Chapter I - Divisions, Customs, and History of the Race

The First Indians in Europe

A LMOST immediately upon the discovery of the New World its inhabitants became a source of the greatest interest to all ranks and classes among the people of Europe. That this should have been so is not a little surprising when we remember the ignorance which prevailed regarding the discovery of the new hemisphere, and that in the popular imagination the people of the new-found lands were considered to be inhabitants of those eastern countries which European navigation had striven so long and so fruitlessly to reach. The very name ‘Indian’ bestowed upon the men from the islands of the far western ocean proves the ill-founded nature and falsity of the new conditions which through the discovery of Columbus were imposed upon the science of geography. Why all this intense and vivid interest in the strange beings whom the Genoese commander carried back with him as specimens of the population of the new-found isles ?

The Spaniards were accustomed to the presence and sight: of Orientals. They had for centuries dwelt side by side with a nation of Eastern speech and origin, and the things of the East held little of novelty for them. Is it not possible that the people, by reason of some natural motive difficult of comprehension, did not credit in their hearts the scientific conclusions of the day ? Something deeper and more primitive than science was at work in their minds, and some profound human instinct told them that the dusky and befeathered folk they beheld in the triumphal procession of the Discoverer were not the inhabitants of an Orient with which they were more or less familiar, but erstwhile dwellers in a mystic continent which had been isolated from the rest of mankind for countless centuries.

There are not wanting circumstances which go far to prove that instinct, brushing aside the conclusions of science, felt that it had rightly come upon the truth. The motto on the arms granted to Columbus is eloquent of the popular feeling when it states,

To Castile and Leon
Columbus gave a new worlds

and the news was greeted in London with the pronouncement that it seemed “a thing more divine than human”—a conclusion which could scarcely have been arrived at if it was considered that the reaching of the farthest Orient point alone had been achieved.

The primitive and barbarous appearance of the Indians in the train of Columbus deeply impressed the people of Spain. The savage had before this event been merely “a legendary and heraldic animal like the griffin and the phoenix.” In the person of the Indian he was presented for the first time to the astonished gaze of a European people, who were quick to distinguish the differences in feature and general appearance between the Red Man and the civilized Oriental—although his resemblance to the Tartar race was insisted upon by some early writers.

Popular interest, instead of abating, grew greater, and with each American discovery the ^c Indian ’ became the subject of renewed controversy. Works on the origin and customs of the American aborigines, of ponderous erudition but doubtful conclusions, were eagerly peruse d and discussed. These were not any more extravagant, however, than, many theories propounded at a much later date. In the early nineteenth century a school of enthusiastic antiquaries, perhaps the most distinguished of whom was Lord Kingsborough, determined upon proving the identity of the American aborigines with the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and brought to bear upon the subject a perfect battery of erudition of the most extraordinary kind. His lordship’s great work on the subject, The Antiquities of Mexico , absorbed a fortune of some fifty thousand pounds by its publication. The most absurd philological conclusions were arrived at in the course of these researches, examples of which it would but weary the reader to peruse. Only a shade less ridiculous were the deductions drawn from Indian customs where these bore a certain surface resemblance to Hebrew rite or priestly usage.

 

Indians as Jews

As an example of this species of argument it will be sufficient to quote the following passage from a work published in 1879 :^[1]

“The Indian high-priest wears a breastplate made of a white conch-shell, and around his head either a wreath of swan feathers, or a long piece of swan skin doubled, so as to show only the snowy feathers on each side. These remind us of the breastplate and mitre of the Jewish high-priest. They have also a magic stone which is transparent, and which the medicinemen consult ; it is most jealously guarded, even from their own people, and Adair could never procure one.

Is this an imitation of the Urim and Thummim ? Again, they have a feast of first-fruits, which they celebrate with songs and dances, repeating ‘Halelu-Halelu-Haleluiah’ with great earnestness and fervour. They dance in three circles round the fire that cooks these fruits on a kind of altar, shouting the praises of  Yo-He-Wah (Jehovah ?). These words are only used in their religious festivals.”

To what tribe the writer alludes is not manifest from the context.

 

Welsh-speaking Indians

An ethnological connexion has been traced for the Red Man of North America, with equal parade of erudition, to Phoenicians, Hittites, and South Sea Islanders. But one of the most amusing of these theories is that which attempts to substantiate his blood-relationship with the inhabitants of Wales ! The argument in favour of this theory is so quaint, and is such a capital example of the kind of learning under which American ethnology has groaned for generations, that it may be briefly examined. In the author’s Myths of Mexico and Peru (p. 5) a short account is given of the legend of Madoc, son of Owen Gwyneth, a Welsh prince, who quitted his country in disgust at the manner in which his brothers had partitioned their father’s territories. Sailing due west with several vessels, he arrived, says Sir Thomas Herbert in his 'Travels (1634), at the Gulf of Mexico, “not far from Florida,” in the year 1170.

After settling there he returned to Wales for reinforcements, and once more fared toward the dim West, never to be heard of more. But, says the chronicler,

“though the Cambrian issue in the new found world may seeme extinct, the Language to this day used among these Canibals, together with their adoring the crosse, using Beades, Reliques of holy men and some other, noted in them of Acusano and other places, . . . points at our Madoc’s former being there.”

The Cambrians, continued Sir Thomas, left in their American colony many names of

“Birds, Rivers, Rocks, Beasts and the like, some of which words are these : Gwrando , signifying in the Cambrian speech to give eare unto or hearken. Pen-gwyn , with us a white head, refered by the Mexicans to a Bird so-called, and Rockes complying with that Idiom. Some promontories had like denominations, called so by the people to this day, tho’ estranged and concealed by the Spaniard. Such are the Isles Corroeso. The Cape of Brutaine or Brittaine.

The floud Gwyndowr or white water, Bara bread, Mam mother, Tate father, Dowr water, Bryd time, Bu or Buch a Cow, Clugar a Heathcocke, Llwynog a Fox, Wy an Egge, Calafz. Quill, Trwyn a Nose, Nef Heaven ; and the like then used; by which, in my conceit, none save detracting Opinionatists can justly oppose such worthy testimonies and proofes of what I wish were generally allowed of.”

 

Antiquity of Man in America

To turn to more substantial conclusions concerning the racial affinities of the Red Man, we find that it is only within very recent times that anything like a reasoned scientific argument has been arrived at. Founding upon recently acquired geological, anthropological, and linguistic knowledge, inquirers into the deeper realms of American ethnology have solved the question of how the Western Hemisphere was peopled, and the arguments they adduce are so convincing in their nature as to leave no doubt in the minds of unbiased persons.

It is now admitted that the presence of man in the Old World dates from an epoch so far distant as to be calculated only by reference to geological periods of which we know the succession but not the duration, and research has proved that the same holds good of the Western Hemisphere. Although man undoubtedly found his way from the Old World to the New, the period at which he did so is so remote that for all practical purposes he may be said to have peopled both hemispheres simultaneously.

Indeed,

“his relative antiquity in each has no bearing on the history of his advancement.”

It is known that the American continent offers no example of the highly organized primates—for example, the larger apes—in which the Old World abounds, save man himself, and this circumstance is sufficient to prove that the human species must have reached America as strangers. Had man been native to the New World there would have been found side by side with him either existing or fossil representatives of the greater apes and other anthropoid animals which illustrate his pedigree in the Old World.

 

The Great Miocene Bridge

Again, many careful observers have noticed the striking resemblance between the natives of America and Northern Asia. At Bering Strait the Old World and the New are separated by a narrow sea-passage only, and an elevation of the sea-bed of less than two hundred feet would provide a ‘ land-bridge ’ at least thirty miles in breadth between the two continents. It is a geological fact that Bering Strait has been formed since the Tertiary period, and that such a ‘ land-bridge ’ once existed, to which American geologists have given the name of ‘the Miocene bridge.’ By this ‘ bridge,’ it is believed, man crossed from Asia to America, and its subsequent disappearance confined him to the Western Hemisphere.

 

American Man in Glacial Times

That this migration occurred before the Glacial period is proved by the circumstance that chipped flints and other implements have been discovered in ice-drift at points in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota, to which it is known that the southern margin of the ice-sheet extended. This proves that man was driven southward by the advancing ice, as were several Old World animal species which had migrated to America. However, it is difficult in many cases to accept what may seem to be evidence of the presence of prehistoric man in North America with any degree of confidence, and it will be well to confine ourselves to the most authentic instances. In the loess of the Mississippi at Natchez Dr. Dickson found side by side with the remains of the mylodon and megalonyx human bones blackened by time. But Sir Charles Lyell pointed out that these remains might have been carried by the action of water from the numerous Indian places of burial in the neighbourhood. In New Orleans, while trenches were being dug for gas-pipes, a skeleton was discovered sixteen feet from the surface, the skull of which was embedded beneath a gigantic cypress-tree. But the deposit in which the remains were found was subsequently stated to be of recent origin.

A reed mat was discovered at Petit Anse, Louisiana, at a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet, among a deposit of salt near the tusks or bones of an elephant. In the bottomlands of the Bourbeuse River, in Missouri, Dr. Koch discovered the remains of a mastodon. It had sunk in the mud of the marshes, and, borne down by its own ponderous bulk, had been unable to right itself. Espied by the hunters of that dim era, it had been attacked by them, and the signs of their onset—flint arrow-heads and pieces of rock—were found mingled with its bones. Unable to dispatch it with their comparatively puny weapons, they had built great fires round it, the cinder-heaps of which remain to the height of six feet, and by this means they had presumably succeeded in suffocating it.

In Iowa and Nebraska Dr. Aughey found many evidences of the presence of early man in stone weapons mingled with the bones of the mastodon. In California, Colorado, and Wyoming scores of stone mortars, arrow-heads, and lance-points have been discovered in deposits which show no sign of displacement. Traces of ancient mining operations are also met with in California and the Lake Superior district, the skeletons of the primitive miners being found, stone hammer in hand, beneath the masses of rock which buried them in their fall. As the object of these searchers was evidently metal of some description, it may reasonably be inferred that the remains are of comparatively late date.

 

The Calaveras Skull

In 1866 Professor J. D. Whitney discovered the famous ‘ Calaveras ’ skull at a depth of about a hundred and thirty feet in a bed of auriferous gravel on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, California. The skull rested on a bed of lava, and was covered by several layers of lava and volcanic deposit. Many other remains were found in similar geological positions, and this was thought to prove that the Calaveras skull was not an isolated instance of the presence of man in America in Tertiary times. The skull resembles the Eskimo type, and chemical analysis discovered the presence of organic matter. These circumstances led to the conclusion that the great age claimed by Whitney for the relic was by no means proved, and this view was strengthened by the knowledge that displacements of the deposits in which it had been discovered had frequently been caused by volcanic agency.

 

More Recent Finds

More recent finds have been summarized by an eminent authority connected with the United States Bureau of Ethnology as follows :

“In a post-Glacial terrace on the south shore of Lake Ontario the remains of a hearth were discovered at a depth of twenty-two feet by Mr. Tomlinson in digging a well, apparently indicating early aboriginal occupancy of the St. Lawrence basin. From the Glacial or immediately post-Glacial deposits of Ohio a number of articles of human workmanship have been reported : a grooved axe from a well twenty-two feet beneath the surface, near New London ; a chipped object of waster type at Newcomerstown, at a depth of sixteen feet in Glacial gravel; chipped stones in gravels, one at Madison-ville at a depth of eight feet, and another at Loveland at a depth of thirty feet.

At Little Falls, Minn., flood-plain, deposits of sand and gravel are found to contain many artificial objects of quartz. This flood-plain is believed by some to have been finally abandoned by the Mississippi well back toward the close of the Glacial period in the valley, but that these finds warrant definite conclusions as to time is seriously questioned by Chamberlain.

In a Missouri river-beach near Lansing, Kansas, portions of a human skeleton were recently found at a depth of twenty feet, but geologists are not agreed as to the age of the formation. At Clayton, Mo., in a deposit believed to belong to the loess, at a depth of fourteen feet, a well-finished grooved axe was found.

In the Basin Range region, between the Rocky Mountains and the sierras, two discoveries that seem to bear on the antiquity of human occupancy have been reported : in a silt deposit in Walker River Valley, Nevada, believed to be of Glacial age, an obsidian implement was obtained at a depth of twenty-five feet ; at Nampa, Idaho, a clay image is reported to have been brought up by a sand-pump from a depth of three hundred and twenty feet in alternating beds of clay and quicksand underlying a lava flow of late Tertiary or early Glacial age. Questions are raised bya number of geologists respecting the value of these finds.”

 

Later Man in America

Whatever doubt attaches to the presence of man in America during the Tertiary period—a doubt which is not shared by most American archaeologists—there is none regarding his occupation of the entire continent in times less remote, yet far distant from the dawn of the earliest historical records of Asia or Europe. In caves and ‘kitchen-middens’ or rubbish-heaps over the entire length and breadth of the American continent numerous evidences of the presence of populous centres have been discovered. Mingled with the shells of molluscs and the bones of extinct animals human remains, weapons, and implements are to be found, with traces of fire, which prove that the men of those early days had risen above the merely animal existence led by the first-comers to American soil.

 

Affinities with Siberian Peoples

As has already been indicated, careful observers have repeatedly remarked upon the strong likeness between the American races and those of Northeastern Asia. This likeness is not only physical, but extends to custom, and to some extent to religious belief.

“The war-dances and medicine customs of the Ostiaks resemble those of the Kolusches even to the smallest details, and the myth of a heaven-climber, who ascends the sky from a lofty tree, lowering himself again to earth by a strip of leather, a rope of grass, a plait of hair, or the curling wreath of smoke from a hut, occurs not only among the Ugrian tribes, but among the Dogrib Indians. Such myths, it is contended, though insufficient to prove common descent, point to early communications between these distant stocks.

