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THE STORY OF

THE AMERICAN INDIAN

HIS ORIGIN r3EVELOPMENT DECLINE

AND DESTINY

•?!

ELBRIDGE S BROOKS

BOSTON

D LOTHROP COMPANY

FRANKLIN AND IIAWLEY STREETS

i --4

mmim^mmmmm

-•"—■*-""

Press of
BERWICK AND SMITH,

BOSTON.

D. LoTHROP Company.

Hi *

PREFACE.

The popular opinion of the American Indian has for generations been based
upon prejudice and ignorance — as thoughtless as it is unreasoning and unjust.
The red man of America may be no saint, but he is at least a man and should
not be condemned unheard. He has his side of the story quite as much as
has his white conqueror.

Desire, acquisition, superiority, indifference — these have been the steps
toward the ostracism that has been visited upon the American Indian, denying
him justice and opportunity for advancement since the earliest days of white
occupation. It is these barriers to progress that have alike created and com-
plicated the vexed Indian problem.

This volume does not attempt to state or solve that problem. It simply
seeks to arrange in something like complete and consecutive form the story
of the North American Indian as he has existed for generations, and as from
supremacy in the land of his fathers he has fallen under the ban of the white
civilization that conquered and displaced him.

The mistreatment of the Indian, a recent writer declares, is one of the
abuses of the age, and one of the reproaches of civilization. It is high time
that the abuse and the reproach should give place to something like fairness
and moral sense. If this story of a race that has played its part in the drama
of human progress shall lead readers to exchange indifference for interest and
contempt for justice, the labor and study that it has involved will not have
been in vain.

A mass of material bearing on the Indian's story has been consulted and
drawn upon, and the author makes grateful acknowledgment of his obligation
to Miss Tracy Thompson of Brooklyn for interested and painstaking assist-
ance in this direction.

PREFACE.

If the future of the American Indian is to be brighter and more self-
helpful than ever before, the credit of this advance is in great measure due to
the self-sacrificing exertions of those missionaries of good who have, in spite
of heedlessness, and in spite of slur, devoted so much of their lives to the
bettering of a misunderstood and unfortunate race.

To all such, and to all friends of humanity who, despising injustice, seek
to convert public opinion into public conscience, this story of the American
Indian is gratefully inscribed.

£• Sa B«

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Pagb.

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN ....

••••. II

CHAPTER n.

THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS . .^

• • • • • 4u

CHAPTER HI.

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES CQ

CHAPTER IV.

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS . Q^

CHAPTER V.

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM TO^

CHAPTER VI.

THE INDIAN HOME

CHAPTER VII.

THE INDIAN YOUTH • j >-

•/

viii CONTENTS.

' CHAPTER VIII.

Pacr.
MANNERS AND MATERIALS IC5

CHAPTER IX.

TI.x^ COMING OF THE WHITE MAN 1 75

CHAPTER X.

COLONIAL INJUSTICE : igj

CHAPTER XI.

PLACING THE RESPONSIBILITY 2IO

CHAPTER XII.

PUSHED TO THE WALL 23 1

CHAPTER XIII.

INDIAN TYPES 249

CHAPTER XIV.
THE Indian's outlook 280

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Quigualtanqiii's defiance ....

" The oldest of existing lands "

Ruins called "the Governor's house," Uxmal, Vutacan

Skeleton of the megatherium .

The niylodon

Hunting the dinornis

An ancient volcano in the Rocky Mountain range

The mammoth and primitive man

Primitive household utensils .

Mounds on the Kickapoo river

Skull found in a mound in Tennessee

Skull found in a mound in Missouri

(Jround plan of " high bank pueblo "

Mound in the shape of the elephant

Moteuczonia, lord of the Aztecs

Probable appearance of an ancient puebl

Home of the " village Indians "

Ground i)lan of the pueblo Honito .

In the grand canon of the Colorado

A cliff-dwelling ....

Ruins of an Arizona cliff-dwelling .

Nature's wonderland

The home of the ancient American .

A study of comparative cranial outlines

An Indian myth ....

Interior of a partially restored cliff-dweller's house

Hiawatha, the "river-maker."

Atotarho, the war chief .

An Indian village

One of Nature's highways

" The ' spoor ' of the game "

The wounded buffalo

The hunted elk

Shell ornaments and fish-hooks

First discoveries ....

The landing of Columbus

" Not friends, but foes " . . .

Frontis.

Page.

'S
l6
i6

17
18

'9
20

22
22

=7
29

34
35
36
38
40

41
43
44
46

47
SO
SI
IZ
IS
S6

n
61

63.

ii •

ILLUSTRATIONS.

The return of Columbus

All Iro{)uoiH scout .

The gate of I. adore

In the shallow of Shasta

A I'ueblo boy .

I'owhatan . .

One of the higher types .

Glen caFion

" The marvellous white man "

" The sjiirit of peace " .

An In'lian myth

Fighting the stone giant

Cayote fetich .

In the land of the fetich

The Navajo of to-day

Palisaded Iroquois village

In the Moki land .

The home of the Columbians

A town of the Zunis

White Buffalo

An Indian's greeting

"The White Chief " .

The domed earth-houses of the Pacific tribes

In the Iroquois country .

An Iroquois long-house .

An admirer of warlike prowess

The Mandan Lodge of the Northwest .

Here I discovered five pappooses slung to

An education in drudgery

Dreaming of his "medicine "

As happy as a white baby

The scalp-dance

On the war-trail

The ceremony of the wampum belts

A lesson in archery

A wampum necklace

Decorated wampum belts

Indian method of lighting fire

Navajo basket work

Indian weapons

Council of chiefs and warriors

So the white man came .

" Along the narrow trail the startling tidings

Spanish occupation

The death of his comrade

The pitiless man-hunter .

The burial of De Soto .

*' Killed in the swamp " .

" Red man and white " .

Civilization distrusts savagery

" Doomed and uncovenanted heathen "

the trees

sped

Pack.

65
68
69

71
73
76

78
79
83
85
89

91
94
96

100
104

'OS
107
no

i'3
116
121

I2S
127
•30
133
139
142

"43
146
149

IS'
IS7
162
164
167
1 68
169
171

'73
177
179
185
192
194

'95
197
199
200
201

ILLUSTRATIONS.

An episode of the French and Indian War

" Justice or war — which ?" ....

" Ho, VValdron 1 does your hand weigh a pound now

" A new feature in the Indian landscape "

llispanioia

C;oh)nie9 at the time of the Revolution

Attack on stockade

Military tyranny

In contact with civilization

An episode of the Seminole War
" The white man wanted the land "

Fighting the Indians on the Virginia frontier

The home of the Indian

Types of a " fading race "

F'ra Junipero Scrro

The meeting of the races

Charging an Indian camp

The renegade of civilization .

Pocahontas and her son .

I'ontiac, chieftain of the Ottawas

Te-cum-thc, chief of the .Shawanoe

.Sa-go-ye-wat-ha the Seneca .

Ma-ka-tai-me shc-kiakiah the Sauk

Spotted Tail with his wife and daughter

" His story is a simple one " .

Contact with a higher intelligence

A candidate for Hampton School

The land of their fathers

Pack train leavin;; a pueblo .

In i^rocv'ss of civilization

Darkness ....

Daylight ....

Pagi.
203
206
207
212
215
217

221

22 C
227

239
240

243
246

250

253
257
259
261
265
269

273
277
279
281

283
28s
289
292
294
298
299

i>-

THE STORY OF

THE AMERICAN INDIAN

CHAPTER I.

THE ANCIKNT AMKRICAN.

In the great past, so says an
Iroquois legend, Ta-rliu-liia-ua-
kii, the Sky-holder, resolved upon
the creation of a race which
should surpass all others in
beauty, strength and bravery.
So, from the bosom of a great
island, where they had previously
subsisted upon moles, the Sky-
holder brought into the daylight
six perfectly mated couples who
were set apart as the ancestors of the greatest of all peoples.
Such, according to Iroquois legends, were the beginnings of
the human race ; and the greatest of all peoples, who could
look back to these six perfect pairs as their ancestors, were,
presumably, the historic red-men of America.

Ever since the modern discovery of America speculation
has been rife as to the origin and intermediate history of
the races of men that Columbus and Cortez, the Cabots and

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN

\ I

John Smith, the Jesuits and the Puritans found upon the
shores and in the forests of the new world. But speculation
has led to little that is tangible. A mystery they are, a mystery
they must remain, until some truth-grounded plan of ethnolog-
ical reasoning, supported by an undeniable chain of archaeo-
logical and anthropological relics, shall be able to settle beyond
dispute the beginnings of a race whose manners and customs
suggest those of every nation of civilized antiquity, and yet can
positively be traced to none.

That America is the oldest of existing lands many wise
geologists confidently assert ; that a certain pre-historic and
apparent semi-civilization prevailed upon the North American
continent, hundreds of years ago, the silent ruins of giant
mounds, tenantless temples and forest-covered cities indisput-
ably attest; that this possible civilization antedates the race
of red-men known to us and to our forefathers is apparent.
But just how absolute a race connection existed between our
historic red-men and their pre-histfTic forerunners is still an
unsolved problem. Certain it is, that this older civilization,
however cultured or however questionable it may have been
went down in ruin before the resistless assaults of savagery.
As cruel as they were barbarous these savage wanderers —
veritable "Huns of America" — decimated and dispersed the
now unknow^n builders of mound and temple and city ; and, their
conquests complete, roamed at will over the grass-grow^n ruins
they had made, hunters and harriers all, until, in logical course,
an avenging civilization coming from the East, made them in
turn the hunted and the harried.

It is the story of this strange and interesting race — the red-
men of North America, mistakenly called " Indians," that these
pages seek to tell.

i\n

■l i

J- -4- 1 ■

"S*"

w«.

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

Recent students of race-characteristics assert that there is
nothing in the physical or mental conditions of the early
Americans that should force us to ascribe to them a foreiirn
origin. Man may have had his beginning in America quite
as logically as in Asia. The human remains that have been
found all over our land, mingled with those of what are

RUINS CALLED "THK GOVKRNOR'S HOUSE," UXMAL, YUCATAN.
{Dimensions T,icj feet long, ^c) /eei wide, and ih feet high.)

termed the antediluvian animals are evidence of this great antiq-
uity. Mammoth and mastodon, mylodon and megatherium, and
others of the jjijxantic and lono: extinct monsters of an earlier
world have left their bones side by side with those of men
almost as ancient and scarcely less intelligent than they.
Hunters and hunted, destroyers and destroyed, these relics of a
far-distant epoch hint at a more positive era of creation ; and

:'*

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

SKKLF.TON CM' THE MKGATUERIUM.

SO, out of misty and uncertain theories, which yet are worthy
of consideration and of partial acceptance as fact, we may

weave tliis story of
the origin of the
American Indian.

Ages ago — thou-
sands, jDcrhaps tens

of thousands of
years — a race of

men peopled the
valleys and river bot-
toms of A m e r i c a.
With barely more
than an i m a 1 i n-
stincts, knowing enough to eat and to sleep, to hurl a great
stone or plunge a great stick in defence or assault against the
mighty beasts with whom they
fought for existence, this prim-
itive race lived as nearly an ab-
solute brute life as it is possible
for a human being to endure.
A naked, low-browed, big-jawed,
uncouth race of men, their lives
were nothing but a constant
stru2:2:le against the forces of
nature that kept them in con-
tinual fear — the flood, the vol-
cano, the tempest and the earth-
quake, — or against the monstrous forms of animal life that
have long since disappeared from the plains, the forests and
the waters that were their haunts.

THE MYI.ODON (PARTIALLY RESTORED).

V • ' •

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

So from generation to generation these first men lived, with
just enough of slowly awakening intelligence to discover that
the fire that could burn could also warm, that the strength that
could hurl could also subdue, that a sharpened stone could
wound and cut and bring about a speedier death than one
that was simply flung at their enemies or their game, and
that hands were intended for something better than merely

•*•

HUNTIM; TlIK UINOKNIS.

to hurl or pull, to cling or tear. In pursuit of food they roved
over the land leaving their traces along the bottom lands of
Western rivers, by the marshes of Southern Louisiana, in the
sand stretches of New Jersey, and along the broken shore
line of the Great Lakes.

Gradually, as intelligence grew stronger within them, they
became more social and distinctive. They began to separate
into communities and, finding that shelter from the elements,
and from heat and cold, could be obtained in the shadow of

HW>

Jl^.

THE ANCIENT AMhKlCAN.

overhanging rocks, they learned to live in caves, and to com-
bine for mutual protection or defence against those of their
own kind who yet remained rovers and brutes. Still progress-
ing, they developed other faculties. They discovered that
warmth and comfort could be obtained from the skins of

AN ANCIENT VOLCANO IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN RANGE.

I
I

slaughtered animals, drawn about their naked bodies; that
arrow and spear-head, knife and axe could be made of their
sharpened bits of flint, or trap or hard obsidian ; while in the
great shell heaps that have been investigated, and which are
believed to be the house rubbish of these cave communities
the rude attempts at pottery, table utensils, carving and even
drawing that ive been discovered, show a sluggish, but grad-
ual development out of mere brutish living into something
like a rudimentary manhood.

Savagery and cowardice usually go hand in hand. Brute
force and brute fear are comrades, and the outgrowth of both
cowardice and fear is a desire to propitiate the person or the

THE ANCIEXT AMERICAN,

«9

power feared. A slave to the forces of nature which he could
not understand because he could neither conquer nor control
them, this primitive man sought to propitiate what he believed
a higher and un-
friendly !> o w e r .
Propitiation demands
the giving up of what-
ever is esteemed of
value by the suj>
pliant. But the cow-
ard can never consent
to give himself. He
seeks to shirk respon-
sibility by substitu-
tion. From this came
the idea of a personal
offerintj: that in the
lowest grades of hu-
manity has always
meant human sacri-
fices. The cave
dwellers of America,
advancin"" from the ^"^ mammoth and primitive man.

absolute earth-brutality of their predecessors, turned their cow-
ardly desire to propitiate the hidden and mysterious powers of
Nature into offerinfjjs and sacrifices of their enemies or of their
own weaker kinsman. And thus was laid the foundation of
that sacrificial religion that, at a later time, appeared equally
in the bloody teocalli of the half-civilized Aztec and the torture-
stake of the ferocious Huron.

Communities beget helpfulness. Wherever men gather in

! J

•o

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

groups or families labor becomes, first, divisible, and then pro-
ductive. Mere herding together leads finally to mutual sup-
port, and one need ministers to another. Agriculture, rude
enough at the outset, gradually becomes systematized, as the
desires of the community increase ; manufacture, ruder still,
begins to assume design and shape; and the more thoughtful
or less careless workers in both agriculture and manufacture
begin to struggle towards something like definite form and

PRIMITIVE HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS, FOUND IN A CAVE NEAR NASHVILLE, TENN.

decoration ; while these, in turn, lead to a barbaric but positive
phase of architecture and of art.

So, from the cave and the shell-heap came, very slowly, the
tent of skins or the hut of boughs, the cabin and divided lodge ;
and as the home took shape, another stage of progress was
reached.

Communities create civic strength. Strength means na-
tional growth and increase. And this growth and increase

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

develop, as their natural concomitants, a certain mental and
moral advance.

Through, possibly, thousands of yeai>, ->£ gradual progress
the home idea broadened wherever in communities these early
Americans lived in daily comradeship and union. Tent and
hut, cabin and lodge, grouped together as settlements. The
iiettlements became towns ; the towns grew into walled cities.
For rivalry and jealousy have always had a place in the world,
more marked and more vindictive in the lower staiies of civili-
zation, than in either absolute barbar-
ism or the highest culture; and man
has ever found it needful to raise a
wall against his brother. • ,

We are also to remember that, in
the gradual development of a race,
not all of that race will equally ad-
vance. The wild habits of our far-
distant ancestors sometimes reap-
pear in us. . in, separated from
the refininji influences of civilization,

inevitably retrogrades, and a wandering people is always a
wild one. The North American continent was a vast and
diversified an^a affording, alike, opportunities for settlement
and scope for the free life of a labor-hating tramp.

So, while communities prospered and increased, and certain
portions of the people, growing gregarious, massed themselves
in settlem.ents, other portions, scattering in families and bands,
roamed at will from place to place. They lived upon what
Nature offered them ; developed slowly and imperceptibly ;
preyed upon other hostile families or bands ; and, as their
numbers increased, actually menaced and attacked the set-
tled communities.

MOUNDS ON THK KICKAI'OO RIVER.

l^.

THE ANCJKN2' AMEHICAN.

Thus it was that, against rival coninumities, rival cities
fortified themselves; and, against the dreaded incursions of
savagery, ramparts were reared and watch-towers were built.
It is beyond dispute that, the

■ high-raisctl Ij.Utlcmcnt or labored mound,
Thick wall or moatcii gate — "

which, the poet assures us, does not " constitute a State," still
does constitute an admirable defence for a State, and this the

SKULL FOUND IM MOUND IN TENNESSEE. SKULL FOUND IN A MOUND IN MISSOURI.

early Americans learned from stern necessity and bitter expe-
rience.

Over great stretches of country from Western New York,
west and southwesterly as far as the Mexican deserts, but princi-
pally confined to that central belt of the United States between
the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, may still be seen
grass-grown mounds, embankments and low earthworks that
have long baffled the minutest inquiry. These are now,
however, believed to have been the walls, temple-sites and
foundations of friendly or rival communities of the long ago.

$CAL&

GaOUND PLAN OF "HIGH BANK PUEBLO," — EMBANKMENTS

BL'ILOEHS IN ROSS COUNTY, OHIO.

BY THE MOUND-

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

They were perhaps cities, towns or villages, teeming with a
busy life, and seem to have been protected against each other
and a savage foe by single, double or triple ramparts, flanked
with watchtowers. Within these ram})arts huge altars built
for bloody sacrifices, stood, central in each, and the crowding
wooden houses of chieftain, noble and laborer, set in orderly
array, were grouped around the central temples.

The civilization that existed fully three thousand years ago
in these long-silent cities is now being rigidly investigated and

Stale 3t feot to the inch.
MOUND IN THE SHAPE OF THE ELEPHANT OR MAMMOTH IN OKANT COUNTY,

WISCONSIN.

slowly read by the light of accumulating relics. The Mound-
builders, as th*2y are called — more for convenience than cor-
rectness — are believed to have lived in the midst of a civili-
zation that was crude and uncertain, but strong and far-reach-
ing. It had government, priestcraft, and official station, mili-
tary and home lite, and, growing with the centuries, finally
culminated, as climate, growth and possible dissension forced

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN

it North and West, in ihc great Aztec civilization that filled
Mexico with empires, cities and temples, and strewed the Pacific
slope from California to Central America and Peru with mar-
vellous structures that, since the days of the Conquerors, have
been alike a study, a mystery and a regret.

It is not the design of this volume to consider, in the least,
the so-called Aztec civilization. The Spanish nature, always
prone to exaggerate — the priestly records, never weak enough
to underestimate the triumphs of the Romish Church, have
invested the tales of Spanish conquest with both the halo of
romance and the flavor of uncertainty. Half-mythical as these
relations are felt by modern students to be, even sober second-
thought is not yet prepared to accept the sweeping conclu-
sions of such inconoclasts as Wilson, who not onlv discredits
the grandiose stories of Bernal Diaz and other Spanish his-
torians of the Conquest, but denies the very existence of both
civilization and ruins in Mexico.

The middle course most nearly approaches the truth in
all matters of s})eculation, and we must therefore conclude
that the semi-civilization of Mexico and Central America had
existence, power and influence, and, finally, that this civilization,
however real it ma\- have been, was the next stage of progress
reached by the Mound-builders of the Mississippi and the Ohio
valleys, and the highest point of advancement ever attained by
the so-called " Indians " of America.

It is probable, however, that this Southwestern or Mexican
civilization rcjiresents the real progress of a portion only of the
Mound-builders. It comprised, j)()ssiblv, tlie most warlike, ambi-
tious, intelligent and cultivated of these people. The remnant,
long a majority perhaps, clung to their homes and their occu-
pations, working the copper in their Michigan mines, cultiva-

MOTEUCZOMA, LURU OF THK AZTECS.

^^'^ . ^H^y -^^

I r

^^im^rmmmmmmmmimmmgmmmttmitmm

wmm

!i ^r-»^^ ;»'ft w^':'"-'*yi«s rfrjT . 'T' g gsaa

'" 111" Ml

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN

tins: their immense elevated farms in the South, and mouldine
their pottery, or developing other now unknown home indus-
tries, in their river and valley towns. But, always about them
raged their savage and relentless foemen — the wandering tribes,
the Bedouins of America. Wasted by the fury of continual

PROKABLE APPEARANn-, OF AN ANCIENT PUEBLO.

and ferocious invasions, and also, perhaps, by bitter internal
strife, the flourishinc: communities cfrevv weaker and weaker.
Driven in time from the broken ramparts which they could find
neither the time nor the spirit to repair, the fleeing inhabitants
of the central valleys themselves became wanderers and, relaps-
ing into a less civilized condition, drifted westward. At last,

Ji:1) I

t !

THE ANCIENT AMEKFCAN.

after years of wandering, they placed the deserts of the South-
west between themselves and their savage foes and found tem-
porary rest, though a far less intelligent existence, in the adobe
villages which constitute what the Spanish Americans term
the "pueblos" of Arizona and New Mexico.

In these new homes the "village Indians," as they have been
called, proceeded by irrigation and untiring labor to make
the sun-dried plains of the great Southwest yield them support

THK HOME OK THE "VILLAGE INDIANS.'

and comfort. Only years of patient toil, however, were able
to brinix this result.

Their low-walled, two and three-storied houses, pierced with
LiKputian windows, and reached by movable ladders, stood
upon rising terraces or broad plateaus and overlooked plains
made fertile by careful ditching, over fields of waving grain
and pastures dotted with cattle.

But the ever-constant terror of savagery found them even

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GROUND PLAN OK THE PUEIU.O liONlTU, CTIACU CANoN, N. M.
(Estu/n IS Spanish for Council Room.)

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THE ANCIENT AMERICAN,

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here. Ferocious tribes (of which the Apache of to-clay is a
partial type) or less successful members of their own wander-
ing communities rendered desperate through failure and fam-
ine, swooped
down upon the
unprotected
"pueblos" and
once again, after
years of f r u i t-
less resistance,
the " village In-
dians " fled to
still more inac-
cessible regions.
Leaving the ex-
pose d valleys,
they now sought
safety higher up
in the caves and
fissures of the
c^reat cliffs that
enclose the f^iant
canons of the
Far West.

These singu-
lar dwellings,
the last refuge
of a hunted and
helpless people, were for many years the homes of successive
generations. From their almost inaccessible eyries, reached
only by steps cut in the solid rock or by baskets drawn

IN TllK c;KANU canon of THK ColAlKADu.

:■! SJ

Ml I

TlH'. AXCIE.XT AMKRiCAN.

A CLII I'DWII.I.INC. — "TIIK I.A.ST REFUGE OF A HUNTKl) I'EOI'LE.

from lc(l<;t* to Icdiijo, the Cliff Dwellers, as they arc termed,
could " s])y out all the land," guard themselves from surjjrise
and prei)are to repel attack. Their i)inkish gray houses, one,
two and three stories in height, were built (lush with the sheer

walls of t h e
mighty j^reci pi-
ces within whose
crevices they
w ere hidden.
I'ar below them
ti o w e d s o m e
rapid river, while
here and there,
on river lands or irrigated spaces, were fields of grain or graz-
ing droves of cattle.

The canons of the Colorado, the sandstone-cliffs of Arizona,
New Mexico and Southern Colorado, still punctured with these
"cubby-holes" of houses, give evidence of the wide extent of
territory occupied by these rock-perched communities, and are
proof alike of the wonderful ingenuity and the ceaseless activity
of man who could thus sustain himself in the midst of the most
unfavorable circumstances and surroundinq;s.

But, more relentless than savage foemen, more tireless than
the most inveterate human enemy, the forces of nature which
terrified and dominated the first American came now to scatter
and destroy this remnant of his more intelligent descendants.
The forests disappeared before the needs of men or the destruc-
tive torch of war; the fearful and loi ^-continuin"; drouuhts
which have ever been the curse of that Southwestern country
overcame even the vigilance of the cliff-dwellers. Water-courses,
upon which they relied for '.rigation and commerce, dried up

TJIK AXCJK.\T AMERICAN.

and disappeared; tlieir fertile fields became arid and sterile;
and in place of these came desert and sand-drift, while t;rain
and cattle alike were lost. The j^oor cliff-dweller, who could
climb to safety far above the head of liis roving focman, could
not resist the stern decrees of nature. Defeated and power-
less, the inhabitants of these airy fortresses gradually deserted
their rocky homes and, becoming themselves rovers and Ish-

RIIINS OF AN ARIZONA CLll'K-DWKLI.INU.

maels, lost the feu^ last vestiges of a partial civilization that
lor centuries their fathers had developed and enjoyed.

But, as civilization decreased, savagery spread. Coming all
from one common stock, the roving tribes of America were

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

changed in manners, customs, speech, stature and complexion
by climatic and other causes. Diffused over the whole North

nature's wonderland. — lllE MOUTH OK THE LIITLE COLORADO.

American continent they used its vast plains, > its hillslopes, val-
\Q^' -'vers, seashores, lakes and forests as their unfailing store-
houses. Alike, conquerors and conquered became restless

■i»i«"-

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

wanderers, hunters, or rude agriculturists; and, spread thus over
an immense section, they Hved as savage proprietors — lords
paramc unt of one of the grandest domains ever given to man.

What the possibilities of primeval America were, as the
hunting-ground and the grain-field of a wandering people, ca.i
be but faintly conjectured, /-.ny one who has traversed its vast
area and noted its present fertility, from the tropical coast-line
of the Gulf to the valleys of the great rivers, the prairies of the
West, the shores of the Pacific and the plains and table-lands
of the North, may perhaps imagine what, even in its unculti-
vated state, must have been its resources in fish and game, in
fruit and grain.

The land had already created and supplied the needs of
crowded cities and of wide-bordered communities , and the agri-
culture necessary to their subsistence, though neglected and
dissipated, had left its seeds in the wildernesses that had suc-
ceeded to the farms which savagery had destroyed.

The cities of the central valleys, the stone-walled pueblos
and the cliff-towns of the Southwest were tenantless, silent and
overthrown, while over all the land, North, South, East and
West, roamed its savage possessors, victorious over an order of
living they could neither desire nor comprehend.

Cruel, vindictive, brutal and fierce, they had hunted and
worried, tortured and destioyed, and had blotted out an at-
tempted civilization which had now lost itself in the wild life
of its conquerors.

A religion whose corner-stone was bloody and merciless
torture ; a life whose best efforts were defeated by its own
incompetencies ; a possible civilization that had proved itself
crude and ineffectual because it had in it neither love, pity,
mercy, nor justice, had risen, flourished and fallen. And now.

\ '%

L, Jfig-

THE ANCIENT AMERICAN.

I !j

as if in strict accord with a Divine and logical plan, its savage
destroyers were themselves to pass through a schooling that
should lead them out from savagery into barbarism. By slow

processes and
natural meth-
ods they were
to be prepared
themselves to
be confronted
by a still higher
civilization — a
civilization
more helpful if
more greedy,
more progres-
sive if more re-
lentless, more
lasting if more
arrogant than
was the society
• they had al-
ready confront,
ed and over-
thrown.

Just why the
Divine plan
should require
these stages of

progress and deflection, of rise and fall, that upon the stepping-
stones of dead states savar jry shall climb only to be itself a
step for other states to mount upon, we need not here inquire.

THE llOMK OF THK ANCIKNT AMERICAN.

!!<

""^grnvn-m.-^-

THE ANCIEN2' AMERICAN.

But the world's history shows this continual growth, decline
and fall, and growth again; and still eternal progress leads to
nobler heights.

The Power that had impelled the ancient American out
of his primitive degradation and made him the citizen of an
incohate but progressive state was now to lead his lapsed
descendants along the same pathway, and to use them as
unconscious but helpful workers upon the ever-broadening
highway that leads from savagery to civilization.

So the student of race-development, whether he reads Ihe
stories of Egypt and of Rome, or of England and America,
may ever find reason for his faith in the world's advance, and
find himself prepared with Milton to

" — assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men."

CHAPTER II.

THE RED MAN REFORE COLUMT5US.

Through just how many changing years the red race, found
in possession by European discoverers, lived supreme in North
America, no one, as yet, may truthfully say. The scientist, the
antiquarian and the ethnologist, probing mounds in Ohio, de-
ciphering rude hieroglyphics in Vermont or in Yucatan, study-
ing cranial develop-
ments in Michigan and
placing pottery and ex-
cavated relics in chron-
ological order, can, after
all, only conjecture, as-
sume and as&ert.

Basing a hypothet-
ical calculation upon the
assumptions of recent
theorists it would seem
fairly safe to accord to the North American Indian a period
of at least a thousand years of sole possession of this continent
after his absolute extinction of the pre-historic races.

In ten centuries of existence man can do much for progress
and civilization. Within that limit had Greece risen, ruled and
fallen, and Rome from a mud-walled city of robbers, became,.

A STUDY OF COMPARATIVE CRANIAL OUTLINES.

A , a European skull. B, a skull found at StimpsotC s Mound,

Mo. C, the Neandertluil skull. D, skull from Dun-

leilh Mound, III. E, skull of a chimpanzee.

)rsa

THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS.

first, mistress of the world, and, tiien, the prey of barbarians.
What could the red denizens of the American forests do
within that limit ?

Only the myths and legends of the Indian race can afford
any answer to this query. And that answer can, at the best,
be but vague and unsubstantial. It is the universal " we hear
so " upon which so much
of the Indian information
is founded — an element
that was applied alike to
the lodge-fire legends and
the misunderstood teach-
in qts of the
white mission-
aries. It is
possible, how-
ever, even by
their imper-
fect light, to

read in partial form, the story of the growth of the Indian
power within the confines of the North American conti-
nent.

The human race cannot stand still. Retrogression is never
final, for eternal progress is the Divine law. Savagery must
lead into barbarism, as barbarism must develop into civili-
zation.

The effects of climate and surroundings, of personal contact,
association and union, and, above all, the interminglings of
those ties of kinship and of home that make all men stable,
would work with proportionate effect even upon a nomadic
savage, reared in slaughter and developed by destruction.

AN INDIAN MYTH. — MAKING MAN FROM THE SENOMOIZA-TREE.

THE A' ED M.l.y BEFORE COLL'MJWS.

For savciLijcry and destruction must in time yield to a more
peaceful and ambitious way of life. Nomads become settlers,
root-digiijers become agriculturists, hunters become acquirers,
and thus, in logical course, families become tribes, tribes be-
come nations, and nations confederacies.

So, by gradual, but uneven changes the destroyers of the
older America became the denizens and upbuilders of the new.
They developed slowly, but, out of their condition of chaos,
they really did evolve a crude system of state-craft, polity and
law. Indeed, it may be asserted that but for the coming of tiie
white man the Indian might, perhaps, have worked out for
himself a second though scarcely more substantial phase of
American civilization.

Hut this was not to be. The Divine architect had other
plans, and the upbuilding of the real .American civilization was
to be upon other foundations than those of aboriginal savagery.

And yet the effort, which this chapter attempts to sketch —
the gradual development of a peoj)le out of absolute savagery
into a more orderly though barbaric form of living, even
though formulated upon a hy})othetical basis — has still in it
enough of loijical cohesion to f^ive it interest and force.

Ferocity always rebounds ujDon itself. For every act of sav-
agerv there is usually more reason than excuse, and the result
of continued violence is the final weakening of violence itself.
The l-vomans became more Grecian than the Greeks them-
selves, the Goths more Roman, the Normans more English.
The conquerors of a nation are often themselves the conquered.

Inch by inch, the savagery that upon the American continent
had, even from primeval times, kejjt pace with its crude though
slowly developing intelligence, forced that intelligence into
terrorism and decline ; but as it chd so, it gave to successful

THE A'/U) MAX BEFORE COLUMJWS.

ferocity, even in its success, the first germs of a desire for
progress.

Rampart and temple, pueblo and cliff-dwelling might, one
by one, be left ruined and tenantless, but the last stages of the

INTERIOR OF A PARTIALLY RESTOKLI) ( Lll 1 -DWKLI.LK S HOUSE.

so-called early American civilization overlapped the first steps
in advance taken by American savagery.

Even amonc the Indians of a century aG[o there still existed
legends of the people who had been their predecessors and who,
though long since conquered, had, in a measure, beCi: deified by
their conquerors.

THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS.

it^

In Mr. Pidgeon's " Traditions of De-coo-dah " is given the
story of a highly imaginative old Indian who asserted that
he, himself, was one of the last remaining relics of " the Elk
nation." No such nation can be found among the Indian tribes,

HIAWATHA, THK " RIVKR-MAKKR.

but it was, presumably, one of very ancient origin : successors
and descendants of the last of the Mound-builders.

However much of fiction there may have been in the mar-
vellous tale which the credulous Mr. Pidgeon has here set down,
it is no doubt true that under the fiction there is a basis of fact ;
and this basic fact. Indeed, Is the origin and cause of the count-
less myths and legends in which are sketched, not only the
dwellers in a forgotten past, but those less impossible and more
heroic fiofures of Atotarho and Hiawatha, common to so manv

THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS.

. ■

Indian tribes. These latter, indeed, may stand as the types of
those ceaseless conflicts between savagery and progress which
marked the growth of the Indian state.

Atotarho, " the entangled one," with his Medusa-like head of
twisted, living snakes, was the representative of skill, cunning
and cruelty in war. He stood for that baleful spirit of ferocity
and that open hostility to improvement that is to be found in
every savage people.

Hiawatha, literally " the river maker," represented all that was
noble, helpful and progressive in the Indian nature. His name
implied intertribal friendship, treaty and peace, and whether we
meet him as the Iroquois " Hiawatha," the Zuni " Po-shai-an-
kia " (Father of the Sacred Bands), the Omaha " Hanga," or the
Aztec " Moteuczoma," this beneficent leader of men, known to
all the tribes as the being sent " to clear the rivers, forests and
fishing-grounds and teach the arts of peace," may be regarded
as a sort of " composite photograph " of the progressive Indian.

These two characters, half mythical, half possible, represent
the two most divergent qualities of Indian life and, as has
been remarked by Mrs. Erminie Smith, the myths that have
accumulated around their history are so many and varied that it
is impossible to define the vague boundary line separating fact
from fiction.

It was Atotarho — spirit of savagery — who overthrew the
flourishing communities of pre-historic times. It was he w'^o
laid waste the cities and villages, the farms and gardens of the
so-called Mound-builders and drove this less warlike people
into destruction or flight. It was he who, as leader of a fe-
rocious foe, stormed the pueblos of the Southwest and the cliff-
dwellings of the Colorado canons, and blotted out a people
whose ruined homes are now their only monuments.

! 1

iii

III

'Si

T//E RED MAN nEFORR COLUMBUS.

For how many ages this ruthless influence — that of Ato-
tarho, the War Chief — relentless, destructive and untiring,
dominated the savage American it is impossible to determine.
But, even in its greatest intensity, it generated, in the very
satiety of savagery, the desire for rest from slaughter. This

ATOTARHO, THK WAR CHIEF. {Fnmi an Indian drawing.)

increased with the years, and, as the devastated sections were
themselves occupied as occasional homes and burial grounds by
the conquerors, it finally developed into the yearning for a
more settled and secure manner of living, typified in Hiawatha,
the Wise Man, the Teacher, Maker of Rivers and of Treaties.

It was Hiawatha — spirit of progress — who induced the
restless nomads to become settlers and sojourners, to add to

' I

V .

' ; »

I ^-

AN INDIAN VlLLAUIi. — J'/^OM un old ait.

;t: 1

.1 .11

1 II

„ .. /" ii ffi Lv,,

■ M I

•V

THE RED MAN BEEORE COLUMEL'S.

their strictly carnivorous bill of fare the cereal and vegetable
products of the land — corn and beans and sc[uasl-.cs, bread-
roots aiul natural fruits. It was iliavvatha who gradually
changed the rovers into communities and confederacies. Me
taught them the arts of peace, led them into a clearer form
of tribal and domestic institutions, and advanced them from
remorseless sava'»;es with no hi'>her ideas than hatred, venire-
ance and plunder, a brutal religion and a bestial appetite,
into those hiuher grades of savai>e life which students of
race development have denominated the " middle period of bar-
barism."

Personifications of types are but arguments for the types
themselves. Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greece, Visvametra in
ancient India, Men-es in old Egypt and Jimmu in Japan were
but the prototypes or parallels of Manco-Capac in Peru, Votan
and Ouetzalcoatl in Central America and Mexico, and Hiawa-
tha among the Indians of the North.

There is still another type noticeable. This is a hybrid one ;
a seeming compromise between the vices of Atotarho and the
virtues of Hiawatha, and compounded of each. This type was
known as Manabozo, a personage who, according to School-
craft, was " strong enough in his necromantic and spiritual
powers, to bafifle the most malicious, beat the stoutest, and over-
reach the most cunning. . . . Whatever man could do he
could do. He affected all the powers of a necromancer. He
wielded the arts of a demon and had the ubiquit)- of a god."

It is Manabozo, indeed, who, even more than Hiawatha,
seems to have been the inspiration and basis of Longfellow's
now famous and beautiful Indian poem. He was, in fact, the
most popular personage in the red man's lodge-fire lore. The
feats portrayed in Longfellow's " Song of Hiawatha " are those

IP^n

f il

77//': A'/'!/) MAN BEFORE COLUMnUS.

ONK OF nature's HIGHWAYS.

of neither Iliiuvatha nor
Atotarho, but of IManabo-
zo, witli this exception,
that the poet invests his
hero with none of the
malicious propensities that
are ever cropping" out in
the Indian tales of Mana-
bozo.

It is therefore safe to
assume that in these three
types are portrayed tlie
condition of the American
Indian throuirh the cen-
turies that elapsed be-
tween Jiis days of savage-
ry, following his conquest
of the prc-historic civili-
zation, and the state of
progressive barbarism in
which the white man
found him.

Atotarho was the fierce
and roving outlaw, hunter
alike of beasts and men,
brutal in tastes, pitiless in
disposition,thoroughly sav-
aQ:e in manners. Hiawa-
tha was the progressive
Indian, the dweller in com-
munities, with a growing
acquaintance with agri-

■tby

TJfE RED MAN BEIORE COf.UMnUS.

s«

•]V

culture, of government and even a crude form of manufac-
ture and of writing. And between these stood Manabozo,
half-wanderer, half-settler, ready to fight and quick to be pacified,
swaying now this way, now that, toward savagery or progrei-'S,
as surroundings or necessities influenced or compelled him.