Superstitious usages, on the other hand, it is argued, are scarcely likely to have been adopted in consequence of mere intercourse, and indicate a common origin. Thus, among the Itelmians of Kamchatka it is forbidden to carry a burning brand otherwise than in the fingers ; it must on no account be pierced for that purpose with the point of a knife. A similar superstition is cherished by the Dakota. Again, when the tribes of Hudson Bay slay a bear they daub the head with gay colours, and sing around it hymns having a religious character ; it is understood to symbolize the spirit of the deceased animal. A similar practice, it is said, prevails throughout Siberia, and is met with among the Gilyaks of the Amur, and the Ainu.

The Ostiaks hang the skin of a bear on a tree, pay it the profoundest respect, and address it while imploring pardon of the spirit of the animal for having put it to death ; their usual oath, moreover, is ‘by the bear,’ as the polished Athenians habitually swore ‘by the dog.’ Earthen vessels, it is further urged, were manufactured not only by the Itelmians, but by the Aleutians and the Kolusches of the New World ; whereas the Assiniboins, settled farther to the southward, cooked their flesh in kettles of hide, into which red-hot stones were cast to heat the water.”^[2]

 

The Evidence of American Languages

The structure of the aboriginal languages of America corroborates the conclusion that the American race proceeded from one instead of several sources, and that it is an ethnological extension of North-eastern Asia. Not only does the ‘machinery’ of American speech closely resemble that of the neighbouring Asiatic races in the possession of a common basis of phonesis and strenuity, but the rejection of labial explodents, which extends from Northern Asia through the speech of the Aleutian Islands to North-western America, is good evidence of affinity.

 

Evidences of Asiatic Intercourse

Evidences of Asiatic intercourse with America in recent and historical times are not wanting. It is a well-authenticated fact that the Russians had learned from the native Siberians of the whereabouts of America long before the discovery of the contiguity of the continents by Bering. Charlevoix, in his work on the origin of the Indians, states that P&re Grellon, one of the French Jesuit Fathers, encountered a Huron woman on the plains of Tartary who had been sold from tribe to tribe until she had passed from Bering Strait into Central Asia. Slight though such incidents seem, it is by means of them that important truths may be gleaned. If one individual was exchanged in this manner, there were probably many similar cases.

 

Later Migrations

There are theories in existence worthy of respect which would regard the North American Indians as the last and recent wave of many Asiatic migrations to American soil. If credence can be extended to the Norse sagas which describe the visits of tenth-century Scandinavian voyagers to the eastern coasts of America, the accounts given of the race encountered by these early discoverers by no means tally with any possible description of the Red Man. The viking seafarers nicknamed the American natives Skry or ‘Chips,’ because of their puny appearance, and the account which they gave of them would seem to class them as a folk possessing Eskimo affinities. Many remains discovered in the eastern States are of the Eskimo type, and when one combines with this the Indian traditions of a great migration—traditions which cannot have survived for many generations—it will be seen that he exact epoch of the entrance of the Red Man into America is by no means finally settled.

 

The Norsemen in America

As the visits of the Norsemen to America during the tenth century have been alluded to, perhaps some further reference to this absorbing subject may be made, as it is undoubtedly germane to the question of the identity of the pre-Indian inhabitants of eastern North America. The Scandinavian colonization of Iceland tempted the intrepid viking race to extend their voyages into still more northerly waters, and this resulted in the discovery of Greenland. Once settled upon those dreary beaches, it was practically inevitable that the hardy seamen would speedily discover American soil. Biarne Herjulfson, sailing from Iceland to Greenland without knowledge of the waters he navigated, was caught in dense fog and shifting wind, so that he knew not in what direction he sailed.

“Witless, methinks, is our forth-faring,” laughed the stout Norseman,

“ seeing that none of us has beheld the Greenland sea.”

Holding doggedly on, however, the adventurers came at last in sight of land. But this was no country of lofty ice such as they had been told to expect. A land of gentle undulations covered with timber met their sea-sad eyes. Bearing away, they came to another land like the first. The wind fell, and the sailors proposed to disembark. But Biarne refused. Five days afterward they made Greenland. Biarne had, of course, got into that Arctic current which sets southward from the Polar Circle between Iceland and Greenland, and had been carried to the coasts of New England.^[3]

 

Leif the Lucky

Biarne did not care to pursue his discoveries, but at the court of Eric, Earl of Norway, to which he paid a visit, his neglect in following them up was much talked about. All Greenland, too, was agog with the news. Leif, surnamed ‘the Lucky,’ son of Eric the Red, the first colonizer of Greenland, purchased Biarne’s ship, and, hiring a crew of thirty-five men, one of whom was a German named Tyrker (perhaps Tydsker, the Norse for ‘German’), set sail for the land seen by Biarne. He soon espied it, and cast anchor, but it was a barren place; so they called it Hellu-land, or ‘Land of Flat Stones,’ and, leaving it, sailed southward again. Soon they came to another country, which they called Mark-land, or ‘Wood-land,’ for it was low and flat and well covered with trees. These shores also they left, and again put to sea.

 

The Land of Wine

After sailing still farther south they came to a strait lying between an island and a promontory. Here they
landed and built huts. The air was warm after the sword-like winds of Greenland, and when the day was shortest the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven in the morning until half-past four in the afternoon. They divided into two bands to explore the land. One day Tyrker, the German, was missing. They searched for him, and found him at no great distance from the camp, in a state of much excitement. For he had discovered vines with grapes upon them— a boon to a man coming from a land of vines, who had beheld none for half a lifetime. They loaded the ship’s boat with the grapes and felled timber to freight the ship, and in the spring sailed away from the newfound country, which they named ‘ Wine-land.’

It would seem that the name Hellu-land was applied to Newfoundland or Labrador, Mark-land to Nova Scotia, and Wine-land to New England, and that Leif wintered in some part of the state of Rhode Island.

 

The Skrælingr

In the year 1002 Leif’s brother Thorwald sailed to the new land in Biarne’s ship. From the place where Leif had landed, which the Norsemen named ‘Leif’s Booths’ (or huts), he explored the country southward and northward. But at a promontory in the neighbourhood of Boston he was attacked and slain by the Skrælingr who inhabited the country. These men are described as small and dwarfish in appearance and as possessing Eskimo characteristics. In 1007 a bold attempt was made to colonize the country from Greenland. Three ships, with a hundred and sixty men aboard, sailed to Wine-land, where they wintered, but the incessant attacks of the Skrælingr rendered colonization impossible, and the Norsemen took their departure. The extinction of the Scandinavian colonies in Greenland put an end to all communication with America. But the last voyage from Greenland to American shores took place in 1347, only a hundred and forty-five years before Columbus discovered the West Indian Islands. In 1418 the Skrælingr of Greenland —the Eskimo—attacked and destroyed the Norse settlements there, and carried away the colonists into captivity. It is perhaps the descendants of these Norse folk who dared the world of ice and the ravening breakers of the Arctic sea who have been discovered by a recent Arctic explorer !^[4]

The authenticity of the Norse discoveries is not to be questioned. No less than seventeen ancient Icelandic documents allude to them, and Adam of Bremen mentions the territory discovered by them as if referring to a widely known country.

 

The Dighton Rock

A rock covered with inscriptions, known as the Digh-ton Writing Rock, situated on the banks of the Taunton River, in Massachusetts, was long pointed out as of Norse origin, and Rafn, the Danish antiquary, pronounced the script which it bore to be runic. With equal perspicacity Court de Gebelin and Dr. Styles saw in it a Phoenician inscription. It is, in fact, quite certain that the writing is of Indian origin, as similar rock-carvings occur over the length and breadth of the northern sub-continent. Almost as doubtful are the theories which would make the ‘ old mill ’ at Newport a Norse ‘ biggin.’ However authentic the Norse settlements in America may be, it is certain that the Norsemen left no traces of their occupation in that continent, and although the building at Newport distinctly resembles the remains of Norse architecture in Greenland, the district in which it is situated is quite out of the sphere of Norse settlement in North America.

 

The Mound-Builders

The question of the antiquity of the Red Race in North America is bound up with an archaeological problem which bristles with difficulties, but is quite as replete with interest. In the Mississippi basin and the Gulf States, chiefly from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Natchez, Miss., and in the central and southern districts of Ohio, and in the adjoining portion of Indiana and South Wisconsin, are found great earthen mounds, the typical form of which is pyramidal. Some, however, are circular, and a few pentagonal. Others are terraced, extending outward from one or two sides, while some have roadways leading up to the level surface on the summit.

These are not mere accumulations of debris, but works constructed on a definite plan, and obviously requiring a considerable amount of skill and labour for their accomplishment.

“The form, except where worn down by the plough, is usually that of a low, broad, round-topped cone, varying in size from a scarcely perceptible swell in the ground to elevations of eighty or even a hundred feet, and from six to three hundred feet in diameter.”^[5]

 

Mounds m Animal Form

Many of these structures represent animal forms, probably the totem or eponymous ancestor of the tribe which reared them. The chief centre for these singular erections seems to have been Wisconsin, where they are very numerous. The eagle, wolf, bear, turtle, and fox are represented, and even the human form has been attempted. There are birds with outstretched wings, measuring more than thirty-two yards from tip to tip, and great mammalian forms sixty-five yards long. Reptilian forms are also numerous. These chiefly represent huge lizards. At least one mound in the form of a spider, whose body and legs cover an acre of ground, exists in Minnesota.

According to the classification of Squier, these structures were employed for burial, sacrifice, and observation, and as temple-sites. Other structures often found in connexion with them are obviously enclosures, and were probably used for defence. The conical mounds are usually built of earth and stones, and are for the most part places of sepulture. The flat-topped structures were probably employed as sites for buildings, such as temples, council-houses, and chiefs’ dwellings. Burials were rarely made in the wall-like enclosures or effigy mounds. Many of the enclosures are of true geometrical figure, circular, square, or octagonal, and with few exceptions these are found in Ohio and the adjoining portions of Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia. They enclose an expanse varying from one to a hundred acres.

 

What the Mounds Contain

In the sepulchral mounds a large number of objects have been found which throw some light on the habits of the folk who built them. Copper plates with stamped designs are frequent, and these are difficult to account for. In one mound were found no less than six hundred stone hatchet-blades, averaging seven inches long by four wide. Under another were exhumed two hundred calcined tobacco-pipes, and copper ornaments with a thin plating of silver; while from others were taken fragments of pottery, obsidian implements, ivory and bone needles, and scroll-work cut out of very thin plates of mica. In several it was observed that cremation had been practised, but in others the bodies were found extended horizontally or else doubled up. In some instances the ashes of the dead had been placed carefully in skulls, perhaps those of the individuals whose bodies had been given to the flames. Implements, too, are numerous, and axes, awls, and other tools of copper have frequently been discovered.

 

The Tomb of the Black Tortoise

A more detailed description of one of these groups of sepulchral mounds may furnish the reader with a clearer idea of the structures as a whole. The group in question was discovered in Minnesota, on the northern bank of St. Peter’s River, about sixty miles from its junction with the Mississippi. It includes twenty-six mounds, placed at regular distances from each other, and forming together a large rectangle. The central mound represents a turtle forty feet long by twenty-seven feet wide and twelve feet high. It is almost entirely constructed of yellow clay, which is not found in the district, and therefore must have been brought from a distance. Two mounds of red earth of triangular form flank it north and south, and each of these is twenty-seven feet long by about six feet wide at one end, the opposite end tapering off until it scarcely rises above the level of the soil. At each corner rises a circular mound twelve feet high by twenty-five feet in diameter. East and west of the structure stand two elongated mounds sixty feet long, with a diameter of twelve feet. Two smaller mounds on the right and left of the turtle-shaped mound are each twelve feet long by four feet high, and [consist of white sand mixed with numerous fragments of mica, covered with a layer tof clay and a second one of vegetable mould. Lastly, thirteen smaller mounds fill in the intervals in the group.

Conant gives an explanation of the whole group as follows :

“The principal tomb would be the last home of a great chief, the Black Tortoise. The four mounds which form the corners of the quadrangle were also erected as a sign of the mourning of the tribe. The secondary mounds are the tombs of other chiefs, and the little mounds erected in the north and south corresponded with the number of bodies which had been deposited in them. The two pointed mounds indicate that the Black Tortoise was the last of his race, and the two large mounds the importance of that race and the dignity which had belonged to it. Lastly, the two mounds to the right and left of the royal tomb mark the burial-places of the prophets or soothsayers, who even to our own day play a great part among the Indian tribes. The fragments of mica found in their tombs would indicate their rank.”^[6]

 

Who were the Mound-Builders ?

It is not probable that the reader will agree with all the conclusions drawn in the paragraph quoted above, which would claim for these structures a hieroglyphic as well as a sepulchral significance. But such speculations cannot destroy the inherent interest of the subject, however much they may irritate those who desire to arrive at logical conclusions concerning it. Who then were the folk who raised the mounds of Ohio and the Mississippi and spread their culture from the Gulf states region to the Great Lakes ? Needless to say, the ‘antiquaries’ of the last century stoutly maintained that they were strangers from over the sea, sun- and serpent-worshippers who had forsaken the cities of Egypt, Persia, and Phoenicia, and had settled in the West in order to pursue their strange religions undisturbed. But such a view by no means commends itself to modern science, which sees in the architects of these mounds and pyramids the ancestors of the present aborigines of North America. Many of the objects discovered in the mounds are of European manufacture, or prove contact with Europeans, which shows that the structures containing them are of comparatively modern origin.

The articles discovered and the character of the various monuments indicate a culture stage similar to that noted among the more advanced tribes inhabiting the regions where the mounds occur at the period of the advent of the whites. Moreover, the statements of early writers on these regions, such as the members of De Soto’s expedition, prove beyond question that some of the structures were erected by the Indians in post-Columbian times.

“It is known that some of the tribes inhabiting the Gulf states, when De Soto passed through their territory in 1540-41, as the Yuchi, Creeks, Chickasaw, and Natchez, were still using and probably constructing mounds, and that the Quapaw of Arkansas were also using them. There is also documentary evidence that the ‘Texas’ tribe still used mounds at the end of the seventeenth century, when a chiefs house is described as being built on one. There is also sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that the Cherokee and Shawnee were mound-builders. . . . According to Miss Fletcher, the Winnebago build miniature mounds in the lodge during certain ceremonies.”^[7]

Nothing has been found in the mounds to indicate great antiquity, and the present tendency among archaeologists is to assign to them a comparatively recent origin.

 

The ‘Nations’ of North America

In order that the reader may be enabled the better to comprehend the history and customs of the Red Race in North America, it will be well at this juncture to classify the various ethnic stocks of which it is composed. Proceeding to do so on a linguistic basis— the only possible guide in this instance—we find that students of American languages, despite the diversity of tongues exhibited in North America, have referred all of these to ten or a dozen primitive stems.^[8] Let us first examine the geographical position of the ‘nations’ of the American aborigines in the sixteenth century, at the period of the advent of the white man, whilst yet they occupied their ancestral territory.

The Athapascan stock extended in a broad band across the continent from the Pacific to Hudson Bay, and almost to the Great Lakes below. Tribes cognate to it wandered far north to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and, southward, skirted the Rockies and the coast of Oregon south of the estuary of the Columbia River, and spreading over the plains of New Mexico, as Apaches, Navahos, and Lipans, extended almost to the tropics. The Athapascan is the most widely distributed of all the Indian linguistic stocks of North America, and covered a territory of more than forty degrees of latitude, and seventy-five degrees of longitude. Its northern division was known as the Tinneh or Dene, and consisted of three groups—eastern, north-western, and south-western, dwelling near the Rockies, in the interior of Alaska, and in the mountain fastnesses of British America respectively. The Pacific division occupied many villages in a strip of territory about four hundred miles in length from Oregon to Eel River in California.

The southern division occupied a large part of Arizona and New Mexico, the southern portion of Utah and Colorado, the western borders of Kansas, and the northern part of Mexico to lat. 25°. The social conditions and customs as well as the various dialects spoken by the several branches and offshoots of this great family differed considerably according to climate and environment. Extremely adaptable, the Athapascan stock appear to have adopted many of the customs and ceremonies of such tribes as they were brought into contact with, and do not seem to have had any impetus to frame a culture of their own. Their tribes had little cohesion, and were subdivided into family groups or loose bands, which recognized a sort of patriarchal government and descent. Their food-supply was for the most part precarious, as it consisted almost entirely of the proceeds of hunting expeditions, and the desperate and never-ending search for provender rendered this people somewhat narrow and material in outlook.

 

The Iroquois

The Iroquois—Hurons,Tuscaroras, Susquehannocks, Nottoways, and others—occupied much of the country from the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario to the Roanoke. Several of their tribes banded themselves into a confederacy known as the ‘Five Nations’ and these comprised the Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas,Onondagas, and Senecas. The Cherokees, dwelling in the valleys of East Tennessee, appear to have been one of the early offshoots of the Iroquois. A race of born warriors, they pursued their craft with an excess of cruelty which made them the terror of the white settler. It was with the Iroquois that most of the early colonial wars were waged, and their name, which they borrowed from the Algonquins, and which signifies ‘Real Adders,’ was probably no misnomer. They possessed chiefs who, strangely enough, were nominated by the matrons of the tribe, whose decision was confirmed by the tribal and federal councils. The ‘Five Nations’ of the Iroquois made up the Iroquois Confederacy, which was created about the year 1570, as the last of a series of attempts to unite the tribes in question. The Mohawks, so conspicuous in colonial history, are one of their sub-tribes.

Many of the Iroquoian tribes

“have been settled by the Canadian Government on a reservation on Grand River, Ontario, where they still reside. . . . All the Iroquois [in the United States] are in reservations in New York, with the exception of the Oneida, who are settled in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The so-called Seneca, of Oklahoma, are composed of the remnants of many tribes . . . and of emigrants from all the tribes of the Iroquoian Confederation.”

In 1689 the Iroquois were estimated to number about twelve thousand, whereas in 1904 they numbered over sixteen thousand.

 

The Algonquins

The Algonquian^[9] family surrounded the Iroquois on every side, and extended westward toward the Rocky Mountains, where one of their famous offshoots, the Blackfeet, gained a notoriety which has rendered them the heroes of many a boyish tale. They were milder than the Iroquois, and less Spartan in habits.

• Their western division comprised the Blackfeet, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, situated near the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains ;
• the northern division, situated for the most part to the north of the St. Lawrence, comprised the Chippeways and Crees ;
• the north-eastern division embraced the tribes inhabiting Quebec, the Maritime Provinces, and Maine, including the Mon-tagnais and Micmacs ;
• the central division, dwelling in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, included the Foxes, Kickapoos, Menominees, and others ;
• and the eastern division embraced all the Algonquian tribes that dwelt along the Atlantic coast, the Abnaki, Narragans ets, Nipmucs, Mohicans (or Mohegans), Shawnees, Delawares, and Powhatans.

The Algonquins were the first Indians to come into contact with the white man. As a rule their relations with the French were friendly, but they were frequently at war with the English settlers. The eastern branch of the race were quickly defeated and scattered, their remnants withdrawing to Canada and the Ohio valley. Of the smaller tribes of New England, Virginia, and other eastern states there are no living representatives, and even their languages are extinct, save for a few words and place-names. The Ohio valley tribes, with the Wyandots, formed themselves into a loose confederacy and attempted to preserve the Ohio as an Indian boundary; but in 1794 they were finally defeated and forced to cede their territory. Tecumseh, an Algonquin chief, carried on a fierce war against the United States for a number of years, but by his defeat and death at Tippecanoe in 1811 the spirit of the Indians was broken, and the year 1815 saw the commencement of a series of Indian migrations westward, and a wholesale cession of Indian territory which continued over a period of about thirty years.

 

A Sedentary People

The Algonquins had been for generations the victims of the Iroquois Confederacy, and only when the French had guaranteed them immunity from the attacks of their hereditary enemies did they set their faces to the east once more, to court repulse a second time at the hands

(of the English settlers. Tall and finely proportioned, the Algonquins were mainly a sedentary and agricultural people, growing maize and wild rice for their staple foods. Indeed, more than once were the colonists of New England saved from famine by these industrious folk. In 1792 Wayne’s army found a continuous plantation along the entire length of the Maumee River from Fort Wayne to Lake Erie, and such evidence entirely shatters the popular fallacy that the Indian race were altogether lacking in the virtues of industry and domesticity. They employed fish-shells and ashes as fertilizers, and made use of spades and hoes. And it was the Algonquins who first instilled in the white settlers the knowledge of how to prepare those succulent dainties for which New England is famous—hominy, succotash, maple-sugar, and johnny-cake.

They possessed the art of tanning deerskin to a delicate softness which rendered it a luxurious and delightful raiment, and, like the Aztecs, they manufactured mantles of feather-work. They had also elaborated a system of picture-writing. In short, they were the most intelligent and advanced of the eastern tribes, and had their civilization been permitted to proceed unhindered by white aggression and the recurring inroads of their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois, it would probably have evolved into something resembling that of the Nahua of Mexico, without, perhaps, exhibiting the sanguinary fanaticism of that people. The great weakness of the Algonquian stock was a lack of solidity of character, which prevented them from achieving a degree of tribal organization and cohesion sufficient to enable them to withstand their foes.

 

The Muskhogean Race

The Muskhogean race included theChoctaws,Chicka-saws, Creeks, and Seminoles, who occupied territory in the Gulf states east of the Mississippi, possessing almost all of Mississippi and Alabama, and portions of Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Many early notices or this people are extant. They were met by Narvaez in Florida in 1528, and De Soto passed through their territory in 1540-41. By 1700 the entire Apalachee 1 tribe had been civilized and Christianized, and had settled in seven large and well-built towns. But the tide of white settlement gradually pressed the Muskhogean tribes backward from the coast region, and though they fought stoutly to retain their patrimony, few of the race remain m their native area, the majority having been removed to the tribal reservation in Oklahoma before 1840. They were an agricultural and sedentary people, occupying villages of substantially built dwellings.

A curious diversity, both physical and mental, existed among the several tribes of which the race was composed. They possessed a general council formed of representatives from each town, who met annually or as occasion required. Artificial deformation of the skull was practised by nearly all of the Muskhogean tribes, chiefly by the Choctaws, who were called by the settlers ‘ Flatheads.’ The Muskhogean population at the period of its first contact with the whites has been estimated at some fifty thousand souls. In 1905 they numbered rather more, but this estimate included about fifteen thousand freedmen of negro blood.

 

The Sioux

The Siouan or Dakota stock—Santees, Yanktons, Assiniboins,and Tetons—inhabited a territory extending from Saskatchewan to Louisiana. They are the highest type, physically, mentally, and morally, of any or the western tribes, and their courage is unquestioned. They dwelt in large bands or groups.

“Personal fitness and popularity determined chieftainship. . . . The authority of the chief was limited by the band council, without whose approbation little or nothing could be accomplished. War parties were recruited by individuals who had acquired reputation as successful leaders, while the shamans formulated ceremonials and farewells for them. Polygamy was common. . . . Remains of the dead were usually, though not invariably, placed on scaffolds.”^[10]

 

Caddoan Family

The Caddoan family comprises three geographic groups, the northern, represented by the Arikara, the middle, embracing the Pawnee Confederacy, once dwelling in Nebraska, and the southern group, including the Caddo, Kichai, and Wichita. Once numerous, this division of the Red Race is now represented by a few hundreds of individuals only, who are settled in Oklahoma and North Dakota. The Caddo tribes were cultivators of the soil as well as hunters, and practised the arts of pottery-making and tanning. They lacked political ability and were loosely confederated.

 

The Shoshoneans

The Shoshoneans or‘ Snake’ family of Nevada, Utah, and Idaho comprise the Root-diggers, Comanches, and other tribes of low culture.

These people, it is said,

“are probably nearer the brutes than any other portion of the human race on the face of the globe.”

“Yet these debased creatures speak a related dialect and partake in some measure of the same blood as the famous Aztec race who founded the empire of Anahuac, and raised architectural monuments rivalling the most famous structures of the ancient world.”^[11]

 

Early Wars with the Whites

Numerous minor wars between the Indians and the colonists followed upon the settlement of Virginia, but on the whole the relations between them were peaceable until the general massacre of white women and children on March 22, 1622, while the men of the colony were working in the fields. Three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children were slain in a single day. This holocaust was the signal for an Indian war which continued intermittently for many years and cost the colonists untold loss in blood and treasure. Inability to comprehend each other’s point of view was of course a fertile source of irritation between the races, and even colonists who had ample opportunities for observing and studying the Indians during a long course of years appear to have been incapable of understanding their outlook and true character. The dishonesty of white traders, on the other hand, aroused the Indian to a frenzy of childish indignation. It was a native saying that “One pays for another,” and when an Indian was slain his nearest blood-relation considered that he had consummated a righteous revenge by murdering the first white man whom he met or waylaid. Each race accused the other of treachery and unfairness.

Probably the colonists, despite their veneer of civilization, were only a little less ignorant than, and as vindictively cruel as, the barbarians with whom they strove. The Indian regarded the colonist as an interloper who had come to despoil him of the land of his fathers, while the Virginian Puritan considered himself the salt of the earth and the Indian as a heathen or ‘ Ishmaelite’ sent by the Powers of Darkness for his discomfiture, whom it was an act of both religion ad policy to destroy. Vengeful ferocity was exhibited on both sides. Another horrible massacre of five hundred whites in 1644 was followed by the defeat of the Indians who had butchered the colonists. Shortly before that event the Pequot tribe in Connecticut had a feud with the English traders, and tortured such of them as they could lay hands on. The men of Connecticut, headed by John Mason, a military veteran, marched into the Pequot country, surrounded the village of Sassacus, the Pequot chief, gave it to the flames, and slaughtered six hundred of its inhabitants. The tribe was broken up, and the example of their fate so terrified the other Indian peoples that New England enjoyed peace for many years after.

 

King Philip's War

The Dutch of New York were at one period almost overwhelmed by the Indians in their neighbourhood, and-in 1656 the Virginians suffered a severe defeat in a battle with the aborigines at the spot where Richmond now stands. In 1675 there broke out in New England the great Indian war known as King Philip’s War. Philip, an Indian chief, complained bitterly that those of his subjects who had been converted to Christianity were withdrawn from his control, and he made vigorous war on the settlers, laying many of their towns in ashes. But victory was with the colonists at the battle called the ‘Swamp Fight’ and Philip and his men were scattered.

Captain Benjamin Church it was who first taught the colonists to fight the Indians in their own manner. He moved as stealthily as the savages themselves, and, to avoid an alarm, never allowed an Indian to be shot who could be reached with the hatchet. The Indians who were captured were sold into slavery in the West India Islands, where the hard labour and change of climate were usually instrumental in speedily putting an end to their servitude.

Step by step the Red Man was driven westward until he vanished from the vicinity of the earlier settlements altogether. From that period the history of his conflicts with the whites is bound up with the records of their western extension.