Hy various natural highways, up and down, and across the
North American continent, from the Arctic seas to the Isthmus

"THE 'spoor' of the GAME."

of Panama, and from the Pacific slope to the Atlantic seaboard,
the tide of Indian migration ebbed and flowed.

At first, following the course of conquest, westward, savagery
hurried fast upon the heels of dest'uction, from the dismantled
fortifications of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys to the New
Mexican pueblos and the canons of the great Southwest.

Whenever they devastated communities, such as those of the

^ili

; "1

i'i

liiii

2'//E /v'AV) jr.l.y B F.I' ORE COLUMBUS.

so-called Moiincl-iUiildors, those ruthless conquerors, havini;-, as
yet, neither the needs nor the inclinations of the agriculturists
by whom these communities had l)een formed, naturally fol-
lowed the track of their tleeii ^- foe or the "spoor" of the game
they sought as food. This, consequently, kept them westward
for generations.

P)Ut when the last hunted remnant of a less savage past
also relapsed into savagery, conquerors and conquered, now
merged into a shifting and heterogeneous mass of nomads and
Ishmaels, swept North and South along the river ways and
valley lines without purpose or destination save the satisfying
of appetite or the need for rest. At times, perhaps, for years
they would be held by the attractions of promising hunting
grounds upon the borders of some treeless plain or inland sea,
or again, it might be, their wandering w^ould for a while be
stayed by the barrier of some vast stretch of dense and impene-
trable forest. Then, necessity or desire would force them into
some ncv." line of departure ; and so, surging this way and that,
the half-million souls that made up this savage mass, without
domestic animals and with few even of the rudest arts of com-
munity life, drifted about as need or inclination led.

The plains and prairies of the West were to the nomadic
tribes little better than some trackless sea or desert. Without
the knowledge of the horse or of any beast of burden save their
ow'.i brute selves the Indians found upon these treeless stretches
of country but few opportunities for subsistence. They were
indeed of little \alue save as the home and breedinu-ground
of the Imlian's greater game — the buffalo, the elk, and the
antcloi^c.

It was therefore in the valleys, whose rivers gave them alike
fish and game, and whose forest-covered slopes afforded shelter

*TV

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a
w
c
z,
&
o

■<

THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS.

and all the opportunities for savage wood-craft, that the most of
the Indian life was found.

Drifting farther and still farther apart, separated by mountain
chains and these same trackless plains, and with opposing
interests growing out of the ties of clan and kin, the conquerors
gradually resolved themselves into crude but distinct tribal

TlIK INDIAN'S (;AME. — TUK IlLNTEU LLK.

relations, speaking, upon a rough estimate, at least forty dis-
similar and seemingly unrelated languages, though these in
reality were but perversions of a parent stock.

Of all these natives the forest Indians seem to have been
the most manly and progressive, far surpassing in ability and
ambition their more conservative and degenerate brothers of
the plains and hills.

So, gradually, along the natural highways afforded by the

THE RED MAN EEIORE COLUMBUS.

I. I

I •■ '*

courses of tlic larger rivers, the great lakes and the valley of the
St. Lawrence the Indian path of migration touched all the more
habitable and fertile sections of the continent until the Nomads
became less Nomadic and settled in comparatively distinct race

.y-'

SIIKM. KISIMIOOKS OK TIIK CALIFORNIA TIUHES.

or clan areas North, West, South and East, in small but vigor-
ous communities all over the broad iAmerican continent.

Ferocity and feud still marked the Indian's life. Atotarho
still held the supremacy in many a restless tribe ; but, year by
year, the nobler Hiawatha gained among his brothers a firmer
and surer foothold. Clans cfrew into tribes, the tribes became
confederacies, and men, especially those of kindred language,
became friends and allies instead of rivals and foes. Villages,
each with its cultivated spaces of corn and vegetables, began to

;

THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS.

multiply, the war-chief gave place to the council, while the pipe-
bowl and the arrow-head, to-da\- upturned by the plough of the
white man in fields once trod only b) the red man's foot, testify
to the rude skill in manufacture which the Indian once again
attained. Hiawatha was fast becoming the stronger chief.
Thus, by a gradual but logical advance, based upon natural mi-
frrations, increasing needs and developing desires, did the Amer-
ican Indians progress rrom a body of ruthless destroyers into
something li'
a consistent
and kindred
race of men.

Through
the ages that
succeeded the
conquest of
pre-h i storic
America, how-
ever or when-
ever this may
have been
achieved, the
savaofc devel-
oped into the
barbarian. His
real progress

had beoun. And thus the first discoverer from the distant
East found him.

The legends that were current in so many Indian tribes, of
an expected messenger or visitor from distant lands, — oki,
manitou or god, fair of face, majestic in form and gifted with

THK WHITE MAN CAMIC AT I.A.ST.

THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS.

■

supernatural powers — may, perhaps, have a basis of fact in the
real presence, in ages past, upon American shores, of some
white voyager from the distant East.

Phoenician and Israelite, Arabian and Welshman, St.
Thomas the Apostle and the Irish missionaries of St. Patrick
have all found their advocates and supporters as the early dis-
coverers of America. Even in the wildest of legends may
sometimes lie a germ of truth. The white man came at last.

Whether this modern discoverer of America was Lief the
Northman, or Columbus the Genoese, matters little to us here.
But, from the day when, sailing across unknown seas, the broad
banner of Castile was borne to the new-found land a second
chapter in the story of the red man was begun.

The Marquis de Nadaillac's " primeval Americans " had be-
come Mr. Carlyle's " copper-colored chiefs in wampum." And
what was to be the issue between the destroyers of one civili-
zation and the harbingers of another ?

The days of myth and fable, of misty speculation and un-
certain legends have passed. From this time forward we are to
deal with a race whose chroniclers were their conquerors, and
whose story has been told and retold in written records that
yet remain for our guidance and information.

CHAPTER III.

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

'.!

: ''.\

1
1

;

n >

" It is a fact worthy of a pause
for thought," says Dr. ElHs in his
excellent sketch of Las Casas, " Pro-
tector" of the Indians, "that in no
single instance since the discovery
of our islands and continent by
Europeans, has any new race of men
come to the knowledge of travellers,
explorers and visitors from the
realms of so-called civilization, when
the conditions were so fair and fav-
orable in the first introduction and
acquaintance between the parties as
in that between Columbus and the natives of the sea-girt isle
of Hispaniola."

Columbus greeted the new-found land with a kiss. For the
startled and wondering natives he had only smiles and signs of
loving-kindness. But this auspicious opening of an era of
discovery that was to give a new world to an old, was not
destined to continue. From the days of the Great Admiral to
those of La Perouse and Vancouver, greed, rapacity, and a
careful disregard of the rights of all men to life, liberty and the

RACJ'] DHISIONS AND KJASJJJT TIES.

pursuit of liap]Dincss, have marked the dealings of the white
disc:()vercr wilh llic red luibitaut.

Cc)]unil)us himself inaui^urateu the slave trade. The very
iiati\-c's who had received hini as a t^'od were seized and shipped
to Spain as " cannibal slaves." " The ill that he had done,"
says Pr. I'^Uis, " lived after him, to qualify the splendor of his
nobleness, grandeur and constancy."

So malign an example from so exalted a source could
scarcely fail to Inid imitators. Within less than twenty years
after the first landing of Columbus the islands comprising the
West India group were almost depopulated of their native
inhabitai^.ts.

Even the most trustin'^ native will throui^h ill-usatje and bad-
faith grow suspicious and revengeful. The Southern Indians
whom the Spaniards thus foolishly maltreated, much more
gentle than their brethren of the North, turned at last upon
their tormentors. " Wliere once the Indians were like sheep,'
wrote, in 15 14, Vasco Nunez, commonly called Balboa, "they
have now become like fierce lions, and have acquired so much
daring, that formerly they were accustomed to come out to the
paths with presents to the Christians, now they come out and
kill them ; and this has been on account of the bad things
which the captains who went out on the incursions have clone
to them."

And Spain was not the only criminal. Greed for gold that
sent the ships of all the natirins of Europe west^vard seeking
new dominions and an impossible El Dorado, was from the
very first liidced with a fatal disregard for the peoples to whom
these dominions belonged. Frenchman and Englishman,
Dutchman and Swede saw in the red-man only a heathen to be
deceived, overmastered and fleeced.

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THK I.ANDINd OF CCJUTMHUS.

■i I

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

From the Arctic Circle to the Equator wherever an Indian
tribe was found the charge of selfishness and violate J faith
must stand against the discoverers. The Indian nature, based
upon the suspicion that is always fostered by barbarism, grew
still more uncertain, wily and vindictive as the native learned
that the new-comers were not friends, but foes. Thus wrongly
grounded, the inter-
course between the red
man and the white de-
veloped into a cease-
less warfare between
power and prejudice,
and this bitter strife
penetrated into every
section of the great
continent, wherever an
Indian lived and, after
his own fashion, did
valiant battle for his
home-land.

How disproportion-
ate must have been
this native population
to the area occupied recent figures demonstrate.

It has always bcv .^ the custom to speak of the red races of
America at the time of the discovery as outnumbering " the
sands of the sea " — a quantity beyond compute, and to be ex-
pressed only in millions.

Sober fact, however, has again asserted itself and dispelled
all this exaggeration. So far from there being any truth in the
statement recklessly made that " five hundred years ago it re-

NOT FRIENDS, BUT FOES.

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSIIJP TIES.

quired niilHons to express in numbers the Indian jiopulation,"
it is certain that at that date the total nuniber of Indians in
North .America barely exceeded, if it even reached, five hun-
dred thousand.

And this possible half-million was scattered over the length
and breadth of the land from Hudson's Hay to the (iulf of
Mexico, and from the Everglades of Florida to the far north-
western shores of Onalaska and the Frozen Sea.

These scattered descendants of savao^e hunters, rovinir
herdsmen, dismantled villages and fallen civilizations, dispersed
over this vast area and differing radically in customs, com-
plexion, and costume, language, stature, laws and life, had still
one physical and one mental characteristic common to all.
These were the straight black hair and the " bunch-words " or
polysynthetic speech. These point to a common origin, while
the basic name given to themselves by all the American tribes,
variously expressed but always meaning " men," indicates a
positive fundamental relationship of blood as well as of brain.

Dismissing the first hundred ycirs of discovery as too vague
in both report and record for definite statistics it may be stated
that at the bes^innintjj of the seventeenth centurv the native
races upon the North American continent, exclusive of Mexico
and Central America, numbered something less than five hun-
dred thousand and were divided into twelve distinct stocks or
families. An enumeration of these families and a rou;;>:h outline
of the sections they occupied may afford a more intelligent idea
of the composition of the Indian Races of North America than
is conveyed by the customary broad generalization.

Along what is known as the Atlantic seaboard, northward
as far as Labrador and the St. Lawrence and southward to the
latitude of South Carolina, radiating westward to points in

THK RKTURN OF COLUMliUS.

55 li

5 •'• i

r.' MhwbiaMj-b V^woifef A ^

V-»

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

Illinois, Michigan and even to the Mississippi a kindred race
lived, which ethnographers have called the Algonquin family.
Warlike, ambitious and powerful this great tribal family became
the most famous as they were among the most fearless of the
Northern races.

Closely allied to the Algonquin stock and touching their
country in the region of Upper Canada and the Great Lakes,
Northern New York and the Virginia highlands lived the
Wyandot-Iroquois family, a stock that has furnished, more
than any other, the model for the so-called " noble ^d-man "
of fiction and of which the historian Parkman declares that
" their ferocious vitality, but for the presence of Europeans,
would probably have subjected, absorbed, or exterminated, every
other Indian community east of the Mississippi and north of
the Ohio."

Distantly connected, through the medium of a related
language, with the Wyandot-Iroquois came, next, the Dakota
family, sometimes called by the French explorers the Sioux.
Their domain stretched across the Western prairies that lay
between the Miss'3sippi and the Rocky Mountains, and reached
northward as far as the Saskatchwan region, beyond Manitoba,
and southward to the Red River of Texas.

North of the territory of these kindred races, though inter-
secting them at certain points, stretched the country of the
great Athabascan family. Almost all of what is now the vast
Dominion of Canada was occupied by this hardy race, whose
trails and hunting grounds crossed the Arctic Circle into Alaska
and the land of the Eskimos and zigzagged the broad area be-
tween the Rocky Mountains and Hudson's Bay.

The Eskimos, with the natives of Alaska and all the inhab-
itants of the far northern lands from Baffin's Bay westward to

111

A'ACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

•111

Behrinfr's Straits, formed what is known as the HvPERnoREAN
Race — the folk " beyond the north."

Distantly allied to them, though with a completely isolated
language, were the tribes that comprised the Tiilinkeet family,
so called from their national name, T'linketantukwan, or "men

belonginfj to
all villages."
This family oc-
cupied a com-
pact geograjih-
ical area along
the northwest
coast from
]\IountSt.Elias
in Alaska
southward to
the Simpson
River.

To the south

of the Thlink-

eets was the

home of what

have been

termed the

Columbian Races. This family occupied the section now

embraced in British Columbia, Washington Territory and

Oregon.

Northern California from the Klamath River to Monterey
was the home of a low-grade and rapidly degenerating stock,
which for reasons of locality has been called the Californian
Races, while the other half of the great Western State with a

AN IROQUOIS SCOUT.

V^i

THE GATE Of LAUOKE. — THE UUME Oh IHE bllOSUUNE RACE.

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ri!

I ii

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RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

portion of Southern Arizona was the home of the Yuma family.

To the East, embracing the sections now known as Idaho,
Utah, and Wyoming, with parts of Oregon, Montana and
Nevada and the greater part of Texas, Kansas and the Indian
Territory, lived the Shoshone and Pawnee families, related as
to race character-
istics but entirely
distinct as to lan-
guage.

In New Mexico,
closely massed as
a strictly separate
family were the
Pueblos, the last
remnant of the
once wide-spread
civilization that
had occupied the
cliffs, the cafions
and the pasture
lands of the dry
Southwest and
that went backward into barbarism before the combined assaults
of savage man and still more savage nature.

One other family remains. It occupied the great southern
space of the United States, from the Carolinas and Tennessee
southward to the Gulf of Mexico and westward to, and includ-
ing, Louisiana and Arkansas. These tribes, for purely geo-
graphical reasons, have been denominated the Appalachian
Races and have included many notable and interesting types
of Indian character, such as Oganasdoda the Tsaraghee and
Asseola the Seminole.

IN THE SHADOW OF SHASTA. — THK HOME OF THE CALI-
FORNIAN RACES.

■P

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/^ACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

Thus, three hundred years ago, was the North American
Continent peopled. From the Arctic Ocean to the borders of
Mexico — a region now under the supreme control of the
English-speaking race — twelve great families possessed and
divided the land. All were, presumably, attributable to a com-
mon origin, but, when first known to the white man, they had
for ages been broken and subdivided into confederacies, nations
and tribes, warring upon each other or bo.und in solemn though
oft-violated compacts, and living under the influence of manners,
customs, religions, and laws as foreign to those of the nations
who discovered them as were the peoples, themselves, an enigma
and a confusion.

In so diffused and varied a people as were the native
Americans the fashion of life must have ranGfed from absolute
lawlessness to some attempted form of regulated government.

" Government," says Burke, " is a contrivance of human
wisdom to provide for human wants." The fewer the wants the
less there must be of wisdom. Both the wants and the wisdom
of the savage govern, therefore, his position in the scale of
progress.

"A state," says Major Powell, "is an organized group of
men with an established government and a body of determined
law." Neither established government nor determined law, as
we understand them, seem to havj been existent among the
American races, and yet the tribal relation, common to them
all, had as its central motive the fundamental idea of both gov-
ernment and law — obedience to an established authority.

Schooled by centuries of tyranny, monarchy, feudalism and
class distinctions to an entirely arbitaray division of mankind
into the governor and governed, the tyrant and the tyrannized,
the European discoverers of America brought to their super-

A PUEBLO BOY.

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I I

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

•r

ficial and negligent study of the Indian composition their own
caste-ridden notions. Kings and subjects, barons and vassals,
lords and serfs were the only divisions of society known to
them ; and king and subject, baron and vassal, lord and serf
was the manner in which they read the Indian fabric.

The reverse was indeed the case. The Indian tribes of
North America were in greater or less degree autonomic —
self-governed. And each tribe, however high or however low
it stood in intelligence, had the one fundamental idea referred
to above : obedience to an established authority.

This authority, commonly vested in chieftainship, ranged
according to the composi ion and proclivities of the tribe, from
elective or hereditary chieftainship down to the strong man
power that dominates, though it may not always dictate, in the
most barbrvous communities.

Broadly speaking, however, the Indian state in its higher
form may be esteemed what has been described as a " kinship
state ; " that is, according to one authority,* a state " in which
the governmental functions are preformed by men whose posi-
tions in the government are determined by kinship." The
"law" of such a " state " regulates marriage and the rights of
the several members of a body of kindred and their duties
to each other. Individuals, he declares, are held responsible
"chiefly to their kindred, and certain groups of kindred are
held responsible to other groups of kindred."

Such a regulation, which could only hold in a family or
patriarchal nationality, will largely explain the meaning and ex-
tent of the " gens," as they were called, into which tribes and
kindred tribes were divided — a system somewhat analagous to
the " clans " of the old Celtic communities.

* Rev. J. Owen Dorsey of the Bureau of Kthnogvaphy.

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

To whatever extent we may bring against the Nortli Ameri-
can Indians the charges of ferocity and cruelty, superstition and
duplicity, barbarity and even cowardice, to these remorseless
savages belongs, at least, more than to any other barbarous or

semi-barbarous race
on earth, one char-
acteristic that must
commend them to
the better judgment
of the civilized
world — itself not
always above re-
proach in this re-
spect. The native
North American
was, and always has
been, loyal to the
ties of kindred and
of blood relation-
ship. " The sacred
tie of family," de-
clares Mr. School-
craft, " is the great
fulcrum upon which
the lever of hope,
in doing anything
to raise this people from barbarism, rests."

In one of the numerous inter-tribal wars of the seventeenth
century the little son of Bi-aus-wah, a famous Ojibway chief, was
surprised and captured by the Foxes not far from the site of
the modern city of Duluth. The news of disaster reached the

POW^HATAN

JzeM tliisjtale &L^/i/on when Capt.Smth
^-u/as deliaered /o Mn £ri^mr

(Fio/n ait old print.)

UUIIW II J IIIIII III UUl l il.l IL Jl - U M lt UWIIU i » ---

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

father who knew at once what fate was in store for his boy. At
once and alone he followed the trail of the victorious I'oxes
and reached their village as the fatal fire was being kindled.
Without hesitation the old chief walked boldly to the place of
sacrifice. " My little son, whom you are about to burn with
fire," he said to the hostile warriors who knew him only too
well, " has seen but a few winters ; his tender feet have never
trodden the war-path. He has never injured you. Hut the
hairs of my head are white with many winters, and over the
r^raves of my relatives I have hung many scalps which I have
taken from the heads of the T^oxes. My death is worth some-
thing to you. Let me therefore take the place of my child, that
he may return to his people." The offered substitution was
.accepted. The boy was carried back to his tribe, and the lov-
ing father without a groan met his death amid the fagots
"which had been set alight for his son.

It was by such examples of paternal sacrifice as this that the
value of the family tie was stamped into the very soul of each
new and rising generation. And this strength of kinship was,
naturally, the one most pronounced result of the patriarchal
basis of the American tribes. Respect for age has always been
a leading characteristic of the Indian nature. The father of a
family except for the " motner-right," to be explained hereafter,
was supreme in his own lodge. Heads of lodges — "fathers,"
as they were called — were, of course, the ruling spirits in the
tribe. From them came the chiefs, the men of action and
executive ability. But the still older men, those who were no
longer " fathers," constituted a sort of post-magisterial council
for the tribe — veterans who could caution, suggest or advise
when they had grown too old to lead or act.

This patriarchal bond has always been the source or accom-

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

\\:

panimcnt of a nomadic life. It is found in the Hcdouin of to-
day as it was in the Goths of Europe and the shepherds of old
Judea. Naturally, it leads, at last, to a sub-division of the
original material as families enlarge, separate and grow into

other families. And out of this,
with the American nomads, came,
also naturally, their division into
" gens " or tribes.

So, though the barbaric state is
supposed to be the most simple, free
and unfettered of all the forms of
human living, it really becomes
through these family and sub-family
complications, at once involved and
intricate, a puzzle to the outsider,
and to the sociologist a problem
worth the research. A great, rov-
ing people therefore, like the North
American race, with a basis of mingled su])erstition and
family traits, becomes confused, baffling and often inexplicable
to one who, versed in the simpler ways of the more intelligent
composition of civilized society, seeks to unravel the mazes
of a barbaric race.

But, starting from this family or patriarchal basis, a patient
student of the life and customs of the twelve great sub-divisions
of the original Amencan stock may be able to determine how
it is possible, even in a complexity of hostile and stranger tribes,
to still discover in all a certain strain of kindred manners, a
certain similarity of government, and, alike in the most lawless
rovers and the most advanced confederacies, a certain related
phase of polity, policy and law.

ONK Ul' THK IIUIHKR TYl'Eb.
ZUNI INDIAN.

RACE DlllSlOXS AND KINSIflP TIES,

An Indian chief being once asked whether liis people were
free, replied, " Why not; since I myself am free, although tiieir
chief."

IS. m 1

tself.

is an indication of the absolute Indian

equality. As before stated, tliere was neither baron nor sen in
the Indian state. The power of the chief was limited. Ability
always asserted itself; there was always room at the top. Pub-
lic opinion was the real governing force, and in the tribal

GLEN CANON. — THE INDIAN'S HOMELAND.

councils every lodge had a voice. Those who exalted could
also abase, and a chief rarely dared go counter to the will or the
demands of his tribe. He seldom presumed to dictate as to the
domestic concerns of individual lodges, and indeed any inter-
ference by a chief was quickly resented by the father of a
family.

i*w^ ^mimmmU9 '

m lyui iii ni i ii f I I i j I L

A'^Cili DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES,

Next t the Indian's love of kindred, stood his affection for
hia home-land. This is always an accompaniment of the tribal
life. Dividing between them a vast area, aggregating nearly
seventy-five hundred thousand square miles, the twelve great
native families to which reference has been made, each held
tenaciously the uncertain boundaries that marked the confines
of their several sections. In the same manner the nations,
tribes and sub-tribes that constituted these larger families as
jealously guarded their several ranges from intrusion.

It cannot be learned that any Indian tribe, victorious in war,
ever appropriated as its own the lands of the defeated tribe.
Hostile hunting-grounds might be invaded, but they were never
" annexed." And, within its acknowledged territory, the mem-
bers of a tribe had equal interest, right and ownership in that
territory. There was no individual property in land. The
tribe owned all that it he'd.

Modern theorists who so strenuously advocate the abolition
of ownership in land fail to give due weight to the fact that
personal ownership in land is the first step toward civilization.
The foundation of the Roman state was the hcrcdium, or owner-
ship of one-and-a-half acres in perpetuity by each householder;
and it is certain that, as national progress is largely b ied upon
personal proprietorship, so barbarism clings to the idea of a com-
mon property. '1 he Indian was as tenacious of his tribal rights
to the tribal lands as he was careless of his individual possession
beyond the shadow of his own lodge poles.

Upon these two fundamental principles therefore — love of
kindred and love of home land — was the native Americ. -■
race firmly gronndca. And it is these two characte- ' Lies that,
from the days of the first discoverers until now, the English,
Colonial and the L nited States Governments have been com-

t#/»

*»»»'

RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES.

■•

T**

pelled to combat or respect. The natural reluctance of so
tenacious a people to abandon these ties of r.ncestry and land
has, by its very recognition by the government, been the cause
of , complicated system of treaty relations ; and thes' as a
recent writer declares, have " undoubtedly been the greatest
stumbling-block in the way of the Indian's advancement to
civilization and citizenship."

Even a virtue may be wrongly directed. Personal prefer-
ences or prejudices shouM never be permitted to militate against
the general good. As American citizenship seems the only
logical settlement for the so-called Indian problem, there are
those even among the friends of the Indian who hold that "only
by a movement toward the disintegration of the tribes " can be
secured that citizenship which shall make them no longer aliens
but units in an undivided nation.

It is of value, however, to remember, as we seek to read con-
sistently the story of the American Indian, that the fabric of
that story has been determined and developed by the unalterable
tenacity with which, through full three hundred years of alternate
war and peace, he has clung to those characteristics that lie at
the foundation of the Indian nature — the love of kindred and
the love of his home-land.

I If

j»><

' fi' y i

CHAPTER IV.

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

When the discoverers of America
first touched upon, or journeyed into
the nc.v-found lands, Spaniard and
Frenchman, Englishman and Dutch-
man encountered the representatives of
a ;'^'->ple peculiarly fitted to be either
moulded or marred.

The savage mind is essentially child-
like. It receives and appropriates new
ideas in faith or in diplomacy in the
broad sense of a general receptiveness
and engrafts them upon such a basis
of belief, conjecture or superstition as
fill the heart alike of savage and of
child.
" Had I been there with my Franks," said Clovis the Pagan
king, when the Bishop Ren.i told him of the death of the
divine sufferer on Calvary, " I would have taught those Jews a
lesson." "Why did you bapuze this Iroquois.? " asked a Huron
convert of Gamier, the Jesuit, who had just performed his
sacred office upon a dying captive; "he will get to heaven

before us, and when he sees us coming he will drive us out."

:vi^Vv

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

The savage of every land is a literalist at heart, however
much of an idealist he may ho. in thought, and in his treat-
ment of new theories he is as full of unreasoning imitation as
is a child with a new doll.

Before the white man came with his peremptory but diverse
statements of the same general truth the North American In-
dians throughout all their broad area of occupation, held with
almost unvarying unanimity the same generic form of religious
belief — if that may be
deemed religion or be-
lief which was mainly
superstitious fear em-
bodied in a worship of
symbols.

This worship indeed
was little more than a
sort of primitive phil-
osophy such as always
rules the life of man
in the childhood of the
world. " All thinii^s liv-
ing or moving," says
Prof. Tiele, "or start-
ling him by something
strange and extraordi-
nary, and of which he does not know the natural causes, he
ascribes to the working of mighty spirits, moving freely through
earth and air and, taking up their abode either temporarily
or permanently in some living or some lifeless object."

Deriving from their common, primeval ancestor, the first
American, this fear of natural phenomena the Indian had no
conception of a central governing omnipotence or deity.

"THE MARVELLOUS WHITE iMAN."

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

Mrs. Erminic A. Smith, whose lone: residence amonG^ the
Indians gives especial force to her statements, emphatically
asserts that " the * Great Spirit ' so popularly and poetically
known as the god of the red man, and the ' Happy Hunting
Ground,' generally reported to be the Indian's idea of a future
state, are both of them but their ready conception of the white
man's God and heaven."

"In no Indian language," says Mr. Parkman, "could the
early missionaries find a word to express the idea of God.
Manitoit and Oki meant anything endowed with supernatural
powers,"

The Indian, therefore, deified or, rather, personified those
forces of nature that ever surrounded him, expressing them in
the corresponding types of animal life with which he came in
daily contact, but which, also, he could not understand.

The most assertive natural forces were the strongest in per-
sonification. The thunder in the North, and the sun in the
South seem to have held precedence over all other spirits, while
both at the North and the South, alike among the Algonquins
of Canada and the Aztecs of Mexico, the four mythical
"brothers " — the winds — were objects of peculiar veneration.

To the imaiiinative Indian,

" wIkjsc untutored mind
Sees Govl iu clouds, or In-.us him in the wind,"

the birds symbolized the winds as with strong and steady pin-
ions they swept through the airy spaces, or like fleecy clouds
poised in mid-air; the snake was the visible expression of the
lightning that darted and flashed across the sky, while similar
parallelisms between physical and material qualities became
basic points in the Indian philosophy.

"THE bl'IKlT Ul' I'EACE.

11:

If JL IlJl> " ll 3»lf

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

To the Dakota family of the West the antelope typified
the spirit of peace; the snarling grizzly was the divinity of
war. In fact, the wild beasts with whose ways and voices the
Indian was familiar were regarded by him as in every way his
superiors.

"We must remember," says Dr. Brinton, "that as a hunter
the primitive man was always matched against the wild crea-
tures of the woods, so superior to him in their dumb certainty
of instinct, swift motion, muscular force, and permanent and
sufficient clothing. Their ways were guided by a will beyond
his divination and they gained a living with little toil or trou-
ble. They did not mind the darkness so terrible to him, but
throuc^h the night called one to the other in a tongue whose
meaning he could not fathom, but which, he doubted not, was
as full of purport as his own. He did not recognize in himself
those god-like qualities destined to endow him with the royalty
of tl lid, while, far more than we, he saw the sly, strange

faculties of his brute antagonists."

Reared upon a basis of symbolism and myth, good and evil
powers, spirits of luck and calamity, dreams and spells, and all
the distorted images of superstition and of fear, the North
American Indian could formulate no gods "one whit better
than himself." His natural " animism," as such blind worship
of the phenomena of nature is termed, exhibited a marked ten-
dency to gloomy rites, half-insane ecstasies, and bloody self-t'^ r-
ture. More than this, it still possessed the same crude elements
of a propitiatory faith, that manifested itself in the occasional
cannibal feasts and the horrible human sacrifices of the torture-
stake, that had marked the North American savage from the
far-off days of the Mound-Builder and the Cave-Dweller.

To a people thus grounded upon an unsubstantial faith — a

^^^iHiMi

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

faith that taught nothing and imagined mucli — the peculiar
teaching of the white man, |;eculiarly taught, led to a curious,
though logical result. In the South, the Spaniard with cross
and corselet, priestly rites and inquisatorial fires, in the North,
the French Jesuit with his open and conflicting desires of
material and moral advantage, alike preached and promised all
the realistic crudities of the Romish Church. And, between
these two, Puritan, Lutheran, Quaker, Cavalier, and Huguenot,
each with tenets diametrically " 1 often hostilely opposed,
sought to instill into the receptive but unreasoning Indian
mind the message of the Truth as each ojjposing sect dogmat-
ically held it.

The savage, knowing nothing of the ethical nature of the
reliirion thus flung at him, received it within the limited circle
of his own fantastic faith, and made for himself a new belief —
a jumble of mystery, materialism, ecstasy and stern alternatives
in which appeared but little of that broad and civilizing love of
a Father who had made of one blood all nations of men, and
who had equal regard^ for all.

From the first the material element was all that was ad-
vanced as a basis for faith. To the Spanish Indians conversion
was an alternative that meant either acceptance or death. To
the Jesuit proselytes were promised a purely Algonquin Heaven
and Hell. " Images of all the holy mysteries of our faith ; "
"pictures of souls in perdition — of souls in bliss one will be
enough ; " these were what the Brothers in France were re-
quested to send for the Huron conversion. The Indian was
given only what his senses could appreciate.

But more than this material religion the mortal hates of
the new-comers had an influence upon the minds of the red
men. More cruel than the Indian, because more intelligent ;

■pi^

i^ggE^gg

INDIAN FATTHS AND CONFEDERATION^;,

springing at each other's tliroats in a frenzy of mingled relig-
ious zi>al and jealous greed, Spaniards and iM-enchmen alike,
as Parknian declares, "laid their reeking swords upon God's
altar "' and placed the necessities for their fiendishness at the
door of their All-Merciful God. The butcher Menendez and
his gang of Spanish cut-throats ravaged Florida " for the sake
of Christ and His Blessed Mother." In the name of the Sav-

AN INDIAN MYTH — THE INDIAN BOY LEARNS WISDOM FROM THE SQUIRREL.

iour of men, Frenchmen and Englishmen strugcflcd for the con-
trol of Canada. From Pemaquid to the capes of Delaware,
Puritan and Papist raged vengefully against one another.
Swede and Dutchman bandied threats and blows, while
brothers of the same nation and the same blood, in defence
of creed, or for love of gold, were more vindictive toward one
another than were ever Huron and Iroquois, or the dusky fol-
lowers of a Satouriona and an Outina.

A conflict of creeds and lessons in hatred were thus en-
grafted upon abject and fantastic superstition. And what could
be the outgrowth.? Schooled in an atmosphere of rapacity,

9°

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

duplicity, fraud, and greed, of falsehood in trade and unbal-
anced enthusiasm in religion, during his three centuries of asso-
ciation with the white man the Indian could not improve a
nature already compounded of savagery. The red-man of
America has been precisely what his conquerors have made
him. r\)r every torture-stake and every burning village, for
every cry of the terror of surprise, and every scene of Indian
pillage, the white colonists of America are very largely respon-
sible. The Indian's desire was his relif'ion — nothinij: else.
In too many instances, also, was the white man's desire his
religion; and the overmastering spirit of greed, the stern de-
mands of a self-imposed necessity, and the promises lightly
made, and quite as lightly broken, furnish alike cause and ex-
cuse for scores of Indian atrocities.

There is, however, no cloud so dark but has its bright side.
Even this hybrid and wrongly developed pseudo religion had
in it many things to lighten the weariness of a most monoto-
nous existence. The myths that filled it were often beneficent
in design ; the good spirits were quite as numerous as the evil
ones, and were lielps in seed time and harvest, in woodcraft
and the chase, while, even in the most ferocious of the tribes,
there is apparent a certain indication of humor, that may be
dense and dull, but is humor, nevertheless.

The tribes of the West as they were the latest to encounter
the white man were also the last to feel and fall victim to his
influence and precepts. Here, too, the primitive faith remained
longest intact. Both the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts nrrew^
familiar to the tread of the white man, but on the plains and
prairies, by the lakes and rivers ' ' the great West, from the
Alleiihanies to the Rockies, the red-man retained the lonijest
his own native customs, manners, and speech.

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INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

Here, too, for many a weary year was the Debatable Land —
the "dark and bloody ground" that witnessed, long after the
East had accepted civilization, the feud, the foray, the attack
and the repulse, the horror, the ferocity and the valor of border
war. But here, too, remained longest unchanged, the primitive
beliefs of the red-man — the giant and the pigmy; the dream
god and the sleep spirit, the witch woman and the magic med-
icine, the Great Head, the Stone Giant, the myths of Atotarho
and Hiawatha, and all the childish mysteries that, long since,
had, among their Eastern brothers, yielded to the dominating
influence of the misunderstood religion and the questionable
ethics of the all-powerful white man.

It was also among these Western tribes that the peculiar
system of tribal government remained longest intact — a system
that, until the arrival of the white stranger, had, to a widely
related extent, had place in all the American tribes.

As has already been indicated, this government had a kin-
ship or patriarchal basis, and, by intermarriage among the tribes,
this spirit of kinship was fostered and increased.

Out of this tie of kin grew, also, one of the strongest bonds
of Indian unity — the do dainty or totem, as the word has been
anglicized. This was essentially a system of symbol-association
among the numerous Indian clans, and was one that ramified
and intermingled all the native races of America.

"In the days when all was new," says a Zuni legend, "the
' Holder of the Paths of men,' the Sun-Father, created from his
own being two children who fell to earth for the good of all
that live. These children cut the face of the world with their
magic knife and were borne down upon their magic shield
into the caverns in which all men dwelt. These caverns were
very dark, and as men increased they began to crowd one

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

another and were very unhappy. Then, at last, the two chil-
dren of the Sun-Leather listened to the supplications of men
and led them out of the caverns, eastward, toward the home
of the Sun-Father. But, lo, the beasts cf prey, powerful and
like the gods themselves, would have devoured the children
of men, and the two Brothers thought it not wise that these
all should be permitted to live ; ' for,' said they, ' alike will
the children of men and the children of the beasts of prey
multiply, and the children of men are the weaker.' So,
whenever they came across the pathway of one of these ani-
mals, were he mountain lion or mole, the Brothers struck
him with the fire of lightning which they carried in their

magic shield. Thluf
and instantly he was
shrivelled and burnt
into stone. Then
said they to the an-
imals they had thus
changed to stone, ' That ye may not be evil unto men, but
that ye may be a great good unto them, have we changed
you into rock everlasting. By the magic breath of prey, by
the heart that shall endure forever within you, shall ye be
made to serve instead of to devour mankind.' "

These beasts, represented in stone "fetiches" among the
Southwestern tribes and in rude " pictographs " by most of
the others, were accepted or adopted as the guardian spirits,
or protectors, of man. Each individual family, in the earlier
days, had such a tutelary genius. Intermarriage carried the
genius of an especial family into other tribes, for the warrior
always followed the clan of his wife and became a member
of the family into which he married.

CAYOTE I'Kl'ICH ; A TOI KM OV THli ZUNI.

INDIAN FA J THS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

The Bear and the Wolf, the Tortoise, the Eagle, the
Snipe and other well-known creatures of earth and air be-
came, thus, the family gods — the Lares and Penates of the
American Indians.

When such a reptile, bird, or quadruped was adopted as
a guardian spirit, its rude representation, or pictograph, wher-
ever seen, was at once recognized and respected by other
possessors of the same totem. Like the hand-clasp or pass-
word of modern secret societies, the symbol of the totem
secured for its owner all the rights of hospitality, help and
friendship wherever claimed or needed, alike among hostile
and stranger tribes, as among friendly and confederated ones.
'*' The wayfarer, the hunter, or the warrior," says Mr. Parkman,
*' was sure of a cordial welcome in the distant lodge of the
clansman whose face, perhaps, he had never seen."

A warrior might change his name repeatedly. Prowess,
exalted service, or increasing possessions might lead to this,
and " Rain-in-the-face " to-day, might be " Two-feathers " to-mor-
row. But the totem name was never changed. Its central
motive was the modern German doctrine of "once a citizen
always a citizen." Bear or Beaver, Turtle or Wolf, the pos-
sessors of these badges of consanguinity were always and
unalterably Bear or Beaver, Turtle or Wolf, wherever they
might be or whatever they might become. It is not entirely
possible to assign a sufficient reason for the great impor-
tance attached to the totem, unless it be the expression of
that stronu: love of kin that formed the basis of the Indian
nature. This, if explaining its importance, would also explain
the respect paid to it, and if, as appears, the totem is the out-
growth of the original clan-marks of all the Indian tribes
without regard to the tribal organization, in it may be dis-

n :1

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

covered the very earliest traits of association, political or
social, among the separating races, while it may also be re-
garded as an immediate outgrowth of the original or patriarchal
state.

This mystic connection of the totem, as it was the first to
take its place among the tribal phases of Indian life, is the last
to disappear. The influence of a resistless civilization may

have modified, altered,
or obliterated most of
the original and distinct-
ive characteristics of the
native races. The steady
advance of the white
man's conquests may
have degenerated or cul-
tivated the Indian na-
ture; but, alike among
the scattered reserva-
tions of the East, the
roving tribes of the
North and the pueblo
dwellers of the South-

IN THE LAND OK THE FETICH.-AN ARIZONA CANON. ^^^^^^ ^J^^ influenCC and

permanence of the totem are still apparent and still religiously
adhered to.