 

The Reservations

The necessity of bringing the Indian tribes under the complete control of the United States Government and confining them to definite limits for the better preservation of order was responsible for the policy of placing them on tracts of territory of their own called ‘ reservations.’ This step led the natives to realize the benefits of a settled existence and to depend on their own industry for a livelihood rather than upon the more precarious products of the chase. An Act of Congress was passed in 1887 which put a period to the existence of the Indian tribes as separate communities, and permitted all tribal lands and reservations to be so divided that each individual member of a tribe might possess a separate holding. Many of these holdings are of considerable value, and the possessors are by no means poorly endowed with this world’s goods. On the whole the policy of the United States toward the Indians has been dictated by justice and humanity, but instances have not been wanting in which arid lands have been foisted upon the Indians, and the pressure of white settlers has frequently forced the Government to dispossess the Red Man of the land that had originally been granted to him.

 

The Story of Pocahontas

Many romantic stories are told concerning the relations of the early white settlers with the Indians. Among the most interesting is that of Pocahontas, the daughter of the renowned Indian chief Powhatan, the erstwhile implacable enemy of the whites. Pocahontas, who as a child had often played with the young colonists, was visiting a certain chief named Japazaws, when an English captain named Argali bribed him with a copper kettle to betray her into his hands. Argali took her a captive to Jamestown. Here a whiteman by the name of John Rolfe married her, after she had received Christian baptism. This marriage brought about a peace between Powhatan and the English settlers in Virginia.

When Dale went back to England in 1616 he took with him some of the Indians. Pocahontas, who was now called ‘ the Lady Rebecca,’ and her husband accompanied the party. Pocahontas was called a princess in England, and received much attention. But when about to return to the colony she died, leaving a little son.

The quaint version of Captain Nathaniel Powell, which retains all the known facts of Pocahontas’ story, states that

“During this time, the Lady Rebecca, alias Pocahontas, daughter to Powhatan, by the diligent care of Master John Rolfe her husband, and his friends, was taught to speak such English as might well be understood, well instructed in Christianity, and was become very formal and civil after our English manner ; she had also by him a child which she loved most dearly, and the Treasurer and Company took order both for the maintenance of her and it, besides there were divers persons of great rank and quality had been kind to her ; and before she arrived at London, Captain Smith, to deserve her former courtesies, made her qualities known to the Queen’s most excellent Majesty and her Court, and wrote a little book to this effect to the Queen :

An abstract whereof follows :

“‘To the Most High and Virtuous Princess , Queen Anne of Great Britain

“‘Most admired Queen,

“‘The love I bear my God, my King and Country, hath so oft emboldened me in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honesty doth constrain me to presume thus far beyond myself, to present your Majesty this short discourse: if ingratitude be a deadly poison to all honest virtues, I must be guilty of that crime if I should omit any means to be thankful.

“‘So it is,

“‘That some ten years ago being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the power of Powhatan their chief King, I received from this great savage exceeding great courtesy, especially from his son Nantaquaus, the most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit I ever saw in a savage, and his sister Pocahontas, the King’s most dear and well-beloved daughter, being but a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, whose compassionate pitiful heart, of my desperate estate, gave me much cause to respect her ; I being the first Christian this proud King and his grim attendants ever saw : and thus enthralled in their barbarous power, I cannot say I felt the least occasion of want that was in the power of these my mortal foes to prevent, notwithstanding all their threats.

After some six weeks fatting among these savage courtiers, at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine ; and not only that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conveyed to Jamestown : where I found about eight and thirty miserable poor and sick creatures, to keep possession of all those large territories of Virginia ; such was the weakness of this poor Commonwealth, as had the savages not fed us, we directly had starved. And this relief, most gracious Queen, was commonly brought us by this Lady Pocahontas.

“‘Notwithstanding all these passages, when inconstant Fortune turned our peace to war, this tender virgin would still not spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jars have been oft appeased, and our wants still supplied. Were it the policy of her father thus to employ her, or the ordinance of God thus to make her His instrument, or her extraordinary affection to our nation, I know not ; but of this I am sure : when her father, with the utmost of his policy and power, sought to surprise me, having but eighteen with me, the dark night could not affright her from coming through the irksome woods, and with watered eyes gave me intelligence, with her best advice to escape his fury ; which had he known, he had surely slain her.

“‘Jamestown with her wild train she as freely frequented as her father’s habitation; and during the time of two or three years [1608-9] she, next under God, was still the instrument to preserve this Colony from death, famine and utter confusion ; which if in those times it had once been dissolved, Virginia might have lain as it was at our first arrival to this day.

“‘Since then, this business having been turned and varied by many accidents from that I left it at : it is most certain, after a long and troublesome war after my departure, betwixt her father and our Colony, all which time she was not heard of;

“‘About two years after she herself was taken prisoner, being so detained near two years longer, the Colony by that means was relieved, peace concluded; and at last rejecting her barbarous condition, she was married to an English gentleman, with whom at this present she is in England; the first Christian ever of that nation, the first Virginian ever spoke English, or had a child in marriage by an Englishman : a matter surely, if my meaning be truly considered and well understood, worthy a prince’s understanding.

“‘Thus, most gracious Lady, I have related to your Majesty, what at your best leisure our approved Histories will account you at large, and done in the time of your Majesty’s life ; and however this might be presented you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a more honest heart, as yet I never begged anything of the state, or any : and it is my want of ability and her exceeding desert; your birth, means and authority ; her birth, virtue, want and simplicity, doth make me thus bold, humbly to beseech your Majesty to take this knowledge of her, though it be from one so unworthy to be the reporter, as myself, her husband’s estate not being able to make her fit to attend your Majesty.

The most and least I can do is to tell you this, because none so oft has tried it as myself, and the rather being of so great a spirit, however her stature : if she should not be well received, seeing this kingdom may rightly have a kingdom by her means ; her present love to us and Christianity might turn to such scorn and fury, as to divert all this good to the worst of evil : whereas finding so great a Queen should do her some honour more than she can imagine, for being so kind to your servants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endear her dearest blood to effect that, your Majesty and all the King’s honest subjects most earnestly desire.’”

Captain Powell continues:

“The small time I staid in London, divers courtiers and others, my acquaintances, have gone with me to see her, that generally concluded, they did think God had had a great hand in her conversion, and they have seen many English Ladies worse favoured, proportioned, and behavioured; and as since I have heard, it pleased both the King and Queen’s Majesty honourably to esteem her, accompanied with that honourable Lady the Lady de la Ware, and that honourable Lord her husband, and divers other persons of good qualities, both publicly at the masques and otherwise, to her great satisfaction and content, which doubtless she would have deserved, had she lived to arrive in Virginia.

“The Treasurer, Council and Company, having well furnished Captain Samuel Argali, the Lady Pocahontas alias Rebecca, with her husband and others, in the good ship called the George ; it pleased God at Gravesend to take this young Lady to His mercy, where she made not more sorrow for her unexpected death, than joy to the beholders to hear and see her make so religious and godly an end. Her little child Thomas Rolfe, therefore, was left at Plymouth with Sir Lewis Stukly, that desired the keeping of it.”

 

Indian Kidnapping

Many are the tales of how Indians raiding a white settlement have kidnapped and adopted into their families the children or the slain whites, but none is more enthralling than that of Frances Slocum, who was carried away from home by a party of Delawares when but five years of age, and who lived with them until her death in 1847. When discovered by the whites she was an old woman of over seventy years of age. The story is told by the writer of a local history as follows :

“The Slocums came from Warwick, Rhode Island, and Jonathan Slocum, the father of the far-famed captive girl, emigrated, in 1777, with a wife and nine children. They located near one of the forts, upon a spot of ground which is at present covered by the city of Wilkes-Barre.

“The early training of the family had been on principles averse to war, and Jonathan was loath to mix with the tumult of the valley. A son by the name of Giles, of a fiery spirit, could not brook the evident intentions of the Torys and British, and consequently he shouldered his musket, and was one to take part in the battle of July 3, 1778.

“The prowling clans of savages and bushwhacking Torys which continued to harass the valley occasioned much mischief in different parts, and in the month of November following the battle it was the misfortune of the Slocum family to be visited by a party of these Delawares, who approached the cabin, in front of which two Kingsley boys were engaged at a grindstone sharpening a knife. The elder had on a Continental coat, which aroused the ire of the savages, and he was shot down without warning and scalped by the very knife which he had put edge to.

“The report roused the inmates of the house, and Mrs. Slocum had reached the door in time sufficient to see the boy of her neighbour scalped.

“An elder daughter seized a young child two years old, and flew with terror to the woods. It is said that her impetuosity in escaping caused the Indians to roar with laughter. They were about to take away a boy when Mrs. Slocum pointed to a lame foot, exclaiming :

‘The child is lame ; he can do thee no good.’

They dropped the boy and discovered little Frances hidden away under the staircase. It was but the act of a moment to secure her, and when they bore her away the tender child could but look over the Indian’s shoulder and scream ‘Mamma!’

“The alarm soon spread, but the elasticity of a Delaware’s step had carried the party away into the mountains.

“Mr. Slocum was absent at the time of the capture, and upon returning at night learned the sad news.

“The family’s trials did not end here. Miner, who is ever in sympathy with the early annals of Wyoming, thus depicts the scenes which occurred afterwards :

“‘The cup of vengeance was not yet full. December 16th, Mr. Slocum and Isaac Tripp, his father-in-law, an aged man, with William Slocum, a youth of nineteen or twenty, were feeding cattle from a stack in the meadow, in sight of the fort, when they were fired upon by Indians. Mr. Slocum was shot dead ; Mr. Tripp wounded, speared, and tomahawked ; both were scalped. William, wounded by a spent ball in the heel, escaped and gave the alarm, but the alert and wily foe had retreated to his hiding-place in the mountain. This deed, bold as it was cruel, was perpetrated within the town plot, in the centre of which the fortress was located. Thus, in little more than a month, Mrs. Slocum had lost a beloved child, carried into captivity ; the doorway had been drenched in blood by the murder of a member of the family ; two others of the household had been taken away prisoners ; and now her husband and father were both stricken down to the grave, murdered and mangled by the merciless Indians. Verily, the annals of Indian atrocities, written in blood, record few instances of desolation and woe equal to this.’”

“In 1784, after peace had settled upon the country, two of the Slocum brothers visited Niagara, in hopes of learning something of the whereabouts of the lost sister, but to no purpose. Large rewards were offered, but money will not extract a confession from an Indian.

“Little Frances all this time was widely known by many tribes of Indians, but she had become one of them, hence the mystery which shrouded her fate.

“The efforts of the family were untiring. Several trips were made westward, and each resulted in vain. A large number of Indians of different tribes were convened, in 1789, at Tioga Point, to effect a treaty with Colonel Proctor. This opportunity seemed to be the fitting one, for one visit could reach several tribes, but Mrs. Slocum, after spending weeks of inquiry among them, was again obliged to return home in sorrow, and almost despair.

“The brothers took a journey in 1797, occupying nearly the whole summer, in traversing the wilderness and Indian settlements of the west, but to no purpose. Once, indeed, a ray of hope seemed to glimmer upon the domestic darkness, for a female captive responded to the many and urgent inquiries, but Mrs. Slocum discovered at once that it was not her Frances. The mother of the lost child went down to the grave, having never heard from her daughter since she was carried away captive.

“In 1826, Mr. Joseph Slocum, hearing of a prominent Wyandot chief who had a white woman for a wife, repaired to Sandusky, but was disappointed when he beheld the woman, who he knew to a certainty could not be Frances. Hope had become almost abandoned, and the family was allowing the memory of the lost girl to sink into forgetfulness, when one of those strange freaks of circumstances which seem so mysterious to humanity, but which are the ordinary actions of Infinity, brought to light the history and the person of the captive girl of Wyoming.

“Colonel Ewing, who was connected with Indian service, had occasion to rest with a tribe on the Wabash, when he discovered a woman whose outlines and texture convinced him that she must be a white woman, though her face was as red as any squaw’s could be. He made inquiries, and she admitted that she had been taken from her parents when she was young, that her name was Slocum, and that she was now so old that she had no objections to having her relations know of her whereabouts.

“The Colonel knew full well how anxious many eastern hearts were to hear of the lost one of earlier days, and thinking that he would do a charitable service, he addressed the following letter to the Postmaster of Lancaster, Pennsylvania:

“‘Logansport, Indiana : January 20, 1835

“‘Dear Sir,—

“‘In the hope that some good may result from it, I have taken this means of giving to your fellow-citizens—say the descendants of the early settlers of Susquehanna—the following information : and if there be any now living whose name is Slocum, to them, I hope, the following may be communicated through the public prints of your place.

“‘There is now living near this place, among the Miami tribe of Indians, an aged white woman, who a few days ago told me, while I lodged in the camp one night, that she was taken away from her father’s house, on or near the Susquehanna River, when she was very young—say from five to eight years old, as she thinks—by the Delaware Indians, who were then hostile toward the whites. She says her father’s name was Slocum ; that he was a Quaker, rather small in stature, and wore a large-brimmed hat; was of sandy hair and light complexion, and much freckled ; that he lived about a half a mile from a town where there was a fort ; that they lived in a wooden house of two stories high, and had a spring near the house.

She says three Delawares came to the house in the daytime, when all were absent but herself, and perhaps two other children : her father and brothers were absent making hay. The Indians carried her off, and she was adopted into a family of Delawares, who raised her and treated her as their own child. They died about forty years ago, somewhere in Ohio. She was then married to a Miami, by whom she had four children; two of them are now living—they are both daughters— and she lives with them. Her husband is dead ; she is old and feeble, and thinks she will not live long.