" Very many years ago," still say the Navajo sages, *' the
grand Mother brought from her home in the setting sun nine
separate forms of plant and animal life. These were : first, the
deer race; second, the sand race; third, the water race; fourth,
the bear race; fifth, the hare race; sixth, the prairie-wolf race;
seventh, the rattlesnake race ; eighth, the tobacco-plant race ;

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

ninth, the rccd-grass race. Having placed or planted them
upon the spot where the villages now stand the Mother trans-
formed them into men. They built the pueblos, and the totem
distinctions are still kept up." The Navajo from whom Mrs.
Ellen Russell Emerson received the above modernized tradition
was of the deer race. The deer was his totem, and throughout
his clan, in spite of all the words of the white missionaries, the
belief prevailed that after death the soul of every member of
the Deer totem would transmit^rate into the form of a deer.

The basic difference between the clan and the tribe is thus
at once apparent. The clan was totemic, the tribe was direct-
ive; the clan was the bond of kinship, the tribe of daily life;
the clan had no distinct chieftain, it was simply a diversified
bond of blood relationship ; the tribe was the governmental
organization, necessary wherever the families of men unite for
mutual protection and support.

The tendency of all society, whether civilized or barbarous,
is naturally, though gradually, toward cohesion, union and cen-
tralization. The Athenian and the Roman states both grew
out of such a coalescence of antecedent tribes.

The narrower the limit of the land the speedier is this
union. Scattered over a vast area and separated by the bar-
riers of climate and of speech, the Indian tribes of North
America emerged but slowly from the barbarism into which
the whole land had fallen when the suggested and unsubstantial
civilization of pre-historic days had gone down into savagery.
For this reason the spirit of union was of but slow and retarded
growth, but that it did exist the numerous confederacies that
were found in the land at the time of its discovery by Euro-
peans is sufficient evidence.

Of these confederacies the strongest, the most intelligent,

' :;|

'C'^i-

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

the most alert — "foremost in war, foremost in eloquence, fore-
most in their savage arts of policy," declares Mr. Parkman —
were \\\<i Hod'cnosauncc — the " People of the Long House." This
was the only name by which the five confederated Indian tribes
called by the French "Iroquois" ever designated themselves.
The tribal union of this remarkable people was not exceeded
in rude state-craft even by the half-mythical Aztec confederation,
and their story, briefly told, will indicate the general nature of
the other though less perfect Indian confederacies of North
America.

Fully five hundred years ago there lived on the banks of
the Mississippi and its tributary streams an extensive branch
of the Indian race, known as the Dakotas. A small but ambi-
tious section of this central family, impelled by the roving dis-
position that has always been the cause of race emigration,
separated itself from the parent stock and moving north-
eastward halted, at last, in the valley of the St. Lawrence. For
years the exiles lived near to the present site of Montreal as a
semi-agricultural community. But their numbers were small,
and they were continually harassed by the fierce Adirondacks,
a tribe of the hostile Algonquin race among whom they had
settled, and were pushed to extremities for maintenance and
subsistence.

Again they resolved to emigrate, and leaving behind them a
small fraction of their tribe, who became finally the Hurons of
Canada and their bitterest enemies, the settlers made another
remove.

This time they resolved upon a southward route. Embark-
ing in their frail canoes they coasted along the eastern shores
of Lake Ontario unti^ they reached the mouth of the Oswego
River. Here they remained for generations, and, their numbers
increasing, they scatterc lemselves over the fertile lands in

INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS.

the lake section of Central New York. Out of the central
stock three tribes first formed themselves — the Mohawks, the
Onondagas and the Senecas. Later, portions of these with-
drawing themselves made two additional tribes, the Oneidas
and Cayugas. Their villages surrounded by palisades housed
and protected them, and from rovers they became settled In-

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A VOUNC NAVAJU SHEl-HKRUKSS.

dians, hardy agriculturists, living upon the produce of their farm
lands and the fish and game that lakes and forests had ready at
hand. Thu.^ he original stock became at last, five independent
though neighboring tribes, bound together by the common ties
of race and lamruac^e.* The ties of kindred and of the totem
made many of their interests identical, while the onsets of

• In 1715 the Tuscaroras, a kindred tribe living in the Carolinas, were admitted into the League as a sixth nation,
and although they h.id not the same standing in the confederacy as had th j five original tribes the League was there-
after known to wliite men as the " Six Nations."

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INDIAiY FAITHS AXD CON/'EDEJiAr/OXS.

other and unfriendly tribes made a scheme of mutual protection
highly feasible.

The men of these five nations were capable and far-seeing
beyond their kind. They had the intelligence not only to appre-
ciate the wisdom of confederation, but the skill to undertake it.

Somewhere about the
middle of the fifteenth cen-
tury a council of the wise
men and chiefs of the five
tribes met upon the north-
ern shore of Onondaga
Lake near the site of the
present thriving city of
Syracuse. It was at this
council that a plan of con-
federation was formulated,
adopted and immediately
entered upon.

The confederacy thus
formed by these five kin-
dred tribes was based uj>
on the principle of absolute and fraternal equality. Each
tribe remained independent so far as local self-government
w^as concerned, but in matters of mutual interest they were
united and patriotic. The principle of totemship was, how-
ever, the real and underlying strength of the Iroquois con-
federacy. Three of these totems — the Wolf, the Hear, and
the Turtle, — were common to all the tribes; and three more
— the Deer, the Snipe and the Hawk — were common to
three of the five. " Thus," says Mr. Parkman, " the five nations
of the confederacy were laced together by an eightfold band ;

I'AI.ISADlil) IR()(ilIOIS VILLAGE.
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INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATJOXS.

lOI

and to this hour the slender remnants clinu: to one another
with an invincible tenacity." And Mr. Morgan, in his exhaust-
ive study of this kindred confederacy, says: "The history of
the Iroquois demonstrates the reality as well as the persist-
ency of the bond of kin, and the fidelity with which it was
respected. During the long period through which the con-
federacy endured, they never fell into anarchy, nor ruptured
the organization."

The composition of the confederacy gave to each tribe
unhampered, its chief, sub-chiefs, and councillors. But all
matters of national importance that called for united action
were discussed and settled by the central council, composed
of the chiefs of tribes. This met, when summoned, in the
bark council house — the "Long House" — in the valley of
Onondaga.

So intelligent a political organization was really a long
step in the direction of civilization. Just how far this step
might have led can only be matter for conjecture. There is,
however, little doubt that it would have been a dominatinsr
influence on the American continent.

" The Six Nations," proudly declared the Mohawk Thayen-
dancgea, known as Joseph Brant, " have no di' 'ator among the
nations of the earth. We are not the wards oi ^^ngiand. We
are a Commonwealth ! "

A confederacy compounded of such pronounced statecraft
and such restless activities, though formed for mutual protection,
logically became adherents of a policy of open aggression.
Themselves firmly established in a range of country admir-
ably adapted for their secure unity the Iroquois year by year
grow more ambitious and arbitrary. Aiming at greater
power they brought their neighbors under tribute or waged a

! i:

[!:'>

102

JmNdian faiths and confederations.

remorseless and continuous warfare against such as dared to
withstand or attack them.

It has been claimed for the Cherokee nation — a part of
the former Creek confederacy of the South — that it repre-
sented, in intelligence and capacity for civilization, in manner
of living, agricultural advantages, architecture and laws, the
highest type of Indian civilization. But whatever may have
been their attainments it is certa. that they lacked the vitality,
progressivencss, and political sagacity that marked the rest-
less and resistless Iroquois.

East and West, North and South the power of the Hod'oio-
sauiiec spread. A nation of warriors, their " unsatiable ambi-
tion and restless ferocity " brooked neither enemy nor rival,
and the career of conquest of these " Romans of the West "
as they have been not inaptly called, was checked only by
the interposition of a foreign and unlooked-for power greater
than themselves.

CHAPTER V.

;«i^'

,*^

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

The warlike Hod'enosauna\ with
their conu;ress and their council
house, their careful organization,
alike political and military, their forays and
friendships, their treaties and tributaries, may
stand as a type of the slowly growing intel-
ligence that, before the cominsj of Eastern
civilization, was already moulding and uniting
the tribes of North America.

" A tendency to confederate for mutual defence," says Mr.
Morgan, " would naturally exist among kindred and contigu-
ous tribes. . . . The organization, at first a league, would
gradually cement into a federal unity.''

This, he claims, would be simply a growth from a lower
into a higher organization by an extension of the principle

which united kindred people into a tribe.

103

■ 1

vV.

104

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

'^1

II!

Growing thus out of pre-existing elements, by a law of
intellectual development, the league or confederacy became
naturally a phase of Indian life. The most intelligent, be-
cause the most ambitious
of the tribes gravitated
toward this state of
union.

Amons!" the confed-
eracies on the North
American continent
known to have been in
existence at the time of
discovery were the Ho-
dcnosa7incc, or Iroquois,
already described and
composed of the five in-
dependent tribes of Cen-
tral New York ; the Creek, or INIobilian Confederacy of the
South, formed by a union of six tribes; the Ottawa confed-
eracy of the North embracing three tribes; the Dakota League
of the Mississippi Valley made from thiC union of seven tribes,
— the "Seven Council Fires," as they called themselves; the
Moki Confederacy of seven pueblos in New Mexico, and the
Aztec Confederacy of three tribes in the valley of Mexico.

Other similar though smaller confederacies possibly ex-
isted, but this enumeration doubtless comprises the leading
and dominant ones.

There were, also, other tribes \vho were perceptibly pro-
ijressino: toward this state of confederation. Such, as an
example, was the Thegiha union, comprising the three tribes
of the Omahas, the Ponkas and the Osages, who with the

IN Tilt; MUKl I.AM).

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CULTURE AND COMML'XJSM.

105

''P

iowas and Kaws, or Kansas, formed, for a time, a sort of
roving confederacy through Upper Missouri. Later still, as
friction with the whites produced confiicts and warfare, tribes
that had previously been hostile united on the common bond
of vengeance, as in the days of Philip, the sachem of Pokon-
oket, and of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas. But these all
were partial or peremptory unions and arc in no wise to be
associated with the real confederacies of which the Iroquois
stands as the type.

The law of intellectual development to which this prin-
ciple of confederation has been referred was of varying exist-
ence throughout the land. In so many phases of human life,
ranging from savagery up
to intelligent barbarism,
from the degraded types of
the Columbia Valley to the
Iroquois of New York, and
the village Indians of the
southwestern Pueblos, it
was possible 10 find exam,
pies of all the intermediate
stages.

Ethnologists agree in
giving to what they call the
" culture periods " of man-
kind seven distinct steps
from absolute savagery to
civilization. These steps,
or "periods," are based upon the acquisitive and inventive
faculties of man.

Allowing to the North American Indian a relapse from

lllli HU.MK OK TIIK ( Ol.r.MIUANS.

n tiT

xo6

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

\ i

the spurious civilization of pre-historic times into a general
state of savagery, and from thence a consistent though gradual
progress out of savagery again, it is permissable to accept
the deduction of the ethnologists and to place the Indian races
of North America at the era of European discovery in those
several stages of development occupied by what is termed the
Later Period of Savagery, the Older Period of Barbarism and
the Middle Period of Barbarism.

This classification advances an American Indian from but
two removes from the initial or Older Period of Barbarism to
within two removes from the highest Period, that of Civiliza-
tion. It must be assumed, however, that there were tribes who
were living in a condition still closer to savagery as there were
also tribes living nearer to civilization. As the statement of
a fact, however, this general classification may be accepted.

Upon this basis, therefore, Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, who has
devoted careful study to the ethnic theor}', thus divides the
tribes who occupied the land at the time of its discovery:

" When America was discovered in its several parts the
Indian tribes were found in dissimilar conditions. The least
advanced tribes were without the art of pottery and without
horticulture, and were therefore in savagery. But in the arts
of life they were advanced as far as is implied by its upper
status ( ' the Later Period of Savagery ' ) which found them in
possession of the bow and arrow.

"Such were the tribes in the valley of the Columbia, in
the Hudson Bay Territory, in parts of Canada, California
and Mexico. The use of pottery and cultivation of maize
and plants were unknown among them.

" The second class were intermediate between these and
the Village Indians. They subsisted upon fish, game, and

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

107

the products of a limited horticulture, and were in the
Lower Status ( the ' Older Period of Barbarism ' ) .

" Such were the Iroquois, the New England and Virginia
Indians, the Creeks, Cherokees and Choctaws, the Shawnees,
Miamis, Mandans, Minnitarees, and other tribes of the United
States, east of the Missouri River, together with certain
tribes of Mexico in the same condition of advancement.
Many of them lived in villages, some of which were stock-
aded, but village life was not as distinctive and common
among them as it was among the most advanced tribes.
" The third class were the Village Indians proper, who de-

THE HOME OK THE "VILLAGE INDIANS — A TOWN OK THE ZUNIS

pended almost exclusively upon horticulture for subsistence,
cultivating maize and plants by irrigation. They constructed
joint tenement houses of adobe bricks and of stone, usually
more than one story high.

"Such were the tribes of New Mexico, Mexico and Central
America. These tribes were in the Middle Period of Bar-
barism."

Accepting this classification, with its apparent and neces-
sary modifications, as, in the main, correct, it will be seen that
the so-called " Village Indians," though possessing the highesb
culture were neither the most assertive nor the dominating

■Sf

■w

108

cuj.tuke and communism.

class. With the exception, perhaps, of the alleged civilization
of the Aztec Confederacy, the Village Indians never attained
either power or supremacy. The restless and resistless ferocity
of the other tribes and the untiring ambitions especially of the
more aircjressive o'" ♦^^he intermediate class made them the most
powerful and, really, the most progressive section of the native
American races. The Iroquois confederacy undoubtedly rep-
resents the highest supremacy ever attained by the so-called
"Indians "of America after the decline and fall of its pre-his-
toric peoples.

The theory of government that held in all American tribes,
in whatever period of savagery or barbarism they were grouped,
was a plain and simple one. It grew, naturally, out of the pa-
triarchal basis of Indian life, with its respect for age and its
regard for the ties of kindred.

It consisted merely of a collection of families grouped to-
gether as a tribe, with one governing but not arbitrary chief as
its head. There were subordinate chiefs who led in war of~
directed the chase, and a council of the older men, or certain
of the heads of families would in cases of special need or grave
import advise the ruling chief as to his duty in the case.

The ofifice of chief was rarely hereditary in the sense of a de-
scent of the ruling power from father to son. This did hold in
a few of the Pacific tribes, but as a rule the ofifice of chief was
dependent upon special and personal attributes such as wisdom
in council or fearless leadership in war. Preference in selection
was given to the son of a chief if he had exhibited peculiar fit-
ness for the ofifice, but no man of lazy habits or of coward blood
could raise himself to the post of chief.

Although there have been instances of chiefs who were
tyrants and despots such cases were rare. So great was the

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i^^^^mmwmmmm^mmi^

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CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

109

love of personal liberty among the Indians that absolutism in
office was a dangerous experiment. IMahto-Tatonka, the Ogil-
lallah, whose story Mr. Parkman has told in " The Oregon
Trail " was a case in point. " No chief could vie with him,"
says the narrator, " in warlike renown or in power over his peo-
pie. He had a fearless spirit and an impetuous and inflexible
resolution. His will was law. He was politic and sagacious
and it fared hard with those who incurred his displeasure. . .
In a community where, from immemorial time no man has
acknowledged any law but his own will, Mahto-Tatonka raised
himself to power little short of despotic." But his career came
to a sudden end. His assumption of supremacy raised up a
host of enemies, and maddened at last by his arrogance and
tyranny they turned upon him in desperation and this " Nero
of the West " fell beneath the arrows of his own tr'besmen.

Cases like this, however, were, as has been said, exceptional.
In many instances the chief was less comfortably housed and
less generously provided with the necessities of life than were
his warriors. A chief, if he would secure and retain popular
favor, must be shrewd and diplomatic in his dealings with those
who, for the time, recognized his authority. Indeed, like many
a feudal lord or political leader of civilized lands an Indian
chieftain has often beggared himself in his efforts to bind his
followers to his fortunes.

A noticeable defect in the Indian character was, indeed,
based upon this very quality of desire for personal liberty.
This defect was to be found in the frequent irresolution con-
cerning matters that demanded union of action. Where each
man decides for himself and is, to a certain extent, a law unto
himself, a conflict of opinion is certain to result in disputes or
in the uncertainties of a divided council. The failure of In-

i' i

\ ■

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

dian wars has, next to the superiority of the white man's
weapons and discipline, been largely due to the indecision as
to joint action which tlie red men have displayed.

The prominence of the Iroquois league was a result of thc'r

"^"-""""T^^^^^^B ^^'3''^^^}' t^ the decisions
'*>'*i **<*', ^^HIH' ^" council, and the wis-

7^1^^' dom that made them
an exceptional race n-as
quite as much the se-
cret of their success
over their neighbors
and their enemies.

But, while this de-
fect might apply to joint
action in large bodies
it does not appear to
touch the Indian's tri-
bal relations. Here all
were as members of
one large family, and
what affected one af-
fcted all. The chief
of a tribe was merely
the exponent of public
opinion, and all the af-
fairs of the tribe or the
related lodges of a tribe
were regulated by the heads of households.

The kinsmen of a chief were usually his most reliable adhe-
rents, and the influence of the totem was apparent in the divi-
sions and tenements of every village or tribe. But a spirit of

WHITE BUFFALO, THE BOY CHIKF OF THE CHEYENNES.
(Front a photograph.)

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM,

XXX

harmony always appears to have exisLcd in every tribe, the
chieftain of whicli was politic enough to be mindful of the inde-
pendent nature of his tribesmen.

Due respect however was always paid to the office of chief.
" They never interrupt him when he is speaking," says Sir
William Johnson, " nor use harsh language, whatever be their
thoughts. The chief assumes most authority in the field, but
this must be done, even there, with great caution ; as a head
warrior thinks himself of most consequence in that place."

The manner of Indian life tended to communities. Single
or scattered lodges there may occasionally have been, but a her-
mit Indian was rare. The necessity for subsistence was itself
sufficient cause for the necessity for union. Even the roving
bands that moved from hunting-ground to hunting-ground, rest-
less, nomadic and vagrant, were composed of separate families
and held their inter-tribal relations quite as positively as did
their more sta.ble and intelligent brethren.

Even more than in a civilized state the members of an In-
dian community needed each other. Their very usages were
proof of this. War and the chase — the pursuit of power and
of food — equally depended upon self-help and showed the ten-
dency to a cojnmon purpose. Fish and game sought with
equal labor and equal risk by all the fishermen and hunters of
the tribe were equally divided. " Their large houses," says Mr.
Morgan, "usually contained several families, consisting of par-
ents, their sons and daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. Pro-
visions in such a house were all in common and the harmony
of the joint home was scarcely ever interrupted by disputes."
As has already been stated an Indian village was like one large
family wherein whatever affected one affected all.

In this phase of living, indeed, may be found that element

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112

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

of simple communism which was common to all the North
American tribes. Equals in all things — in property, in power,
and in responsibiHties, the Indians were especially equals in the
matter of tribal relations.

The land, as has already been shown, was common property.
According to the Moravian missionary Heckewelder who made
a minute study of Indian manners and methods the red man
held that Hi-nun the beneficent had "made the earth and all
that it contained for the common cfood of mankind. When he
stocked the country that he gave them with plenty of game, it
was not for the benefit of a few, but of all. Everything was
given in common to the sons of men. Whatever liveth on the
land, whatsoever groweth out of the earth, and all that is in the
rivers and waters flowing through the same, was given jointly
to all, and every one is entitled to his share."

"Sell a country!" indignantly exclaimed Tecumthe the
Shawanoe patriot, when protesting against the sale of lands to
the whites ; " why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea,
as well as the earth } Did not the Great Spirit make them all
for his children ? "

And this communistic phase of Indian faith leads, naturally,
to another marked and positive characteristic in the native
American — his boundless hospitality. It sprung from this
community of interests repeatedly alluded to, and appears to
have been a universal practice at the time of discovery. It was
this that obtained so gracious a welcome for the earlier discov-
erers, every one of whom fiom Columbus to Hudson and John
Smith reports t offerings of food pressed upon them by the
natives. It is this that, to-day even, notwithstanding all the
years of the white man's selfishness and bad faith, holds in.
the lodge of the savage.

CULTURE AXD COMMUNISM,

'* They would come to us," says Mr. Parkinan, describing
his adventures among the Dakotas, "muttering certain words,
which being interpreted convoyed the concise invitation ' Come
and eat.' Then we woukl rise, cursing the pertinacity of
Dakota hospitality, which allowed scarcely an hour of rest be-
tween s in and sun, and to which we were bound to do honor,

AN Indian's crektinc;: //<///, itah — "duou kk to vuu."

unless we would offend our entertainers. ... So boun-
teous an entertainment," he adds, "looks like an outgushing of
good-will ; but, doubtless, half at least of our kind hosts, had
they met us alone and unarmed on the prairie, would have
robbed us of our horses, and perhaps have bestowed an arrow
upon us besides."

114

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

hi--

But alike the proffered fruits of the island of Hispaniola
and the " Come and cat " of the northern Dacotas were based
upon a law of hospitality that is deeply ingrained in Indian life.

"It was," says Mr. Morgan, "an active, well-established cus-
tom of Indian society, practised among themselves and among
strangers from other tribes." It was based upon the commu-
nistic principle referred to by I leckewelder the Moravian, and
with the Indians, he says, "hospitality was not a virtue but a
strict duty. . . . They give and are hospitable to all with-
out exception, and will alv/ays share with each other and often
with the stranger, to the last morsel."

' They rather would lie down themselves on an empty stom-
ach," declares the good Moravian, " than have it laid down to
their charge that they had neglected their duty by not satisfy-
ing the wants of the stranger, the sick or the needy."

The subr^ance of the Iroquois law of hospitality, according
to Mr. Morgan, is as follows: "If a man entered an Indian
hou^e, whether a villager, a tribesman, or a stranger, and at
whatever hour of the day, it was the duty of the women of the
house to set food before him. An omission to do this would
have been a discourtesy amounting to an affront. If hungry,
he ate ; if not hungry, courtesy required that he should taste
the food and thank the giver."

No one, surely, will dissent from Mr. Morgan's assertion
that " the common and substantially universal practice of this
custom shows generous dispositions and exhibits traits of char-
acter highly creditable to the race ; " but it must, nevertheless,
be remembered that the Indian's hospitality was not so much a
spontaneous virtue as it was a traditional one — the result of a
settled communistic policy.

Indeed, this communistic principle not only explains much

,|J

•w

CULT UK E AND COMMUNISM.

of the *" :istent similarity in the manner of living among the
native races of North America at the epoch of discovery,
but it helps to explain numerous jihases in Indian life, during
their gradual conquest, that have heretofore been almost prob-
lematical.

The belief that the Indians held in relation to the freedom
of the land and of its products operated, as has been shown, in
a peculiar manner in their reception of the white strangers
from an unknown land. Uncertainty as to the origin of these
newcomers and the inherent superstition of the savage mind
gave to their bounden duty, under their laws of hospitality, the
additional element of curiosity.

Anything incomprehensible in the Indian philosophy was
adjudged to be supernatural. These wonderful strangers cased
in steel or bright with gorgeous clothing, with their tubes that
sent out thunder and lightning, their great "canoes with
wings," their prancing steeds and their commanding and asser-
tive manners made each one of them, to the myth-filled mind
of the savage, oki and manitou, something more than mortals,
the brothers of the powers of the air.

So, in ilmost every instance of American discovery on
record, the first explorers were made welcome after the custo-
mary Indian method. De Soto's " Indian queen," and Ribault's
garlanded pillar on the River May, Donnacona's kiss to Cartier,
and Captain Barlow's royal \/elcome at Roanoke — these were
but instances of the invariable hospitality that, wherever they
landed, the early discoverers found awaiting them. Alas, that
Christian civilization could so illy requite pagan courtesy.

And yet, as has been shown, this courtesy was but a matter
of duty, an unwritten law of the Indian state against which
no one dared go counter.

;$P

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CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

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Improvident and neglectful of the future as the Indian
nature gradually became, this law of hospitality never quite
lost its hold even where degeneration or civilization alike

changed the native character.

"THK WHITE CHIEF.

chari.es the fifth of SPAIN — "lord of all the indies."

An excellent illustration of this fact was recently found
in the action of an old Seneca chief who, becoming "civ-
ilized " and well-to-do, still kept up some of the traditions of
his earlier days. His daughter, educated to the usages of civ-
ilized life, acted as his housekeeper. But not even the adop-

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM,

tion of the three regular daily meals of civilization could
move the old chief from his desire to have, according to
Indian custom, a constant supply of food prepared, to offer
the casual visitor. The Indian law of hospitality in his mind
far outweighed the white man's usages.

Theory and praclce are vastly different. The commu-
nistic theory has never furnished the basis for national growth,
nor has it ever supplied the motive for a permanent or pro-
gressive state. The early Christian church, itself at first an
advocate of the community of inierests, soon realized the in-
stability of such a foundation if practical or cohesive work
was to be hoped for.

Communism in living and in land, therefore, may be es-
teemed as essentially barbaric. An advancing civilization
must of necessity admit of a personal proprietorship in prop-
erty and in land if lasting progress is to be attained. Only
the freeholder is che free man.

The Indian system of living could never make either a
positive civilization or a coherent state. It required the ^'"ti-
ing of a nevv order of things v/hich, while overturning, should
also upbuild upon a more lasting, because a more substantial
basis. This only could ensure a strong and permanent state.

The lodge and palisaded village, the common household
and the cr ncil fire must give place to the cabin and the
town, the privacy of individual families and the senate house.

The white man's methods were harsh and unjust. Wicked
rnen wickedly took advantage of the errors of a wrongly de-
veloped system. But the Divine plan often permits seeming
wrong and apparent injustice as the forerunners of a real
progress. Before the advancing light of a positive civiliza-
tion the virtues as well as the vices of a weaker state must

ii8

CULTURE AND COMMUNISM.

fall. Even as in the days of the conquest of Canaan force
and fraud must sometimes be permitted as factors in the
development of a plan that neither force nor fraud can
wreck or ruin, and even these negative factors may be
turned to advantage as warning lights when a free people
are founding and up-building a mighty nation.

We shall need to read the Indian's story with minds divested
of the white man's prejudices and the red-man's limited percep-
tions. The Lord in his infinite wisdom doubtless intended the
Indian's hard schooling for his ultimate good, but the school-
masters, it must be admitted, have been such as might cause a
finite being to question the ways of the Infinite did he not feel
the truth of Pope's immortal lines:

"All Nature is but Art unknown to thee;

All Chance, Direction which thou canst not see;

All Discord, Harmony not understood,

All partial Evil, universal Good."

■^^

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?H^f*;<

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•*%_

CHAPTER VI.

THE INDIAN HOME.

"Home," says Carlylc, "is not poetical, but prosaic." And,
surely, nothing more prosaic and less poetical than the home
of the North American Indian ever divested romance of its
fflamour, or fiction of its charm. Loni^fellow's tidv wio-wam and
Cooper's savage castle may fascinate and thrill, but they are no
nearer the real fact than is the lurid description of the " blood-
and-thunder" novelist, which decorates the red-man's solitary
wigwam with innumerable scalps and lures the civilization-sated
boy of the East to make a walking armory of himself for the
conquest and destruction of the " pesky redskins " of the West-
ern plains. 119

i ii

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P

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I20

T^y^ INDIAN HOME.

The houses of the North American Indians as they were
first known to the white man varied greatly in construction
and in form. Thev ranched in deqirees of comfort from the
dirt-holes of the CaHfornia savage to the frame house of the
Mandans, the long house of the Iroquois and the stone house
of the Pueblo, or village Indians.

These degrees of comfort represent, also, the three stages
of human progress under which, as we have seen, the native
Americans of the sixteenth century may be classified, viz : the
Later Period of Savagery, the Older Period of Barbarism and
the Middle Period of Barbarism.

The I'ldian homes, however, in whatever scale of comfort
they may be arranged, all agreed in the one general principle
of communistic living.

No Indian family of that early day, so far as can be learned,
ever owned or occupied as an individual family any wigwam,
hut, house or lodge. They herded in cramped and comfortless
hovels or assumed something like a decent disposition of the
proprieties in the divided apartment house, but always and
everywhere the lodge of the American savage was the home of
anywhere from twenty to two hundred human beings, men,
women and children, usually bound together by the perplexing
mazes of Indian kinship or family ties.

The tribes living in savagery, built for themselves, as a
rule, the lowest order of houses. These contained little in the
line of comfort, nor were they anything more than the merest
shelter for the inmates. Such were the round, domed earth-
houses of the Pacific slope, in which, it is estimated, fully two
thirds of the California Indians lived; the L-shaped thatched
lodije of the Gallinomeros and the Sierra Indians, and the con-
ical or wedge-shaped huts of Southern California.

■^ap

"W-5:

2'I/£ INDIAN HOME.

121

Among the triljcs in the intermediate stage of progress —
the " Older Period of Barbarism " — there was a greater diver-
sity of the primitive architecture. Here were to be found the
Ojibwa cabin of elastic poles covered with bark, with its floor
space of from ten to sixteen feet square, and a height of six to
ten feet; the Da-
kota huts, made
of pole frames cov-
ered with bark,
and larsre enoudi
to accommodate
several families,
(alas, for the poet-
ical wiofwam of
"the ancient ar-
row-maker," pros-
pective father-in-
law of Hiawatha);
the long, round-
roofed house, fifty
to eighty feet long,
and covered with
a movable mat-
ting, built by the
Algonquin tribes ;
the warm and

roomy houses of the Iroquois, sometimes over a hundred feet
long and strongly made with stout frame-work of upright poles,
triangular roof and close covering of elm bark; and the tim-
ber-framed house of the Mandans of the upper Missouri, evi-
dencing excellent workmanship alike in design and execution.

THE DOMED EARTH-HOUSES OF THE PACIFIC TRIUES.

122

THE INDIAN HOME.

!■; fi

IP:-

The Village Indians, corresponding to the " Middle Period
of Barbarism," possessed the ist pretentious of all the Indian
dwellings. In their construction is seen the vestiges of that
earlier civilization which savagery had swept away. They
were such as still constitute the now famous Zuni village, and
were groups of adobe or stone houses, built on terraces, two
hundred feet in length, and had usually one story in the front
and two in the rear. They were secure, durable and comfort-
able \\\ their way ; they were reached by movable ladders, and
were entered through trap doors in the roofs and floors.

This class of dwelling represents the most advanced archi-
tectural standard ever attained by the North American Indian.
It is, indeed, questionable whether the alleged and boasted
Aztec civilization ever produced anything higher in the scale
of architectural progress than the stone and adobe houses of
the present Zuni Indians.

The result of this testimony, therefore, would seem to be
that the circumscribed Indian wigwam or tepee of to-day is of
comparatively recent construction, and that the native Ameri-
cans at the time of their discovery by the white man lived in
primitive " tenement houses," ranging in accommodation and
comfort from absolute squalor to comparative well-being, ac-
cording to the stage of progress out of savagery whi i the
inhabitants had attained.

The importance of a house depended upon the number of
"fires" it contained; for, around these fire-pits was congregated
the strength of each household, and, according to the length of
the house, was its quota of fire-pits. This principle of division
seems to have had weight irrespective of location or condition.
The single house of the Columbia River Indians, with its
length of one hundred and fifty feet, its twenty-four fires, its

'iui

THE INDIAN HOME.

123

fifty families and one hundred fighting men, — the long house
of the Eastern Iroquois (" Men of the Long House "), with its
length of one hundred feet, its five fires, twenty apartments and
twenty families, and the veritable bee-hive of the Village Indians
of the Southwestern Pueblos, with its length of two hundred
feet, its terraced rows of apartments, and its household fire^
alike testify to the one general principle of communistic living
that, as has been shown, was adhered to throughout the entire
North American Continent.

The importance, indeed, of the household fires should not
be overlooked. They furnish one of the reasons for the com-
munity of interests that marked the native Americans. Though
innured to cold, an Indian detested it, and his greatest comfort
was to join in the throng about the home fire-pit. Diffused
warmth was not so practical a theory with him as was direct
heat which could be perceptibly felt. " Ugh," grunted an ob-
serving old redskin as he studied the white man's ways and
apparent waste, "ugh; Injun make a little fire and set close to
him ; white man make a big fire and set way off. "

In such a home system it would be as impossible for the
inmates of a house to be divided in interests or to be dependent
entirely upon individual desires, as it would for any of the
institutions of to-day to exist without an executive head.

And here enters another phase of Indian life quite at vari-
ance with the idea popularly held regarding our savage prede-
cessors. This is, the supreme importance of the woman in the
Indian home. The "woman right" indeed was far more pro-
nounced than it is to-day in many so-called civilized homes.

This influence, which the German ethnologist. Professor
Bachofen, denominates gyneocracy or the " mother right," was
a primal feature in Indian life.

;

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!?«'

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124

THE INDIAN HOME.

A chief was great in council or upon the war-path. A war-
rior might " strike the war-post " or lead the t'^rrible Medicine-
dance. His was the arrow that with unerrins: aim could brine:
down the beast or bird needed for food, or the foeman crawling
to the attack. But, be he chief or warrior or half-grown brave,
he bent submissively before the women of his household, when
once he passed the door-flap. For, within the lodge, woman
was supreme.

The very composition of the kinship bond — shown to have
been the basis of the Indian state — is proof of this supremacy.
The power and importance of a family came from the maternal
side. A man who married "became one of the clan of his wife;
and though, very rarely, a timid fellow would bring his bride
into his mother's lodge, he was very soon made to feel that his
room was preferable to his company.

In case of separation or divorce it was the husband and not
the wife who left the house. The female contingent always
ruled the lodge, and the man who failed to do his share as one
of the common providers of home necessities was speedily
brought to a realizing sense of the strength of the "mother-
right.'*

The Rev. Ashur Wright, who made a study of the Iroquois
household economy, is authority for the statement that, " no
matter how many children or whatever goods a man might
have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up
his blanket and trudge. After such an order it would not be
healthful for him to disobey. The house would be too hot for
him ; and unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or
grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was often
done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance In some other
clan."

s:| I

THE INDIAN HOME.

125

This last sentence would seem to indicate that the marriaiic
tie was not rigidly binding among the native .Vmerican tribes.
To a certain extent this was the fact. Polygamy, too, was fre-

quent, though not
general, and, as in
any land, civilized
or savaG:c, where
marriage is a mat-
ter of convenience
or of civil contract
merely, ihe bond of union was
but lightly held.
Among the

Indians the
custom appears to have been
universal that " when the hus-
band and wife were satisfied with each other they stayed to-
gether, but if either party turned out badly the other one
always wished to abandon the unworthy consort."

IN THK IROQUOIS COUNTRY.

"^ ^ \ i

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126

THE INDIAN HOME.

It is a curious fact that even polygamy, when practised, was
largely based upon the kinship theory. A man's " plural wives "
were usually the blood relations of his first spouse. There was
therefore more of real human feeling in the polygamous practice
of the North American red-man than can b? found among the
followers of the Koran or the even more pagan Book of Mormon.

With equal force was it true that the main bar to a sep-
aration was the kinship bontl. This would have weight where
all other ties failed. When, among the Omahas, a woman who
had married contrary to the desires of her kin wished finally
to leave her husband, the male kindred of her clan would inter-
fere. " Not so," they would say to her ; " still have him for your
husband ; remain with him always."

In re-marriage, as well as in the systems of marriage and
divorce, this strongest of ties exerted the greatest influence.
" Pity your brother-in-law," a dying Ponka woman said to her
own brother; " let him marry my sister." - •

A home, therefore, in which the ties of kindred were so
pronounced a force, and in which the element of a community
of interests made all the lodge-folk as one family, had in it
many of the possibilities of growth that a wholly savage race
could scarcely possess. It was through the home that the
Indian was finding advancement.

And yet we must not confound the Indian's idea of home
with our own understanding of that most beautiful of words
What is entirely satisfactory to the barbarian is often altogether
repulsive to the civilized man, and in treating of the Indian's
home life we must dismiss from our minds the refinement and
culture of the white man's home-circle, as surely as we would
send away from the banquet-board of civilization, the undrawn
fowl and the roasted puppy of the Indian's forest-feast.

THE INDIAN HOME.

127

It is, therefore, needless to go to extremes for compari-
sons. Squalor is squalor, alike in the lodge of the unkempt
Gallinomero of the Western Sierra slopes and the swarming
den of a modern tenement in Baxter Street or the Seven Dials.
Within the sound of the printing presses of civilization may be
found to-day foul and fetid rooms, even less inviting than were
the thatched lodges of the Sacramento savages, in which the
early explorers found the red natives sleeping on the ground
*' underneath rabbit skins and other less elegant robes, and

^W\

AN IROQUOIS' LONG-HOUSE.

amid a filthy clutter of baskets, dogs and all the trumpery dear
to the aboriginal heart."

But even the tidiness of the old-time " long house " of the
Iroquois, warm, roomy, and well-ordered though it was, would
be but slightly appreciated by the modern housewife, over-bur-
dened with details and cares of which the Indian housewife
knew nothing. Minnehaha had neither servants to support and
superintend, furniture to dust, carpets to sweep, nor bric-a-brac
to set in studied and disorderly array. The beds in her house
were simply raised bunks built against the walls of each of the

za8

THE INDIAN HOME.

'Mi;

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' ■'■

twenty apartments or closets into which a " long house " of " five
fires" was divided. Her only household decorations were the
deer or bear-skin " portieres " in the doorways at either end of
the lodge, or the strings of dried squashes, pumpkins and corn
in the ear that festooned the roof-poles above her head.

In such a house of " five fires," or twenty apartments,
twenty families would live. Each family occupied its own
apartment — a sort of open stall or closet, some six or eight
feet wide, and facing the central passage.

Alone this central passage-way the fire-pits were ranged at
regular intervals, so that every four stalls, two on either side,
faced one of these several fires. The mother of each family
was responsible for the good order and conduct of her apart-
ment, and her right and influence were protected and strength-
ened by the bond of kinship which united all the wives of a
household. Over every such joint household a matron was in
charge. Her word was law, and neither chief nor warrior, buck
nor boy dared dispute her authority.

Crops and stores were in common ; fish and game were
equally divided, and there could be no rivalry in a household
where personal acquisition was unknown.

But one meal a day was served; and when the four families
around each fire-pit had cooked their share the matron would
divide the antire quantity among the several families according
to their size or their respective needs. What remained was
given, by the matron, into the charge of her assistant to be
kept until required.

Here, then, was primitive but orderly housekeeping* quite at

* On this point Mr. Lewis A. Morpan, in his c.iredil study of Indian life and customs, says: "This mere
glimpse at the ancient Iroquois plan of lite, now entirely passed away, and of which remembrance is nearly lost, is
hij^hly suggestive. It shows that their domestic economy was not without method, and it displays the care and
management of woman, low dovv-n in barbarism, for husbandmg their resources and improving their condition."