“‘These considerations induced her to give the present history of herself, which she would never do before, fearing that her kindred would come and force her away. She has lived long and happy as an Indian, and, but for her colour, would not be suspected of being anything else but such. She is very respectable and wealthy, sober and honest. Her name is without reproach. She says her father had a large family, say eight children in all—six older than herself, one younger, as well as she can recollect; and she doubts not that there are still living many of their descendants, but seems to think that all her brothers and sisters must be dead, as she is very old herself, not far from the age of eighty. She thinks she was taken prisoner before the last two wars, which must mean the Revolutionary war, as Wayne’s war and the late war have been since that one. She has entirely lost her mother tongue, and speaks only in Indian, which I also understand, and she gave me a full history of herself.

“‘Her own Christian name she has forgotten, but says her father’s name was Slocum, and he was a Quaker. She also recollects that it was on the Susquehanna River that they lived. I have thought that from this letter you might cause something to be inserted in the newspapers of your county that might possibly catch the eye of some of the descendants of the Slocum family, who have knowledge of a girl having been carried off by the Indians some seventy years ago. This they might know from family tradition. If so, and they will come here, I will carry them where they may see the object of my letter alive and happy, though old and far advanced in life.

“‘I can form no idea whereabouts on the Susquehanna River this family could have lived at that early period, namely, about the time of the Revolutionary war, but perhaps you can ascertain more about it. If so, I hope you will interest yourself, and, if possible, let her brothers and sisters, if any be alive—if not, their children—know where they may once more see a relative whose fate has been wrapped in mystery for seventy years, and for whom her bereaved and afflicted parents doubtless shed many a bitter tear. They have long since found their graves, though their lost child they never found. I have been much affected with the disclosure,. and hope the surviving friends may obtain, through your goodness, the information I desire for them. If I can be of any service to them, they may command me. In the meantime, I hope you will excuse me for the freedom I have taken with you, a total stranger, and believe me to be, Sir, with much respect, your obedient servant,

“‘Geo. W. Ewing.’

“This letter met the fate of many others of importance—it was flung away as a wild story.

“The Postmaster died, and had been in his grave time sufficient to allow his wife an opportunity of straightening his affairs. She was in the act of overhauling a mass of papers belonging to her husband’s business when she encountered the letter of Colonel Ewing. A woman’s perceptions are keen and quick, and the tender emotions which were begotten in her mind were but the responses of her. better nature. Her sympathy yearned for one of her own sex, arid she could do no more than proclaim the story to the world. Accordingly she sent the letter to the editor of the Lancaster Intelligence , and therein it was published.

“Newspapers of limited circulation may not revolutionize matters of great importance, but they have their sphere in detail, and when the aggregate is summed they accomplish more than the mighty engines of larger mediums.

“It was so in this case—the Lancaster paper was about issuing an extra for temperance purposes, and this letter happened to go into the forme to help ‘ fill up,’ as poor printers sometimes express it. The Lancaster office was not poor, but the foreman did ‘fill up ’ with the Ewing letter. Rev. Samuel Bowman, of Wilkes-Barre, by chance saw a copy. He knew the Slocums, and the entire history of the valley as it was given by tradition.

“He was not present in the valley at the time, but his heart warmed for the scenes and associations of early times in Wyoming. He mailed one of the papers to a Slocum, a brother of the captive girl, and the effect produced was as if by magic. Everybody was acquainted with the history of Frances, and all were interested in her fate. Sixty years had gone by since she was carried away, an innocent girl, and now the world had found the lost one.

“There was one mark which could not be mistaken —little Frances when a child had played with a brother in the blacksmith’s shop, and by a careless blow from the latter a finger was crushed in such a manner that it never regained its original form.

“Mr. Isaac Slocum, accompanied by a sister and brother, sought an interview with the tanned woman, through the aid of an interpreter, and the first question asked, after an examination of the finger, was : ‘ How came that finger jambed ? * The reply was convincing and conclusive : ‘ My brother struck it with a hammer in the shop, a long time ago, before I was carried away.’

“Here then at last, by this unmistakable token, the lost was found. Her memory proved to be unerring ; the details of events sixty years old were perfect, and given in such a manner as to awaken in the hearts of the Slocum family warm emotions for the withered old woman. Her life, although rude, had been a happy one, and no inducements were strong enough to persuade her to leave the camp-fires of her adoption.

“By Act of Congress, Ma-con-a-qua, the Indian title of Frances Slocum, was granted one mile square of the reservation which was appointed to the Indians of Indiana, west of the Mississippi—to be held by herself during her life, and to revert to her heirs forever. She died March 9th, 1847, and was given Christian burial in a beautiful spot where the romantic waters of the Missisinewa and Wabash rivers join their ripples on the way to the sea.

“The story of the captive girl of Wyoming has been breathed around the hearths of the entire Christian world as one of the most fruitful in romance and song.”

 

Dwellings

The habitations of the Indians of North America may be classed as community houses (using the term ‘community’ in the sense of comprising more than one family) and single or family dwellings.

“The house architecture of the northern tribes is of little importance, in itself considered ; but as an outcome of their social condition, and for comparison with that of the southern village Indians, is highly important. The typical community houses, as those of the Iroquois tribes, were 50 to 100 feet long by 16 to 18 wide, with frame of poles, and with sides and triangular roof covered with bark, usually of the elm. The interior was divided into compartments, and a smoke-hole was left in the roof. A Mohican house, similar in form, 14 by 60 feet, had the sides and roof made of rushes and chestnut bark, with an opening along the top of the roof from end to end. The Mandan circular community house was usually about 14 feet in diameter. It was supported by two series of posts and cross-beams, and the wide roof and sloping sides were covered with willow or brush matting and earth. The fireplace was in the centre.

Morgan thinks that the oblong, round-roof houses of the Virginia and North Carolina tribes, I seen and described by Captain John Smith and drawn by John White, were of the community order. That some of them housed a number of families is distinctly stated. Morgan includes also in the community class the circular, dome-shaped earth lodges of Sacramento Valley and the L-form, tent-shaped, thatched lodges of the higher areas of California ; but the leading examples of community houses are the large, sometimes massive, many-celled clusters of stone or adobe in New Mexico and Arizona known as pueblos.

These dwellings vary in form, some of those built in prehistoric times being semicircular, others oblong, around or enclosing a court or plaza. These buildings were constructed usually in terrace form, the lower having a one-story tier of apartments, the next two stories, and so on to the uppermost tier, which sometimes constituted a seventh story. The masonry consisted usually of small flat stones laid in adobe mortar and chinked with spalls ; but sometimes large balls of adobe were used as building stones, or a double row of wattling was erected and filled in with grout, solidly tamped. By the latter method, known as pisS construction, walls 5 to 7 feet thick were sometimes built. The outer walls of the lowest story were pierced only by small openings, access to the interior being gained by means of ladders, which could be drawn up if necessary, and of a hatchway in the roof. It is possible that some of the elaborate structures of Mexico were developed from such hive-like buildings as those of the typical pueblos , the cells increasing in size toward the south, as suggested by Bandelier.

Chimneys appear to have been unknown in North America until after contact of the natives with Europeans, the hatchway in the roof serving the double purpose of entrance and flue. Other forms, some ‘community’ and others not, are the following : The Tlingit, Haida, and some other tribes build substantial rectangular houses, with sides and ends formed of planks, and with the fronts elaborately carved and painted with symbolic figures. Directly in front of the house a totem pole is placed, and near by a memorial pole is erected. These houses are sometimes 40 by 100 feet in the Nootka and Salish regions, and are occupied by a number of families. Formerly some of the Haida houses are said to have been built on platforms supported by posts. Some of these seen by such early navigators as Vancouver were 25 or 30 feet above ground, access being had by notched logs serving as ladders. Among the north-western Indian tribes, as the Nez Perc6s, the dwelling was a frame of poles covered with rush matting or with buffalo or elk skins.

The houses of the Californian tribes were rectangular or circular; of the latter, some were conical, others dome-shaped. There was also formerly in use in various parts of California, and to some extent on the interior plateaus, a semi-subterranean earth-covered lodge known amongst the Maidu as kum . The most primitive abodes were those of the Paiute and the Cocopa, consisting simply of brush shelters for summer, and for winter of a framework of poles bent together at the top and covered with brush, bark, and earth. Somewhat similar structures are erected by the Pueblos as farm shelters, and more elaborate houses of the same general type are built by the Apache of Arizona. As indicated by archaeological researches, the circular wigwam, with sides of bark or mats, built over a shallow excavation in the soil, and with earth thrown against the base, appears to have been the usual form of dwelling in the Ohio valley and the immediate valley of the Mississippi in prehistoric and early historic times. Another kind of dwelling, in use in Arkansas before the Discovery, was a rectangular structure with two rooms in front and one in the rear ; the walls were of upright posts thickly plastered with clay on a sort of wattle.

With the exception of the pueblo structures, buildings of stone or adobe were unknown until recent times. The dwellings of some of the tribes of the plains, such as the Sioux, Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa, were generally portable skin tents or tipis, but those of the Omaha, Osage, and some others were more substantial.

The dwellings of the Omaha, according to Miss Fletcher,

‘are built by setting carefully selected and prepared posts together in a circle, and binding firmly with willows, then backing them with dried grass, and covering the entire structure with closely packed sods. The roof is made in the same manner, having an additional support of an inner circle of posts, with crochets to hold the cross-logs which act as beams to the dome-shaped roof. A circular opening in the centre serves as a chimney, and also to give light to the interior of the dwelling ; a sort of sail is rigged and fastened outside of this opening to guide the smoke and prevent it from annoying the occupants of the lodge. The entrance passage-way, which usually faces eastward, is from 6 to 10 feet long, and is built in the same manner as the lodge.’

An important type is the Wichita grass hut, circular dome-shaped with conical top. The frame is built somewhat in panels formed by ribs and cross-bars ; these are covered with grass tied on shingle fashion. These grass lodges vary in diameter from 40 to 50 feet. The early Florida houses, according to Le Moyne’s illustrations published by De Bry, were either circular with dome-like roof, or oblong with rounded roof, like those of Secotan in North Carolina, as shown in John White’s figures. The frame was of poles covered with bark, or the latter was sometimes thatched. The Chippeway usually constructed a conical or hemispherical framework of poles, covered with bark. Formerly caves and rock-shelters were used in some sections as abodes, and in the Pueblo region houses were formerly constructed in natural recesses or shelters in the cliffs, whence the designation clifF-dwellings. Similar habitations are still in use to some extent by the Tarahumareof Chihuahua, Mexico.

Cavate houses with several rooms were also hewn in the sides of soft volcanic cliffs ; so numerous are these in Verde Valley, Arizona, and the Jemez plateau, New Mexico, that for miles the cliff-face is honeycombed with them. As a rule the women were the builders of the houses where wood was the structural material, but the men assisted with the heavier work. In the southern states it was a common custom to erect mounds as foundations for council-houses, for the chief’s dwelling, or for structures designed for other official uses. The erection of houses, especially those of a permanent character, was usually attended with great ceremony, particularly when the time for dedication came.

The construction of the Navaho hogan , for example, was done in accordance with fixed rules, as was the cutting and sewing of the tipi among the Plains tribes, while the new houses erected during the year were usually dedicated with ceremony and feasting. Although the better types of houses were symmetrical and well-proportioned, their builders had not learned the use or the square or the plumb-line. The unit of measure was also apparently unknown, and even in the best types of ancient pueblo masonry the joints of the stonework were not ‘broken.’ The Indian names for some of their structures, as tipi , wigwam , wickiup , hogan , have come into use to a great extent by English-s people.”^[12]

 

Tribal Law and Custom

There is but little exact data available respecting the social polity of the Red Race of North America. Kinship appears to have been the basis of government among most of the tribes, and descent was traced both through the male and female line, according to locality. In most tribes military and civil functions were carefully distinguished from each other, the civil government being lodged in the hands of chiefs of varying grades. These chiefs were elected by a tribal council, and were not by virtue of their office military leaders. Every village or group was represented in the general council by a head-man, who was sometimes chosen by the priests. Secret societies exercised a powerful sway.

 

Hunting

Hunting was almost the sole occupation of the males of the Indian tribes. So much were they dependent on the produce of the chase for their livelihood that they developed the pursuit of game into an art. In commerce they confined themselves to trading in skins and furs ; but they disposed of these only when their personal or tribal requirements had been fully satisfied. When the tribe had returned from its summer hunting expedition, and after the spoils of the chase had been faithfully distributed among its members—a tribal custom which was rigorously adhered to—ceremonial rites were engaged in and certain sacred formulae were observed. In hunting game the Indians usually erected pens or enclosures, into which the beasts were driven and slaughtered. Early writers believed that they fired the prairie grass and pressed in upon the panic-stricken herd ; but this is contradicted by the Indians themselves, who assert that fire would be injurious to the fur of the animals hunted. Indeed, such an act, causing a herd to scatter, was punishable by death.

In exceptional cases, however, the practice might be resorted to in order to drive the animals into the woods. In pursuing their prey it was customary for the tribe to form a circle, and thus prevent escape. The most favourable months for hunting were June, July, and August, when the animals were fat and the fur of rich quality. To the hunter who had slain the animal the tribe awarded the skin and part of the carcass. The other portions were usually divided among the inhabitants of the village. As a result of this method of sharing there was very little waste. The flesh, which was cut into thin slices, was hung up to dry in the sun on long poles, and rolled up and stored for winter use. The pelts were used in the making of clothing, shields, and bags. Ropes, tents, and other articles were also prepared from the skins. Bowstrings and sewing-thread were made from the sinews, and drinking-cups were shaped out of the larger bones.