THE INDIAN HOME.

129

variance with the charge of improvidence and carelessness as
to the things of the morrow which has always been cited as one
of the chief defects of the Indian nature.

The improvidence of the Indian seems, indeed, to have been
one of the baleful effects of his contact with civilization. The
white man's labor-saving conveniences, readily obtained, in ex-
change for skins, destroyed the necessity, which, up to that
time, the Indian had always known, for the laborious manufac-
ture of bow and arrow, hatchet of stone and kettle of clay, soft
fur garments and ground shell money. " His guns, his traps,
his knives, his hatchets, his outer garments and his wampum
money," says Dr. Eggleston, " were all purchased in exchange
for skins, and thus he lost his skill, exterminated his game, and
sacrificed his independence."

But, if the woman was supreme within the lodge, even in
this very supremacy was to be found the barbaric theory of
man's superiority. It was woman's duty to cater to her acknowl-
edsred lord and master. To do this she must control her do-
mestic affairs and thus serve him even while governing and
guiding his household.

With the American Indian war was the one end and aim of
living. Clansmen were brothers, but rival clansmen were
natural enemies. This kinship of clans dates back beyond all
known history of the red men, and doubtless had its beginnings
in the first leagues of the savage bands against the prosperous
cities of the so-called mound-builders.

So, too, from the earliest times, has this rivalry between the
clans kept the American Indians in almost perpetual warfare.
Each clan was believed by its rivals to be possessed of some
supernatural power which could be exerted, with malign effect,
upon all hostile clans. A death, therefore, in any one clan was

130

THE INDIAN HOME.

considered the work of some member of a rival clan. Murder,
according to Indian philosophy, was an injury solely to the
person murdered, and not an offence to the gods. Being an
injury against the dead, it remained for the friends of the mur-
dered man to avenge his death. Revenge therefore was lawful,

and war, upon this
theory, was esteemed
not only as a right,
but as a duty to the
dead.

This peculiar and,
certainly, simple
method of reasoninc:
will at once show why
it was that the eagle's
feather — symbol of
success on the war-path
— was the prize which
every Indian lad hoped
one day to attain.
" The whole force of
public opinion in our
Indian communities,"
says Mr. Schoolcraft,
" is concentrated on
this point ; its early lodge-trainings, its dances, religious rites,
public harangues — 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 inquiry might be here pertinent; In how far does this statement vary from one tliat might be applied to
the earlier stages of our boasted Christiati civilization ? And has the deification of the war spirit even yet ceased
imong men ? The reflection of the wise old Spaniard Hamirez holds to-day quite as strongly as when he made it,

AN ADMIRKR OF WARLIKE PROWESS.

THE INDIAN HOME.

131

Schooled in this belief it may readily be seen that the
Indian woman would be an even irfeatjr admirer of warlike
prowess than the warrior himself. This is but following a law
of human nature, civilized as well as savage. To see her father,
brother, husband or son a dauntless warrior was equally the
ambition and the aim of the Indian woman. To this end she
could allow no menial "abor to be performed by him whose only
thought should be of war and glory.

The cause, therefore, of the long-decried but miscalled
servitude of the Indian woman is to be found not in the tyranny
or mastership of the man, but in the woman's own peculiar
system of logic and her practical way of putting it to the test.

The drudgery of Minnehaha was her choice and not her
obligation. Hiawatha must be a hero, a wearer of the eagle's
feather, a terror to his enemies, the envy of his clansmen. And
how could a hero plant corn, or carry wood and water, or perform
the menial duties which, from her youth up, Minnehaha had
been taught to esteem her own and indisputable province ?

Upon this theory the system of female servitude among the
American Indians is found to have been no servitude at all.
A coward could secure neither respect, assistance nor obedience
from the women of his tribe.

And this devotion was well repaid. The Indian would
fifjht to the death in defence of his wife and children. Kind-
ness, affection and mutual concession were the rule in the
Indian home, quite as much as in that of the white man.
Mention is made in some of the old records of a Delaware
Indian who travelled forty miles to obtain some cranberries for
his sick wife ; and, at a time when corn was scarce, an intrepid

years ago : " For, as far as concerns the peoples called modern, regarding them as the nursery whence emerged the
nations that to-day carry the standard of civilization, it is vury easy to show that not one of them has escaped that bap«
tism of blood which forms one of the steps in the scale of social progress which none have the privilege to omit."

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132

T^"^ INDIAN HOME.

warrior willingly rode over a hundred miles of country to
procure corn for his suffering family. When he was able to
obtain only a hatful of the coveted corn in exchange for his
horse, he unhesitatingly parted with his horse, and, taking the
corn, returned to his home on foot.

The proverbial sullenness and taciturnity of the Indian
nature and the Indian home are equally without foundation,
so far, at least, as applies to the earlier era of European dis-
covery.

Years of ill-tr-satment and centuries of dishonor may have
soured the natural disposition of the red-man, as they would
men of any color or of any land. The dispirited brutes who
fret and chafe in their cramped menagerie cages, or look through
the bars with sullen and vindictive stare, are changed alike in
color, appearance and manner after months and years of con-
finement;. The free lords )f the forests and plains of America,
driven from their homes, despoiled of their lands, cheated, con-
fused and despised have become in disposition and in manners
only what such treatment could logically make them. " No-
where," says Mr. Turner, " in a long career of discovery, of
enterprise and extension of empire, have Europeans found
natives of the soil with so many of the noblest attributes of
humanity as the American Indians. They were possessed of
moral and physical attributes which, if they could not have been
blended with ours, could, at least, have maintained a separate
existence, and been fostered by the proximity of civilization and
the arts."

So, in the Indian homes, before the days of deceit, injustice
and greed, the red-man was a jovial and happy fellow, fond of
fun and feasting ; \c Ing, in his own uncultivated fashion, his
wife and children, and the free, unfettered life he had known

THE INDIAN HOME.

133

through generations; hampered as to fluency of speech by a
restricted language, but given, because of this, to metaphor and
crude allegory that would sometimes rise even to eloquence.

As fitted a barbaric nature, his fun was coarse, his play rude
and rough, his manners far from courtly or refined; but, in a
home based upon hospitality and freedom of possession — a home
that, unblessed by the conveniences and enjoyments of civiliza-
tion, had still its games and sports, its ready story-teller, its
folk-lore, legends, and traditions — man could not be altogether

THE MANDAN LOUUE OV THE NORTHWEST.

brutal, woman altogether a drudge, nor children entirely savage.
" Home is home, though it be never so homely," and the Indian
of the sixteenth century could, and doubtless did, often express
the very sentiments that have immortalized the verses of
John Howard Payne, though his only musical accompaniment
was his crude flute of reed, or his dismal and monotonous log
drum with its top of thin, raw skin.

As has already been remarked comparisons are misleading.
The points of view from which savagery and civilization regard
things are never iden*^'cal. All natures have their limitations,

134

THE INDIAN HOME.

dependent, always, upon their peculiar and traditional environ-
ments.

The barbaric mind may be both imaginative and philo-
sophic, but its basic senses are dull and limited from the lack of
those stimulating preceptive faculties that come only from a
constant use of the higher intellectual powers. "A savage,"
says Mr. Powell, " sees but few sights, hears but few sounds,
tastes but few flavors, smells but few odors. His whole sen-
suous life is narrow and blunt, and his facts that are made up
of the combination of sensuous impressions are few. . . .
The stages of discernment from the lowest savage to the high-
est civilized man constitute a series, the end of which is far from
the beoinninf^."

Upon this theory it must be evident that the American
Indian, when first known to Europeans, was on the high road
toward civilization, but had as yet only reached such a stage of
advancement as w'ould be deemed neither desirable nor pro-
gressive when viewed from the higher standpoint of civilization.

And yet it is from this stage of semi-advancement that we
must regard alike his surroundings, his home-life, his customs
and his acts. All progress is slow, and when, as, for instance,
in the matter of equality at meals, the Indian made any advance
his progress toward the modern idea of courtesy was but that
of a laggard.

Originally, in the communal houses common to all our
tribes, the men ate first and then the women and children.
Upon the barbaric idea of concession to prowess there was
nothing degrading in this. The change in this custom came
only by degrees, with the breaking up of the old plan of com-
munal living and the gradual substitution of the single house
and the single family for the former mode of life.

THE INDIAN HOME.

135

It is said, however, that when, among the Senecas, the
proposition that man and wife should eat together was solemnly
decided upon, it was only agreed to with this compromise —
that man and wife should eat with the same ladle from the same
dish, the man taking the first spoonful and then the woman,
continuing thus, alternately, until the meal was finished.

Thus the old Adam clung to the new man ; and this seem-
ingly insignificant insight into the Indian nature will be found
to cover a profound fact. For it may be regarded as an indica-
tion of one of the main barriers toward an acceptance of the
ways of civilization which, even had the white man proved
other than he did, would still have modified and retarded the
red-man's intellectual growth.

CHAPTER VII.

THE INDIAN YOUTH.

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To the barbaric mind endurance
and courage are synonymous. Endur-
ance was the first lesson learned by
the baby Indian ; it was the last act
of his life as, bound to the fatal stake,
he laughed at the taunts of his captors
and urged them to greater indignities
that they might see how a warrior
could die.

No doubt times have changed, for
there are those who assert, after a
study of the life of the Indians of the Far West, that the red-
man of to-day knows neither courage nor endurance. But, in
the days before the white man's whiskey and the white man's
methods had destroyed the finer qualities of the red-man's
nature, his chief characteristic was his superiority to physical
privation and suffering.

The Iroquois traditions tell of a Seneca lad who, while but
a little fellow, was taken captive by the Illinois. The boy knew
what to expsct, but braced himself to meet his fate and prove
the value of his Seneca blood. " If he can live through our

tortures," said the Illinois chief, " he shall become an Illinois."

136

THE INDIAN YOUTH,

137

They held him barefoot upon the coals of the council fire,
until his feet were a mass of blisters. Then, with fish-bone
needles, they pierced the blisters, filled them with sharp tlint
stones and bade the little fellow run the gauntlet for twenty yards
between two rows of warriors armed with thorn-brier branches.

" His agony was intense," says the story, " but up in his heart
rose the memory of his tribe." He ran the fearful race and,
passing the goal, darted into the " Long House " and paused
not until he sank almost fainting upon the place of honor —
the wild-cat skin that marked the seat of the chief.

"Good," cried the Illinois; "he has the stuff for a warrior
in him.

Again they bound him to the stake, tortured him with fire,
and then, cutting his thongs, put him to the final test by holding
him beneath the cold water of the drinking spring, again
and again, until he was well-nigh strangled. And still neither
complaint nor moan came from the brave-hearted lad.

But when the test was complete the watching warriors gave
a shout of approval.

" He will make a warrior," they cried. " Henceforth he
shall be an Illinois."

Then they adopted him into their tribe; they re-named him
Ga-geh-djo-wa, and raised him up to be a chief. " And as the
years passed on," says the story, " he was much esteemed for
his feats as a hunter, and his strength and endurance were
by-words among the Illinois."

In such a display of boyish pluck as was this, the young
Seneca was but carrying out the teachings of his earliest child-
hood. The Indian baby's first lesson, as has been said, was one
of endurance. Strapped to a flat piece of wood the little
pappoose took hi;i first views of life from this painful posture,

»-<MMMa<WJ«R„

138 THE INDIAN YOUTH.

suspended from a tree or secured to the back of his hard-
working mother.

One of the cleverest contributions to the Indian question
is a recent " tract " prepared by a bright young student of this
perplexing problem.* It seeks to give in direct and simple

I'fT phrases the backward view of life and things that the "little

Injun " sees from its mother's back — fit type of the backward
way of looking that, for the past two hundred years, has been
the Indian's lot. " I go ahead backward," sighs the little
pappoose ; " I don't know what is coming, and I can't dodge it
till it is past. That is what comes of going ahead backward.
-' My people are pretty much like me. The old Mother Govern-
ment straps them upon a board, and shoulders them around
from one place to another. She lets them live on the hind side
of somewhere till somebody else wants it ; and then she bundles
them off to the other side of nowhere, which nobody wants."
But though endurance was a precept early instilled, the
little red baby was as fondly nurtured as is the petted darling
of many a civilized home to-day. Its hard cradle-board was
made comfortable with softly dressed buckskin, or fragrant with
a bed of sweet grass and odorous ribbons of the bark of bass
or linden tree. The finest beadwork that the mother could
make, or the most deftly plaited reed-splints and grass that she

H| % could braid, decorated her baby's bed, and over and over again

^i* I she sang the little one to sleep with her monotonous but rhyth-

ll I mical lullaby :

11 i

1 "Swinging, swinging,

Lul-la-ljy;
Sleep, little daughter, sleep.
'Tis your mother watching by,
Swinging, swinging, she will keep;
Little (laughter,
Lul-la-by."
• " One Little Injun," by Miss M. K. Ditto.

;*1

HERE I DISCOVERED FIVE PAPPOOSES SLUNG TO THE TREES.

4 I

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THE JNDTAN YOUTH.

141

H»

-f

Up to two years of age the Indian baby was kept lashed
to the unyielding board, which vvas alike carriage and cradle.
Once a day its bonds were loosed and it was allowed to play
and roll upon a blanket or the grass. When the mother
was busy the board, baby and all, was hung upon the most
convenient tree or placed in a corner of the lodge.

Mr. H. VV. Elliott relates that some fifteen or twenty years
ago, being one day near to old Fort Casper, on the River Platte,
he paused to kneel and drink from a stream he was crossing.
" Suddenly," he says, " my attention was arrested by a succes-
sion of queer, cooing, snuffling sounds that caused me to peer
curiously about in the recesses of the surrounding birch and
poplar thicket. Here I discovered, to the right and just above
me, five pappooses slung to the trees, all alone in their glory,
amusing themselves by winking and staring at one another,
apparently as happy as clams at high water. But, unfortu-
nately for their serenity, they caught sight of the pale-face, and
with one accord, began to howl in dismal and terrified accents,
so that in less than a minute six or seven squaws came crashing
through the underbrush to the rescue. Happy mothers ! It
was not, as they had feared, a bear, and the tempest was quelled
at once."

At two years of age, as has been said, the child was released
from the imprisonment of its uncomfortable cradle and, accord-
ing as it was boy or girl, its real education would begin.

Even at this early age the difference in treatment accorded
the sexes was noticeable. For, following the traditions of
their race, which regarded the boy as the future warrior and
the girl as the future drudge, all the training of the one and
all the duties of the other lay in the traditional course.

"The girls," says Mr. Elliott, "fall in line behind their

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143

T/f£ INDIAN YOUTH

mothers as soon as they can carry a five-pound weight, and
become liewers of wood and drawers of water before they enter
♦"heir teens."

" When she was four or five years old," says Mr. Dorsey,
"the Indian girl was taught to go for wood, etc. When she
was about eight years of age she learned how to make up a
pack and began to carry a small one on her back. As she
grew older she learned to cut wood, to cultivate corn, and other
branches of the Indian woman's work." This education in
drudgery, however, seems never to have soured the disposition
of the little red-skinned maid, for Mr. Dorsey declares that she
" maintained the most affectionate regard for her mother and
other kindred."

From the Indian boy's earliest years his training was such
as prophesied the future warrior. Although allowed to run

wild and to be
spared anything
that seemed like
labor or work, he
learned to swim, to
run, to jump and
to wrestle. Some
of the southern
tribes, such as the
Natchez, seem
even to have had
a sort of master
of gymnastics to
look after the physical development of their youth. At an
early age, too, the boy was put to archery practice with blunted
arrows shooting at a target of hay, bunched at the top of a

AN EDUCATION IN DRUDGERY.

« »»

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THE INDIAN YOUTH.

Stick, or at the birds that swarmed about his forest and
prairie home.

When the boy was about seven years old his first fast was
imposed — an all day's watch upon some high or exposed point;
here, smeared with white clay, he kept,
like the boyish squires of the knightly
days, a sort of vigil, filled with contin-
ued calls upon his selected manitou to
make him a great man — a warrior.
These fasts increased in length and in-
tensity with the lad s years until the age
of fifteen or sixteen when, after a five
days' fast, the troubled dreams of hun-
ger would reveal to him some bird, beast
or reptile which was to be esteemed his
" medicine " — his mysterious protector
through life. This creature, whatever
it might be, must be hunted and killed
by the boy; its skin, made into a pouch
or bag, and stuffed with grass, was relig-
iously sealed, and was worn or carried by the young warrior
as his " medicine bag" — his materialized "good luck," without
which he could have neither strength in battle nor guardian
care in death.

The Indian boy was seldom if ever punished for disobedi-
ence or insubordination. It was esteemed as altogether im-
proper and unwise to lay any chastisement upon one who
might in future years be a mighty warrior. The mother was
the strongest advocate of this theory. Ton-ti-le-augo's Wyom-
dot wife left him and returned to her people — an unusual thing
for the wife to do — because he had given her eight-year-old

DREAMING OK HIS " MEDICINE.

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144

T//£ INDIAN YOUTH.

son a moderate whipping for some offence committed. " She
acknowledged that the boy was guilty of a fault," says Colonel
Smith, who tells the story, " but thought he ought to have been
ducked, which is their usual mode of chastisement. She said
she could not bear to have her son whipped like a servant or
like a slave." And so when her husband went out to hunt
she left his lodge in displeasure never to return.

The main defect in the Indian education was, of course, that
semi-savagery that must, logically, result from a system that
developed the combative rather than the conciliatory in both
boy and man. And yet it is a fact worthy of especial note that
the Indian boy, barbarian though he was, received and gave
due heed to many a lesson in good breeding that the boys and
girls of our larger day too frequently neglect.

Generosity, thoughtfulness for others, hospitality, magna-
nimity, respect towards elders, abhorrence of evil speech, truth-
fulness, temperance, honor, honesty, toleration, independence,
pity for the unfortunate, courtesy and humanity — these all
found place in the education of the Indian boy and girl and
remained '^ part of the Indian nature until that nature was
dwarfed cteriorated by the degradations of a civilization

pres' . the red-man " wrong end foremost."

X , student of Indian character as it now app'^ars upon
our plains and in our lava beds would scarcely find himself
prepared to admit the existence of any of the above qualities in
the Indian of to-day. And yet the burden of proof is all in
favor of ascribing to the Indian of three centuries ago everyone
of these attributes — and others of even nobler strain.

Superstition and sorceiy, cannibalism and cruelty, a lax
morality and a remorseless spirit of revenge — all these too the
Indian possessed, and, as boy and man, practised and adhered

■' fi"

„

THE INDIAN YOUTH

'45

to them. But there is reason in all things, and the student of
human nature, progressing from the lowest types to the highest
intelligence, has been able to discover a logical reason for the
existence of these seemingly evil attributes in the composition
of the American Indian.

There are ceremonial forms peculiar to the most advanced
phase of civilized life that could by careful study be traced to a
common origin with those observances of savaire life which
civilization most abhors.* It is results not causes that deterio-
rate. The cannibalistic feasts of the red devotee (never for the
mere satisfaction of hunger), the horrible scalp-lock (the taking
of which has stained the hearths of so many American homes
with innocent blood), and the uncouth ceremonies attendant
upon the red-man's burial sprang, all, from motives quite as
elevating and fully as philosophic as those that have given
life and permanence to the white man's most cherished rites.

Indeed, it was the opinion of Father La Jeune, one of the
most devoted of the earlier French missionaries, that " in point
of intellect," the American red-man could be placed in a high
rank. " The Indian," he said, " I can well compare to some of
our own (French) villagers who are left without instruction.
I have scarcely seen any person who has come from P'rance to
this country who does not acknowledge that the savages have
more intellect or capacity than most of our peasantry." The
French traveller, Charlevoix, was even more emphatic. " The
beauty of dieir imagination," he says, "equals its vivacity,
which appears in all their discourses. They are very quick at
repartee, and their harangues are full of shining passages which
would have been applauded at Rome or Athens. Their elo-

* For a more exhaustive study of this most interesting comparison consult Dorman's " Origin of Primitive
Superstitions."

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146

T//£ INDIAN YOUTH.

quence has a strength, nature and pathos which no art can give>
and which Greeks admired in the barbarians."

A circumscribed Hfe is always a simple one, but such a life
has its pleasures, however limited, an<i its diversions, however
crude. The Indian's day had in it much of rude enjoyment ;
his games, thoug'- comparatively few, were heartily entered

into, and however high or harsh the
sport might run, the player never lost
his good-nature.

" An Indian youth," observes one
writer, " although intensely interested
in a game from beginning to end, ap-
peared to be just as well pleased, and
laughed just as heartily, when beaten
as when victorious. If the game was
a gambling one, as were most of their
games of skill, he would unconcern-
edly part with his last piece of clothing, laughing as cheerfully
as when he commenced to play." And Mr. Elliott in his study
of Indian child life to which reference has already been made,
afifirms that " Indian children are light-hearted and cheerful,
rippling with laughter and mischievous mirth. They play sly
tricks upon the dogs and one another incessantly, and are much
given to singing."

The boys had their ball games, both " shinny " and football
as well as an incipient game of base-ball ; they flew their kites
of fish bladders, spun their teetotums, played at tag and hide-
and-seek, blind-man's-buff and hunt the slipper. The girls,
though brought up to work long and hard, while the boys were
free to come and go as they chose, still enjoyed their dolls in
such leisure hours as they had, and though girls and boys rarely

AS HAPPY AS A WHITE BABY.

THE INDIAN YOUTH.

X47

*>>

played together, both sexes were just as fond of making mud
pies as are the little folks of our day. One word indeed in the
Omaha dialect comes from this childish disposition to play in
the mud. It is the verb tigaxc, meaning to make dirt lodges,
and having, hence, the broader significance: to play games.

An Indian never hunted for sport. He found no enjoy-
ment in worrying a dumb brute to death for the mere excite-
ment of the chase or the savage pleasure of seeing it die.
Necessity sent him upon the track of the game as duty im-
pelled him to follow the trail of his enemy. "His worst bar-
barities," says Mr. Dorman, "were committed at the instigation
of superstition ; and cruelty, from sheer malignity, such as has
been laid to his charge, was really foreign to his nature."

War, as it was the predominant feature in the Indian life,
was entered into and followed out upon a system as inflexible
and methodical as holds among civilized nations. It was not,
as a rule, entered into for purposes of personal revenge or
individual renown, but was undertaken as a concession to the
manes of the tribe's dead. Only by the performance of the
Me-da-we, or grand medicine rites, or by the vicarious bestowal
of an enemy's blood, could an Indian, as the saying was, " wipe
the paint of mourning from his face."

The inter-tribal wars projected for purposes of retaliation or
redress might, of course, partake of something of a national
character, though even these were not unfrcquently the result
of raids planned for this vicarious mourning rite. But the
majority of war-parties, before the days of the frontiersman and
the stand in defence of the home-land, were composed and
carried out in deference to the rites referred to.

There was, therefore, as marked a distinction between the
Indian raid for religion and his warfare for redress, as between

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148

TJI£ INDIAN YOUTH.

the borc'er foray of some Highland chief or German baron and
the warfare between nations based upon political grievances.
The one was sudden, unexpected and brief; the other the result
of debate, forethought and negotiation. The first could be
started by any single warrior, moved by devotion to his dead
or by personal hatred ; the other c.dled for days of council, the
interchange of presents, an embassy, a demand for redress, and
the pipe of peace with its fan-like decoration of white-eagle
feathers, or the calumet of war with its fan of flamingo or other
red-dyed feathers, according r the result of the embassy should
be for peace or war.

But whether for foray or war, the warriors who went upon
the war-path were always volunteers. No chief could order or
compel his tribesmen to follow his feather to the wars. Hos-
tilities once decided upon, a chief or crier would make an-
nouncement through the villages of the tribe and invite the
warriors to the preliminary war-dance.

The dance which has always played so important a part in
Indian life and ceremonies is but another indication of the
common origin of man. In savagery, in barbarism and in civil-
ization, wherever or however man lives and moves, the dance
has place and part.

Originally a ceremony of superstition or of religion, traces
of which may even be seen in the kneeling and genuflections of
modern Christian ritualism, the dance, as such, is never entirely
relegated to the domain of social pleasure until civilization
emerges from barbarism. Among the American Indians,
therefore, as among all other peoples in barbarism, some form
of dance has always been inseparable from rites or ceremonies.

The medicine dance was strictly religious, described by one
writer as analogous to the camp-meeting fervor of some of our

•>'

THE INDIAN YOUTH.

149

modern church bodies. The scalp-dance was ceremonial and
superstitious, every scalp taken being esteemed as just so much
control over the spirit-life of the enemy. The war-dance which
preceded the foray or the tribal war was simply the ceremony
of enlistment, in which, under the excitement of the song and
dance, warrior after warrior should be induced to " strike the

THE SCALP-DANCE.

war-post " and thus signify his intention of taking the field
against the enemies of their tribe.

The Indian warfare was one of surprises and ambuscades.
A land of forest and of thicket made such a system not only
possible, but imperative. The multitude of tribal divisions,
and the small proportionate population of the land kept the real
warriors limited in numbers. There were no Indian armies*

« !

150

THE INDIAN YOUTH.

This made the natives also, as one writer has expressed it,
" economical of their lives," and, except in the cases of confeder-
ated tribes, who combined for both defensive and offensive war-
fare, the losses on any raid were comparatively slight. If the
tribe or village attacked proved too strong for the assailants,
discretion was judged the better part of valor, and a retreat
was ordered.

The speech of an old Natchez warrior to the younger
braves about to set out upon the war-path would seem to out-
line the whole theory of Indian warfare.

" Now, my brothers," he said, " depart with confidence. Let
your courage be mighty, your hearts big, your feet light, your
eyes open, your smell keen, your ears attentive, your skins
proof against heat, cold, water and fire. If the enemy should
prove too powerful, remember that your lives are precious, and
that one scalp lost by you is one cause of shame brought upon
your nation.* Therefore, if it be necessary, do not hesitate to
fly, and, in that case, be as wary as the serpent, and conceal your-
selves with the skill of the fox, or of the squirrel. But although
you run away, do not forget that you are men, that you are true
warriors, and that you must not fear the foe. Wait awhile, and
your turn will come. Then, when your enemy is in your power,
and you can assail him with advantage, fling all your arrows
at him, and, when they are exhausted, come to close quarters,
strike, knock down, and let your tomahawks be drunk with
blood."

Inured by fast and vigil, by tests of endurance and of

skill, by athletic games and the education which a hunter's
life gave in abstinence, suffering, danger, and endurance of

* It was customary to bear home the bodies of the fallen, or, at least, their scalps, rather than permit any tro-
phies or proofs of victory to remain in hostile hands. This custom was due to the theory already referred to, that
the possession of my portion of a person gave his rival endless power over him, alive or dead.

■I

THE INDIAN YOUTH.

151

fatigue, the Indian lad grew to manhood longing for the time
when he too might strike the war-post and make for himself a
name among the warriors. To this end his mother and his
sisters toiled uncomplainingly, and his father, almost from baby-
hood, initiated him in all the ways of war. He learned the

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ON THE WAR-TRAIL.

language of the grass and of the sky, the wonderful and intri-
cate system of sign communication, the minutest details of
woodcraft and the keenest methods of trail-seeking and of
scent, primarily, for use in hunting, but ultimately for success
upon the war-path.

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152

rJI£ INDIAN YOUTH.

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But, underlying all this barbaric education, was its basis
of superstition upon which has always rested the savage and
barbaric nature. Fear, which was the prevailing sentiment
among the American red-men, permeated all their beliefs and
colored all their customs. And this was not physical coward-
ice, it was dread of the supernatural. The Indian feared the
control of evil spirits while living, and doubly feared their
dominion when he should be dead. Half his life was passed
in the endeavor to baffle or propitiate them. As Mr. Dor-
man remarks, "the Indian's worst barbarities were committed
at the instigation of superstition," and in the horror of the
scalping-knife and of the torture-stake we are to see not the
pitiless malignity of a savage mind, but a blind and frenzied
concession to an undefinable fear of consequences which had
its root far back in the grosser and still more brutal days of
primeval savagery.

But, though he might be full of superstitious notions, the
personal bravery of the American Indian of earlier days is a
matter of historic fact. The moral decay of a race implies alsa
the degradation of its finer personal qualities. Bravery and
courage are lost as honesty and manliness decline, and the
deterioration of the red race of America is one of the
saddest evidences in proof.

The Indian lad of to-day, in tepee or on reservation, has
the same lofty contempt of manual labor that his ancestors
possessed. But with this he possesses none of the old-time
incentives to manly endeavor, to personal prowess, or to
brave and daring deeds. To lie, to cheat, to beg, to steal,
to live without work and to die as does the brute, consti-
tute in far too many cases the round and the desire of the
Indian's life, save only where some unselfish and strong-.

THE INDIAN YOUTH.

153

heartod friends of humanity seek to educate and lead him
into a better and more helpful way of living.

But with the loss of manhood caiv the loss of valor, and
one of the earliest signs of this deciine was the strain of
personal cowardice that, superinduced by a desire for the
white man's whiskey, gradually became a new factor in
Indian nature.

" White men who have dwelt all t. ir lives with the
Indians," says the Earl of Dunraven, "have to confess that
they know very little about their inner lives, and understand
nothing of the hidden springs of action rnd of the secret
motives that impel them to conduct themselves in the strange
and inexplicable manner they sometimes do."

There was much in the earlier Indian character that
recalls those still older barbarians — the Greeks and Trojans
of whom Homer suno::

! ' !''

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"O friends, be men, and let your hearts be strong.
And let no warrior in the heat of fight
Uo what may bring him shame in others' eyes ;
For more of those who shrink from shame are safe
Than fall in battle, while with those who Hee
Is neither glory, nor reprieve from death."

A certain old man, so runs the Omaha story, had been
very brave in his youth ; he had gone many times on the
war-path, and had killed many persons belonging to different
tribes. His only children were two young men. To them
he gave this advice: "Go on the war-path. It will be good
for you to die when young. Do not run away. I should
be ashamed if you were wounded in the back ; but it
would delight me to learn of your being wounded in the
breast." By and by there was war with another tribe, and
the two young men took part in it. Their party having

154

THE INDIAN YOUTH.

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Jii'

been scared back, both young men were killed. When the
men reached home some one said, " Old man, your sons were
killed." " Yes," said he, " that is just what I desired. I
will go to see them. Let them alone ; I will attend to
them." He found his eldest son wounded all along the
back, but lying with his face toward home. " Wa ; wa ! "
said he ; " he lies as if he felt a strong desire to read',
home ! I said heretofore that you were to lie facing that
way ; " and, taking hold of the arms, he threw the body in
the other direction, with the face toward the enemy. He
found his younger son wounded in the breast, and lying
with his face toward the foe. " Ho ! this is my own son,"
said he. " He obeyed me." And the father kissed his dead
boy and bore his body home.

f-ti'^

^'V*'

CHAPTER VIII.

MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

The domestic life of any people is the surest index ta
its history. Only as the home element assumes a definite
and developing individuality is real progress possible. The
brute beast simply exists and multiplies. Brute man does the
same, until the soul-power, long lying dormant, begins to
assert its supremacy. And, as the family instinct, becom-
ing something more than merely brutish desire, gradually
develops the best faculties of man — affection, pride, self-
sacrifice, devotion — and thus leads the brute c.way from the
beast, so may we mark the advance of a people out of abso-
lute savagery toward an enduring civilization.

The story of the American Indian is the story of just
such an advance. Even the superficial civilization in which
the red-men had a place and which they themselves over-
threw doubtless had the family idea at its base ; but, because
of its lack oi the element of loving self-helpfulness without
which the family can never grow into a perfect nationality^
this pseudo-civilization relapsed into savagery.

There is little doubt that the family life of the Iroquois,
the Ojibway and the Cherokee had in it more of real heart-
affection than had the home life of the Aztec and the
Mound-builder whom they overthrew.

III

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MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

And yet, as the preceding chajiters have shown, this
family Hfe of the Indian though it exhibited affection, care-
taking, self-sacrifice and pride, was wrongly centered and lacked
still the vital elemenl; of unselfishness without whi-.h no home
system can stand.

Husband and father, brother and son thought more of
personal glory and prowess than of the comfort and well-
being of those whose happiness should have been their
especial care. And even the woman element in the home
wasted its energies upon laborious details, from a mistaken
sense of personal proprietorship in the valor rather than the
love of the man. There was, thus, none of that mutual
sharing of sympathy and support that is necessary for a
happy home.

The Indian woman's idea of the future Hfe consisted only
in the relief from care and drudgery that it would bring. " Oh,
that I were dead, ' many an Indian woman has been heard to
say, " for then I shall have no more trouble."

There are, however, many indications from which it may be
inferred that there was prevalent among Indian women a yearn-
ing for a broader equality than that based simply upon labor
and valor.

We have seen how advanced was this 2quality among the
more intelligent tribes, such as those constituting the Iroquois
league, and, even among the lowest type of the California sav-
au:c were found evidences of this desire that w^ould be ludicrous
were they not so sadly real. Mr. Stephen Powers regards as a
significant fact the " almost universal prevalence, under various
forms, of a kind of secret league among the men, and the prac-
tice of diabolical orgies, for the purpose of terrorizing the
women into obedience. It shows," he continues, " how they

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i*«Hliiaitf]imm>iriii

Af.LV.V/iA'S .l\D M. ITER J. M.S.

'59

(the women ) were coiUinually strui^ijjHng uj) toward equality,
and to what desperate expedients their lords were compelled to
resort in order to keep them in due subjection."

Mr. Bancroft, after an exhaustive study of the Native
Races, gives as his opinion that " it is among tribes that live by
the chase, or by other means in which women can be of service,
that we find the sex most oppressed and cruelly treated." In
proportion to their usefulness therefore was their degradation —
sure sign that the real home element, based on mutual help, had
no place in the Indian state.

And yet, as there were signs of a yearning for more real
equality there were indications also that this equality might
some day have been secured. Some women, like We-ta-moo of
Pocasset, whom the English called the warrior-queen, were able
to assert and to maintain their independence and supremacy,*
and among the progressive Iroquois the women of the tribe
while they had no absolute voice in the council were represented
by orators who were, on this account, knovv'n as " squaws' men."
Sa-go-ye-wat-ha, the Seneca — otherwise known as Red Jacket

— is said to have won no little reputation for himself in this
capacity and, as the representative of the women of his tribe, to
have spoken eloquent words for peace and independence and
thus to have laid the foundation of his future eminence.

It was by such a representation as this that the Iroquois
woman could oppose a war or secure a peace and in the sale of
land, they claimed a special right to exercise their prerogative

— for, as they claimed, "the land belongs to the warriors who

*The " Old Indian Chronicle " of Massachusetts says of We-ta-moo : " She is as jiotent a prince as any round
about her, and hath as much corn, land and men at her command ; " and Cooke's " Virginia " declares that the
aboriginal Virginians were content to be ruled by women. "Of this singular fact," says Mr. Cooke, "there is no
doubt, and it quite overthrows the general theory that the Indian women were despised subordinates." Pow-ha-tan's
" kingdom," as it was called, would, so it was stated, eventually descend to his sisters though the chief had sons
living.

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MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

defend and to the women who till it." And this tilla2:e of
the land was no small thing. As it occupied much of a woman's
life, it gave to the Indian the means of existence through the
winter months when fish and flesh were hard to obtain, or
absolutely unattainable.

To the labors also of these female agriculturists is America
to-day indebted for a knowledge of some of the most important
vegetable products, as well as for some of the dishes now con-
sidered as strictly American.

The corn that is even now the staple American breadstuff,
was first brought from some unknown point in the West along
the paths of Indian migration. It speedily became the Indian
staple and was used in many ways as yet unknown to us. It
was planted, harvested and cooked by the Indian women, and
from the well-tilled Seneca corn-patches came the first sweet-
corn ever known to man.

F'rom these indefatic^able women-workers came also our
knowledge of the existence of such necessaries as squashes and
pumpkins, beans and melons. The Indian women were the
first to serve the smoking meal of baked beans, and to teach the
colonists from over-sea how to pic'pare the hoe cake and the ash
cake, pone and hominy, samp and succotash, gruel for the sick-
room, and the toothsome "corn that flowers," dear to our child-
hood as "pop corn."

With tools that \vere as primitive as are all aboriginal im-
plements, these women-farmers of old America yet made their
garden-patches yield a plentiful increase. But in the absence
of anything like systematic commercial intercourse, this yield
was limited to the tribal garden-patches, and needed to be used
to the best possible advantage. There was no waste among the
Indians until the white man fostered it.

■I

MANNERS AND MATERIALS,

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The seasons of want, from long winters or dry summers, of
necessity made the Indian provident, and, as Dr. Eggleston
says, " None know better than the red-men with what last
resorts to sustain life in time of famine."

But, if the women were the farmers, the men were the
hunters. Food, as one of their chroniclers says, was precious
to the Indians; and meat, quite as much as corn, was the staff
of life among them. Indeed, it played a prominent part in
the economy of their domestic relations. " Squaw love to eat
meat," an old Indian once declared; "no husband — no meat.
Squaw do everything to please husband ; he do everything to
please squaw — all live happy."

In the more advanced tribes, where a higher necessity
demanded more forethought than General Fremont found, for
instance, in some of the Columbia River tribes who, as he says,
"grew fat and became poor with the salmon," the yields and
harvests of the woman-tilled soil were augmented by the fish
and flesh which weie secured by the bone fish-hook and grit-
stone hatchets, the fibre-woven nets and the unerring bow and
arrow of the wary hunter.

The tomahawk seems really to have been a creation of
the white traders, and not an aboriginal weapon. The war
club of hard wood, sometimes edged with flint, which certain of
the Southern Indians used, may have suggested the white
man's tomahawk, but before that invention the Indian's armory,
as a rule, contained only the bow and arrow.

So great, says Mr. Dorsey, was their skill in archery, that
they frequently sent their arrows completely through the
bodies of the animals at which they shot, and there have been
instances reported when, so great was the force of this flight of
the arrov/, with its sharp poin': of deer-horn or of the spur of the

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162

MAyA'EKS AND MATERIALS.

wild turkey, that it has not only passed entirely through the
body of a hunted buffalo, but has even gone flying through the
air far beyond the wounded animal.

Each hunter had his own distinguishing mark of proprietor-

A LESSON IN ARCHERY.

ship upon his arrows, so that he could recover his own again,
or could tell which animals he ^ ad slain. The " that was my
shot" quarrels of the hunting field were unknown to the Indian
marksmen.

Many of the tribes understood the art of dressing hides to

•r

MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

163

perfection. The skins of the buffalo, deer, beaver and other
animals, made soft and pliant by the skilful manipulation of the
women, were manufactured into comfortable winter clothing by
the help of the awl-like needles formed from the small and thin
bone in the leg of the heron or in the larger sort of fish.

The Natchez Indian as also some among the Southwestern
villages, or "pueblos," understood the art of dyeing in various
colors, and made their skin robes brilliant in alternate stripes of
white and yellow, red and black.

The canoes made of fire-hollowed logs or of strips of birch
bark deftly laced and ribbed were the only means of navigation
known to the Indian; but these varied from the light shallops
of the East to the forty-foot war-boats of the Pacific tribes.

The red-men were expert paddlers and g()t)d near-shore navi-
gators but, so great was their confidence in their ability to
"paddle their own canoe," that they sometimes ventured be-
yond the bounds of caution. We have it on record that certain
of the Carolina Indians, disgusted with the treachery and bad
faith of the white traders, determined to remedy tho abuses by
trading direct with the consumers. They, therefore, secretly
fitted out several great canoes and dispatched them with their
freights and crews for England. Jkit the wide ocean was as
remorseless as the white-man's treachery, and the jDoor paddlers
were never heard of more.

It has been said that there was no system of commercial
intercourse among the American Indians. This, so far as it
relates to a uniform and organized method of barter and sale,
was undoubtedly the fact, and yet the well-worn and connecting
trails and the preeminence given to one especial article of Indian
manufacture would indicate the existence of some recos:nized
system of business inter-communication.

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164

MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

From the remotest antiquity the use of shells as ornaments
amonir mankind has been universal. The earliest anions: men,
obtaining their food from the ocean or the great lakes, put the
larger shells from which they extracted their food, to practical
use as cups and dishes.

As these shells were broken or thrown aside some more
reflective mind, in which was slowly awakening the first
gleams of the artistic faculty, conceived the idea of perforating

and stringing the thicker portions of
the broken shells; and thus was origi-
nated the use of personal ornaments —
possibly the earliest necklaces and pen-
dants.

Gradually these rude strings of
shells, becoming attractive to the savage
eye, obtained a certain value as, in the
course of migration or of barter, they
found their way into localities remote from their source of
supply. Increasing demand led to more careful manufacture,
and thus was brought about that crude attempt at a circula-
ting medium which became at last an established article of
sava2:e manufacture.

Through all the changes of peoples and communities these
coveted bits of shell held place and prominence, appearing,
finally, in historic times, as the chief, and indeed the only
material approaching the standard of permanent value which
among civilized man has always been given to the precious
metals and the more precious stones.

Certain choice sea or lake shells laboriously ground and
perforated to the size of " a wheat straw," were variously colored
and strung upon a single strand of vegetable fibre, a strip of

A WAMI'U.M NKCKl.ACK.

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MANNEJiS AND MATERIALS.

165

««

buckskin or a bit of sinew. These strings of shell beads grew
in value as the demand for them increased, and though known
under a variety of names, as diverse as the native dialects, they
have retained most widely their Algonquin name of warn-pum-
pe-age (" the belt of rounded shells"), a word abridged for
English use into the well-known name of Wampum.

From the red denizens of Labiiidor to their far-off brethren
of Lower California, in the Mississippi valleys, and from the
Lakes to the Gulf, was this precious wampum used. It was the
Indian's most coveted possession. Even at a recent date the
tribes of the Columbia River, according to Lewis and Clark,
would " sacrifice their last article of clothing or their last
mouthful of food " to procure it ; and John Lawson, writing
long ago, declared : " This is the money with which you may
buy skins, furs, slaves, or anything J-he Indians have ; it being
their mammon (as our money is to us) that entices and per-
suades them to do anything, and part with everything they
possess, except their children for slaves. . . . With this
they buy off murders ; and whatsoever a man can do that is ill,
this wampum will quit him of and make him, in their opinion,
good and virtuous, though never so black before."

Probably in no land and among no race of men has an
article of apparently so small an intrinsic value become of such
immense importance, and none surely was ever put to so many
uses.

Aside from its circulation as a sort of natural currency *
the wampum of the American Indians was used by them for

* Mr. Morgan, it is true, claims that there is no sufficient reason for calling wampum the " money of the Indian,"
or for the assertion that they ever made it an exclusive currency. "There is however no doubt," he says, " that it
came nearer to a currency than any other species of prnpi-rty among the Indians, and its transit from hand to liand
became so easy that everyone could be said to need it." Mr. William H. Holmes, however, ni an exhaustive study
of the ancient American " art in shells," holds that the shells used as wampum did have a fixed and uniform value
and formed a natural currency.

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MAXXEJ^S AND MATERIALS.

personal adornment, for the decoration of costumes, robes, the
cradles of their children and the grave-clothes of their dead.
It took the place of written records, * and stood, by the wonder-
ful power of memorizing possessed by certain of the red-men, as
the record of histories, laws, treaties and speeches. It was a
method of communication between friendly and hostile tribes,
it was used in connection with compacts, agreements, and con-
tracts, in opening and closing councils, as proof of authority
and credentials, in marriage feasts and at funerals, for summon-
ing councils, solemnizing oaths, declaring war and proclaiming
peace.

Mr. Brice in his description of an Indian council held in
the Muskingum valley, gives the following" report of a speech
in council accompanied by the delivery of wampum belts.
Each sentence, he says, was pronounced with great solemnity
and confirmed by the delivery of a belt of wampum :

" Brothers, with this belt I open your ears that you may hear
— with this I remove grief and sorrow from your hearts — with
this I draw from your feet the thorns that pierced them as you
journeyed thither — with this I clean the seats of the council-
house, that you may sit at ease — with this I wash your head
and body, that your spirits may be refreshed — with this I con-
dole with you on the loss of the friends who have died since we
last met — and with this I wipe out any blood which may ^ave
been spilt between us."

The value and infinence of this Indian mediuin can scarcely
be over-estimated. It stands as an important element in Indian
life, and its history is, indeed, the story of the rise and progress

* " These wampum bells as I have said took the place of contracts, of public acts, and of annals or registers. For
the savages, liaviiig nn wiiiinR or letters, and findinsj tliemselves soon forgetting the transactions that orcur among
lliein from time to time, supply this deficiency by inaking for themselves a local memory by means of words which
they attach to these belts, of which each one refers to so-i e particular affair, or some circutnstance which it repre-
sents so long as it exists." — Lafitau : Afaeurs des Sdiivages A meriqunines.

MANNERS AND MATERIALS,

167

of the race in whose duties, occupations, organizations and
ambitions it played so conspicuous a part.

But there were other things, also, that determined the char-
acter and quality of the Indian life: — arts and inventions,
beyond the attainment even of peoples who have not been
esteemed barbaric ; workmanship, of which even the skilled
artificer of to-day might be proud ; productiveness, that betrays
an intelligence never yet conceded to these so-called " savages."

I \

DKCOKATKD WA.MI'LM HELPS.

Relics and excavations attest their skill in the making of
pottery, beyond that which even their pre-historic ancestors of
mound and pueblo attained. The Indian method of tanning
skins is still esteemed the best; the Indian deer-skin shoe, or
moccason, as originally made, was a better shoe than ancient
Rome or media^vel Europe produced and, so experts have
declared, "deserves to be classed among the highest articles

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MANNERS AND MATF.KIAI.S.

of apparel ever invented, alike in usefulness, durability and
beauty." The bark rope, the beautiful, strong and skilfully-
made burden-straps of porcupine-quills, the canoe, bark tray
and sap-tub, the corn-mortar, snow-shoe and Da-ya-ya-da-g'd -
ne'd-t'd or fire-maker (really a unique and ingenious invention

for creating a fire, in
the absence of matches,
metals, and chemicals)
all testify to the pa-
tience and developed
skilfulness of the In-
dian manufacturer.
The basket making
and ivory turning of
even the degenerate
races known to us to-
day, the delicate and
often wonderfully artistic weaving of the Navajos, and the peo-
ple of Zuni, the air gun and arrows still made by the Chero-
kees, the buckskin ball and the hickory rackets of the Choctaws
and Seminoles, the polished stone ware and the rotary drill of
the Moki and Zuiii Indians — relics of the lost arts of their
ancestors — all attest the high state of semi-civilized inventive-
ness which the Indians before the discovery had attained.
Indeed it is by a careful study and comparison of Indian arts
and inventions that students of race-characteristics have been
able to assert the common origin and connected life of the red-
men of America. The similarity of their labors and their pro-
ductions is ample proof that their life in all sections of their
wide domain was essentially the same, modified only by the
degrees of intelligence to which they had severally attained.

a H.rtMlS.*.

INDIAN METIKJl) OK l.IC.IITING FIKK.

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MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

169

The main barrier to the lii<j;lier intellectual development of
the American Indian — even had not the white discoverer
come to so comj)letely change his destiny — was undoubtedly
an ethical quite as well as an ethnical one.

With a philosophy based upon superstition rather than
reason, a morality that sprung from the limitations rather than
the exaltations of life, and a system of law based on security

! \

.NA\AJU IJAsKEl WORK.

rather than justice, the Indian mind was as slow to reach con-
clusions as was its volition contracted. Though it held the
same elements of morality that form the basis of civilized char-
acter, their right development was retarded because the stand-
ard of attainment was low.

" Law," says Major Powell, "begins in savagery through the

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MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

endeavor to secure peace, and develops, in the highest civiliza-
tion, into the endeavor to establish justice."

A careful study into the fundamental principles of the
Indian idea of justice and equity will discover that this idea
related solely to the pre^T'^'ticn of controversy or its termina-
tion. All the doings and talk of the Indian councils, the inter-
change of presents and the payment of tribute or of indemnity
were directed toward this end, and many a pliase of tribal life
seemingly without reason, will be found to spring from this
cause.

As has been shown elsewhere, the arrows of each hunter or
warrior bore upon them private marks so that the game or the
scalp might be claimed by its rightful owner; and it is on
record that a Sioux war-party having surprised and killed, at
the first fire, a squad of sleeping soldiers, left the bodies, the
arms and property of their victims untouched because it could
not be determined by whose bullets the soldiers had been
killed. This, according to the Indian law, was the only just
settlement of a dispute as to possession — prove your property
or leave it alone.

The deference shown to age, that has also been elsewhere
referred to, will upon investigation be found to have another
basis than that of mere affection. It holds even where affec-
tion does not exist, and is due to the universal law, always a
part of the Indian economy, that authority belongs to the elder.
It was this law — a sure way of settling controversy — that gave
rise to the seemingly curious custom among the Indians of
never addressing a person by his proper name, but always by
his kinship term.

Such a kinship term would convey a relative idea of the age
of the person addressed, and would itself show to whom author-

■

AfANA'EJiS AMJ MATERIALS.

»7«

ity or possession bclonu;cd. " When we are young," said an old
Wastonquah medicine man, " we do not care how old we are,
and when we are old we do not care to know."

Among the Omahas there were fourteen of these "consan-
guinity terms " for male relationship, and for female kindred
fifteen. The most remote ancestors were called grandfathers

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r~^2^

INDIAN UKAl'ONS.

and grandmothers ; the most remote descendants were addressed
or spoken of as grandchildren. The Seneca child called its
mother's sisters "mother" — either "great" or " little " mother,
according as the sisters were older or younger than the real
mother.

So closely allied to law, among barbaric peoples, is super-
stition that this very law of consanguinities led to a supersti-
tious dread of speaking or telling one's own name. Disuse

172

MANiYJ'lUS AND MATERIALS.

pit'
W 'I

H 1 1

W0^

creates distrust, and it became one of the canons of the Indian's
faith that to tell or speak aloud one's own name gave to the
enemy, or the evil spirit that the Indian always feared and
sought to baffle, a power over the speaker which would be used
for purposes of sorcery or witchcraft.

For this reason there was always much difficulty in learning
an Indian's real name, and he would employ both reticence and
evasion to conceal it. This did not preclude another person
from telling the name; it only applied to the Indian in question
or to some member of his immediate family.*

Johann Kohl, the German traveller, relates a curious exam-
ple of this absurd superstition. " To whom does this gun
belong? " he asked an Indian squaw. " It belongs to him," she
replied. " And who is ' him ' ? " demanded Mr. Kohl. "Why,
the man who has his seat there," the woman answered, pointing
to her husband's seat in the lodge. And at another time,
havinij asked an Indian his name the man remained silent for a
long time, and finally, when the question had been repeatedly
asked by Mr. Kohl, the Indian nudged a bystander and said,
" Tell him my name."

Thus, in many and often unexpected ways, can the whole
fabric of aboriginal life in America be traced to a logical cause,
resident in the red-man's peculiar and childlike conceptions of
the superstitions, moralities and laws that lay at the basis of his
circumscribed and limited powers.

There is, in the whole life of man, no happening that is due
to chance. Even the smallest occurrence or custom may be
traced to a logical and legitimate cause. And to this rule the
American Indian was no exception. From North to South,

* It it because <,f this supeisf.tion that so much confusion arises in the identification of historic Indians, and it
is because of this that the dauj^hter of the wily chief of the Pow-ha-tans, Ma-ta-Ua, is known to us only by her
nickname of " little wan'.aii " — f.o-<,i-hu>i-t is — \vr fallier rofiisinc; tn (li«cVise lier real name to his wliite neighbors.

-«3»

MANJVE/iS AND MATERIALS.

»73

from East to West, wherever a red-man lived and labored,
hunted, fought or died, from birth to burial his life was but that
of his brothers. Faiths, customs and methods were at base
identical.

All Indians, alike, located their misty and mythical paradise
in the West " toward the sinking sun "; their laws of hospitality
were the same ; their modes of war and worship, their tribal

a'-

CUUNCII, OV ClllKlS AM) WAKRIUKS.

relations, their manner of hunting, their amusements and their
burial customs were largely similar.

" Peculiarities of manners and customs," says Schoolcraft,
" where they exist in the most striking forms, are found to be
due in oreat measure to the diversities of latitude and lonoi-
tude, changes of climate, geographical position and the natural
products and distinctive zoology of the country."

And Mr. Lewis H. Morgan in his careful study of the life
and history of the Indians sees in the similarity of their arts
and inventions a certain proof of their undivided race connec-
tion. "To this day," he says, "Indian life is about the same

■If

ifii

' r

r I

174

mmmmmmm

MANNERS AND MATERIALS.

over the whole republic, and in describing the fabrics which
illustrate the era of Indian occupation, we should take in the
whole range of Indian life, from the wild tribes dwelling in the
seclusions of Oregon, to the present semi-agricultural Iroquois
who reside amongst us. Many of the relics disentombed from
the soil of New York relate back to the period of the mound-
builders of the West, and belong to a race of men and to an age
which have passed beyond the ken of Indian tradition. Our
first Indian epoch is thus connected with that of the mound-
builders."

And during all the era of Indian occupation, so this laborious
student assures us, though there were diversities of manners
and customs Indian Hfe was essentially the same. "One sys-
tem ot trails," he Sc , " belted the whole face of the territory
from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and the intercourse between
the multitude of nations who dwelt within these boundless
domains was constant, and much more extensive than has ever
been supposed."

It was to this widely-scattered, but generically-related race —
so different in every way from the masses of Euiope, them-
;.elves just emerging from the darkness of feudalism, of igno-
rance and of a system little else than barbaric- — that the white
men from across the sea came, seekinc: for riches and dominion.
Let us draw from the historic records the story of this clashing
of alien customs and manners, faiths and laws — the story of the
m'"igling lives of the red-man and the white

' WVIVH'"'*"'

CHAPTER IX.

THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN.

J-

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:>^>!^^

After a thousand years of ab-
solute supremacy this, then, had
the American Indian become —
a free man of the forest and the
plains, a citizen of a sylvan
republic, ranging in intellectual
force through the several phases
of progressive barbarism, as op-
portunity, capacity or occupation
placed him.

A home-lover and a home-liver
after his kind; holding peculiar
but, judged from his standpoint,
altogether logical ideas of life, liberty and the ■pursuit of happi-
ness, and with a certain, regulated system of law that may
have been crude and primitive, but was yet respected through-
out all his broad domain ; with a nature capable of advance
along certain restricted lines — a nature dwarfs-' and warped
by superstition and the forms it creates, but yet with the high-
est possibilities of courage, endurance, virtue and honor; with
a mind restricted in its workings, but singularly childlike and
imitative when brought into contact with higher intelligencies,

I7S

176

tj/Jl coming of the u'hjte man.

the Indians of North America were struu;Q:lino; t(nvard an ad-
vanced })osition in the scale of civilization which, though far
below that attained by the Caucasian race might, still, have gone
far beyond that which other semi-civilizations have reached.

The logic of events is inexorable. Nowhere in the history
of the world has a nomadic, a hunting, or a purely agricultural
race been allowed to monopolize a territory which could be
made to support a more numerous, because more intellecaially
productive population.

The history of the People, from pre-Adamite times to those
of Canaan and the Congo, furnish incontestable proof of the
inevitable woi ngs of this law. Through ages, and aeons per-
haps, the continent of America had been preparing for its ulti-
mate possessors. Its veins of iron, of coal, and of practical and
precious metals, its noble sea-harbors, its mighty lakes and
rivers, inviting commerce, its vast stretches of fertile farm-land,
its inexhausti])le forests, its unrivalled sites for the great cities
\^hich the accumulating life of a greater nation must eventually
occupy — all these pointed to a possibility which must in time
be evolved from an era of preparation.

So the V hite man came. He came with his mvsterious
ships and his more mysterious implements and arms, with his
prancing horses that, alone, were to revolutionize the ways of
Indian life, with his greed for gold and gain, his determination
for dominion, his arrogant and overbearing nature, his manhood-
destroying drink, his love of barter and his peculiar creeds.
The first rav of light that showed to the watchful Columbus
from the Santa Maria's deck the low-lying islands of the South-
ern sea ushered in, for the American Indian to whom the ureat
admiral thus unwittingly came, not the sunrise, but the twilight,
of iiis' race.

!=«

THE COMING OF THE IVHETE MAN.

177

That the red-man and the white had met before Columbus'
day there is Httle doubt. But this acquaintance had been so
limited and fragmentary that the existence of a white race was
to the Indian little else than mythical, mysterious and legendary.
The discoN'cries of Columbus fjave to the red-man of the Ameri-
can continent his first real and lasting knowledge of the abso-

hO TllL UlUn. MA.N CAMK.

lute existence of the "white manitous" of his lodge-fire legends
and tales.

lUit, because of these legends and tales, he was all the more
ready to put in jn-actice his universal law i>f hospitality, and to
extend to the strangers a ready and generous welcome.

Rumor never lags, and rumor that has its foundation in fact
travels even swifter than a groundless fabrication. Along the

ii:

■*_

178

THE COMIXG OF THE JV/f/TT MAN.

narrow Indian trails tliat skirted tlic Atlantic seaboard and
stretched far away into the back country, or over tlie gleaming
water-ways that bore the frail canoe, there sped with ever-
increasing force the startling reports of the coming of the
canoes with wings, the men with white faces and invulnerable
bodies, the strange animals — neither dog nor deer — upon
which the pale-faced chieftains rode, the black-frocked medicine
men, the wooden cross, and the tubes that shot out liuhtninu:.

Around the fire-pit in lodge and council house, as from tribe
to tribe the marvellous stories ran, the strange tidings were told
and retold, discussed and pondered upon, and the mysterious
visitors were reckoned as white manitous sent from the far-
distant shores of Che-ba-ku-nah, the Land of Souls.

The Algonquins of the North listened to and spread the
story as it came from those of their people who in 1497 had
seen the ships of the Cabots, and those who, in 1500, had
watched from rocky shores the sails of Cortcreal ; the tribes of
the South responded witli the reports of those who had wel-
comed the caravels of Ojeda and Vespucci in 1499, and,
during the months of 1500 and 1502, had seen through the live
oaks and the pines the vessels of now unknown Spanish navi-
gators who explored the coast from Pensacola and the Gulf to
the mouths of the Chesapeake 7\vx\ the Hudson. The Indians
of the sea-coast received as gifts or in barter new and marvellous
trinkets and cloths, glittering and gorgeous in color, such as had
never been seen before. i\nd, as they showed these baubles
and stuffs to tlieir brethren of the interior, they told also of a
maiiic drink which the white manitous had given them, and
which first set tl.em on fire and then filled them with pas.-.ion
and mirth and the desire for sleej?

So, with extravagant demonstrations of welcome, with pres-

' ' «^r3^TWf ,

" Al'lNt' 1111

^,KUou Tuvn. mK^iAK'MN.; n..iN..s si.ia..

THE COMfNG OF TIfl' U'lfJTE MAN.

i8i

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ents of maize and fisli and fruits, and, often, with offcrini^s in
sacrifice to propitiate and please their mysterious visitors, the
Indians of the North .American coast from Yucatan to Labrador,
gave to the first of the navigators a cordial, hearty and helpful
welcome. There does not appear a single exception to this
spontaneous Indian hospitality in the whole story of early
American discovery.

But this record of friendship was soon to be changed, and by
the very men who should have perpetuated it. All too speedily
the trustful and superstitious Indians found their white mani-
tous to be but mortal men, and very scurvy ones at that.

The opening years of the sixteenth century saw Europe still
but half-civilized. Letters and learning were monopolized by
the few, and tlie letters were as crude as was the learning
pedantic. The invention by means of which Faust and Guten-
berg were to give an immeasurable advance to man's possi-
bilities, the freedom of thought that was to emancipate him
from the slavery of Rome, moved both slowly and uncertainly.
The baleful influence of feudalism, and the iron bands of a
priestly despotism which even then held over one third of all
the land in Europe in thrall, still kept the men and women of
Europe in political and spiritual bondage. And it was the
nation most deeply sunk in this feudal and religious despotism
that gave to the world the knowledge of a new continent and
sent her shij)s and her sailors across the western sea to discover,
explore, conquer and claim for the king of Spain all the new-
found lands.

Schooled in the ruthless tutelage of ei«'ht centuries ot war-
fare and of conquest amid the Moors of Spain, every Spaniard
was a figliter, and, in the eyes of hidalgo and of don, evC' y infidel,
as Dr. Ellis says, was " an enemy exempted from all tolerance

;

182

y/Z/i COMING OF THE WHITE MAN.

and mercy. Trcaclicry, defiance of pledges and treaties, bru-
talities and all wild and reckless strata^^ems, had educated the
champions of the Cross and faith in what were to them but the
accomplishments of the soldier and the fidelity of the believer."

Brutality may be evnlained, though it can never be excused^
and this condition of the .Spanish nature in 1500 helps to
explain the atrocities which befouled the pathway along which
Spanish dis( yvery passed. Add to this an insatiable greed of
gold and of spoil, an absolute disinclination to work, more
marked than that of the Indian brave himself, and an arrogance
of bigotry w'hich saw in all men not of Castilian faith and
blood heretics and infidels, and in all whom the Church held as
pagans material only for serfs and slaves, and the cause that
led alike to Spanish dominion and to Spanish downfall is at
once disclosed.

It was with such a nature as this that the Indians of America
were, first of all, brought into contact.

The child-nature, as it is quick to welcome and appropriate
the marvellous, is also quick to retaliate when what it has
loyally accepted proves unworthy or hostile. • A child, hurt by
a new pet or injured by a new toy, angrily punishes or destroys
its aggressor ; a savage, deceived or abused by one at first
accepted as faultless, speedily learns to distrust and detest.
Familiarity does often breed contempt, and when the sadly
mortal nature of the supposed manitous became so painfully
api)arent to the disillusioned red-man, distrust and hatred soon
worked their logical course.

The European occupation of America naturally divides
itself into three epochs : the days of the navigators, the days of
the cojiquistadores, the days of the colonists, and in each epoch
is to be found the same misunderstanding and disregard of the

TJIE COMING OF THE U'JIJTE MAN.

183

i'>

Indians character and the Indian's riulit. The treachery of
the navigators, the brutaUty of tiie conquerors, and the studied
injustice of the colonists laid the foundation for the years of
terror, of massacre and of blood that fill the jKiges of early
American history.

The very first phase of European contact with the Ameri-
can was the knavish kidnapping of hosts by guests as "sam-
ples " for exhibition at home ; the next was the cruel system of
Indian slavery which, instituted by Columbus himself, was prac-
tised by every nation that thereafter found a footing on Ameri-
can soil.

In the days of the navisfators the slave-catcher and the
explorer travelled in company, and, basing the authority for
their actions upon the infamous Sparish law that gave to the
King as suzerain and liege a proprietory right over all tlie
lands discovered, and all the natives thereof, the Spanish
explorers took possession alike of lands and natives in the
name of their King and allotted their human spoils according
to the rank and station of the "gentlemen" of the expedition.
The system of Indian slavery thus instituted by Columbus and
his companions outri vailed in horror and atrocity all the malig-
nities of the most fiendish form of modern African slavery.

Spain, with the long line of her navigators, from Columbus
the admiral, and Velasci'iez, the slave-catcher of Yucatan, to
De Soto, bloody and brutal in his greed for Indian slaves, led
this infamous and demoralizing trafiic. lUit, as has been said,
the other nations who followed her as explorers and colonizers
were but little behind her in their treacherous trade in men.
Gasper Cortereal in his Portuguese vessel brought away from
Labrador a number of its natives, "admirably calculated for
labor, and the best slaves I have ever seen ; " Verrazano the

^^^

184

77//? COMIXG OF 77 IE WHITE MAN.

Frenchman foully returned the h()S|)itality of the North Caro-
lina Indians who had rescued his drowning; sailors, by kidnap-
ping the children of the tribe; Mawkins the I^lnglishniaii in his
slave-ship, bearing the merciful name of "Jesus," followed suit,
and the iniquitous system thus begun did not entirely disappear
until the brighter days of colonial revolution.

The Indians of America acknowledged neither master nor
lord. The Iroquois and the Cherokee republics, fit prototypes
of the greater republic that was to follow them, taught the
lessons of man's equality and freedom that were common to all
the Indian tribes. Brave and chief were upon an equal footing,
and the red-men could neither understand nor appreciate the
iniquitous law of Spain nor the arrogant assumption of posses-
sion which the white men claimed.

The logical result of brutality and bad faith on the part of
the stronger party must be hatred and duplicity on the part
of the weaker and persecuted one. No wonder that the startled
natives of the seashore tribes shot off great flights of arrows at
the approaching ships thinking to kill them as they would the
beasts of prey; no wonder that Jacques Cartier, feeling his way
alone: the northeastern coasts, where for vears Breton fisher-
men and unscrupulous voyagers had trafficked and cheated,
reported the Indians to be " wild and unruly ; " no wonder that
the red-man's hatred of the S [vanish conqiiistadorcs should be so
intense that a captive chief bound to the Spanish torture stake,
when promised e.^inal bliss or eternal torment as he should
accept or reject the Catholic faith, asked the pertinacious
" black-coat " if there were any Spaniards in heaven, and on
being assured that there were he bade the prie.-t begone and
added " I will not go to a })lace v/here I may meet with one of
that accursed race,"

«a

THE COMlMi or TlfE in//'/'/- JA/yV.

•85

As, first, along the narrow trails had sped the rumor of the
white man's landing upon the shores of the "(ireat Salt Water,"
until the tribes of the coast had seen and the tribes of the
interior had heard of this new factor in Indiai. life, so now
quickly followed the tidings of disaster and of death which the
the new comers had
wrought, until those
wh(j had been ready
to welcome were hot
to meet and repel this
treacherous invader.
The brothers of the
kidnapped Donnacona
in the North, and of
the butchered Chero-
kee patriots in the
South, replaced their
gifts of hospitality with
the war-whoop and
gave to their persecu-
tors blood for blood.
Step by step they dog-
ged the track of Euro-
pean exploration and
the battle of Mauvila
on the Alabama, " the
bloodiest battle ever ft)ught on our soil between the red-man
and the white,"* marked the protest as it showed the inherent
weakness of the Indian tribes.

* Koiiglit ill tlie year 15(0 between l)e Solo and tlie Indians of the Cherokee confederacy. Tlie Spanisli loss in
Unied and woniided was 175 ; the Indi.m, accordin.; to Spanish records, nearly 3000. Mauvila was an Indian town
on the Alabama river about thirty miles north of the present city of Mobile — which derives its name from this old
Indian stronghold.

SPANISH UCCUl'ATIUN.

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IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-S)

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2.0

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1 86

THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN.

Still the conquerors persisted, and fast upon their heels
came the colonists — a mingled and constantly-increasing
throng, the oppressed, the adventurous and the scum of Europe
seeking homes and wealth in a new world where liberty could
be turned to license, and tlie force of a man's strong arm was
the only or the surest law.

But now another element, more potent than the white
man's arm and the red-man's vengeance, was introduced into this
conflict of races; an element more destructive, because more
insidious, more fatal because more degrading than Sjmnish rack
and chain or Eniilish ^m\\ and sword.

The white man's fire-water was his strongest and most
deadly ally in the conquest and disintegration of the native
American race. The story of its introduction, its influence,
and its triumph is the saddest record yet made of the downfall
and destruction of a once noble race and is, in itself, the strong-
est plea for temperance that the annals of man's weaknesses
can show.

Up to the time of Columbus drunkenness was an unknown
vice among the American Indians. Their sole drink was cold
water save among certain of the Southern tribes where it is
said, though this is not entirely proven, that a certain decoction
of herbs steeped into what was termed "the black drink" was
an occasional though by no means appetizing beverage. Smoke
was sometimes swallowed and retained in the lungs until partial
intoxication resulted, but even this was considered a demoraliz-
ing habit and was used more as an anaesthetic than an excitant.

When Ma-se-wa-pe-ga, the Ojibway, brought back from his
visit to the "white spirits" a certain allowance of the fire-water
received from them as a gift, none of his tribe dared drink it,
believing it to be some deadly poison that the white man used

BSSSB

#•

THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN.

.87

as a snare. To test its virtues, however, so runs the story, they
resoKed to try its effect upon a very old woman wlio liad but a
short time longer to live, and whose death would therefore be of
small account. The old woman drank of the proffered "poi-
son " but, instead of dying, she appeared perfectly happy ; recov-
ering from the first effects, she begged for more. Thereupon the
braves themselves dared to taste and speedily drank up what
remained. From that time, says the narrative, " fire-water
became the mammon of the Ojibways, and a journey of hun-
dreds of miles to procure a taste of it, was considered but as
boy's play."

And as with the Ojibways of the West, so with the tribes of
the East, the South, and the far Pacific coast. The advent of
the white man's "fire-drink" marked the first downward step
for the red race of America, whose desire like that of the child-
nature everywhere, knew no limit to appetite but gratification.

" Take these Indians in their own trim and natural disposi-
tion," wrote Master William Wood in his " New En(j:land's
Prospect," two hundred and fifty years ago, "and they be
reported to be wise, lofty-spirited, constant in friendship to one
another, true in their promises and more industrious than many
others." And so they remained, he continues, " until some of
our English, to unclothe them of their beavei* coats, clad them
with the infection of swearins: and drinkin*'- which was never in
fashion with them before, it being contrary to their nature to
guzzle down strong drink, until our bestial examj^le and dishon-
est incitation hath brought them to it, and, from overflowing
cups there hath been a proceeding to revenge, murder, and
overflowing of blood."

" The crowning curse, the source of nearly all other evils
that beset the Indians, and nearly all that embarrassed our

iip'iii

mgfmmmmmmm

i88

7'//fi: COMING OF THE WHfTK MAN.

early relations and intercourse with their race," says Mr. Tur-
ner in his history of Indian treaties, " was the use of sj)irituous
liquors. In the absence of them the advent of our race to this
continent would have been a blessins: to the red-man instead of
what it has proved — the cause of their ruin and gradual exter-
mination. . . . The introduction of 'fire-water,' vitiating
their appetites, cost them their native independence of char-
acter; made them dependants upon the trader and the agents
of rival governments ; mixed them up with factions and con-
tending aspirants to dominion ; and from time to time, impelled
them to the fields of blood and slaughter, or to the stealthy
assault with the tomahawk and scalping-knife. F'or the ruin of
his race the red-man has a fearful account against the white."

Any one who reads the Indian story in the light of accumu-
lating facts cannot but be impressed with the real cause of the
Indian's decline and fall. As we see how the cursed love of
drink can change and vitiate the nature of men born to be
peers of the greatest minds of earth, we can readily understand
how a less intelligent nature, scarcely midway on the road to
civilization, could be affected and turned back by this same
degrading agent.

" If the discernment of the savage is little," says Major
Powell, " his discrimination is less ;" and where appetite sways
desire, neither discernment nor discrimination can exist.

The trader with his keg of rum could accomplish more than
with all his barter-stock of duffel cloth and beads. Wherever
the Indian trails led to trapper's hut or trader's post the infat-
uated red-man, inflamed by the one taste of the white man's
fire-water that created the thirst for more, bore his load of pel-
tries, careless of their cost and reckless of their selling price
if only rum was the return.

THE COi\f/XG OF TlfE WHITE AfAN.

18)

Appetite is the grave of reason, as it is of manliness, honor,
decency and truth. Priest and missionary might implore and
threaten, colonial authority might legislate and restrict, chiefs
and councils might protest and plead, but the curse of rum
once fastened uj)on an heretofore abstemious race was more
powerful than priest or governor, chief or council.

"With his keg of rum," says !\Ir. Turner, "the l^nglishman
could succeed, and with a morbid and sordid perseverance he
plied it in trade as well as in diplomacy. It was rum that first
enabled the Englishman to get a foothold upon the Hudson,
upon the Mohawk, along the shores of Lake Ontario ; and, in
the absence of its use, bold as the assertion may appear, he
would not have succeeded in putting an end to French domin-
ion in America."

As we look at the red race to-day — a problem and a puzzle
alike to statesman and philanthropist — we need to remember
that, debased, uncouth, blo(xly-minded, treacherous and bestial
as he may appear, the very degradations that render him an
unsavory quantity in the eyes of culture and refinement are due
to the ancestors possibly of the very persons who now regard
him with loathing and contempt.

Before the white man came theft and dissimulation, cow-
ardice and drunkenness were unknown amonc: the Indian
tribes. " No people," says Mr. Morgan (referring to the earlier
Iroquois), "ever possessed a higher sense of honor and self-
respect in regard to theft or looked down upon it with greater
disdain. . . . Their lanfj:uatjc does not admit of double
speaking, or of the perversion of the words of the speaker.
Dissimulation was not an Indian habit, and before the coming
of the whites the Indian at large had not a mercenary thought."

"From the hour," says Mr. Turner, "that Henry Hudson

«J»

,-atmammtmn

I9C

THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN.

first lured the Indians on board his vessel, on the river that
bears his name, and gave them their first taste of spiritous liq-
uors, the whole history of British intercourse with the Indians
is marked by the use of this accursed agent as a principal
means of success."

But the use of this " accursed agent," however, stretches
still further back. It came in with Spanish cruelty and Portu-
guese greed, with French diplomacy and English avarice, and
from the days of the explorers until now it has been the chief
abettor of the Indian's vices and the chief cause of the Indian's
woes.

As, therefore, we read the story of the growing contact
between the red race and the white we must never forget that
beneath all the accumulating causes for friction, distrust and
even for open lupture and war there ever lurked this baleful and
insidious foe of all that is manly in man or womanly in woman.
It was this demon of appetite, this devil of drink, that as Cassio
declared could make a sensible man " by and by a fool and
presently a beast." A resistless destroyer where reason and
intelligence hold sway it was more to be feared and exorcised
by the poor savage than manitoit, oki o\ jcbi or all the countless
spirits of evil and of woe that his childish superstition could
conjure or his unreasoning fear could dread.

Till

chaptI':r X.

n %

COLOMAI, INJUSriCK.

!= I

,j.

/ "TiiK red men know nothini; of troiil)le,"

said Sa-go-yc-wat-lia the Seneca, commonly
called Red Jacket, in one of those mas-
terly speeches that showed him to be at
once an orator and a j^hilosopher, " until
it came from the white men. As soon as
thev crossed the <''reat waters thev wanted
our country, and in return have always
been ready to teach us how to quarrel
about their reliiiion. The thinus tliev tell
us wc do not understand, and the light
they give us makes the straight and plain path trod bv c^ur
fathers dark and drearv."

This pathetic statement of an undisputed fact furnishes the
key to the strained relations that for full four centuries have
existed between the red-man and the white.

Civilization seems invariably to have taken hold of bar-
barism by the "hot end," and the danger of playing with fire
has been proven again and again. Rum and religion are both
forced down the wide open mouths of the wondering savage
and, appetite being always stronger than reason, the bad that

civilization gives takes precedence over the good.

191

» l i»iM i ik.iMi mstiitimii

192

COL ONI A r. JXJ( 'S TICE.

This, at least, was the case so far as the native races of
America were concerned, and a study of Christian discovery
and proselytism will show a similar experience in other new-
found lands.

Appetite inHamed, natural characteristics combated, and
superstition illogically attacked are certain to result in friction,

" ■ ■'••■' ^■'_?:>^'"'

TIIK DIAIU (Jl' Ills (JUMKADE.

dispute and conflict. It was not alone what Dr. Eggleston
denominates " the wide difference between the moral standards
and social customs of the white race and the red" that proved
the chief obstacle to the civilization of the Indian; it was the
too frequent absence of these standards and customs on the
part of the European that was at fault, A thoughtless method

COL ONJAL INJUSTICE

«93

of approach, an unwise system of communication, and a studied
injustice or brutality in treatment first unsettled and then
aroused the diverse nature of the unsophisticated Indian.

Received as gods the white men proved to be devils; wel-
comed with overflowing hospitality they repaid it with deceit
and theft ; freely offered homes and harborage they surrounded
them with frowning forts and instruments of murder; and,
recompensing simple faith with social vices, they gave in barter
for the fertile fields and free air of their Indian hosts the
plague pests of their race — debauchery and disease, the white
man's foulest evils — rum and the small-pox.

In the year 1494 Columbus cruising among the islands of
the West India group sent home to Spain twelve ships laden
with captive Indians as slaves.

In 1494 young Sebastian Cabot, with two shi{)loads of
English convicts, skirted the North American coast from New-
foundland south to New York harbor and Cape Hatteras. He
came for purposes of colonization and the first gift of the old
world to the new was this questionable contingent of Knglish
jail-birds, pardoned by the king to proselyte and people the
Western wilderness. The expedition proved a failure and,
lacking in both sailors and provisions, it turned toward Eng-
land carrying nothing hoiiieward but the memory of hardships
and a number of kidnapped Indians, stolen for slaves.

In 1500 Caspar Cortereal, sailing along seven hundred miles
of the northeasterl) Anerican coast found the people "well
made, intelligent and modest," living in wooden houses and
" admirably calculated for labor." He kidnapped fifty-seven of
these hospitable natives for slaves, and the name of that north-
erly coast is to-day a lasting monument of the white man's
treachery — Terra de Labrador, the " land of laborers."

5^ •

^^AaUX

194

COI.OMAL INJUSTICE.