Among the methods employed in capturing game was the setting of traps, into which the animal was decoyed. A more primitive method of taking animals by the hand was largely in use. The hunter would steal upon his prey in the dead of night, using the utmost cunning and agility, and seize upon the unwary bird or sleeping animal. The Indians were skilled in climbing and diving, and, employing the art of mimicry, in which they attained great proficiency, they would surround a herd of animals and drive them into a narrow gorge out of which they could not escape. Their edged weapons, fashioned from stone, bones, and reeds, and used with great skill, assisted them effectually when brought to close quarters with their prey. Dogs, although not regularly trained, they found of much value in the hunt, especially for tracking down the more swift and savage beasts. With the assistance of fire the hunter’s conquest over the animal became assured. His prey would be driven out of its hiding-place by smoke, or the torch would dazzle it. Drugging animals with poisonous roots and polluting streams to capture fish were largely practised. The use of nets and scoops for taking animals from the water and the fashioning of rakes for securing worms from the earth were other methods employed to obtain food. The use of the canoe gave rise to the invention of the harpoon.

The wandering habits of their game and the construction of fences were obstacles which strengthened their perception and gave excellent training for the hunt. The variety of circumstances with which they had to meet caused them to prepare or devise the many weapons and snares to which they resorted. Certain periods or seasons of the year were observed for the hunting of particular animals, each of which figured as a token or heraldic symbol of a tribe or gens.

Schoolcraft, in an accurate and entertaining account of Indian hunting in his Historical and Statistical Information respecting the Indian Tribes , says :

“The simplest of all species of hunting is perhaps the art of hunting the deer. This animal, it is known, is endowed with the fatal curiosity of stopping in its flight to turn round and look at the object that disturbed it; and as this is generally done within rifle-range, the habit is indulged at the cost of its life ; whereas, if it trusted unwaveringly to its heels, it would escape. “ One of the most ingenious modes of hunting the deer is that of fire-hunting , which is done by descending a stream in a canoe at night with a flambeau. In the latter part of spring and summer the Indian hunters on the small interior rivers take the bark of the elm or cedar, peeling it off whole, for five or six feet in length, and, turning it inside out, paint the outer surface black with charcoal.

It is then pierced with an orifice to fit it on the bow of the canoe, so as to hide the sitter ; then a light or torch is made by small rolls, two or three feet long, of twisted birch bark (which is very inflammable), and this is placed on the extreme bow of the boat, a little in front of the bark screen, in which position it throws its rays strongly forward, leaving all behind in darkness. The deer, whose eyes are fixed on the light as it floats down, is thus brought within range of the gun. Swans are hunted in the same way.

“The mazes of the forest are, however, the Indian hunter’s peculiar field of action. No footprint can be impressed there with which he is not familiar. In his temporary journeys in the search after game he generally encamps early, and sallies out at the first peep of day on his hunting tour. If he is in a forest country he chooses his ambush in valleys, for the plain reason that all animals, as night approaches, come into the valleys. In ascending these he is very careful to take that side of a stream which throws a shadow from it, so that he may have a clear view of all that passes on the opposite side, while he is himself screened by the shadow. But he is particularly on the alert to take this precaution if he is apprehensive of lurking foes. The tracks of an animal are the subject of the minutest observation ; they tell him at a glance the species of animal that has passed, the time that has elapsed, and the course it has pursued. If the surface of the earth be moist, the indications are plain ; if it be hard or rocky, they are drawn from less palpable but scarcely less unmistakable signs.

“One of the largest and most varied days’ hunt of which we are apprised was by a noted Chippeway hunter, named Nokay, on the upper Mississippi, who, tradition asserts, in one day, near the mouth of the Crow Wing River, killed sixteen elk, four buffaloes, five deer, three bears, one lynx, and a porcupine. This feat has doubtless been exceeded in the buffalo ranges of the south-west, where the bow and arrow is known to have been so dexterously and rapidly applied in respect to that animal; but it is seldom that the chase in forest districts is as successful as in this instance.

“On one occasion the celebrated chief Wabojeeg went out early in the morning, near the banks of Lake Superior, to set martin-traps. He had set about forty, and was returning to his wigwam, armed with his hatchet and knife only, when he encountered a buck moose. He sheltered himself behind trees, retreating ; but as the animal pursued, he picked up a pole, and, unfastening his moccasin-strings, tied the knife firmly to the pole. He then took a favourable position behind a tree and stabbed the animal several times in the throat and breast. At length it fell, and he cut out and carried home the tongue as a trophy of his prowess.

“In 1808, Gitshe Iawba, of Kewywenon, Lake Superior, killed a three-year-old moose of three hundred pounds weight. It was in the month of February, and the snow was so soft, from a partial thaw, that the agim , or snow-shoes, sank deep at every step. After cutting up the animal and drawing out the blood, he wrapped the flesh in the skin, and, putting himself under it, rose up erect. Finding he could bear the weight, he then took a litter of nine pups in a blanket upon his right arm, threw his wallet on top of his head, and, putting his gun over his left shoulder, walked six miles to his wigwam. This was the strongest man that has appeared in the Chippeway nation in modern times.

“In 1827, Annimikens, of Red River of the North, was one day quite engrossed in looking out a path for his camp to pass, when he was startled by the sharp snorting of a grizzly bear. He immediately presented his gun and attempted to fire ; but, the priming not igniting, he was knocked by the animal, the next instant, several steps backward, and his gun driven full fifteen feet through the air. The bear then struck him on one cheek and tore away a part of it. The little consciousness he had left told him to be passive, and manifest no signs of life. Fortunately, the beast had satiated his appetite on the carcass of a buffalo near by. Having clawed his victim at pleasure, he then took him by the neck, dragged him into the bushes, and there left him. Yet from such a wound the Indian recovered, though a disfigured man, and lived to tell me the story with his own lips.

“Relations of such hunting exploits and adventures are vividly repeated in the Indian country, and constitute a species of renown which is eagerly sought by the young.”

 

Costume

The picturesque costume of the Red Man is so original in character as to deserve more than passing mention. An authority on Indian costume, writing in Bulletin 30 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, says :

“The tribes of Northern America belong in general to the wholly clothed peoples, the exceptions being those inhabiting the warmer regions of the southern United States and the Pacific coast, who were semiclothed. Tanned skin of the deer family was generally the material for clothing throughout the greater part of the country. The hide of the buffalo was worn for robes by tribes of the plains, and even for dresses and leggings by older people, but the leather was too harsh for clothing generally, while elk- or moose-skin, although soft, was too thick. Fabrics of bark, hair, fur, mountain-sheep wool, and feathers were made in the North Pacific, Pueblo, and southern regions, and cotton has been woven by the Hopi from ancient times. Climate, environment, elevation, and oceanic currents determined the materials used for clothing as well as the demand for clothing. Sinew from the tendons of the larger animals was the usual sewing material, but fibres of plants, especially the agave, were also employed. Bone awls were used in sewing ; bone needles were rarely employed and were too large for fine work. The older needlework is of exceptionally good character and shows great skill with the awl. Unlike many other arts, sewing was practised by both sexes, and each sex usually made its own clothing.

The typical and more familiar costume of the Indian man was of tanned buckskin,and consisted of a shirt, a breech-cloth,leggings tied to a belt or waist-strap, and low moccasins. The shirt, which hung free over the hips, was provided with sleeves and was designed to be drawn over the head. The woman’s costume differed from that of the man in the length of the shirt, which had short sleeves hanging loosely over the upper arm, and in the absence of the breech-cloth. Women also wore the belt to confine the garment at the waist. Robes of skin, woven fabrics, or of feathers were also worn, but blankets were substituted for these later. The costume presented tribal differences in cut, colour, and ornamentation. The free edges were generally fringed, and quill embroidery and beadwork, painting, scalp-locks, tails of animals, feathers, claws, hoofs, shells, etc., were applied as ornaments or charms. The typical dress of the Pueblo Indians is generally similar to that of the Plains tribes, except that it is made largely of woven fabrics.

“Among the Pacific coast tribes, and those along the Mexican border, the Gulf, and the Atlantic coast, the customary garment of women was a fringe-like skirt of bark, cord, strung seeds, or peltry, worn around the loins. In certain seasons or during special occupations only the loin-band was worn. For occasional use in cooler weather a skin robe or cape was thrown about the shoulders, or, under exceptional conditions, a large robe woven of strips of rabbit-skin. Ceremonial costume was much more elaborate than that for ordinary wear. Moccasins and leggings were worn throughout much of this area, but in the warmer parts and in California their use was unusual.

Some tribes near the Mexican boundary wear sandals, and sandal-wearing tribes once ranged widely in the south-west. These have also been found in Kentucky caverns. Hats, usually of basketry, were worn by many Pacific coast tribes. Mittens were used by the Eskimo and other tribes of the far north. Belts of various materials and ornamentation not only confined the clothing, but supported pouches, trinket-bags, paint-bags, etc. Larger pouches and pipe-bags of fur or deer-skin, beaded or ornamented with quill-work, and of plain skin, netting, or woven stuff, were slung from the shoulder. Necklaces, earrings, charms, and bracelets in infinite variety formed a part of the clothing, and the wrist-guard to protect the arm from the recoil of the bowstring was general.

“Shortly after the advent of whites Indian costume was profoundly modified over a vast area of America by the copying of European dress and the use of traders’ stuffs. Knowledge of prehistoric and early historic primitive textile fabrics has been derived from impressions of fabrics on pottery, and from fabrics themselves that have been preserved by charring in fire, contact with copper, or protection from the elements in caves.

“A synopsis of the costumes worn by tribes living in the several geographical regions of northern America follows. The list is necessarily incomplete, for on account of the abandonment of tribal costumes the data are chiefly historical.

“Athapascan. Mackenzie and Tukon —Men: Shirt-coat, legging-moccasins, breech-cloth, hat and hood. Women : Long shirt-coat, legging-moccasins, belt.

“Algonquian-Iroquois. Northern —Men : Robe, shirt-coat, long-coat, trousers, leggings, moccasins, breech-cloth, turban. Virginia— Men and women : Cloak, waist-garment, moccasins, sandals (?), breech-cloth (?). Western —Men : Robe, long dress-shirt, long leggings, moccasins, bandolier-bag. Women : Long dress-shirt, short leggings, moccasins, belt. Arctic —Men : Long coat, open in front, short breeches, leggings, moccasins, gloves or mittens, cap or headdress. Women : Robe, shirt-dress, leggings, moccasins, belt, cap, and sometimes a shoulder-mantle.

“Southern or Muskhogean. Seminole —Men : Shirt, over-shirt, leggings, moccasins, breech-cloth, belt, turban. Formerly the Gulf tribes wore robe, waist-garment, and occasionally moccasins.

“Plains. Men : Buffalo robe, shirt to knees or longer, breech-cloth, thigh-leggings, moccasins, headdress. Women: Long shirt-dress with short ample cape sleeves, belt, leggings to the knees, moccasins.

“North Pacific. Chilkat —Men : Blanket or bark mat robe, shirt-coat (rare), legging-moccasins, basket hat. Women : Tanned skin shoulder-robe, shirt-dress with sleeves, fringed apron, leggings (?), moccasins, breech-cloth (?).

“Washington-Columbia, Salish —Men : Robe, head-band, and, rarely, shirt-coat, leggings, moccasins, breech-cloth. Women : Long shirt-dress, apron, and, rarely, leggings, breech-cloth, moccasins.

“Shoshonean. Same as the Plains tribes.

“California-Oregon. Hupa —Men : Robe, and waist-garment on occasion, moccasins (rarely) ; men frequently and old men generally went entirely naked. Women: Waist-garment and narrow aprons; occasionally robe-cape, like Pueblo, over shoulders or under arms, over breast ; basket cap ; sometimes moccasins. Central California —Men : Usually naked; robe, network cap, moccasins, and breech-cloth occasionally. Women : Waist-skirt of vegetal fibre or buckskin, and basketry cap ; robe and moccasins on occasion.

“South-western. Pueblo —Men : Blanket or rabbit-skin or feather robe, shirt with sleeves, short breeches partly open on outer sides, breech-cloth, leggings to knees, moccasins, hair-tape, and head-band. Women : Blanket fastened over one shoulder, extending to knees; small calico shawl over blanket thrown over shoulders ; legging-moccasins, belt. Sandals formerly worn in this area. Snow-moccasins of fur sometimes worn in winter. Apache —Men : Same as on plains. Women : Same, except legging-moccasins with shield toe. Navaho —Now like Pueblo ; formerly like Plains tribes.

“Gila-Sonora. Cocopa and Mohave —Men : Breech-cloth, sandals, sometimes head-band. Women : Waist-garments, usually of fringed bark, front and rear. Pima —Same as Plains; formerly cotton robe, waist-cloth and sandals.”    '

 

Face-Painting

A first-hand account of how the Indian brave decorated his face cannot but prove of interest. Says a writer who dwelt for some time among the Sioux :^[13]

“Daily, when I had the opportunity, I drew the patterns their faces displayed, and at length obtained a collection, whose variety even astonished myself. The strange combinations produced in the kaleidoscope may be termed weak when compared to what an Indian’s imagination produces on his forehead, nose, and cheek. I will try to give some account of them as far as words will reach. Two things struck me most in their arrangement of colour. First, the fact that they did not trouble-themselves at all about the natural divisions of the face; and, secondly, the extraordinary mixture of the graceful and the grotesque. At times, it is true, they did observe those natural divisions produced by nose, eyes, mouth, etc.