■1

And thus, on almost every year succeeding the days of
these first navigators, was their pernicious example followed.
The European adventurers, mostly in the clumsy caravels of
Sj)ain, sought with never-fiagging zeal the coasts of the
Southern United States of Mexico, Central America and the

islands of the Spanish
Main impelled by two
desires — the discovery
of gold and the cap-
ture of Indians for
slaves.

Wherever alone:
those tropic shores an
Indian tribe was found
or an Indian lodtje
looked out toward the
sea came with blood-
hound and with lash, with harquebuse and spear the pitiless
man-hunters, while above their heads floated what Mr. Park-
man has well called " the portentous banner of Spain."

It was, at least, but stern and merited justice that fate
visited upon these earlier explorers in a land wherein they
hoped to find the spoils of a second Mexico or of a richer
Peru. Ponce de Leon, seeking in a land of flowers boundless
riches and the fountain of perpetual youth, found only the seeds
of death from the poisoned arrow of a hunted Indian fighting
for his home-land. Velasquez, de Cordova, Miruelo, Garay,
de Ayllon, de Quexos and Estavan Gomez discovered little but
disappointment, loss and death along the then unknown shores
from the Carolinas to the mouth of the Mississippi. Narvaez, vio-
lator of Indian graves, ended in famine and shipwreck on the

TllK Piril.KSS MAN-IIUMER.

J,.

CO I. ONL / / JNJUSTJCE.

195

Texan coast, and Cabeca dc Vaca, the questionable hero of
adventures more romantic than any ever imagined by Del'oc or
told by Stevenson, wandered for six weary years, an outcast
and a tramp, through unknown Indian tribes — the first white
man to cross the continent, befriended and pitied by the very

savages

he had

hoped to capture and
enslave.

And Hernando de
Soto — "noble knight
and true Christian "
— the foremost fig-
ure in the story of
the Gulf region —
what of him ? The
very crown and re-
finement of Spanish
cruelty, an ardent ad-
mirer of " this sport
of killing Indians,"
De Soto repaid wel-
come with treachery
and marked his whole
disastrous march
from the Everglades
of Florida to the
banks of the Missis-
sippi with the blood of tortured Indians and tlie smoke of
burning villages. Not the name of this much vaunted Ade-
lantado — bankrupt, butcher and tyrant — should be held high
for the esteem and pattern of American youth, but those

THK HURIAI, OK DK. SOTO.

196

cor. o.\ '/A I. J. \jus 1 ici'..

rather of the native American patriots wiio dared withstand the
white man's arrow-proof arms and to valiantly flight to the death
for their homes — Ilirihiujua the Suminole, Capafi the Creek,
Tuscaloosa, chief of the Chickasaws, and the betrayed young
chieftainess of Cofitachiqui.

l''()r 'generations the vouth of America have been trained to
venerate the sturdy and uncomp. .nising manliness of their
ancestors. It has been a cardinal point in all historical teach-
ing to exalt the white man and abase the Indian.

To come of a line of " Indian fighters" has been esteemed
an honor that far outshone the heroic ancestry of bygone
times; and, as i)residents have been made of Indian conquerors,
and statesmen of frontier lawyers and j)ioneers, so has the
Indian invariably been depicted as an ignorant, cunning and
ferocious savage whose conquest was a patriotic duty and whose
extermination was a divine necessity.

No doubt there may have been wisdom even if there appears
but scant justice in this line of teaching. Here, again, opinion is
largely determined by the point of view from which the past
history of America is to be regarded. The aggressive manhood
by means of which the vast area of the North American con-
tinent has been reclaimed from unproductiveness and made the
home of millions where, before, it could barely sustain thousands,
is in strict accord with the plan of eternal progression which
has marked the history of the whole human race.

But, in the interests of truth, of justice and of humanity it is
only right that some credit should be given to the conquered
minority. While we revere the ancestors to whose indomitable
fortitude, courage and perseverance America's present ):)reemi-
nence is due, we should, with equal candor, be ready to acknovvl-
edge their faults and their short-comings and allow to the race

COI.ONIAr. INJUSTICE.

•97

that gave them place, such measure of patriotism and of valor
as the truly brave man is always ready to concede to his foe-
man and his rival.

" Truly," said Mendoza the viceroy, when he heard of the
achievements of Ouigualtanqui, chief of the Chickasaws, and
how he had driven the
Spanish invaders from
the bayous of Louis-
iana and the shores of
the great river into
which had been hur-
riedly flung the bones
of the defeated De
Soto, " truly, here was
a noble barbarian, an
honest man, a true
patriot ! "

In one of the piti-
less massacres by
which the patriotic
Pequot Indians were
reduced to submission
by our "heroic ances-
tors" a certain por-
tion of them in a lofty
c o n t e m p t of death
were, says the old record, "killed in the swamp like sullen
dogs who would rather, in their self-willedness and madness, sit
still and be shot through or cut to pieces, than to beg for
mercy." A writer of seventy years ago, commenting on this
scrap of history, says: "when the Goths laid waste the city of

"KILLKU IN THK bWAMl'.'

COLONIAL INJUSTICE.

Rome, they found the nobles clothed in their robes and seated
with stern tranquility in their curule chairs; in this manner
they suffered death without an attempt at supplication or resist-
ance. Such conduct in them was applauded as noble and
magnanimous; in the hapless Indian it was reviled as obstinate
and sullen."

Let us, therefore, in the light of history as written by the
conquerors of the Indians themselves, or by the eulogists of
those conquerors, regard the conquest and colonization of
North America from the Indian's side of the question and see
to whose charge might justly be laid the conflicts and the
troubles that accompanied colonization.

" It is from the old times of which I am speaking to thee,"
an old Ojibway woman explained to Johann Kohl, the German
traveller and explorer, "the very, very old, when there were no
white men at all in the country. Then the Indians were much
better than at this hour. They were healthier and stronger.
They lived long and became very old. They could all fast
much longer. Hence they had better dreams.* They dreamed
of none but good and excellent things, of hero deeds and the
chase, of bears and stags and caribous, and other great and
grand hunting animals ; and when he dreamed the Indian
knew exactly where those animals could be found. He made
no mistake. . . . But now," she added sadly, "their strength
is broken and they have lost their memory. Their tribes have
melted awav, their chiefs have no voice in the council. Their
wise men and priests have no longer good dreams, and the old
squaws forget their good stories and fables."

It was into the life of thf^se "old times," these "very, very
old " that the white man abruptly came.

• " Dreams " when used by the Indian always meant tliouglits, determinations, or plans of life.

;

COLONIAL INJUSTICE.

199

T/
1

The Indian, as we have seei., met him with a kindly wel-
come, an open hospitality, and an eager readiness for barter.
It was only when despoiled, deceived, hunted, kidnapped and
maltreated that the hospitable welcomer became the wary foe.
And thouijh this chansfe came srraduallv it came all too soon.

o 00*'

It came even before the days of the colonists, for navigator and
conqueror alike had proved deceivers.

Civilization always distrusts savagery. The European col-
onists were, for the most part, sufferers from the savageries of
civilization — the tyrannies of king and creed. But despite
their bitter experiences — perhaps because of them — they
came to the American shores with a distrust of the natives,
whom they expected to
meet only as foemen,
as absolute as was their
determination to con-
vert and conquer them.
And conversion thouijh
foremost in announce-
ment was always last in
fact. Columbus is even
said to have excused his treacherous kidnapping of the island-
ers of the Caribees by the statement that they were to be taught
Spanish and then sent back to their brethren as " interpreters "
to assist in the work of conversion.

To the French Jesuits in Canada and the vSpanish " padres "
in Southern California full praise should be accorded for good
intention and patient zeal. The effects of their earnest though
wrongly grounded teaching lived long after the bones of these
devoted teachers had mingled with the inhospitable soil of the
land they had hoped to save. But even their efforts were

RKDMAN AND WHITE.

:■

^00

COLONIAL INJUSTICLi

;.l^-^;^^i^Vi

calculated to arouse hostility among the race they had come
to helj).

The Indian superstitions were too firmly rooted to yield at
once to other and antagonistic superstitions. Crucifix and

beads, censer and candle, mass
and mysteries were to the In-
dian but the white man's " med-
icine," and were only better
than his own as they possessed
more of ijlitter and barbaric at-
tractiveness. " His pictures of
infernal fires and torturing dev-
ils," says Mr. Parkman, " were
readily comprehended, but with
respect to the advantages of the
French paradise he was slow
to conviction."

The Jesuit conversion and absorption oi the American
Indians failed because of the arrow of the Iroquois and the
rum of England. But the duplicity and greed of the Canadian
fur-trader and voyagciir accomplished what the zeal of the
priest could not compass, and Algonquin and Athabascan
became little less than spiritless serfs of these arrogant lords
of trade.

y\nd yet such was the " fascination and flexibility " of the
French character that this conquest was a comparatively blood-
less one. The French seemed to read the Indian nature better
than any other of the new-comers and they sought to identify
themselves with the personal interests of the Indian whereas
the English had only contempt for the red men. The English
colonists looked upon the natives, so says Mr. Coolidge, "with

" Civil. IZAIION DISTKI'SIS S.WACKKY.'

COL ONIAL INJl STICK.

20l

detestation and horror, taking every opportunity for their exter-
hiination, and using every means to annoy and exasperate
them."

As merciless as the Spaniard in the South, as bigoted as
the Jesuit in the North, the Puritan element that was the
dominant one in the colonization of the New England " Planta-

"DOOMED AND UNCOVKNAN I KD llEATilEN."

tions"was equally regardless of the Indian's rights and care-
less of the Indian's wrongs.

The Puritan saw in the red-man only a "doomed and
uncovenanted heathen," a non-productive pagan whom, by the
Lord's will, it was his duty to dispossess of his unrighteous
inheritance that the sons of God might occupy and develop

i ^

1 .r'

- 1 '

'■'■:

i ;i

202

COL ONI A I. INJl 'S 1 ICK.

it. As Dr. Ellis says, "the enemies of the Puritans were the
enemies of Ciod."

In justice however to the Puritans it must be admitted that
even before their day the Indians of New England had felt the
white man's tyranny had learned to distrust and hate him.

Weymouth and Harlow, Smith and Hunt and others among
the explorers, kidnapped and enslaved the natives; such ques-
tionable colonists as Popham's men on the Maine coast, who in
1608 hunted the Indians with dogs and practised upon them
" many impositions in barter and bargains " were but poor
samples of the white man's civilization, though they found
their imitators in Wollaston's unprofitable colony at Mount
Wollaston, or Quincy, in 1625, and in the suggestions of the
Rev. Samuel Stoddard, of Northampton, who as late as 1703
advised the huntinc: of Indians with doos because, said this
pious reasoner, " they are to be looked upon as thieves and
murderers; they doe acts of hostility without proclaiming war;
they don't appear openly in ye field to bid us battle ; they use
those cruelly that fall into their hands; they act like wolves
and are to be dealt with as wolves."

The men who colonized Maine were, according to their own
historian, " encroachinsf aij^ressors ; " the merchant adventurers
who first settled New Hampshire were " the terror of the
Indians." The stern and merciless injustice of Endicott —
the culmination of countless acts of tyranny, treachery and
aggression on the part of the Plymouth and Connecticut col-
onies — precipitated the Pequot War and decided the position
of a naturally warlike people toward their persecutors. The
patriotism of Metacomet of Mount Hope, known to the English
as "King Philip," fired to resistance by the continued encroach-
ments of the men whom his father Massasoit had befriended,

..^i^-atAikiii^Mat-

EPISODE 01-- THE lUKNCIl AND INDIAN

^VAR-RESCI'K or ISUAEI. PUTNAM.

^f]

COLONIAL INJUSTICE.

205

found a response among the Eastern Inrlir.ns smarting under
" repeated injuries at the hands of the English," 'ut it was only
after long-continued negotiation and council and the feeling
among the Indians that there was no relief possible by other
than warlike methods that the frenzy of what was known as
" King Philip's war " burst upon the New England colonists.
The " French and Indian wars " of the colonies that, dating
from the closing years of the seventeenth century, culminated
in the bloody hostilities of 1754-58 were directly traceable to
the aggressions of the colonists. They were, indeed, doubly t'le
work of the white men, in that their cause is to be found in the
steady usurpation of the land by the English and in the deter-
mination of the French to check the advance of their rivals by
combining with the Indians against them.

It may also be added that the numerous Indian massacres
that marked the years of the colonial period were caused not
by Indian barbarity, but by so-called "Christian" policy — the
plain result of the malign influence of either France or Eng-
land. " Neither nation," says a recent student of this phase of
American history,* " was high-minded enough to scorn availing
herself of savage allies to do bloody work which she would not
have dared to risk national reputation by doing herself. This
fact is too much overlooked in the habitual estimates of the
barbarous ferocity of the Indian character as shown by those
early mas'^-acres."

In the Middle-State colonization the same general fact is
apparent. The Indian was never the aggressor, until forced,
by repeated bad faith, to the only remedy known to him —
armed retaliation. The story of the brutal massacre of the
Indians at Pavonia by order of the cowardly and obstinate

* Mrs. Jackson (" H. H." ) in " A Century of Dishonor."

2o6

COLONIAL INJUSTICE.

W ii

Dutcb governor, Van Twiller, is proof of this. The Esopus
war of 1663 was altogether due to the brutality of the colonists
and the frenzy caused by the distribution of unlimited rum.
"The Indians," says the editor of the Holland Documents,

" were sof)n made to
feel the presence of
the whites." Their
corn-hills were tram-
pled by Dutch cattle,
they were taxed by
the Dutch authori-
ties for the expense
incurred in the erec-
tion of forts under
the pretence that by
these ramparts the
Indians were de-
fended from their
enemies, and a refusal
to be taxed was threatened with punishment. " This combi-
nation of unfavorable circumstances," says the Documents,
"required but a slight addition to convert into estrangement
whatever good understanding or friendship hitherto existed
between the natives and the new comers, and this provocation
was not long wanting."

The Virijinia massacre of 1622 was the direct result of the
cruelty and rapacity of her colonists. Treachery and dissimu-
lation throughou. marked the dealings with the Indians, and
the Indian " wars" of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida were
entirely brought about by the jealousies, quarrels and incessant
disturbances between the English and Spanish colonists. A

'JUSTICK (JR WAR — WHICH?'

""^

HMi

»rTiia',

COLONIAL INJUSTICE,

207

pa<;e from the history of South Carolina's early days affords a
fair sample of the Indian policy of our stalwart forefathers
throughout all the colonies.

When first settled by the English South Carolina was inhab-
ited by some twenty Indian tribes. They had alrjady tasted the
treachery of the early Spanish explorers and had no great
desire for the presence or the homes of the white man. To
save themselves from Indian attack therefore, according to
Ramsey, one of the State's historians, " the Carolinians soon
found out the policy of setting one tribe of Indians against
another. By trifling presents they purchased the friendship of
some tribes, whom they employed to carry on war with others.
This not only diverted the attention of the natives from the
white settlers, but encouraged them to bring their captives to
Charleston for the purpose of transportation to the West Indies."

The Spaniards in
Florida man^iled the
living bodies of their
dusky captives; the
Fre nc h i n Canada
used the torture-stake
for the punishment of
their Indian foes. The
Puritans of Massachu-
setts " exulted " over
the grief of Philip at
the loss of his wife and
child, whom they had
sold into West Indian slavery. The cavaliers of Virginia and
of the Carolinas added to frequent treacheries, slavery and
torture. Dutchman and Swede alike plied their Indian allies

"no, WALDRON ! DOKS YOUK HAND WEIGH A
I'OUNI) NOW ? "

2o8

COL ONI A L IN/US I JCK.

with rum and then cheated them in trade, and it was not so
mucli the benevolence as the shrewdness of William I'enn
that made friendship a business investment and quietly ob-
tained the better of the Indians when he appeared to be
favorins: them.

Duplicity in trade and treachery in diplomacy worked
their lotjical results, and it was but a stern commentarv on
the white man's ways when certain Maine Indians, capturing
Major Waldron during one of their numerous outbreaks,
grimly satirized the trader's method of using a hand's weight
in the scales as a pound; cutting off the fingers of his left
hand they demanded tauntingly "Ho, Waldron! does your
hand weigh a pound now ? "

The first contact of civilization with barbarism had proved
far from creditable to the white men who came to convert and
to colonize. Las Casas and Eliot are names that stand out
amid all the bic..:kness of European treachery and deceit as the
friends of the Indians, luminous and peculiar because they
were exceptional. The Indians of colonial days had but few
friends. Amity was but a question of policy dependent only
upon the relative strength or weakness of the white man's arm.

It is small wonder that the Indian grew to distrust and
despise the hollow friendship of the white man. It is, indeed,
possible to find both force and feeling in the story that Mr.
Drake tells to the effect that a white man once meeting an
Indian in his path addressed him as "brother." "Ugh!"
grunted the Indian with an expression of evident meaning on
his face, "how came we to be brothers?" "Oh! by way of
Adam, I suppose," the specious white man replied. "Ugh!"
grunted the Indian again, "me thank him Great Spirit we no
nearer brothers."

COLONIAL INJi'STlCE.

209

The vidence is iindcniablL', declares Dr. Hllis, that in the
Indian wars of the colonists "the civilized man was generally
the aggressor, and though he expressed horror and disgust at
the barbarous and revolting atrocii! s of savage warfare, his
own skill and cruelty in wreaking vengeance hardly vindicated
his milder humanity."

Modern apologists for the later policy of repression and
extermination need to remember this as they lay down the
barbarous Western dictum that the only good Indian is a dead
Indian. The white man from the very first has requited kind-
ness and hospitality with oppression and cruelty, and it is little
wonder that the red-man turned at last upon his oppressor, and
displayed in his defence of lodge-fire and hunting-ground a
patriotism as intense raid devoted as was ever that of a Tell or
a Winkelried.

" He saw the cloud ordained to grow

And burst u|)(>n liis hills in woe;

He saw his i)eople withering lie

lleneath the invader's evil cvc.
Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones;

At midnight hour he woke to gaze

Upon his ha|)py cabin's blaze,
And listen ti) his children's dying groans.

He saw; and, maddening at the sight

(lave his liold Iiosom to the fight;

To tiger rage his soul was driven,

Mercy was not, nor sought nor given ;

The pale man from his lands must fly;

He would be free, or he would die ! " *

* From the ode by Cliarles Sprague (1S30), said to be one of the most fervent appeals in behalf of justice to tliu
Indian

I M inim.>^

rrrrrss

CHAFTHR XI.

PLACING TllK RKSl'ONSIHIMTY.

It is to be regretted that,
upon first approach, a superior
civilization always presents its
most questionable elements to
the inferior. The viciousness
and crudities, the demoraliza-
tion and temptations of all bor-
der settlements are well-known.
The trapper, the trade, the
hunter and the pioneer as they
are the hardiest are, also, too often, the hardest of men.

To fight with Nature for subsistence does not seem to sym-
metrically develop the Christian graces and the free life of the
forest and the hill3 tends more to license than to simple liberty.
In addition to this it may be asser+^ed that far too many of
the earlier settlers in any new land are prompted to emigration
by greed rather than by the nobler qualities of manly character.
To the attainment of their one selfish end do they bend not only
their own energies and endeavors but, quite as determinedly, the
plastic nature of the natives with whom they are brought into
contact and of whose welfare they are studiously disregardful.
The fur trader, the trapper, the Indian pedler, the Canadian

K?^".'>™

rr.AClXG THE RESrONSnUI.ITY.

voyageur and the conrciir de bois did more \q^ pervert and distort
the simple Indian manliness than it was possible for missionary
or apostle, colonial or home government to rectify and controvert.
Individual influence is always more powerful than indirect or
impersonal effort.

So, while it is a fact that the policy of the colonial and the
parent governments toward the Indians was based upon an
attempted equity, and that the lands occupied by settlers were,
presumably, to be acquired only by purchase, barter or treaty, it
is also beyond dispute that the business transactions and espe-
cially the real estate ventures of individual colonists were too
often in direct violation of treaty, bargain and contract. The
agents and representatives of the governments were often them-
selves the most culpable and, next to the white man's rum, the
white man's peculiar methods of land traffic with the Indian
were the cause of frequent and bitter hostilities.

The Indian's views on the land question were, as has been
shown, peculiar. 1 he tribal tenure of land was in perpetuity,
and no individual tribesman had authority or right, as an inui-
vidual, to sell a single foot of soil. The consent of the tribe was
necessary to such a transaction, and as, previous to the white
man's comino;, no land sales between tribes had ever taken ulace
this new order of things as it demanded new requirements was
altogether pc lexing to the Indian mind.

As no individual Indian could obtain absolute title to land, so
could no individual Indian transfer such title by sale, deed or gift.
This inability, never before disputed or even questioned, nat-
urally acted as an unconscious bias in the mind of the Indian,
totally unable to comprehend the white man's law of land
purchase and tenure.

The sachem Metacomet — otherwise known as " King

* J

J 3

212

PLACING THE RESrONSIBlLITY.

Philip" — though lavish in his gifts of land to the Massachusetts
colonists could not understand why his tribe should not be per-
mitted to hunt over those lands, which, so he supposed, he and
his white neighbors could still occupy in common.

" You are welcome," said Archihes, the Maryland sagamore,
to the men of Calvert's colony ; " we will use one table. My

"A NKW I'KATUKK IN TIIK INDIAN LANDSCAI'Ii.

people shall hunt for my brothers, and all things shall be in
common between us."

But things could not be in common. This the Indian,
reared to vastly different ideas of property and of living than
those held by his white " brother," speedily discovered. His
lands, given to the colonists for but small considerations, were
permanently closed to him ; his home, invaded by the white

PLACING THE RESPONSIBILITY.

213

man's labor-saving clothing and implements, became less and
less self-dependent, and his tribesmen, unable to resist the
white man's seductive barter and tempting fire-water grew
dissatisfied, quarrelsome and, even, less manly.

The very '" improvements " of civilization were factors in this
deteporation of Indian character. " With the introduction of
iron and brass kettles," says Dr. Eggleston, "and poor iron
hatchets, made on purpose for the Indian trade, all necessity for
earthen jDots and stone hatchets vanished; the rudimentary
arts of pottery and stone cutting were quickly forgotten and the
Indian took a step backward in becoming by so much less an
artificer and by so much more a mere hunter. . . . The
elaborate fur garments were ripped up and sold, and their kind
made no more ; the duffel cloth, without so much as a hem or
seam, was thrown about the shoulders and the Indian was more
than ever a savage."

The white settler's horses — a new feature in the Indian
landscape — trampled down the unfenced fields of standing corn
upon which the Indian so largely depended ; the hogs of the
colonists, roving at will, uprooted the inland Indian's garden
beds and the seaside Indian's clam banks. On the other hand
the Indian himself, accustomed to the belief that all nature,
animate and inanimate, was for man's subsistence and conven-
ience, failed to respect the theory of property in live stock and
regarding the white man's hogs, poultry and cattle as lawful
prey hunted them as he had always hunted the wild food-creat-
ures of his native woods.

It is the little worries of life that make up an aggregate of
woe, and the most destructive wars have often grown from the
most insignificant causes. The accumulation of these petty
annoyances on both sides of the color line fostered the growing

(il

.iJlaii

214

PLACING THE KESPONSIBILirV,

It;

seeds of discontent and finally developed into animosity, dispute
and open rupture.

The colonial political system also largely contributed to this
uneasiness and final disturbance The Indian was a thorou<j:h
democrat. He knew no king but himself, acknowledged no
authority greater than himself and admitted of no restraining
government except that of his own democratic tribe in which he
himself was as great a power as any.

Even such tribes as yielded to superior force — as did the
Delawares to the Iroquois — and made regular payments of
tribute looked upon this tribute simply as a prevention of con-
troversy or an avoidance of war with the powers which they
knew to be stronger than themselves.

When the European governments without show of reason
or justice, began to claim the American lands as their property,
they based their claim upon the right by discovery, asserted a
proprietary interest in the lands discovered and denied to the
Indians anything beyond a possessory title. The Indians how-
ever utterly failed to appreciate the unreasonable assertion that
they were no longer free men or the owners of the lands they
occupied, but vassals and liegemen of an unknown and far
distant power. Unaccustomed to obey their own chiefs save
at their own royal pleasure, they were unable to comj^rehend
the demanded submission to a Spanish, a French or an
Enolish kino^.

We have seen how brutally Spain met this democratic
denial of supremacy. France applied to it the same tactics
that had spread blood and slaughter among the Albigenses
and the Camisards, and England, harshly exacting submission
where none was due, accounted the Indians who dared with-
stand the colonial tyranny as guilty of high treason and visited

PLACING THE KESPOXSIBILITY.

215

them with the punishment of traitors, as in the case of the
followers of Philip of Pokanoket and the Yemassee "rebels" of
South Carolina.

Thus, due entirely to the misunderstandings of conflicting
natures, the brutalities of border life and the soulless policy of
trade that ignored every virtue for the sake of one profitable

lUbl'ANIDLA. — SI'.VIN's IIRST SLAUCU I l-.U C.KOlNI) IN AMKKICA.

barter, were Indian wars fastened upon the red and the white
man alike. And as, almost without exception, the earlier
colonial wars were the offsprings of white aggression, tyranny
and greed, so the later disturbances — from those of Revolu-
tionary times to Minnesota, the Lava Beds and the Apache out-
breaks of to-day — have the same basis of unstable methods and
of broken faith on the part of the white man.

What the Indians thought of this one-sided policy may be

2l6

PLACING THE RKSPONSIBILITY.

!ir

gathered from the rf^mark mack by one of their own leaders.
In 1794 an Americi.n officer presented a Western chief with
a reconciliatory medal upon one side of which was represented
President Washington standing with drawn sword, while on
the other appeared an Indian burying the hatchet. " Ugh ! "
grunted the chief, at once appreciating the inconsistency, " why
does not Great Father bury his hatchet, too ? "

A careful study into the causes of the Indian troubles of the
past, investigating them, State by State, from those of New Eng-
land, South and West, to the distant Pacific coast, will show that,
almost without exception, the blame in the matter rests directly
or indirectly with the white settlers.

The encroachments upon Indian lands, the sale of whiskey
among the native population, and the disregard and ill-treatment
accorded them by traders, settlers and agents have all contri-
buted toward an Indian hostility that has alternately smouldered
and blazed out from the first days of colonization to the present
time.

While America was colonial the Indian was alike the tool
and the terror of each nationality whose colonies were here
fostered. Remorselessly played with by each he was made the
instigating cause or the coercing quality by each unscrupulous
national rival. And, quite as positively, too, did he hold the
balance of power between England and France on the North
American continent, and was a factor which neither nation
could spare from its territorial schemes.

During the revolt of the colonies against the power of
England the Indian once more found himself in a quandary.
Made suspicious by repeated grievances and broken pledges, the
Indian was slow to form new alliance or allegiance. Years of
slow conquest had bound him at last in fealty to the English

eaders.
ef with
2sented
lile on
Ugh ! "
A, " why

s of the
;w Eng-
ow that,
directly

whiskey
eatment
I contri-
)uldered
present

the tool
ere here
nade the
rupulous
hold the
le North
r nation

)0wer of
uandary.
dges, the
Years of
English

it'

Coi

U* T/inKitada 7'- Wejt from 4* W»«Him;ton 3'

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PLACING THE KESrOXSlBILlTW

217

throne, and with the old spirit of liberty gone lie was unable to
appreciate the exalted principles of resistance to tyranny which
he had repeatedly tested to so little purpose.

The home liovernnient of England had been his court of
last resort, his one bulwark acrainst the a<j:<j:ressions of the settle-
ments. To see his natural enemies in revolt against his only
protectors would, logically, make him the unhesitating ally of
the red-coated warriors who fought for the great white chief
beyond the water of sunrise.

His loyalty was unquestioning, unwavering and aggressive,
and, because he followed the dictates of his reason and his con-
science, the Indian in the American Revolution has always been
regarded with feelings of horror and detestation.

The Mohawk Tha-yen-da-ne-gea, upon whose English name
of Joseph Brant has been heaped every contemptuous adjective
that hati"ed can apply to cruelty, saw in his loyalty to England
the only hope of independence for his tribe, and the man who
could forget his careful education and relapse into the vengeance
of savagery at Wyoming could also remember his own demo-
cratic birth and race and refuse to kneel to English royalty or
kiss the kingly hand at Windsor.

Mr. Lockwood L. Doty in his sketch of the position of the
Iroquois during the American Revolution says " It was a dic-
tate of policy, during the Revolution, to paint the Indian as
black as possible in crimes and cruelty, and to hold him often
responsible for deeds of which it might easily be shown the
British alone were guilty. Since then, the prejudice has
been adroitly fostered by those whose selfish ends it sub-
served. That the Indian committed excesses and barbarities
it would be in vain either to deny or palliate. But how far he
was justified in waging the only system of warfare known to

\:.

2l8

PLACING THE KRSPONSIIULITY.

■^

his race, as a nicasurc of retaliation, it is for the moralist to
say. If the whole story were told, if the Indian could tell
his side, how then would the record stand ? "

At the close of the Revolution the territory under control
of the white race in North America embraced the entire eastern
slope of the Appalachian system reaching from the Gulf of
Mexico to the St. Lawrence. Over the greater part of this,
with the exception of the English possessions in Canada, the
new republic had control. Florida and Louisiana were so
speedily ceded to the United States that their possessions
along the Gulf arc really to be considered as the property of
the Republic.

Although the colonial possessions were acknowledged io
extend westward as far as the Mississippi River, only a com-
paratively small section of this indefinite area was actually
settled. The Ohio River w^as the limit of even the sparsest
civilization as it was also understood by the Indian tribes to be
the actual and permanent boundary of white occupation.

At a treaty concluded at Fort Stanwix in 1768, betw-een
the Indian commissioner. Sir William Johnson, and the Iro-
quois tribes, it was agreed that the Ohio River should be the
w^estern boundary of English occupation. This was but car-
rying out the policy of the British government, made public by
ofificial proclamation in 1763, that the entire Western country
was to be reserved for the use and permanent occupation of the
aborigines then in possession. " All other persons," says Mr.
W^hittlesey, " were forbidden to remain or settle within this
Western reo;ion, and thus the most civilized nation of the earth
decreed the continuance of barbarism over the best portion of
North America."

So, too, during th progress of the American revolution, the

<. $■

PLACING THE RESPOXSIH lUTY,

219

liritish authorities in Canada "solemnly granted the Western
domain to the Indians residing upon it."

Such thoughtfi.l and observing Americans as Washington
and others of his time foresaw the inevitable, and oi)enly
declared the impossibility of this limitation by the Iinglish
government. But to the Indians it seemed only just and proper,
and trusting to the promises of England they ceded the East
to the white man on condition of their unobstructed possession
of the West.

It was to this disputed question of land limits that most of
the Indian troubles succeeding the Revolution were due. And
thus to an era of personal aggravations succeeded an era of race
quarrels for absolute possession.

The foresight of Washington as he studied the future from
the white man's standpoint was paralleled by that of the more
patriotic Indian chieftains as from their own barbaric standpoint
they regarded the white man's " inching along." And, as they
began to appreciate the truth that there was no limit to the
desires and demands of the white settlers who were each year
increasing in numbers and pertinacity, they began to advocate
native confederation for mutual protection and for white
extermination.

Pontiac, chief Oi the Ottawas, whom historians have called
the Napoleon of his race, early foresaw the necessity for Indian
confederation and, even before the Revolution, sought to join the
tribes in an aggressive union which by simultaneous and con-
centrated efforts, should drive the En^j^lish eastward into the
great ocean over which they had come to invade and appropriate
the Indian's heritasfe.

The Conspiracy of Pontiac, in 1 763-64, was the first united,
aggressive stand against land absorption by the American

■\

220

ri.AClNC Till'. KI'.srOXSUilJ.lTY.

Indian. " Kint; I'liilip's War," in 1675, altliouL^li it has fre-
quently been regarded as a united stand against land appro-
priation was in reality only the protest of savagery against
civilization based uj)on personal grievances and barbaric ani-
mosities. There is, indeed, no j^roof that Philip's cons])iracy
was a combined effort of the New I'lngland tribes or anything
more than an Indian uprising provoked by the fiery nature of
so relentless a foeman as were the sachem Metacomet.

The sj)irit of tribal jealousy inherent in Indian nature, and
which the kinship distinctions and totem divisions at once
created and fostered, made any intertribal union im])ossible.
The natural and absolute independence of the Indian, which
resented even the authority of his own tribal chief, scorned any
assum))tion of leadership by chieftains of other and heretofore
rival tribes. Algonquin and Iroquois, Ojibway and Dakota,
Chevenne and Pawnee could not so far for<j:et the traditions of
their fathers and the almost ceaseless feuds of centuries as to
exchange the wami)um belts in mutual and defensive union.

All the art of a prudent leader, as Mr. Parkman says, could
scarcely prevent dormant jealousies from starting into open
strife. Pontiac's irreat scheme failed and so too did all the
later attempts at Indian union. Black Hawk and Red Jacket,
Tecumthe and Asseola, Joseph the Nez Perce and \s.ki(\ Cloud
the Sioux alike have tried and alike have failed uj^on this
unstable basis of race confederation. The animosities of totem
and of clan proved more antagonistic than even the invincible
arms of the mutually hated white man.

Savagery can never sink its own personality even in the
hour of supreme danger. The history of the world shows that
the union of rivals against the common foe is possible only to a
positive and vigilant civilization.

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■Mr ' >

N>r>?/>j.',

ATTACK (JN Sl()( KADK.

BUS

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PLACING THE RESrONSIBILITY.

223

But the arrogance of this same civilization, as it was the
underlying cause of the Indian troubles of the colonial days,*
has also, as certainly, been at the bottom of all the more recent
outbreaks.

The vitiatino: influences of the ne^'ative side of civilization —
its perfidy, its haughtiness, its contemptuous disregard of what
it deems an inferior race, its debasing influences, its whiskey
and its wiles — have ever been the persistent and pitiless
obstruction to every conciliatory policy.

The Indian speedily discovered, to use the words of an
earlier writer, that "it is the Indian's property in the white
man's hands that gives the white man importance, makes him
arrogant and covetous, while he despises the Indian as soon as
his ends are answered and when the Indian has nothing more
to part with."

An offensive manner always breeds retaliation. The wild
love of freedom and impatience of all control which, according
to Mr. Parkman's observation, mark the Indian race, is the very
one to protest against an assumption of superiority bv those
who are neither physically superior nor morally helpful. From
the days of Pontiac the Ottawa to those of Kient-poos the Modoc
and Moc-peah-lu-tah the Sioux,t Indian retaliation has always
proceeded from the haughty and offensive manners of the set-
tlers, soldiers or agents toward the natives with whom they are
brought into contact.

" The moral influence of the soldiers upon the Indian," says
Mr. Howland in his paper on " Our Indian Brothers," " has been
of the worst character." The barbarities of the trappors and

* In tlie " Remonstrance " of the deputies fr; n New Xethcrl.iiitl to the home government of Holland in if)i4 it
is complained against the l)uich West India Company that "the Christians are treated almost liUe Indians in the
piMchase of necessaries which they cannot do withiuit " -an imconscioiis acknowledgment of the contemptuous
and unjust bearing of these very coniplainauis themselves toward the people whom they had displaced.

t Tl\e native names of " Captain Jack " and " Red Cloud."

■i .J

224

PLACING THE KESFOXSIBILITY.

the villainy of the fur-traders are too well known to need details
in proof. The open immorality and undiluted selfishness of the
border settlements develop the worst traits not only in the white
but in the Indian nature. Truly, as was said at the opening of
this chapter, it is to be regretted that, upon first approach, a
superior civilization always presents it^ most questionable ele-
ments to the inferior.

It was the existence of these demoralizing influences, pushed
to the extreme of aggravation and exasperation, that brought
about the later Indian troubles. A sjlance at the succession of
these "troubles" will warrant this assertion.

The conspiracy of Pontiac in i 763 was due to the rascality
of the English fur-traders, the tyranny of the British soldiers
and the unwarranted intrusion by settlers upon the Indian's
lands.

The war with Tecumthe in 181 1 was caused by the encroach-
ment by settlers upon Indian lands in open violation of treaty.

The Creek troubles in Georgia in 1S13 were brought about
by the endeavors of the State of Georgia to enforce its remark-
able compact with the United Stales government by which it
bound itself " to extinijuish the Indian title to all the lands
within the State of Geori^ia."

Black Hawk's War in 1832 along the Upper Mississippi,
resulted from the indignities visited upon this eminent and
patriotic chieftain and upon his tribesmen by the pioneers and
settlers who evinced the most determined eagerness for the
forcible removal of the Indians. In fact, in the border wars of
the West, almost without exception, the frontiersman has not
only commenced the trouble, but carried off the palm for cruelty
and inhumanity.

The Seminole War of 1835 which was never upheld by the

PLACING THE RESIOXSIBIUTW

225

best men of the Morida tribes, was the result x)f open provoca-
tion by lawless frontiersmen, retaliation by the " rabble " of the
corrupted Seminoles and the double dealings of the Scotch half-
breed demagogue Asseola who presumed to leadership.

The Pueblo massacres of 1847 were due entirely to the
cruelty of Mexican desperadoes.

^'^

MILITARY TVRANNV.

The Cayuse massacres among the Oregon missionaries in
1847 were instigated and abetted by the Jesuit priests.

The California massacres of 185 1 were the result of the
greed of the gold hunters and, primarily, of the licentiousness
of a drunken miner.

The fatal Sioux and Cheyenne wars of 1854 were due to
a combination of Mormon duplicity and military brutality.

The Oregon massacres and the Klickitat wars of 1855 were

'^■wamttpt

226

rf.ACLXG TUK RESrOASJlULJTY.

1 i

the result of tlic foolish insolence and fiendish attacks of the
white traders and settlers.

The Digger war of 1S5S was simply a butchery by the
white men of these most inoffensive of all the Indians because
they drove away the cattle they found eating their acorns.

The Navajo trouble of 185.S was caused by Ahirmon
diplomacy and Mexican feuds.

The Apache outbreak of 1S61 was the beginning of yet
unsettled trouble with this ferocious race — made ferocious,
however, by the white man's ferocity. The cause is found in
the mistaken treatment of these Indians by the soldiers and
frontiersmen at a time when they might have been conciliated,
so hostile were they to the tyrannical Mexicans and so favorably
inclined toward the new comers.

The fatal Sioux war which, in i(S62, ravaged Minnesota and
marked a bloody trail across that growing State, was the result
of governmental trilling and delay and of the agents' trickery
and the white man's frauds.

The Arapaho and Cheyenne troubles of 1S64 were induced
bv the shifting plans of government, and the failure to carrv out
treaty agreements. It was fanned into fury by the brutality of
the soldiers who were sent among them to "adjust difficulties."

The Sioux war of 1S66 was the vigorous protest of these
despondent and oft-removed Indians against forcible dispos-
session from the lands given them in Dakota.