The eyes were surrounded with regular coloured circles ; yellow or black stripes issued harmoniously and equidistant from the mouth ; over the cheeks ran a semicircle of green dots, the ears forming the centre. At times, too, the forehead was traversed by lines running parallel to the natural contour of that feature; this always looked somewhat human, so to speak, because the fundamental character of the face was unaltered. Usually, however, these regular patterns do not suit the taste of the Indians. They like contrasts, and frequently divide the face into two halves, which undergo different treatment ; one will be dark—say black or blue—but the other quite light, yellow, bright red, or white : one will be crossed by thick lines made by the forefingers, while the other is arabesque, with extremely fine lines, produced by the aid of a brush.

“This division is produced in two different ways. The line of demarcation sometimes runs down the nose, so that the right cheek and side are buried in gloom, while the left looks like a flower-bed in the sunshine. At times, though, they draw the line across the nose, so that the eyes glisten out of the dark colour, while all beneath the nose is bright and lustrous. It seems as if they wished to represent on their faces the different phases of the moon. I frequently inquired whether there was any significance in these various patterns, but was assured it was a mere matter of taste. They were simple arabesques, like their squaws’ work on the moccasins, girdles, tobacco-pouches, etc.

“Still there is a certain symbolism in the use of the colours. Thus, red generally typifies joy and festivity; and black mourning. When any very melancholy death takes place, they rub a handful of charcoal over the entire face. If the deceased is only a distant relative, a mere trellis-work of black lines is painted on the face ; they have also a half-mourning, and only paint half the face black. Red is not only their joy, but also their favourite colour. They generally cover their face with a coating of bright red, on which the other colours are laid ; for this purpose they employ vermilion, which comes from China, and is brought them by the Indian traders. However, this red is by no means de rigueur . Frequently the ground colour is a bright yellow, for which they employ chrome-yellow, obtained from the trader.

“They are also very partial to Prussian blue, and employ this colour not only on their faces, but as a type of peace on their pipes ; and as the hue of the sky, on their graves. It is a very curious fact, by the way, that hardly any Indian can distinguish blue from green. I have seen the sky which they represent on their graves by a round arch, as frequently of one colour as the other. In the Sioux language signifies both green and blue; and a much-travelled Jesuit Father told me that among many Indian tribes the same confusion prevails. I have also been told that tribes have their favourite colours, and I am inclined to believe it, although I was not able to recognize any such rule. Generally all Indians seem to hold their own native copper skin in special affection, and heighten it with vermilion when it does not seem to them sufficiently red.

“I discovered during a journey I took among the Sioux that there is a certain national style in this face-painting. They were talking of a poor Indian who had gone mad, and when I asked some of his countrymen present in what way he displayed his insanity, they said,

‘Oh, he dresses himself up so funnily with feathers and shells ; he paints his face so comically that it is enough to make one die of laughing.’

This was said to me by persons so overladen with feathers, shells, green and vermilion, Prussian blue, and chrome-yellow, that I could hardly refrain from smiling. Still, I drew the conclusion from it that there must be something conventional and typical in their variegated style which might be easily infringed.”

 

Indian Art

If the Red Race of North America did not produce artistic work of an exalted order it at least evolved a distinctive and peculiar type of art. Some of the drawings and paintings on the walls of the brick erections of the southern tribes and the heraldic and religious symbols painted on the skin-covered lodges of the Plains people are intricate and rhythmic in plan and brilliant in colouring. The houses of the northwest coast tribes, built entirely of wood, are supported by pillars elaborately carved and embellished to represent the totem or tribal symbol of the owner. On both the interior and exterior walls brilliantly coloured designs, usually scenes from Indian mythology, are found.

The decoration of earthenware was and is common to most of the tribes of North America, and is effected both by carving and stamping. It is in the art of carving that the Indian race appears to have achieved its greatest aesthetic triumph. Many carved objects are exceedingly elaborate and intricate in design, and some of the work on stone pipes, masks, and household utensils and ornaments has won the highest admiration of European masters of the art. Indeed, many of the pipes and claystone carvings of the Chimp-seyans and Clallams of Vancouver, and the Chippeways and Babeens, are by no means inferior to the best specimens of European mediaeval carved work.

In the potter’s art the Indian people often exhibit great taste, and the tribes of the Mississippi valley and the Pueblo Indians had made exceptional progress in plaster design. As has already been mentioned, the mound-builders displayed considerable skill in metalwork, and the stamped plates of copper taken from the earthen pyramids which they raised strikingly illustrate the fact that Indian art is the growth and outcome of centuries of native effort and by no means a thing of yesterday.

In weaving, needlework of all kinds, bead-work, and feather-work the Indians show great taste. Most of the designs they employ are geometric in plan. In feather-work especially the aboriginal peoples of the whole American continent excel. Rank was indicated among the Plains tribes either by the variety and' number of feathers worn or by the manner of mounting or notching them.

The aboriginal art of North America is in the highest degree symbolic and mythologic. It is thus entirely removed from any taint of materialism, and had it been permitted to evolve upon its own peculiar lines it might have developed a great measure of idealistic excellence.

 

Warfare

In the art of guerrilla warfare the Indians have always shown exceptional skill. Armed with bow and arrow, a war-club, or a tomahawk, they carried on a fierce resistance to the incursions of the white man. These weapons were artistically shaped and moulded, and

were eminently suited to their owner’s mode of fighting. But as they came more into contact with the whites the natives displayed a particular keenness to obtain firearms and gunpowder, steel knives and hatchets. They dispensed with their own rude if effective implements of war, and, obtaining the coveted weapons by making successful raids upon the camps of their enemies, they set themselves to learn how to use them. So mysterious did gunpowder appear to them that they believed it to possess the property of reproduction, and planted it in the earth in the hope that it would yield a supply for their future needs. In attacking the settlers they used many ingenious artifices to entrap or ambuscade them. These methods, naturally, proved successful against the whites, who had yet to learn Indian war-craft, but soon the settlers learned to adopt the same devices.

The Indian would imitate the cry of the wild goose to attract the white hunter into the woods, where he would spring upon him. He would also reverse his snow-shoes in winter, to make it appear to the settler that he was retreating. Covering themselves with twigs to look like a bush was another method adopted by Indian spies. Occasionally they would approach the white man apparently in a spirit of friendliness, only to commit some act of treachery. Block-houses were built by the settlers as a means of defence against Indian nocturnal surprises, and into these the women and children were hurried for safety. But the perseverance of the white man and the declining birth-rate of the Indian tribes began to create a new situation. Driven repeatedly from one part of the country to another, and confined to a limited territory in which to live, hunt, and cultivate the soil, the Indians finally adopted a less aggressive attitude to those whom they at first, and for some time after their settlement, regarded with suspicion and resentment.

Although the methods of warfare differed with the various tribes, the general scheme of operations was usually dictated by the council of chiefs, in whose hands the making of peace and war also lay. The campaign was generally prefaced by many eloquent harangues from the leaders, who gradually wrought the braves into a fury of resentment against their enemies. The ceremony of the war-dance was then proceeded with. Ranged in a circle, the warriors executed a kind of shuffle, occasionally slowly gyrating, with gestures and movements obviously intended to imitate those of some bird or beast,^[14] and grunting, clucking, and snarling the while. This ceremony was always undertaken in full panoply of war-paint and feathers. Subsequently the braves betook themselves to the ‘ war-path.’ If the campaign was undertaken in wooded country, they marched in single file.^[15]

The most minute attention was paid to their surroundings to prevent ambuscade. The slightest sound, even the snapping of a twig, was sufficient to arrest their attention and cause them to halt. Alert, suspicious, and with every nerve strung to the highest point of tension, they proceeded with such exceeding caution that to surprise them was almost impossible. Should a warrior become isolated from the main body and be attacked and fatally wounded, he regarded it as essential to the safety of his comrades to utter a piercing shriek, which reverberated far through the forest ways and placed the rest of the band on their guard. This was known as the‘death-whoop.’

When the campaign was undertaken in prairie or open country, the method usually employed was that of night attack ; but if for any reason this could not be successfully made, a large circle was drawn round the place to be assailed, and gradually narrowed, the warriors who composed it creeping and wriggling through the grass, and when sufficiently near rising and rushing the camp or fort with wild war-cries. If a stout defence with firearms was anticipated, the warriors would surround the objective of attack on horseback, and ride round and round the fated position, gradually picking off the defenders with their rifles or arrows as the opportunity presented itself. Once the place was stormed the Indian brave neither asked nor gave quarter, at least so far as its male defenders were concerned. These were at once slain and scalped, the latter sanguinary process being effected by the brave placing his knees on his enemy’s shoulders, describing a rapid circle with his knife in the centre of the victim’s head, seizing the portion of the scalp thus loosened, and quickly detaching it.

Schoolcraft, dealing with the subject of Indian warfare, a matter upon which he was well qualified to speak, writes :^[16]

“Success in war is to the Indian the acme of glory, and to learn its arts the object of his highest attainment. The boys and youths acquire the accomplishment at an early period of dancing the war-dance ; and although they are not permitted to join its fascinating circle till they assume the envied rank of actual warriors, still their early sports and mimic pastimes are imitations of its various movements and postures. The envied eagle’s feather is the prize. For this the Indian’s talent, subtlety, endurance, bravery, persevering fasts, and what may be called religious penances and observances are made.

“The war-path is taken by youths at an early age. That age may be stated, for general comparison, to be sixteen ; but, without respect to exact time, it is always after the primary fast, during which the youth chooses his personal guardian or monedo —an age when he first assumes the duties of manhood. It is the period of the assumption of the three-pointed blanket, the true toga of the North American Indian.

“ The whole force of public opinion, in our Indian communities, is concentrated on this point; its early lodge teachings (such as the recital of adventures of bravery), its dances, its religious rites, the harangues of prominent actors, made at public assemblages (such as is called ‘striking the post’), all, in fact, that serves to awaken and fire ambition in the mind of the savage, is clustered about the idea of future distinction in war.

“. . . The Indian has but one prime honour to grasp ; it is triumph in the war-path ; it is rushing upon his enemy, tearing the scalp reeking from his head, and then uttering his terrific sa-sa-kuon (death-whoop). For this crowning act he is permitted to mount the honoured feather of the war-eagle—the king of carnivorous birds. By this mark he is publicly known, and his honours recognized by all his tribe, and by the surrounding tribes whose customs assimilate.

“When the scalp of an enemy has been won, very great pains are taken to exhibit it. For this purpose it is stretched on a hoop and mounted on a pole. The inner part is painted red, and the hair adjusted to hang in its natural manner. If it be the scalp of a male, eagle’s feathers are attached to denote that fact. If a female, a comb or scissors is hung on the frame. In this condition it is placed in the hands of an old woman, who bears it about in the scalp-dance, while opprobrious epithets are uttered against the tribe from which it was taken.

Amidst these wild rejoicings the war-cry is vociferated, and the general sentiment with old and young is :

‘Thus shall it be done to our enemies.’

“The feather of the eagle is the highest honour that a warrior can wear, and a very extravagant sum is sometimes given to procure one. The value of a horse has been known to be paid. The mode in which a feather is to be cut and worn is important to be noticed.

“The scale of honour with the several tribes may vary, but the essential features are the same. Among the Dakota tribes an eagle’s feather with a red spot denotes that the wearer has killed an enemy, a notch cut in it and edges of the feather painted red indicates that the throat of an enemy has been cut. Small consecutive notches on the front side of the feather, without paint, denote that the wearer is the third person that has touched the dead body ; both edges notched, that he is the fourth person who has touched it; and the feather partly denuded that he is the fifth person that has touched the slain.

“On the blanket or buffalo robe worn by the Dakota Indian a red or black hand is often seen painted. The red hand indicates that the wearer has been wounded by his enemy, the black hand that he has slain his enemy.

“The warlike tribe of the Chippeways, on the sources of the Mississippi, who, from a national act in their history, bear the distinctive name of Pillagers, award a successful warrior who shoots down and scalps his enemy three feathers ; and for the still more dangerous act of taking a wounded prisoner on the field, five— for they conceive that a wounded enemy is desperate, and will generally reserve his fire for a last act of vengeance, if he die the moment after. Those of the war-party who come up immediately and strike the enemy, so as to get marks of blood on their weapons, receive two feathers ; for it is customary for as many as can to perform this act. . . .

Those who have been of the war-party, and merely see the fight, although they may have no blood-marks of which to boast as honours, and may even have lacked promptness in following the leader closely, are yet allowed to mount one feather. These honours are publicly awarded; no one dares to assume them without authority, and there are instances where the feathers falsely assumed have been pulled violently from their heads in a public assemblage of the Indians. They never, however, blame each other for personal acts denoting cowardice or any species of timidity while on the war-path, hoping by this elevated course to encourage the young men to do better on another occasion.

“All war-parties consist of volunteers. The leader, or war-captain, who attempts to raise one must have some reputation to start on. His appeals, at the assemblages for dancing the preliminary war-dance, are to the principles of bravery and nationality. They are brief and to the point. He is careful to be thought to act under the guidance of the Great Spirit, of whose secret will he affects to be apprised in dreams, or by some rites.

“The principle of enlistment is sufficiently well preserved. For this purpose, the leader who proposes to raise the war-party takes the war-club in his hands, smeared with vermilion, to symbolize blood, and begins his war-song. I have witnessed several such scenes. The songs are brief, wild repetitions of sentiments of heroic deeds, or incitements to patriotic or military ardour. They are accompanied by the drum and rattle, and by the voice of one or more choristers. They are repeated slowly, sententiously, and with a measured cadence, to which the most exact time is kept. The warrior stamps the ground as if he could shake the universe.

His language is often highly figurative, and he deals with the machinery of the clouds, the flight of carnivorous birds, and the influence of spiritual agencies, as if the region of space were at his command. He imagines his voice to be heard in the clouds; and while he stamps the ground with well-feigned fury, he fancies himself to take hold of the ‘circle of the sky’ with his hands. Every few moments he stops abruptly in his circular path, and utters the piercing war-cry.

“He must be a cold listener who can sit unmoved by these appeals. The ideas thrown out succeed each other with the impetuosity of a torrent. They are suggestive of heroic frames of mind, of strong will, of burning sentiment.

“‘Hear my voice, ye warlike birds!
I prepare a feast for you to batten on ;
I see you cross the enemy’s lines;
Like you I shall go.
I wish the swiftness of your wings ;
I wish the vengeance of your claws;
I muster my friends;
I follow your flight.
Ho, ye young men that are warriors,
Look with wrath on the battlefield !’

“Each warrior that rises and joins the war-dance thereby becomes a volunteer for the trip. He arms and equips himself; he provides his own sustenance; and when he steps out into the ring and dances, he chants his own song, and is greeted with redoubling yells. These ceremonies are tantamount to ‘enlistment,’ and no young man who thus comes forward can honourably withdraw.

“The sentiments of the following song were uttered by the celebrated Wabojeeg, as the leader of the Chippeways, after a victory over the combined Sioux and Sauks and Foxes, at the Falls of St. Croix, during the latter part of the seventeenth century :

I

“‘Hear my voice, ye heroes !
On that day when our warriors sprang
With shouts on the dastardly foe,
Just vengeance my heart burned to take
On the cruel and treacherous breed,
      The Bwoin—the Fox—the Sauk.

II

“‘And here, on my breast, have I bled !
See—see ! my battle scars !
Ye mountains, tremble at my yell !
      I strike for life.

III

“‘But who are my foes ? They shall die,
They shall fly o’er the plains like a fox ;
They shall shake like a leaf in the storm.
      Perfidious dogs! they roast our sons with fire !

IV

“‘Five winters in hunting we’ll spend,
While mourning our warriors slain,
Till our youth grown to men
For the battle-path trained,
      Our days like our fathers we’ll end.

V

“‘Ye are dead, noble men ! ye are gone,
My brother—my fellow—my friend !
On the death-path where brave men must go
But we live to revenge you ! We haste
      To die as our forefathers died.’

“In 1824, Bwoinais, a Chippeway warrior of Lake Superior, repeated to me, with the appropriate tunes, the following war-songs, which had been uttered during the existing war between that nation and the Dakotas :

I

“‘Oshawanung undossewug
Penasewug ka baimwaidungig.’
[From the south—they come, the warlike birds—
Hark ! to their passing screams.]

II

“‘Todotobi penaise Ka dow Wiawwiaun.’
[I wish to have the body of the fiercest bird,
As swift—as cruel—as strong.]

III

“‘Ne wawaibena, neowai
Kagait ne minwaindum
Nebunaikumig tshebaibewishenaun.’
[I cast my body to the chance of battle.
Full happy am I, to lie on the field—
On the field over the enemy’s line.] ”

 

The Indian Wife and Mother

The position of women among the North American Indians is distinctly favourable, when the general circumstances of their environment are considered. As with most barbarian people, the main burden of the work of the community falls upon them. But in most cases the bulk of the food-supply is provided by the men, who have often to face long and arduous hunting expeditions in the search for provender. The labour of planting and digging seed, of hoeing, harvesting, and storing crops, is invariably borne by the women. In the more accessible Indian territory of North America, however, the practice of agriculture is falling into desuetude, and the aborigines are becoming accustomed to rely to a great extent on a supply of cereals from outside sources.

In the art of weaving Indian women were and are extremely skilful. In the southern regions the Hopi women have woven cotton garments from time immemorial.

Among the various tribes the institution of marriage greatly depends for its circumstances upon the system of totemism, a custom which will be found fully described in the chapter which deals with the mythology of the Red Race. This system places a taboo upon marriages between members of the same clan or other division of a tribe. The nature of the ceremony itself differs with locality and race. Among the Plains Indians polygamy was common, and the essential feature of the ceremony was the presentation of gifts to the bride’s father. In some tribes the husband had absolute power, and separation and divorce were common. But other Plains people were free from the purchase system, and the wishes of their women were consulted.

East of the Mississippi the Iroquoian, Algonquian (except in the north and west), and Muskhogean tribes retained descent of name and property in the female line. Exchange of gifts preceded marriage with these peoples. Among the Hurons a council of mothers arranged the unions of the members of the tribe. Monogamy, on the whole, prevailed throughout the continent; and, generally speaking, the marriage bond was regarded rather loosely.

 

Indian Child-Life

One of the most pleasing features in Indian life is the great affection and solicitude bestowed by the parents upon their children.

As a close student of Indian custom and habit avers,

“The relation of parent to child brings out all the highest traits of Indian character.”

Withal, infant mortality is extraordinarily high, owing to the lack of sanitary measures. The father prepares the wooden cradle which is to be the infant’s portable bed until it is able to walk. The papoose has first a child-name, which later gives place to the appellation which it will use through life. Children of both sexes have toys and games, the boys amusing themselves with riding and marksmanship, while the girls play with dolls and imitate their mothers ‘keeping wigwam.’ In warm weather a great deal of the children’s time is spent in swimming and paddling. They are exceedingly fond of pets, particularly puppies, which they frequently dress and carry upon their backs like babies. Among some of the southern peoples small figures representing the various tribal deities are distributed as dolls to the children at certain ceremonies, and the sacred traditions of the race are thus impressed upon them in tangible form. It is a mistake to think that the Indian child receives no higher instruction. This, however, is effected by moral suasion alone, and physical punishment is extremely rare. Great good-humour prevails among the children, and fighting and quarrelling are practically unknown.

At about fifteen years of age the Indian boy undertakes a solitary fast and vigil, during which his totem or medicine spirit is supposed to instruct him regarding his future career. At about thirteen years of age the girl undergoes a like test, which signalizes her entrance into womanhood.    .

 

Adventure with a Totem

An account of the manner in which a young Indian beheld his totem states that the lad’s father sent him to a mountain-top to look for Utonagan, the female guardian spirit of his ancestors. At noon, on his arrival at the mountain, he heard the howls of the totem spirit, and commenced to ascend the slope, chilled by fear as the yells grew louder. He climbed a tree, and still heard the cries, and the rustle of the spirit in the branches below. Then terror overcame him, and he fled. Utonagan pursued him. She gained upon him, howling so that his knees gave way beneath him and he might not turn. Then he bethought him of one of his guardian spirits, and, with a fresh access of courage, he left his pursuer far behind. He cast away his blanket; Utonagan reached it, and, after snuffing at it, took up the chase once more. Then he thought of his guardian spirit the wolf, and again new strength came to him. Still in great terror, he looked back. Utonagan followed with a wolf-like lope.. Then he thought of his guardian spirit the bitch, and once more he gained ground. At length, exhausted by his exertions, he sank to the earth in a fainting condition, and fell asleep. Through the eyes of sleep he saw the spirit as a wolf.

She said to him:

“I am she whom your family and the Indians call Utonagan. You are dear to me. Look at me, Indian.”

He looked, and lost his sense of fear. When he awoke the sun was high in the sky. He bathed in the creek and returned home.

 

An Indian Girl's Vigil

Another story is told of an Indian girl’s vigil. Catherine Wabose, when about thirteen years of age, left her mother’s lodge and built a small one for herself. After a fast of four days she was visited by her mother, who gave her a little snow-water to drink. On the eve of the sixth day, while still fasting, she was conscious of a superhuman voice, which invited her to walk along a shining path, which led forward and upward. There she first met the ‘Everlasting Standing Woman’ who gave her her ‘supernatural’ name. She next met the ‘Little Man Spirit’ who told her that his name would be the name of her first son. She was next addressed by the ‘Bright Blue Sky’ who endowed her with the gift of life. She was then encircled by bright points of light and by sharp, painless instruments, but, mounting upon a fishlike animal, she swam through the air back to her lodge. On the sixth day she experienced a repetition of the vision. On the seventh day she was fed with a little pounded corn in snow-water. After the seventh day she beheld a large round object like a stone descend from the sky and enter the lodge. It conferred upon her the gift of prophecy, and by virtue of this she assumed the rank of a prophetess upon her return to the tribe.

It is not difficult to suppose that the minds of these unfortunate children were temporarily deranged by the sustained fasts they had been forced to undertake.

 

Picture-Writing

Most of the tribes of North America had evolved a rude system of picture-writing. This consisted, for the most part, of figures of natural objects connected by symbols having arbitrary or fixed meanings. Thus the system was both ideographic and pictographic ; that is, it represented to some extent abstract ideas as well as concrete objects. These scripts possessed so many arbitrary characters, and again so many symbols which possessed different meanings under varying circumstances, that to interpret them is a task of the greatest complexity. They were usually employed in the compilation or the seasonal calendars, and sometimes the records of the tribe were preserved by their means.

Perhaps the best known specimen of Indian script is the Dakota ‘Lone-dog Winter-count,’ supposed to have been painted originally on a buifalo-robe. It is said to be a chronicle covering a period of seventy-one years from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Similar chronicles are the Wallum-Olum, which are painted records of the Leni-Lenâpé, an Algonquian people, and the calendar history of the Kiowa. The former consists of several series, one of which records the doings of the tribes down to the time of the arrival of the European colonists at the beginning of the seventeenth century. We append an extract from the Wallum-Olum as a specimen of genuine aboriginal composition.

The translation is that made by the late Professor Brinton.

After the rushing waters had subsided, the Len^pe of the Turtle were close together, in hollow houses, living together there.

It freezes where they abode : it snows where they abode : it storms where they abode: it is cold where they abode.

At this northern place, they speak favourably of mild, cool lands, with many deer and buffaloes.

As they journeyed, some being strong, some rich, they separated into house-builders and hunters:

The strongest, the most united, the purest were the hunters.

The hunters showed themselves at the north, at the east, atthe south, at the west.

In that ancient country, in that northern country, in that Turtle country, the best of Len£p6 were the Turtle-men. [That is, probably, men of the Turtle totem.]

All the cabin fires of that land were disquieted, and all said to their priest: “Let us go.”

To the Snake land, to the east, they went forth, going away, earnestly grieving.

Split asunder, weak, trembling, their land burned : they went, torn and broken, to the Snake Island.

Those from the north being free, without care, went forth from the land of snow, in different directions.

The fathers of the Bald Eagle and the White Wolf remain along the sea, rich in fish and strength.

Floating up the streams in their canoes, our fathers were rich, they were in the light, when they were at those islands.

Head Beaver and Big Bird said: “Let us go to Snake Island,” they said.

All say they will go along to destroy all the land.

Those of the north agreed,
Those of the east agreed.
Over the water, the frozen sea,
They went to enjoy it.

On the wonderful slippery water,
On the stone-hard water all went,
On the great tidal sea, the muscle-bearing sea.

Ten thousand at night,
All in one night,
To the Snake Island, to the east, at night,
They walk and walk, all of them.

The men from the north, the east, the south :
The Eagle clan, the Beaver clan, the Wolf clan,
The best men, the rich men, the head men,
Those with wives, those with daughters, those with dogs.

They all come, they tarry at the land of the spruce-pines:
Those from the west come with hesitation,
Esteeming highly their old home at the Turtle land.

There was no rain, and no corn, so they moved farther seaward.

At the place of caves, in the Buffalo land, they at last had food, on a pleasant plain.

 

Modern Education and Culture

After the establishment of the United States Government a number of Christian and lay bodies undertook the education and enlightenment of the aborigines. Until 1870 all Government aid for this object passed through the hands of missionaries, but in 1775 a committee on Indian affairs had been appointed by Congress, which voted funds to support Indian students at Dartmouth and Princeton Colleges. Many day-schools were provided for the Indians, and these aimed at fitting them for citizenship by inculcating in them the social manners and ethical ideas of the whites. The school established by Captain R. H. Pratt at Carlisle, Pa., for the purpose of educating Indian boys and girls has turned out many useful members of society. About 100 students receive higher instruction in Hampton Institute. There are now 253 Government schools for the education of Indian youth, involving an annual expenditure of five million dollars, and the patient efforts of the United States Government may be said to be crowned with triumph and success when the list of cultured Indian men and women who have attended these seminaries is perused. Many of these have achieved conspicuous success in industrial pursuits and in the higher walks of life.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The Migration from Shinar, by Captain G. Palmer (London).

[2]:

Payne, History of the New World , ii. 87-88, summarizing the investigations of Peschel and Tylor.

[3]:

Rafn, Antiquitates Americana , xxix. 17-25.

[4]:

See Eric Rothens Saga, in Mueller, Sagenbibliothek, p. 214,

[5]:

Bulletin 30, Bureau of American Ethnology.

[6]:

Footprints of Vanished Races , p. 18.

[7]:

Bulletin 30, Bureau of American Ethxiojogy.

[8]:

See the map, p. 361,

[9]:

This name has been adopted to distinguish the family from the tribal name, ‘Algonquin’ or ‘Algonkin,’ but is not employed when speaking of individuals. Thus we speak of ‘the Algonquian race,’ but, on the other hand, of ‘an Algonquin Indian.’

[10]:

Bulletin 30, Bureau of American Ethnology.

[11]:

Brin ton, Myths of the New World.

[12]:

Bulletin 30, Bureau of American Ethnology.

[13]:

J. G. Kohl, Kitchi-garni (i860).

[14]:

Perhaps their personal or tribal totems. See “Totemism,” pp. 80-86.

[15]:

Hence the expression ‘Indian file,’

[16]:

Historical and Statistical Information respecting the Indian Tribes.