The Blackfeet outbreak of 1S69 was occasioned by bar-
barities committed by lawless white men (" roughs and whiskey-
sellers," General Sully called them) and for which the Indians
were punished.

The Modoc "war" of 1872 was caused by vacillation, indif-
ference and contradiction on the part of the government.

IN CUM'ACX Wmi CIVILIZATION.

\ I

■Sit -t

1^1 <

ie-

• j.

-f.

'1'

i ^

t I .,: , "1

PLACING THE RESPONSIBILITY.

229

The Sioux war of 1876, in which Custer and his command
were slaughtered, was due to the neglect on the part of the
United States government to maintain its promises, as also
to the forcible occupation of the Black Hills by settlers and
uold hunters.

The Nez Perce "war" of 1876-77 — "the meanest, most
contemptible, least justifiable thing that the United States was
ever guilty of," so declares Mr. Dunn, in his history of Indian
Wars in the West,* — was due to the " foily, weakness or dis-
honesty ' of the government's Indian agents.

The foregoing summary, incomplete and fragmentary as it
is, indicates that the cry of the Indian hater for complete
extermination is but the logical outcome of years of injustice
and treachery toward the red-man on the part of the very
people among whom the Indian hater is found.

From the days of the first discoverers until now the Ameri-
can Indian has been alike the tool and the scapegoat of the
negative forces of Christian civilization. Despoiled, despised
and trifled with — whenever he has protested he has been tyran-
nized over, whenever he has sou<^ht to strike in defence of his
riohts he has been branded as an outlaw and hunted d;)wn
with relentless ferocity. From the first the white man's policy
of aggression has been the only one with which the settler has
met the rightful possessor of the soil he would appropriate.

What head, then, could Indian patriotism, handicapped as it
was by totemic rivalries, make against a united system of fron-
tier aggressions? The w^hite man's policy was backed by a
public opinion always hostile to the Indian, and by 'he settled
theory that America was the ultimate and legitimate posses-
sion of the white race.

• " The Massacres of the Mountains," by J. P. Dunn, jr.

230

PLACING THE RESJ'OXSIBILITY.

Greed stops at no such sentimental barrier as justice in
pursuit of its desires. Colonization permits no obstacle to
block its pathway toward future empire. Civilization admits
of no concession to barljarism ; and the conciliatory measures
of to-day are forgotten in the territorial desires of to-morrow.

So, step by step, has the Indian been pushed from the
inheritance of his fathers. Treaties have been violated, national
honor forfeited, and any attempt at resistance has been met by
coercion, conquest, and relentless " punishment."

" I love the English so well," said Maqua-comen, chief of
the Paw-tux-ents of Maryland, in 1634, "that if they should
go about to kill me, if I had so much breath as to speak, I
would command my people not to revenge my death, for I know
that they would do no such a thing, except it were through my
own fault."

" There is not one white man who loves an Indian," said
Sitting Bull, the warlike Ogallala, in 1876, "and not a true
Indian but hates a white man."

And this " change of heart " which less than three centu-
ries have witnessed, is the sole result of the contact between
Christian civilization and progressive barbarism. To this end
has come the friendship that saw in the earliest discoverers the
messengers from the gods, and met them with open-handed
hospitality and signs of friendliest welcome. It is logical, per-
haps ; it was, possibly, inevitable ; but yet a lover of justice
might exclaim with Cassio, " The pity of it, lago ! O, lago, the
pity of it, lago ! "

CHAPTER XII.

PUSHED TO THE WALL.

ED into almost immediate antaQ:onism
the relations between the red-man
and the white were from the
very first strained and hostile.
The tyrannous selfishness of
Spain, the ill-concealed greed
of France, the needless stern-
ness of Eno^land and the offen-
sive assumption of personal
superiority by settlers of every
European nation that sent its
swarms of good and bad alike
to this possible El Dorado of the West, could not
but have a disastrous effect upon the Indian nature.

In defence of this European aggression it must be said that
desire is seldom far-seeing. Present benefit is the main end in
view, and not one of the early colonists but felt that he was
doing at once the Lord's will and his own in thus occupying
the heritage of the heathen. " The Lord God of our fathers
hath given to us the land of the heathen people amongst whom
we live for a rightful possession,'' said the Reverend Increase
Mather ; and the twenty-four dollars for which the Dutch pur-

232

PUSHED TO THE WALL

\ :

\ \

^ I

chased New York, the one hundred and forty-fuur fatlioms of
\vanij)uni for which the English obtained Boston, the tricky
"walking purchase " by which the Quakers pocketed Pennsyl-
vania, the trifling bit of copper for which the Virginia colony
secured Richmond, were deemed by the purchasers as full and
honest settlement for what the red people, from whom the pur-
chases were made, could never care to use.

Hut he who has always been free illy brooks dictation and
gratuitous authority. The Indian, as has been shown, was
totally unable to comprehend the peculiar and unjust claims to
possession set up by the different and rival governments beyond
the Great Salt Water. He had no idea of absolutely parting
with his land, but supposed that he had merely admitted his
white "brother" to a share in his benefits.

When, therefore, he once understood that a community of
interest was impossible, and that his lands had actually been
parted with for trifles that soon disappeared, he began, naturally,
to resent the white men's methods of land absorption, as well as
their domiiatic and unelastic reliu;ions, their antaijonistic cus-
toms, their hollow proffers of friendship, their arrogant claims
to a personal superiority, their tricks of trade, of wisdom and of
law.

" Fear nothing, friend," said Oglethorpe, when one of the
Cherokee chiefs met him in conference. "Fear nothing; speak
freely."

The savaore chief of the free mountain tribes of Georma
looked proudly at the Englishman. " I always speak freely," he
replied. " Why should I fear } Ami not now among friends }
I never feared, even among my enemies."

But the time came when the Indian learned to fear, not the
might but the wiles of his new neighbors. Acknowledging

AN KI'ISODK OK lUK SKMINCil.E WAR.

,;: i

';■ i

•r

PUSHED TO Till'. U'AI.r.

235

their mental superiority, he came at last to fear their methods
which always resulted in his discomfiture and in their benefit.
" The natural character of the Indian, so far as I have had
ojjportunity for observing it," says Mr. J. H. Harrison, " has too
much of the moral element in it for him to be able long to
maintain his <jround in the state of war which in so ^reat
degree constitutes the substance and current practical experi-
ence of our civilization. He is too receptive, for his own inter-
est in this world, to the simple, practical teaching of the New
Testament. He does not understand injustice on the part of
those whom he regards as his superiors, and his faculties are
depressed and benumbed by it."

If the " simple, practical teaching of the New Testament"
had been ijiven him at the outset the Indian would have been
more receptive of the "black robe's" message. But Jesuit and
Protestant, Lutheran and Moravian began and persevered in a
doctrinal and dogmatic interpretation of the Gospel that excited
both derision and scorn in their hearers — themselves not alto-
gether deficient in a rude philosophy, which even the absurdities
of superstition and sorcery could not destroy. Membertou's
desire to include "moose meat and fish " in the immortal petition
for "our daily bread " was but the Indian's understanding of a
proper request to a manitou, and there was certainly an ajiparent
logic in the rejoinder of the chief who laid a hypothetical case
before the missionary. "S'pose have bad squaw," he said; "two
children; one ((f 'em squaw love; other she hate and kill.
What do.''" "She must be hung," replied the law-abiding
missionary. " Ugh," said the chief, "go, then, and hang your
god. You make 'im just like squaw."

The chiefs and medicine men, loyal to the teachings and
traditions of their fathers, saw in the abstruse religion of the

236

rUSlIF.D TO HIE WALL.

white men only contradiction, controversy and a means of
disturbance. Wedded to the old forms, which, before they had
become overlaid with mystery, absurdity and superstition, did
contain some rude and axiomatic })hilosophy, the more thought-
ful among the leading Indians could see no benefit in a creed
that seemed to teach the very intolerance they despised. Even
those therefore who were disposed to be friendly to the white
man — chiefs like Mass .oit and Pow-ha-tan* drew the line at
religious interference. JVIassasoit sought promises from the
Pilgrims that no effort should be made to proselyte his tribes-
men. Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, forbade the conversion
of his warriors, and the " Mico," or chieftain of the Yamicraws,
though friendly to Oglethorpe and the English, objected to
the teachintis of the white missionaries among his tribesmen.
Eliot's two hundred "praying Indians," even more than the
land greediness of the Pilgrims, were the cause of " King
Philip's War."

It must be added that the conduct of the missionaries
themselves did not wholly remove this constitutional objection
to conversion. They were, as has been said, too often dog-
matic, opinionated, relentless, and inconsid'M^ate, and very few
among either the French or the English preachers were en-
tirely free from the influences engendered by the hostile
rivalries of their respective governments.

In 1696 an Indian chief told a Boston minister that a
French "black robe," while instructing the Indians in the
Christian religion, had assured them that the Saviour was a
Frenchman ; that he had been murdered by Englishmen, and

*Tliis is but another indicaliuii of tlie cnnfusioii as to the leal names of lustoric Intlians -Iready referred to.
" Powlia'an's" name wa's VVa-bun-so-iia-cook, but as tlie cliief nf the warlike Virginian confederacy in wbicli the
tribe of the Pow-ha-tans was the leading element be received from his white neighbors the name of his tribe rather
than his own personal appellation — doubtless because of the superstition of the Indian which studiously concealed
his proper name.

PUSHED TO THE WALL.

237

that, further, wlien he arose from the dead and went up into
heaven, he had prepared the "hippy hunting grounds" alone
for the allies of France. Therefore, the "black robe" declared,
all who desired his saving grace must recommend them-
selves to his favor by siding with France in its hostility to
England — for this was Christ's quarrel.

Red Jacket, the Sjjneca, the last of the Indian philosophers,
on being asked why he was opposed to the work of the mis-
sionaries said : " Because they do no good. If they are not
useful to the white people, why do they send them among the
Indians? If they are useful to the white people and do them
good, why do they not keep them at home ? The white men
are surely bad enough to need the labor of every one who can
make them better. These men know that we do not under-
stand their religion. We cannot read their book. They tell us
different stories about wdiat it contains, and we believe they
make the book talk to suit themselves. The Great Spirit will
not punish us for what we do not know. He will do justice to
his red children. These black coats talk to the Great, Spirit
and ask for light that we may see as they do, when they are
blind themselves and quarrel about the light which guides
them."

Of similar tenor is a story that Mr. Drake tells of a
Swedish minister who recounted to some Indian chiefs the
principal biblical facts uj^on which his religion rested — such
as the fall of our first parents in Eden, etc. When he
had finished an Indian orator rose to thank him. " What
you have told us," said the orator, " is all very good. It
is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all
into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming
so far to <"ell us those things which you have heard from your

■mnmiPSBSs

^38

PC/SflED TO THE IVALL.

mothers." Then the speaker proceeded to tell the missionary
one of the Indian legends, but the minister interrupted him,
saying that Ihe legend was all falsehood, while the story he
had told was sacred truth. " My brother," said the Indian,
indignantly, " it seems to me that your friends have not done
you justice in your education. They have not well instructed
you in the rules of common civility. You see that we, who
understand and practice these rules, believe all your stories ;
why do you refuse to believe ours ? "

This toleration on tlie part of the Indian met only with
intolerance on the part of his teachers. To intolerance was
added that haughty and foolish pi de of blood that saw in the
Indians an inferior race and alienated friends while it angered
foes. "Nothing," says Mr. Hutchinson, "has more effectually
defeated the endeavors for Christianizinq; the Indians."

So the first much-vaunted measure, which every government
that sent its explorers and colonists into the Western wilderness
advanced as their reason for occupation — the conversion of
the barbarians — failed of success, as false methods always fail.
" Under this forced training," says Dr. Ellis, " the Indian lost
whatever of spontaneous or inherent simplicity or dignity he
might have caught as he roamed the woods, a child of nature.
The virility of his manhood yielded to a humiliated sense of
inferiority. His former attitude of spirit which stood for self-
respect was bowed into conscious dread, though not always
deference, for the white race."

Hand in hand with the unsuccessful attempts at conversion
went the more successful effort at colonization. Here was no
abstruse theory. The white man wanted the land ; he was
determined to have it ; he did have it.

The communistic principles of the Indian prevented him

PUSHED TO THE WALL.

239

fiom understanding the theory of absolute purchase or absoUite
possession. The childlike nature of the red-man at once de-
sired what attracted it. " You shall have this or these for so
much, or for such a tract of land," said the colonist. To the
Indian the land was but a vague quantity ; the trinkets or
implements of the white man
seemed a very tangible one. The
bargain was made, the land was
occupied, and only when he was
excluded therefrom did the Indian
realize what he had done. No
Indian could dispose of land as
an individual. It was not his to
•dispose of. The whole tribe was
concerned in the doings of each
of its members. An infraction
of the hereditary communistic
principle led therefore to tribal
quarrels as well as to troubles with
the new^ occupants of the tribal
lands, and the foolish bargain uf
an individual Indian often brought
upon the settlers the fury and
vengeance of an entire clan.

All through the colonial times the policy of purchasing
lands was pursued by the colonists, and with each purchase the
Indian was crowded westward. The actual area of occupation
was so small, little real trouble fjrew from this cause. Had
the personal bearing of the white settlers toward their red
neighbors been less arrogant, the era of colonization would have
been one of peace, rather than of disturbance and of blood.

"THK WHITE MAN WANTKl) THK
LAND."

A ;l

-1

— — ■'^-*^-rVM>

' T ' . ' .'.^Tu. ^

240

PUSHED TO THE WALL.

But with the increase of iminio-ration that followed the
Revolution, more and more land was needed, and to the
policy of purchase succeeded that of treaty. The State and
National q;ovcrnments souq;ht to obtain the land and avoid
disputes by treaties of peace and possession with the border

KKJlllING THE INDIANS ON THE VIRGINA FRONTIER.

tribes, and in 1804 it was agreed by the United States govern-
ment that the Indians were to retain possession even of lands
acquired by treaty until such lands were sold to actual settlers.
This policy however led only to confusion and trouble.
Certain white families who, says Mr. Wilkie, " probably con-
sidered an Indian's title to life, land and liberty as merely
nominal and of no account when measured against the ' rights '

rUSJIED TO THE WALL.

.'41

of the white man nioxecl on to land which was actually occu-
pied by the Indians." Trouble of course ensued, the govern-
ment came to the aid of the white " squatters " and finally,
contrary to treaty stipulations, dispossessed the Indians.

Thus to solemn treaty succeeded the era of expatriation
and the Indians were crowded still further westward.

In 1S33, after repeated reasons of troublesome and disas-
trous wars, and after the treaty plan had been proved impracti-
cable, the United States attempted the Reservation plan — the
practical imprisonment of the Indians upon tracts of lands
which, it was supposed, would never be needed for settlement.
These Reservations were placed under the charge and control
of agents ap})ointed by the government and would, it was
hoped, prepare the Indian for self-support and gradual civiliza-
tion. The largest of these arbitrary land prisons was the tract
to the southwest, known as the Indian territory. It possessed
an area of nearly seventy thousand square miles, and com-
prised rolling prairies, rich river land, and noble forests. Other
Reservations were established at various points in the West
and, gradually, most of the Indian tribes were exiled to these
extensive and un walled prison-spots.

But governments are changeable and asfents are human.
Unlike the British system in Canada, which makes the superin-
tendence of these Indian reservations life positions, the change
of parties in i)ower resulted, in the United States, in a fre-
quent change of agents. The men occupying this official and
often autocratic position in too many instances used their
offices for their personal profit rather than for that of their
charges; the Indians again and again protested against the
treatment accorded them, and the secret of many of the Indian
outbreaks of the last half-century may be found in the dissat-

1,^

242

rUSIIKD TO THF. WALL.

isfaction of the nation's " wards "' with the ne<>lect or indif-
ference with which their necessities were met. Again and
again have they broken tlu'ir Ijounds and tiiis bulky and
expensive system has at last proved itself at once impracti-
cable and inexpedient.

"It is not more natural for acid to react upon alkali," says
Dr. Eggleston, " than for civilization — esjjecially a half-civiliza-
tion — to fall out with savagery." The raj)acity of the border
settlements, the envious looks which men cast upon the goodly
and extensive lands given up to the despised red-man for
hunting and roving led to encroachments. Little by little the
reservations were contracted, tribes were removed from one
section to another and the ill-effects of " dole and subsidy "
grew more and more apparent.

The discovery of gold and the vast natural wealth that
was found to lie in whac were originally esteemed waste lands
made the white man more impatient of this system of "savage
monopoly." A "restless, enterprising, adventurous and rapidly
thickening white population," as Dr. Ellis characterizes the
American pioneer element, would not be kept out of the
reserved lands. Despite the efforts of government to ])ro-
tect its "wards " the preeminence of possession asserted itself
and the Indians were still further crowded out of their homes.

" We are driven back," said an old warrior, after one of
these periodical dispossessings, " until we can retreat no
further. Our hatchets arc broken, our bows ai'e snapped, our
fires are nearlv extinouished. :\ little lon<>er and the white
man will cease to persecute us — for we will cease to exist."

The tribes within the borders of the United States now
on reservations are divided substantially as follows: In Maine,
there are 410, all that are left of the original Penobscot stock;

)

THE HOME OF IHE INIJIAN.

; I

ii »

PUSHED TO THE IVAr.L.

245

in New York, 4,963, remnants of thu once powerful Iroquois
confederacy; in North Carolina, 3000, of the Cherokee nation.
In Florida and Indiana, 892 — the last of the restless Scminoles
and Aliamis; in Wisconsin, 8,006; in Michigan, 7,313; in
Minnesota, 6,038; in Iowa, 380 — all that remains of Black
Hawk's once warlike race; in Kansas, 1,007; ^^ Nebraska,
3,694; in Colorado, 978; in Nevada, 8,238; in Montana,
12,904; in Wyoming, i,Soo; in Utah, 2,698; in Idaho, 4,061;
in Washington, 10,289; in Oregon, 4,627; in Arizona, 19,468;
in Dakota, 30,271; in California, 11,506; in Texas, 290; in
New Mexico, 2,824; ^•''cl in the Indian Territory 75,799.

This total of nearly 250,000 American Indians represents
the factors in the perplexed Indian problem. And wnat is this
problem? Set forth plainly, says Mr. J. B. Harrison, one of
its latest and most experienced students, " it is the question
how the Indian shall be brought to a condition o': self-support,
and of equal rights before the law, in which they will no longer
require the special protection and control of the Government."

To this complexion has it come at last. " The Indian can
no longer be removed," says another recent student of the
problem, " he must make his stand where he is."

Inch by inch he has been crowded back from the heritage
of his fathers into a cramped and limited area in which the
champed condition of his life from the old times when he
was a hunter, a producer and a free man is fast making him
a vagrant and a pauper.

It is a sad commentary on civilization that it has but
desfraded where it should have exalted. The Indian has been
the white man's foil where he should have proved his friend.
Christianity failed to christianize him not because of any in-
herent weakness in the grandest of religious faiths, but because

246

PUSHED TO THE WALL,

II! \

of the lack of real Christianity itself in the exponents of that
faith. Appetite which should have been cultivated into gentle
living was used to make him a brute; association which should
have ui)lifted him made him an outcast and a vagrant; states-
manship which should have constituted him the peer of his
white brethren has alternately persecuted and petted, domi-
neered over and de-
graded him. And the
race that took from
him his land has taken
from him also his am-
bition, his manhood
and his life.

The American In-
dian has reason to be
proud of his race. His
has been a record
which even dead civili-
zations miq-ht well
have envied. Evolved
from savagery through
years of partial prog-
ress, he became as
bole a warrior as ever
Homer sung, as elo-
quent an orator as
Greek or Roman knew.
His barbaric virtues could shame the sloth and license of
Tiberius' day, his simple manliness could put to blush the ser-
vile manners of Justinian's court. His rude manufactures
and yet ruder art have, rude as they were, still furnished

TYPES OF A "FADINr, RACK" — INDIAN PUPILS AT
HAMITdN SCHOOI,.

]

rUSHHD TO Till. WALL.

247

suggestions upon which modern invention can scarcely im-
prove, and his governmental policy of a league of freemen
is that toward which all the world is tending.

His manners and his methods will compare favorably with
those of any barbaric people. With no more brutality than the
Huns of Attila, no greater ferocity than the sea-wolves of Olaf
the Viking, and no deeper strain of vindictiveness than the
Goths of Alaric, the American Indian has been eliminated as
a factor in a fusing civilization where these bloodier compeers
have been accepted as the bases of refined nationalities.

The Indian knew no law but that of simple justice, no
dealings other than those of simple honesty, no order more
binding than that of simple equality. His mind, hampered
by the superstition that always inheres in an out-of-door race,
was still no greater slave to the supernatural than is that of the
agricultural peasantry of any land, and the spell of the scalp-
lock, or the magic of the " fetich " was not so very far removed
from the slavish manipulation of the myriad gods ot Rome,
the mystic "unicorn-horn" of the bloody Torqumada, the
dread of the " evil eye " among the peasantry of England, or
the fancied " overlooking " which led to such a trairic farce
upon the slope of Witches' Hill.

All this may appear to practical folk as an heroic and over-
drawn estimate of a very ordinary and limited intelligence.
But it is an estimate that is borne out by facts, and is one,
moreover, that the justice of the conquerors should allow to
the conquered. The shame of it all lies in the knowledge that
a civilization which might have moulded has only marred, and
that a promi>..iig barbarism that in time might have developed
into a completed native civilization has been smothered and
contemptuously blotted out by the followers of a Master whose

!48

PUSHED TO TIIK WALL.

greatest precept was: Love one another. But it is never too
late to Idc just.

" The popular creed on the subject," says Mr. J. 13. Har-
rison, in a recent presentation of the " Latest Studies in Indian
Reservations," " which clotiies itself with the solemn sanctions
and imperial authority of science, is that the Indian is doomed
and fated to fade away, by reason of his inherent inferiority to
the white man. Well, let him fade. Nobody need mourn if
any race, justly treated, and with reasonable opportunity for
self-perpetuation, comes to an end because its vitality is ex-
hausted and its puny and vanishing representatives no longer
reproduce their kind. When a race perishes thus it is time
for it to go. But when people numbering hundreds of thou-
sands are destroyed on their own soil by the richest and
strongest nation under the sun — crushed and exterminated by
means of falsehood and theft, of mountainous fraud and fero-
cious murder, I do not call that fading out. It is altogether
a different matter."

CHAPTER XIII.

INDIAN TYPES.

" I WISH to say emphatically," says Gen-
eral (ieorge Crook — an Indian fighter of
valor and renovvMi but, not less, a just and
clear-headed student of Indian character —
"that the American Indian is the intel-
lectual peer of most, if not all, the various
nationalities we have assimilated to our
laws, customs and language."

"Give the Indians the right of sending
a delegate to Congress," said General James
Wadsworth — a soldier, a statesman and a
careful observer of Indian nature fifty years
ago. " I beg you not to be startled," he
continued, in reply to an expression of dis-
sent; "there are many Indian chiefs who
would not disgrace the floor of Congress."

Every friend of the Indian, from the Clcrigo Las Casas
to Era Junipero, " H. H." and Bishop Hare — as, through the
four centuries of intercourse between the white race and the
red, the still unsettled Indian problem has been studied and
experimented upon — agrees in conceding to the native Ameri-
can the attributes that go toward the making of a manly man.

249

ssmmm

250

INDIAN TYPES.

And the testimony of his foes is not less emphatic. Dc
Soto, prince of Indian butchers, found among the chieftains
of the Southern tribes foemen worthy of his steel, warriors
who, despite the vSpaniard's coat of mail, his bloodhounds and
his arms, were his conqueror and his scourge. " Thus has

terminated," wrote
General Sherman,
after the conclu-
sion of the Nez
Perce outbreak of
1877, " one of the
most extraordinary
Indian wars of
which there is any
record. The In-
dians throus^hout
displayed a cour-
age and skill that

elicited universal
praise ; they ab-
stained from scalp-
ing, let captive
women go free, did
not commit indiscriminate murder of peaceful families, and
fought with almost scientific skill, using advance and rear
guards, skirmish lines and field fortifications."

The story of the decline and fall of any nation is full of
sad interest. The decay of a race, even though a stouter and
stronger one succeeds it, elicits sympathy — as failure always
should. No matter how barbaric, no matter how savage, even,
is the race or the people conquered, its attempts as well as its

FRA JUNIPKRO SKRRO, KRIKNI) OK THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS.

[NDJAN TYPES.

!5i

desires toward independence and self-preservation develop
resources of latent patriotism and personal ability. There
were great men in Rome's decadence as well as in her days of
glory. Scanderbeg, the Albanian, has made the death of his
country historic, and Kosciusko's patriotic endeavor glorified
the fall of Poland.

Civilization does not hold a monopoly of all life's nobilities.
There have been patriots and heroes in all ages and among all
peoples, and the American Indian is by no means a laggard in
the ranks of heroism.

" From Massachusetts Bay back to their own hunting
grounds," said Wendell Phillips, champion of the world's
oppressed whatever their color or their homeland, " every few
miles is written down in imperishable record cm a spot where
the scanty, scattered tribes made a stand for justice and their
own rights. Neither Greece, nor Germany, nor the French,
nor the Scotch, can show a prouder record. And instead of
searing it over with infamy and illustrated epuhets the future
will recognize it as a glorious ricord of a race that never
melted out and never died away, but stood up manfully, man by
man, foot by foot, and fought it out for the land God gave him,
against the world, which seemed to be poured out over him."

Without idealizing the red-man's good qualities nor over-
looking his bad ones, without disjHiting the fact that civilization
with all its vices is preferable to barbarism with all its virtues,
we can still have courtesy and courage enough to concede to
the American Indian very much of that inherent nobility that
knc no distinctions of race or rank, of color or creed, of
mind or manners.

We need no mythical Hiawatha, no fictitious Uncas, no
imaginary Pocahontas to prove the existence of real and vital

"Vfifainm

pg^arflga^-.

25-

INDIAN TYPES.

humanity in the Indian nature. " There are," says Mr. Dunn,
" plenty of well-authenticated instances of Indian chivalry.
The romance of war and the chase has always been theirs.
If you want the romance of love, a thousand elopements in the
face of deadly peril will supply you with Lochinvars. If you
want the romance of friendship, you may find, in the 'com-
panion warriors ' of the prairie tribes, rivals for Damon and
Pythias. If you want the romance of grief, take that mag-
nificent Mandan, Mah-to-ti-pa, who starved himself to death
because of the ravages of small-pox in his tribe, or Ha-won-je-
tah, the Minneconjon chief, who was so maddened by the death
of his son that he swore to kill the first living thing that
crossed his path ; armed only with a knife he attacked a buffalo
bull, and perished on the horns of the furious animal. If you
seek knight-errantry, I commend y<,-u to the young Pawnee-
Loup brave, Pe-ta-lc-shar-ro, who at the risk of his life freed
a Comanche sjirl from the stake and returned her unharmed to
her people. If you desire the grander chivalry of strength of
mind and nobility of soul, I will pit Chief Joseph, the Nez
Perce, against any barbarian that ever lived."

" Tell your countrymen that you have been pursued by
Quigualtanqui alone,'' said the intrepid Chickasaw chief as he
drove the last remnant of De Soto's defeated invaders down
the Mississippi and out into the great Gulf; "if he had been
better assisted by his brother warriors not one of you would
have lived to tell the tale."

As this fiery Southern chief was the Agamemnon of his
race so, too, did it have its Regulus. During certain border
disturbances in the early part of the present century, so runs
the story, the British soldiers captureJi a hostile Indian against
whom they laid the charge of murder and notified him that he

■

^j„^^,j,^^.,^..- .^.,^.J^;W^.. .■..■■I^'--

INDIAN TYPES.

255

was to be shot the next day. He made no plea for his life, but
simply asked permission to say good-by to his family, who were
encamped with his tribe a few miles away. He promised to
return by sunrise the next morning. Permission was granted;
the Indian left the camp, bade his family adieu and promptly
at sunrise, next day, returned to his captors who with the
customary border magnanimity led him out and shot him.

Nanuntenoo, son of Miantonomah, chief of the Narragan-
setts, falling captive to the Plymouth colonists during the
bloody time of King Philip s war, was tried and condemned to
death. " After the verdict," says Mr. Hollister, " his life was
tendered to him if he would consent to make peace with the
English. He spurned the offer with the bitterest scorn, and
was sentenced to be shot. When the result of the trial was
niade known to him, he said calmly : ' Nanuntenoo likes it
well. He will die before his heart is soft, and he has said any
thing unworthy of himself.' "

" My son," said the dying chief of the Lower Nez Perces,
as he took the hand of his oldest son, " my body is returning
to my mother earth, and my spirit is going very soon to see the
Great Spirit Chief. When I am gone, think of your country.
You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide
them. Always remember that your father never sold his
country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked to
sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more, and white
men will be all annmd you. They have their eyes on this land.
My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds
your father's body. Never sell the bones of your father and
your mother." And because this loyal son, In-mut-too-yah-lat-
yat (whom we know as the brave Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce)
sought to carry out his father's dying injunction, the United

i 1

256

INDIAN TYPES.

States Government wa'^ecl at^ainst him a bitter and relentless
war. " I love that land more than all the rest of the world, '
said Joseph. " A man who would not love his father's grave
is worse than a wild animal."

No doubt the disbeliever in Indian virtue could cap these
positive types of Indian manliness with certain and well as-
sured negative ones. No doubt the Indian of to-day is lazy
and vicious, drunken and dirty, crafty and deceitful, and no
doubt, even in his palmiest days of freedom and of power the
Indian himself nurtured the seeds of his downfall and decline.
But the like comparisons could be made in every land and
with every race. Ephialtes and Leonidas, Judas and John,
Arnold and Washington are but types of mankind the world
over, and the soil of America has reared alike the ignoble
barbarian and the "noble red-man" — this last by no means
a fiction of the romancer or the creation of the visionary poet.

Professor Huxley has said that if he was compelled to
choose between life in the worst quarter of a great city and
life with the most barbarous tribe known to exist, he would
choose the latter without hesitation. The savage has, at least,
he declares, the sunlight, fresh air and freedom of movement.

Contact, after all, is one of the chief tests of character.
Civilization conquered America rather by force of numbers
than by force of precept, and where the growth of settlement
was slow, as on the farthest borders, it was the savage rather
than the frontiersman who was the doniinatino; influence.

" At first," says Mr. Parkman, " great hopes were enter-
tained that, by the mingling of French and Indians, the latter
would be won over to civilization and the Church; but the
effect was precisely the reverse ; for, as Charlevoix observes,
the savages did not become French, but the French became

l«

lit

JUp|fc a3SM)g^I^-J !.\JLS._

/.Vn/.LV TYJ'ES.

259

savages

<> «

The rcM-ici;acl(' of civilization caut^ht the hal^its and
imbibed the prejudices of his chosen associates. He loved to
decorate his long hair with eagle feathers, to make his face
hideous with vermilion,
ochre, and soot, and to adorn
his greasy hunting frock
with horsehair fringes He
lounged on a bearskin while
his squaw boiled his venison
and lighted his pipe. In
hunting, in dancing, in sing-
ing, in taking a scalp, he
rivalled the genuine Indian."
Vitiated by centuries of

temi)tation, of evil iniiuences

and of contact with the

worst phases of a conquer-
ing civilization the Indian

blood no longer runs pure

and strong. But it is safe

to assert that the unbridled

ferocity which has so long

been a synonym of Indian

warfare is an outgrowth of

the later ages of the Indian

race, and it is equally true

that the less pure the Indian

blood the more brutal and

savage was the Indian nature.

The ferocity of the Indian wars of the West and Southwest

has always been aggravated when Spanish, Mexican or negro

rllK KI'.NIM. ADl-; <)1' < IVIl.l/ A I luN.

26o

JADLiy TVrES.

blood lias run in the veins of the " hostiles," The renet^ade
of civilization and the brutal and parasitical half-breed were
more fruitful of barbarities and less capable of lunnanitv
than were the Indians whom they aroused and instigated. It
was Hi-aus-wah the Ojibway who jnit an cw<\ l)\' intluence and
treaty to the torture of capti\es among the Northwestern
tribes; it was Te-cum-tlu' the Sba.";a:i:)e who treated his ])rison-
ers with uniform kindness and denounced torture at the stake
as unbecoming the character of a warrior and a man; it was
vSpotted Tail the Sioux (Sin-ta-gal-les-ca), wJiose kindness and
affection for the wife whom he had won by a romantic braverv
not exceeded by the knights of Arthur's day, were noted
throughout his tribe, and it was Red Jacket the Seneca who
thouiih his whole life was devoted to securing and maintain-
ing the independence of his race, despised war and abhorred
bloodshed.

While the study of a people is most satisfactorily pursued
by the study and obser\-ation of the people themselves, the
personal characteristics or public acts of those who have been
most prominent in the history of such a peoi)le may make them
valuable as types ot the race or the time to which they belong.
Pericles and Elizabeth, as they have given their names to the
aofcs in which thev lived, are regarded as reijresentative of
their times quite as much as leaders in them. And Indian
character, from the days of the ''Welcome, Englishmen!" of
Samoset the Abneki, to those of Red Cloud and of Geronimo,
of the Lava Beds and of Hampton Scl.ool, has expressed itself
in the lives of certain men and women who may be regarded
as typical and representative.

IMassasoit and I\Ietacomet, father and son, are typical
Americans of the early days. Massasoit embodied that spirit

■V.

l>OCAH()Nl'AS AND HER SUN, i'llOMAS KULIK.
(From the original f^aiutiiisi in H.-.uluim H.ill, EngUiut, the home of the Rvlje family.)

MiliHIii

JiVniAX TYPES.

263

of h()s|)it;ility, of respect for hii^lur iiiti'llit;ence and of the
desire for jieace that marked the first contact of American
and Iuiroi)ean. ''Nun wcrmasu sagimus! Nuu wermasu sagi-
miis! Mv loving sachem; tnv h)vin<': sachem," said I lohba-
mok the Wampanoag to \\'insk)\v the Puritan, as he told of his
loved chieftain's illness. " Many have 1 known, hut never an\'
like thee.' And Mr. Fessenden, in his historv of the town of
Warren, says: " In all the memorials which have come down to
us, Ma.ssasoit's character stands above reproach. No one has
ever charged him with evil." Indeed, from the good chief's
first overture of friendshiji to the Pilgrims to the time of his
death, so Mr. Fessenden declares, Massasoit was " not only
their uniform friend, l^ut their protector at times when his pro-
tection \/as equivalent to their preservation." He was " no
liar," said Hobbamok ; " not bloody or cruel ; in anger and
passion he was soon reclaimed ; easy to be reconciled toward
such as had offended him ; trulv loving where he loved, he
governed his tribesmen better with few strokes than others did
with many." (^f similar strain was Anilco the Chickasaw;
and Tomo-chi-chi the Cherokee, the friend of Oglethorpe and
the preventer of hostilities between the red-man and the white in
the early days of Georgia; such was Granganimeo of Ohanok
(Roanoke), welcomer and friend to Grenville and to Lane. Of
the same kindly nature, too, were the courteous and betrayed
squaw sachem, or " princess " of Cofitachiqui among the tribes
on the Altamaha, and that gentle daughter of Ucita, sachem of
Harrihigua, whose pity and compassion saved Juan Ortiz
from the sacrificial fire, and antedated by almost a century the
now familiar romance of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith.
As to that romance itself, it is one of those debatable stories
that, lacking absolute proof, are relegated by the doubters to

?.6^

INDIAN lYPES.

the domain of myths or arc believed in, imhesitatinL^ly, by the
lovers of sentiment. It is wisest perhaps to agree wiih Pro-
fessor Arber, who has carefully looked into the details of tlic
story, and admit that " to deny the truth of the Pocahontas
incident is to create more difficulties than are involved in its
acceptance."

But whether or not the " kino's dearest dauohter " — Ma-ta-
oka, the Algonquin maiden, sometimes called Pocahontas — did
interi)ose her head between that of the doughty little Vir-
ginia Captain and the club of her kinsman there is no reason
to doubt her friendship toward the white colonists on her triiial
lands. " Shee, next under God," says the old chronicle, "was
still the instrument to preserve this Colonic from death, famine,
and utter confusi(>n." Her frc nt visits of friendship and of
peace, her vigilant guardianship over her white friends even
when her barbaric, but shrewd and clear-headed old father saw
that their destruction wns his only safe policy, and her final
marriage to the '• noble, simple and upright Master John Rolfe "
(as the chronicle sees fit to call her rather fussy and self-right-
eous English husband) are sufficiently authent' ated to place
this duskv voung maiden of the Virginia woods as " the bright
consummate flower " of tliat early Indian hospitality and courtesy
of which good old Massasoit was the manly type.

The fiery Metacomet, known to us as " King Philip,"' is a
fitting typj of that first uncertain, unreasoning and startled
hostility th.vt everywhere followed the unwise prc;"*ess of
P2uropean occupation. A patriot and a partisa* Philips states-
manshii) has been as largely overrated as his nature has beci
m ligned. lL;norant of the white man's reserve powders, care-
less as to his aggressive and, from an Indian standard, his
meaningless religion, Philip of Pokanoket gradually awoke to

ioamam

INDIAN TYPES.

26'

the fact that the growth of the white man's power was a
menace and a bar to Indian prosperity. With noi of the
traits of leadershijD that marked the Ottawa chieftain, Pontiac.
and with little of the ability in statecraft that appear in the
career of Red Jacket the Seneca, Philip could not command the
storm he raised, and the outbreak that he hoped to see grow
into a widesj^read and successful revolt against Euroi)ean aggres-
sion found only a spasmodic and nerveless success. The Ne^v
England Indians, tributaries of the Western Iroquois, had
neither the wisdom to confederate, nor the independence to
resist. Philip's unsupported conspiracy fell because of its
inherent weakness, and only the personal bravery of the
valiant and patriotic chief gave it form or force. Pliilip of
Pokanoket is the American Rob Roy; his personal bravery
and his pride of blood were the only things to lighten a hope-
less cause, while his unconquerable opposition to tyranny
seemed only increased by misfortune, and ended only with death.
" Defeated, but not dismayed — crushed to the earth, but not
humiliated," so says one of his biographers, " he sec'med to
grow more haughty beneath disaster, and to receive a fierce
satisfaction in draining the last dregs of bitterness." The son
of Massasoit died a victim to the false security which his father
had too unquestioningly fostered, and the certain end of which
he alone of all his tribesmen foresaw and vainly struggled
against.

The century that followed his downfall, however, produced
many acceptors of his theory and many imitators of his
methods. The growth of border settlements was everywhere
marked by the twang of the bowstring and the gleam of the
tomahawk, as in their own barbaric fashion the earliest Amer-
ican patriots sought to defend their home-land from invaders

268

INDIAN TYPES.

and usurpers. And the outcome of that century of bloody pro-
test was the typical red-man of the new order of things — the
apostle of extermination, Pontiac the chieftain of the Ottawas.
A fierce and relentless liater of the white man, but a statesman
and a general of no mean ability, Pontiac united with excep-
tional mental qualities the fearlessness of the warrior and the
craftiness of the politician. " Courage, resolution, wisdom,
address and eloquence," says Mr. Parkman. " are, among the
Indians, sure passports to distinction. With all these Pontiac
was preeminently endowed, and it was chiefly to them, urged to
their highest activity by a vehement ambition, that he owed his
greatness. The American forest never produced a man more
shrewd, politic, and amiiitious."

No one Indian in all the history of the native American race
ever possessed so much personal power and mastership as did
Pontiac. The intolerance of disci j)line and the love of absolute
independence that are so pronounced in Indian nature render
such concentrated direction next to impossible, and it is a proof
at once of Pontiac's ability and of his commanding energy
that he was able to unite hostile and rival tribes in a bond of
war that extended from Lake Eric to the farthest shores of
Superior — "a plot such as was never before nor since concei\ed
or executed by a North American Indian." Pontiac the
Ottawa marks the highest point of Indian ability, and his
defeat was the deathblow to Indian supremacy, as it was also
the severest wound to Indian manliness and jjatriotism.

Tha-yen-da-ne-gea ("the brant"), most widely known under
his anglicized name of Joseph Brant, was a remarkable ty]:)e of
that transitory stage of progress in which intellec. struggles
with barbarism, and loyalty with pride. Horn a full-blooded
Mohawk — the fiercest of the Iroquois race — he had received

rE-CUM-Tllli, ClllhK Ol- Till SllAUANUE.

m**wn-*«>>«<

INDIAN TYPES.

271

an excellent English education, had embraced Christianity and
adopted the manner and customs of civilization. Hound thus
to the English by ties of affection and long association, reared
in the knowledtje that for over a century the Endish kinir
and the tribesmen of the Six Nations had been allies and
friends, the clannishness of his Indian nature made him an
ardent loyalist when colonists and king fell out. What has
been judged his treachery was in reality his barbaric faith in
kinship and allegiance, and the ferocity that has been laid
to his charge when once he had put on the war-j^aint and
lifted the tomahawk was but the self-assertion of the barbaric
nature that education could not eradicate nor Christianity
modify. Regarded from the Indian's standpoint Tha-yen-da-
ne-gea the INIohawk was not " the brute and monster " that
jal orators and biased historians have termed him, but a cool,
sagacious and able warrior, and a loyal and patriotic ally of the
government that had helped and honored him.

Te-cum-the (or Tecumseh) the Shawanoe was one of the
most notable of the students and imitators of the <j:reater Pon-
tiac. Unlike Pontiac, however, his sagacity was free from sav-
agery and his fearlessness was tempered by humanity. With
less genius and less personal magnetism than Pontiac he was
fully as patriotic and even more far-seeing than th.: Ottawa
chieftain, while his love for the land of his people ar..ounted
to a passion that absorbed all other considerations. Opposed
to warfare, and honoring the intellectual triumphs of civiliza-
tion, with no complaint against the white men except for their
aggressive and ceaseless absorption of the Indian's land, faith-
ful where he pledged his faith, humane and compassionate,
forgiving even in the face of bitterest provocation, Te-cum-the
the Shawanoe had still " the genius to conceive and the per-

272

INDIAN TYPES.

severance to attempt " the most extended scheme of union
against the white race ever attempted in America — the con-
spiracy of Pontiac alone excepted.

Red Jacket the Seneca — known first as O-te-ti-ani (" Always
Ready "), and after his rise to chieftainship as Sa-go-ye-wat-ha
("the Keeper Awake "), is reco nized as the typical Indian states-
man of the era of transition. Never a warrior, as were Philip
and Pontiac and Black Hawk, Red Jacket was a patriotic
politician in the b .st sense of that questionable designation.
His eloquence was remarkable, and as it gained him fame
and ascendency in his younger days, it kept him the foremost
man among the Iroquois until his death. "A warrior!" he
exclaimed, when some one spoke of him as such, " I am no
warrior. I am an orator. I was born an orator!" Utterly
repudiating all the arts and advantages of civilization he lived
and died a true barbarian, disdaining alike the religion and
the language of his white foemen and spending his whole life
in "vain endeavors to preserve the independence of his tribe
and in active opposition as well to the plans of civilization
proposed by the beneficent as to the attempts at encroachment
on the part of the mercenary."

Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiah, the warlike chief
of the Sacs, or Sauks, was one of the last cf the warriors of
what might be called the earlier Indian school. As fiery as
Philip of Pokonoket and as ambitious as Pontiac, he had,
however, neither the restless energy of the one nor the masterly
ability of the other. Ranked among the braves of his tribe
when but a boy of fifteen, he declared himself when scarce
twenty-one chief of the Sac nation, and, starting upon a career
of conquest, in less than five years he subdued and made
tributaries all the neighboring tribes. The outrageous and

t ■

SA-GU-VE-WAT-llA IIIK SKNIiCA. (KKl) JACKKT.)

' I

'^nRi

■■■

fi^ !

i' . '
i

f ■ '

INDIAN TYPES.

275

lawless actions of the frontiersmen made him an ardent hater
of the white men and their inveterate and relentless foeman.
Fully recognizing the hopelessness of resistance, he yet man-
fully battled against tyranny and oppression and proved himself
as true a patriot as Scanderbeg or Winkelried or any historic
leader of a forlorn hope. " We did not expect to conquer the
whites," he said. " No, they have too many houses, too many
men. I took up the tomahawk, for my part, to revenge injuries
which my people could no longer endure. Had I borne them
longer without striking, my people would have said : ' lilack
Hawk is a woman ; he is too old to be a chief ; he is no Sauk.' "
Asscola, the Scotch half-breed, wrongfully called CJsceola,*
may be regarded as a fitting representative of the un- Indian
qualities which have so often marked the mingling of the blood
of such diverse races as the red and the white. A Seminole who
was no Seminole — his father being a Scotch trader and his
mother a squaw of the Creeks — he played from the outset the
part of a demagogue. As it suited his purpose, he favored
alternately the white man and the red, and with a cunning
that showed both the shrewdness of the Scotchman and the
craft of the Indian, he added treachery to duplicity, broke alike
his pledges and his faith, and, inciting the rabble of the Florida
tribes against their own chieftains as well as the United States
ofificials, he ran a career of boldness, insolence, ferocity and crime
that brought untold suffering upon the misguided people who
followed his feather; being neither Indian nor white man, he
used both sides to serve his own purposes and to gratify his
personal ambitions. Asseola is as far removed from Philip,

* Asseola signifies a plentiful partaker of the black drink. Osceoli means the rising sun. Romance, as it has
ascribed to the mixed Scotch-Creek leader abilities he did not possess, has also adopted as typical of his character
the name of Osceola; his real characteristic seems instead to have been the spirit of unbridled license representee
by the real name Asseola.

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INDIAN TYPES.

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Pontiac and Tecumthe as was Marlborough from Wellington,
or Lee from Washington.

There are still other types of Indian character that might
supplement the more prominent ones here portrayed as repre-
sentatives of their race in its different stages of contact with
white civilization.

Such was Chickataubut the Massachusett, and Mianto-
nomah the Narragansett, friend and foeman of the early settlers
of Boston ; Actahachi, the gigantic chieftain of the Creeks
who led the Indian attack against Ue Soto in the bloody battle
of Mauvila; Wa-bun-so-na-cook. erroneously called Pow-ha-tan,
head chief of tlie confederated tribes of Vinjinia ; and Weta-
moo, " squaw sachem " of the Narragansetts at the time of
Philip's bloody outbreak. Such, too, was Katonah the politic
sasamore of the Westchester Indians, and Osjanasdoda the
Cherokee, who sought to lead his tribesmen into the white
man's civilization. Such was Mah-to-ton-ka the Oufillalah, tht-
tyrant of his tribe ; Ke-o-kuk, (" the watchful F'ox,") rival and
enemy of Black Hawk ; and Corn-planter the crafty Iroquois
statesman. Such was the eloquent " war woman of Chata,"
among the Cherokees ; Sequoyah, the painstaking inventor of
the Cherokee alphabet ; and Lau-le-wa-si-kan, the " prophet,"
brother and helper of Tecumthe ; and such, later, were Red
Cloud and Spotted Tail, rival chiefs of the warlike Sioux, Sit-
ting Bull the half-breed Oncpapa, Captain Jack, or Kient-poos
the Modoc, Joseph the Nez Perce patriot and Geronimo the
relentless Apache.

These and many others of equal prominence represent
every phase and every side of Indian character — the savage,
the barbaric, the progressive. For there are Indians, and
Indians ; and there is as much difference, as Mr. Dunn well

ww\

;

I '!

IA-KA-T\I MI-.Slir.KIA-KIAH THE SM'K. (ULACK HWVK.V

INDIAN TYPES.

279

says, " between a Pueblo and an Apache, or a Nez Perce and an
Arapahoe, as there is between a Broadway merchant and a
Bowery rough."

But, for all practical purposes of illustration and of type,
the Indian leaders whose characters have been outlined in this
chapter may stand
as representatives of
their race and their
times. They will
stand, also, as ample
assurance that the
native American
whose blood ran pure
and who sout^ht to
be loyal to the tra-
ditions of his people
and the integrity of
his home-land, was
as worthy the name
of patriot as have ever been those of more civilized and there-
fore of more favored lands whose names have emblazoned the
pages of history and led the rolls of heroism.

SI'OTIKl) lAII. WIIH HIS WII'K A N 1 1 DAlMiUTER.

CHAPTER XIV.

TIIK INDIANS OUTLOOK.

li^i

It is not tlie dcsitrn
nor the purpose of this
volume to enter into any
discussion of the Indian
problem. It is offered
merely as a contribution
toward a clearer under-
standing of the character of the
original possessors of American soil
and seeks to place in consecutive
and logical form the story of the
.American Indian. The truth of his-
tory and the dictates of simple
justice demand that Americans of
to-day should have something more
than a misty or distorted knowledge of a people who have been
at once the victims and the tools of a conquering civilization.

The Indian problem has existed since the very first days
of discovery and exploration. Priest and soldier, missionary
and explorer, colonist and pioneer, king and counselor, monar-
chist and republican, philanthropist and politician, reformer

and statesman, friend and foe have alike grappled with its

2H0

THE INDIAX'S Oi'TLOOK.

281

intricacies, suggested plans of treatment and settlement, and
have all alike failed of satisfactory results.

Meantime the Indian, though he knew it not, has liimself
been working out his problem in an involuntary and round-
about way. Drifting
this way and that, as
the tide of immigra-
tion has now floated
and now stranded it,
the frail canoe of bar-
barism has but illy sus-
tained the shocks of
the armored vessel of
civilization. The In-
dian paddle has been
able to maintain only
a weak and gradually
lessening struggle
against the incoming
billows of white settle-
ment, and the Indian,
at last, after many a
manly struggle and
many a cruel rebuff
has allowed his canoe
to drift with the tide,
while he from a patriot
and a protestant has become both a fatalist and a pensionary.

His story is, indeed, but that of similar subject races who
have been antagonized and absorbed by the resistless and
more vigorous civilizations that have conquered them.

ills STOKV lb A .SlMl'LL ONE.

aSa

THE INDIAN'S OUTLOOK.

The story is a simple one. Evolved from brutish savagery
through stages of slow and fluctuating development the native
Americans first essayed a pseudo-civilization that fell because
of its ov/n inherent unworthiness. Relapsing into savagery
— though of a higher grade than that of their primitive
ancestors — these native Americans emerged again, as the self-
raised vi^aves of progress floated them along, into a diverse but
more coherent form of barbarism, which contained within itself
the elements but not the energies of a possible civilization.

Brought into contact with a higher and hitherto unsuspected
intelligence, the red natives of America struggled vainly against
the new order of things in which the mind rather than the
senses was the dominating force. Through years of protest,
aggression and defiance they strove for their inherited per-
sonality ; but recognizing finally the uselessness of ceaseless
endeavor they dropped their weapons as they sunk their manly
pride, and fell at last into a condition of vassalage, pupilage,
and involuntary concession, in which it became the duty of the
civilization that had forced them there to protect, educate and
develop them.

How imperfectly civilization met this duty is but too well
known. Religion wrongly directed, power selfishly used, policy
totally misapplied have wrought their logical results, and the
white race must now acknowledge its failure where it might
liave achieved success. " Had every white inhabitant who sat
himself down by the side of an Indian been kind and generous,"
says a recent writer, " had he discovered less of avarice, and
not taken pains to make himself offensive by his unmistakable
hauj^htiness, few cases of contention would have arisen."

But human nature, in civilization quite as much as in bar-
barism, is weak, selfish and rovident, and the first white

THE INDIAN'S OUTIOOK.

583

/ k.,.j.^a.v.

'■• ■'•'') >.J^.i I*; ™' ■'-4' .'<-,-^ -X ' ' I ■■'^ !^t \ r ; V \ ',■> 1 ^

settlers did precisely what they should not have done. Their
successors followed in their footstei)s until now under the con-
fused and loosely-framed laws of the conquerors of his home-
land the Indian is more of an anomaly than ever. Indeed, as
Mr. Byam very concisely states it, "The Indian is not a citizen
and he is not a foreigner. He is a nondescript. At different

periods he has received

different designations.
Years ago he was a
'domestic subject';
then, ' a perpetual in-
habitant with diminu-
tive rights'; now he is
the Government's
'ward.' This latter,"
adds Mr. Byam, "is
manifestly a misno-
mer, for the ' ward ',
in this case, in order
to bring a suit against
his guardian, must first
obtain his fjuardian's

"^ CONTACT WITH A IIIGIIKK INIKI.I.ICKNCK.

permission.

It is this vague and indefinable position before the law
that has been, from » beginning, the main source of trouble
with the Indians."

That the "protecting" government has been largely respon-
sible for this false position — ignorantly, perhaps, but still
responsible — the ofiicial records of the Indian Bureau and the
contradictory legislation of the National Congress afford ample
proof. This latter has given us the treaty system, the separate

L:f

i. ^

• 1

284

y///; INDIAN'S OUTLOOK.

sovereignty system, the reservation system, the agency system,
the religious espionage system, the philanthropic manipulation
system, the military system, the political patronage system, the
ration and pensionary systen, and countless other systems which

— foi innately for the Indian — have failed of Congressional
sanction. And still the question is unsolved.

Said a clever young Indian woman — Insh-ta The-am-ba,
known to us as " Bright I£yes " — "the white people have tried
to solve the Indian question by commencing with the proposi-
tion that the Indian is different from all other human beings.
Allow an Indian,' she adds, " to suggest that the solution of
this vexed question is citizenship."

To this conclusion, too, all thoughtful students of the ques-
tion are rapidly tending. The Indian problem as it stands
to-dav is of our own makinij. Its solution must also be our
own. But the Indian himself — the chief factor in the problem

— must be made the means by which a final solution is reached.
Education and severalty seem to be the only paths which lead
to Indian manhood.

The first of these is already being successfully traversed.
The possibility, of which the one Indian alumnus of Harvard,
two hundred years ago — " Caleb Cheeshabteaumuck, Indus " —
was the prophecy, is fast becoming the reality, and Hampton and
Carlisle, Salem and Albuquerque, Chilocco and Genoa, Law-
rence and Philadelphia, and the other points at which have
been or<>anized advanced schools for the industrial education
and improvement of the Indian, already prove by the success
attained the wisdom of this tardy but practical awakening of
our conscience and our justice.

Not less promising, as proof of the aroused sense of justice
that even a laggard legislation has at last displayed, is the offi-

TJIE INDIAN'S OUTLOOK.

285

cial record of the sums annually appropriated for Indian edu-
cation and improvement. These, from $i6iS,(:^4 in 1877, have
steadily increased to #1,211,415 in 1S86.

Progress is slow, but sure. Relapses into barbarism, even
among those most carefully trained to civilized ways, have been
reported and may be rei:)eated ; but it is no easy task to re-mold

A CANIMD.VIK KOK IIAMI'TON SCHOOL.

a nature which has in it the hereditary taint of four centuries
of criminal neglect. Even failure does not disprove justice,
and it is a blessed thins: that in this selfish world of ours there
are still so many large and generous souls in which lives and
flames the same spirit of yearning toward the unfortunate and
the ignorant that sent the missionaries of old into forest and
fen-land, into danger and death, for the intangible reward of

a86

THE INDIAN'S OUTLOOK,

winning souls from fancied heresy and error. Those unselfish
old fathers were, to be sure, supremely selfish, so far as their
church and their order were concerned ; but despite their limited
intelligences and their sadly warped conceptions of the infi-
nite justice and the eternal love of Hie God they so narrowly
preached, they were still royal souls, orious in intention, act
and will, and were more supremely heroic than any one of the
bloody Indian fighters of all that long line which stretches from
De Soto to Daniel Hoone.

So, even the worst and most deplorable elements of the
Indian life of to-day — lazy, dirty, improvident and brutish
though this may be — shall in time, through ceaseless effort
and kindly ways, be brought into the light. Education and
citizenship shall give back to the Indian the manliness he has
lost, while the refining association of the hi<>her elements of
civilization so long denied him shall make his restored manli-
ness even more manly, progressive and permanent than was the
barbaric vifjor of his noble old ancestors.

"Civilization makes slow progress," says Mr. Thwing, "yet
progress is made, and before the last of the race disappears
from the continent over which he once roamed as master, there
is reason to hope he may become the equal in all the arts of
living of his white conqueror."

But is he disappearing? Apparendy he is, but the undue
proportion between the white race and the red, and the shifting
and shiftless ways of at least one half the Indian population of
to-day makes absolute proof impossible. Opinions differ as to
the actual decrease or increase — for there are those who hold
to the theory of increase. But it is certain that the total
Indian population of to-day is not very far below that which
was so sparsely scattered over the vast North American area

THE h\D JAN'S OUTLOOK.

287

when Columbus and his companions saw the Soutlicrn islands
four hundred years ago.

The latest statistics give a total Indian population in the
United States, exclusive of Alaska, as 247,761. Add to this
the two hundred thousand Indians in Alaska, and the British
Possessions, and the total is not far below the estimated half-
million Indian inhabitants that occupied the North /\merican
continent at the time of discovery.

But liow shrunken are their possessions. The absolute
lords by right of inheritance and occupation, four centuries
ago, of more than seventy-five hundred thousand square miles,
they can now legally claim by the right of their reservation
limits, so far as those within the United States are concerned, a
territory of less than two hundred and fifty thousand square
miles.

And a comparison of the standing of the aboriginal inhabi-
tants and their descendants of to-day reveal some singular facts.
The Indians of the South have, after all, been most progressive
and most susceptible of civilization. The descendants of those
patriotic Americans who first felt the white man's tyranny —
the Creeks, the Choctaws and the Cherokees — have shown the
most advance in education and the methods of their conquerors.
The free Cherokees who dogged De Soto's bloody steps and
who welcomed Oglethorpe's peaceful nV/;«r, as they desired
even in the 2;ood Governor's dav the advantages of the English-
man's schools for their own children, now spend annually nearly
two hundred thousand dollars for educational purposes.

The Navajos — denizens of those mythical "seven cities of
Cibola," that lured so many gold-seeking Spaniards to privation
and death, descendants of the very men who made the story of
Cabeca de Vaca so wildly romantic — are now comparatively

388

THE JXniAX'S OUTLOOK.

^.l

III

independent and self-suj)portin<;. They are owners by their
own efforts of <Soo,ooo sheep, 250,000 horses and 300,000 i;()ats.
Their wool clip for 1SS6 exceeded 850,000 pounds, and they
have under cultivation 12,500 acre.-» of productive land. The
Mo([uis, relics of the attempted civilization that lined the
"mesas" of the dry Southwest with populous "pueblos" and
fertile farm-lands, now possess over 10,000 head of st ::k and
made of their last wool clip over 3000 pounds of their marvellous
blankets. The Comanches, once the most blood-thirsty of the
Western tribes, are clamorous for schools for their children,
and the Indians of Wisconsin in 1886, banked nearly sixty-four
million feet of timber, and are living the lives of contented
lumbermen.

A studv of life amons: the "Five Civilized Tribes" who
are located in the Indian Territory ( the Cherokees, Choctaws,
Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles ) would cause surprise
amonii' those who still hold vaijue notions of the " wildness " of
the Indians. These people, so says Mr. Atkins, the C'jmmis-
sioner of Indian Affairs in his latest report, "have in great
measure passed from a state of barbarism. Many of them are
educated people. They have fine schools and churches. They
are enuafjed in lucrative business of various kinds. In fact, so
far as outward appearances go, there would seem to be \ery
little difference between their civilization and that of the
States."

The Iroquois — most fearless and ferocious of the old
barbarians — have, many of them, accepted the ways of the
white man with almost as much intelliu,ence as their confeder-
ated brethren of the South, and 'he exhibits at an agricultural
fair held by the " Iroquois Agricultural Society," some years
ago (in 1S65), were a revelation to many who knew the Indian by

i»

THE INDIAN'S OUTIOOK.

291

hearsay only as a desperado and a savage. The fair was open
to competition to all of Iroquois lineage and their descendants,
and Mr. L. L. Doty who visited it states that the samples of
corn, beans, squashes and potatoes there displayed were supe-
rior to any he had ever seen. " Wheat and other grains," he
says, " hogs, a few sheep, horses and horned cattle were like-
wise embraced in the display, as were also specimens of bead
and needlework and other articles of female handicraft."

And the latest reports show no retreat from this advanced
position. " The different tribes," according to the latest report
of the New York agent, "are making slow but sure advance-
ment in civilization, are making good progress in agricultural
pursuits, and are rapidly improving their breeds of horses, cattle
and swine, while quite a number of the young men, especially
among the Senecas, are learning the different mechanical
pursuits."

The Indians of the West, made up, to-day, of the scattered

tribes of the plains, the receding ones of the prairie States and
those of the East forcibly removed from their earlier homes
are, within their now restricted limits, alike on New Mexican
plains and on their prescribed reservations, so declares a recent
official authority, Hon. Charles S. Young, of Nevada, " tilling
the soil, building homes, honoring the country of their birth
and at the feet of our civilization are learning lessons of polit-
ical science and personal liberty."

How correct as to actual fact this last assertion may be it is
certainly true in possibility. The iniquitous system of Indian
management that for centuries held sway, is at last giving place
to something like wisdom, justice and equity, and both the
prophecy of Mr. Thwing, quoted above, and the words of Mr.
Young, may in time prove true.

292

THE INDIAN'S OUTLOOK.

There is, undoubtedly, still room for improvement in
governmental policy. The reports of the Interior Department
still tell of injustice and tyranny. Even within the last two
years a reader of these o'" 'al records, according to a writer in

.^Sk^

PACK TRAIN I.KAVINC A I'UKHI.O.

the Nation, "would learn of the Utes compelled to go to the
mountains for game (because their agent had not rations enough
for them to keep them alive, and their reservation had been
denuded of wild animals), and of their being attacked there
without provocation by the w^hites, and their m(;n, women and
children being remorselessly shot down. He would learn of

Iliii

THE INDIAN'S OUTLOOK'.

293

the pitiable condition of the Pueblos under white men's legisla-
tion ; of the manner in which Indian tribes, nominally under
the care of the Government, are left to the mercy of rapacious
cattle-men in making pretended leases of their lands — the very
agents of the Government, who are supposed to be the Indians
guardians, sharing in the profits of these speculative transac-
tions ; and of railroads running through lands to which the
Indians have exclusive rights, without having paid a penny to
the Indians as compensation therefor."

The Indian would have been more than human had he not
resented the tyranny of his " absorbers," especially when he
began to realize that, as one writer puts it, " he was giving the
white man what was imperishable in return for the perishable."
And when even this "perishable" was tampered with, stolen or
delayed, no wonder that he sought redress.

" The red man is not slow to observe," says Mr.
McNaughton, "that the bellicose tribes are the favored ones —
obtaining their pensions more promptly and securing rations of
better quality. I was struck," he adds, " with the pointed and
really graphic way in which a good-natured Sioux put the case:
* Bad Injun shake tomahawk, raise shoot-gun, get pay quick !
]\Ie peace Injun — good, stay in tepee. Pappoose hungry.
Bimeby bread come 'long — sour! bimeby meat come 'long —
stink ! Me shake tomahawk too, guess, bimeby!

The Mission Indians of California in whose behalf the late
Mrs. Jackson (" H. H.") so eloquently plead in her charming
story " Ramona " are still the victims of jealous neighbors and
hostile courts ; the Mo-ko-ho-ko branch of Black Hawk's once
powc'ful tribe of the Sauks, or Sacs, have been forced into
vagal)ondage, and, without rights either of citizenship or prop-
erty in the wealthy State of Kansas, which is their home, are

294

THE INDIAN'S OUTLOOK.

still neglected by the Government which should p -otect them,
and are slowly degenerating into a roving band of starving
trespassers — a sad fall from their once proud position ; and the
Yakama Indians of Washington Territory still plead for relief
from the encroachments of their white neighbors, and make inef-

I.N I'KuCL.iM (Jl' CIVll.l/.AllU.N.

fectual protests against the violation of their fishing privileges.
The story of Me-tia-kah-tla, that remarkable Indian colony
which the self-sacrifice and persistence of William Duncan
evolved from the most unpromising elements in the wilds of
British Columbia, is but a sorry commentary on the "methods "
of a boasted civilization. The Dominion Government has
treated Mr, Duncan and his civilized Tsimsheans with stuched
brutality while even the petition of the persecuted Tsimsheans
for permission to settle upon United States lands in Alaska

THE INDIAN'S OUTLOOK.

295

seems, as one writer declares, " only an attempt to fly !"rom one
persecutor to another." " No doubt," says this same newspaper
critic, " they will be allowed to change masters and tyrants,
though it is unhappily not possible to look forward with much
confidence to their future under the stars and stripes."

And even as I write there comes from the West the latest
story of the white man's duplicity and crime, as if the les-
son of four centuries of injustice had gone for naught. Colo-
row and his Utes, resenting the white borderer's theft and arro-
gance, have dared ])rotest, and at once cowboy and militiaman
ape De Soto's bloody ways and join in " the sport of killing
Indians," while the "paternal government " that should protect
its " wards " stands idly by. All this does but emphasize the
statement of one of our great newspapers, that " the piaciice of
keeping no faith with the Indians has been followed almost as
persistently upon the frontier as the practice of keeping no
faith with heretics was practised by Alva in the Netherlands."

But even these governmental shortcomings will, in time,
give place to something like public conscience. The unselfish la-
bors of the modern friends of the Indians are certain to foster in
the hearts of that generous majority of the people without whom
neither Government nor State can stand, a growing sense of
justice and an increasing desire for national honor. Public
opinion which has negligently permitted will in time absolutly
prevent all violations of the nation's faith, and the rapacity of
the borderer will at last give place to the kindliness of the
neighbor and the helpfulness of the friend. The paui:erizing
system of reservation and ration will die with the red man's
advance toward citizenship, and the agent and trader will be
as thoroughly relics of barbarism as are the primitive weapons
of the old-time Indians themselves.

996

THE INDIAN'S OUTIOOK.

So, even as lie reads tlie record of present Indian griev-
ances, the student of Indian j^rogress to-day, cannot but be
iri ijssed with the changed relations between the red-man and
the white as compared with those of a generation ago. " It
speaks well for the great heart of the people which lies back of
and behind this Government," says Mr. Atkins, "that they order
and command their representatives to foster a policy which
alone can save the aborigines from destruction — from beinij
worn away by the attrition of the conflicting elements of Anglo-
Saxon civilization." And, on the other hand, the indications
point to an improved condition of affairs among the Indians
themselves. " The active inquiry among many of the tribes for
further knowledge of the arts of agriculture," says Mr. Atkins
in his latest report; "the growing desire to take lands in sever-
alty ; the urgent demand for agricultural implements with
modern improvements ; the largely increased acreage which the
Indians have put to tillage, exceeding that of any preceding
year; the unprecedented increase in the number of Indian
children who have been enrolled in the schools — these and
many other facts fully establish the claim that during the past
year (1886) the Indian race has taken a firmer step and a
grander stride in the great march toward civilization than ever
before in the same length of time."

Clan and tribe, totem and medicine, peace-pipe and toma-
hawk, the dances, the ceremonies and the mysteries of barbar-
ism gradually give '^'^ace to the methods and manners of
civilization. The advcdiced condition that some tribes have
already attained will in time be reached by all, and Cherokee
and Creek, Iroquois and Sioux will be needless distinctions, for
where all are citizens there will be neither race discriminations
nor tribal comparisons.

THE IND JAN'S OUTLOOK.

!97

The Indian shows more capacity for instruction than the
net^ro, is more thoroughly American than the Chinese, and
exhibits more natural ability than do many of the European
immigrants that come to us from across the sea. Where the
incentive to ad > ncement exists the result is sure to follow.

" My whole heart is shaking hands with you," wrote a grate-
ful Hampton student to his teacher, and Whittier's recent verses
are eloquently indicative of the changing nature of the Indian.

In the old time, says a Micmac legend, Glooskap the Mas-
ter made himself a canoe and went upon a mighty river. At
first it was broad and beautiful, but after a while great cliffs
were passed which gathered around and closed over the canoe
in a dark cavern. But the river ran on beneath and ever on fat-
underground, deeper and deeper in the earth, till it dashed
headlong into rapids, among rocks and ravines, and under cata-
racts which were so horrible that death seemed to come and no
with every plunge of the canoe. And the water grew narrower
and the current more dreadful and fear came upon the com-
panions of Glooskap, so that they died. But the Master sat
with silent soul, though he sang the songs of life and so passed
into the ni^ht, but came forth asjain into the sunliijht. And
there stood a wigwam on the bank into which he bore his com-
panions ; and lo ! they arose, and deemed they had only slept.
And ever after the Master had the greatest power.

Even thus to-day is the modern Glooskap — the renewed
Indian — emerging from the darkness of centuries into the new
day, wherein too his race shall be aw^akened and disenthralled.
It should be the duty, now, as well as the pleasure of his white
brethren to help him on his forward way by the proffer of citizen-
ship, friendship and fellowship until that denationalizing pro-
cess is complete which is to amalgamate him into the real

298

y •///'; /x/y/AN's olti.ook.

American of the future — the citizen who shall know no dis-
tinction of biood or birth, of color or of creed, but who shall be
simply and everywhere the American.

The Indian of that future day will be as far removed from
the Indian of the past as is Mr. Gladstone the statesman from

DARKNKSS.

Hereward the Wake, or Victoria the EmiDress from Boadicea
the Briton.

But, in the story of the Indian's past, romance and poetry
niay, if they will but study and investigate, find ever new and
inspiring thtmies ; history may discover new facts that will be
shown to have had a wonderful bearing upon the growth and
destiny of the American Republic ; theology may find new in-
dications of man's inherent excellence ; and philosophy new
data in explanation of heretofore unexplainable ethnic peculi-
arities.

From field and forest, from river, lake and hunting-ground
has the Indian been gradually thrust backward into a vassal
and servile state only to again emerge, but upon a higher plane

a-i

mmmmm

THE INDIAN'S OITLOOK.

2y.

of civilization. The old story is retold, and again the fall and
rise of his race results in absolute advancement. And so out
of primeval savagery, by rise and fall, and nsv ind fall and still
by rise again, standing with each rise upon a higher, a more
manly and a nobler plane, shall the American Indian, after many
ages, find permanent civilization.

Thus the old order changes; thus again is the Divine plan
of progress vindicated
and the poet's words
made fact :

I hold it truth with him who

sings,
That men may rise on step-
ping-stones
0£ their dead selves to higher
things.

But the story of the
American Indian — his
manners and cusU)ms,
his struggles, his phil-
osophy, his home-life,
his patriotism and his
manliness in days of
barbarism when, amid
the forests of a vast
continent, he sought to
work out the problem
of the destiny of his

race — will have a new and never-failing interest if, as we read,
we will but allow to him the manhood that a selfish arrogance
of intelligence has so long denied.

DAYLIGHT.

300

THE INDIAN'S OITI.OOK.

The American Indian tried the experiment of race advance-
ment on an imperfect basis — tried and failed, because a greater
civilization was to follow and make the trial, upon a higher and
still more intellectual plane. We too may fail — and yet there
is no failure where progress is eternnl.

So as we read the story of the American Indian, seeking to
put ourselves in his place, amid his surroundings and with his
aspirations and limitations, we may, if we but read aright, hear
from him the same words of noble warning that Carlyle j)uts
into the mouth of another race, as childlike, as rude, as fearless,
as robust as was the Indian race of North America: "This,
then, is what we made of the world; this is all the image and
notion we could form to ourselves of this great mystery of a
Life and Universe. Despise it not. You are raised high above
it, to large free scope of vision ; but you too are not yet at the
top. No, your notion, too, so much enlarged, is but a partial,
imperfect one ; that matter is a thing no man will ever in time
or out of time compreiiend; after thousands of years of ever
new expansion, man will find himself but struggling to com-
prehend again a part of it ; the thing is larger than man, not
to be comprehended by him; an Infinite thing!"

K:tll

ill i '

i|:

■■

■HHI

TH1-: Hi<:sT MiJNi):ii':n books on

AMERICAN INDIAN.

THE

This list of one hundred hooks rehiting to the history, manners and cusloms
of the NortI) American Indian does not purport to be eitlier a complete or an
exhaustive one. It merely selects from the abundant material on the subject
those books best calculated to jiresent the details of the Indian's slorv. 'I'he
transactions of (lie Historical Societies of the several States, tliouij;!! full of ma-
terial, are not eiuuuerated here, and the list of {government publications is
intentionally incomplete. The list is more a su-;gestive than a comprehensive
one, hut it does give the leading books devoted to the study of the American
Indian, Acknowledgment is due to the very thorough Indian bibliography
of the late 'I'homas Field, which has furnished suggestions and notes for this
list. The luost of the books enumerated may be found at the public libraries.

Abbott (John S. C).

Histoiv of KiiiK I'hilip (Sovereign Cliief of the Wainpnnoags). Incliuling the early history
of the Settlers of N'cw Mnglaiul. (With engravings.) i2nio, 410 pp. Xew York, 1S57.

Ballantyne (Kohert Michael).

Hudson's liav; or Kverv-I)ay Life in the Wilds of North America during Six Years' Resi.
dence in the Territories of tiie Hudson's Bay Company. i2mo, i)p. 29S. Hoston, 1859.

Bancroft (Hubert Howe).
Tlu' \ative Races of the Pacific States of North America. 5 vols. 8vo. New York, 1876.

Barber (John Warner).

The History and Anti(iuitics of New England, New York, Few Jersey j.nd Pennsylvania,
embracing Discoveries, Settlements, Indian History, etc., etc. 8vo., pp. 624. Hartfcrd,
i,Ss6.

Benson (Henry C).

Life among the Choctaw IiHi.ans, and Sketches of the Southwest. i2mo, pp. 314. Cincin-
nati, i860.
" An every rf ly story of incidents and characters, grave or ludicrnus ; — a veritable relation of personal experiences

during three viMis' service among the Clioctaws." — Field.

Black Hawk,

Life of Ulack Hawk. Dictated by himself. J. B. Patterson, Editor. i6mo, pp. 155.
Boston, 1845.

Blake (Alexander V.).

.Anecdotes of the .American Indians. i6mo, pp. 252. Hartford, 1850.

Boiler (Henry A.).

.Among the Indians. Eight Years in the Far West, 1858 -1866. i2ino, pp. 428. Phila-
delphia, 1868.
An endeavor to faithfully portray Indian lift in its home aspect.

301

3oa

THE BEST HUNDRED /WOKS O.V TIJE AMEKJCAX IXDIAN.

Brinton (n.-iniel ("■.).

The l.cnape aiul their Legends, with the Complete Text and Symbols of the Walam Olum.
[Hrinton's Library of Aboriginal Literature, No. 5.] Philadelphia, 1885.

Brinton (Daniel (J.)-

The Myths of the New World. .\ Treatise or. the .Symbolism and Mythology of the Red
Race of America. lamo, pp. 337. New Vork, 1876.

Brownell (Charles de Wolf).

Tiie Indian Races of North and South America. Svo, pp. 720 -f- 40 full-page plates. New
York, 1857.

Bryant (Charles S.).

A History of the Creat Mas.sacre by the Sioux Lulians in Minnesota, including the personal
narratives of many who escaped. By Charles S. Bryant and Abel B. Murch. i2mo,
])p. 504. Cincinnati, 1S64.

Buchanan (James).

Sketches of the History, Manners and Customs of the North American Indian with a Plan
for their Melioration. Two vols. i2mo. New York, 1S24.

Cabeca de Vaca (Mvarez Nunez).

Relation of Alvarez Nunez Cabeca de Vaca. Translated from the Spanish by Buckingham
Smith. Svo, pp. 300. N. Y., 1871.
The enrliest historic menuiii' o[ tlie Indian races of the Southern States frcin Florida to Texas.

Catlin (Ceorge).

Letters and Notes of the ^Llnners, Customs and Condition of the North American Lulians,
written during eight years' travel amongst the wildest tribes of Lidians in North America.
Two vols. Svo. With one hundred and fifty ill. on steel and wood. pp. 792 -)- 41 plates.
Philadelphia, 1857.

Catlin (George).

Last Rambles among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and Andes. 121110, pp. 371 ; 8
jilates and 16 wood cuts of Indian portraits, life and scenery. New Vork, 1867.

Charlevoix (P. F. X. de).

History and General Description of New France. Translated with Notes by John Gilmary
Shea. 6 vols. Imp. Svo. Illustrated with plates, portraits and maps. New York, 1872.
" Tlie most authentic accounts of the Indians of Canada ever given. . . . The work teems with vivid rela-
tions of tlieir customs, religious rites, and other peculiarities." — Field.

Cherokee.

A Faithfid History of the C... rokee Tribe of Indians, from the ])eriod of our iirst inter-
course with them down to the present time ; . . . . with a full exjiosition of . . .
. their .... division into three parties .... and of the nature and extent
of their present claims. (The Commissioner's report) Washington, 1846. Svo.

Church (Thomas).

The History of Philip's War, commonly called The Great Indian War of 1675 and 1676.
Also of the French and Indian Wars at the I'^astward, 1689- 1704. With Notes and Ap-
pendix Ijy Samuel G. Drake. i2mo, pp. 360 -|- 2 plates. Boston, 1827. Hartford, 1S52.

Clark'). V. IL).

Lights and Lines of Indian Character and Scenes of Pioneer Life. i2mo, pj). 375. .Syra-
cuse, 1S54.

Clark (J. V. H.).

Onondaga; or, Reminiscencet; of Earlier and Later Times. . . . 2 vols. Svo. .Syra-
cuse, 1S49.

\ valuable and important work.
Clark (j. V. IL).

Tradition of Ili-.vwat-ha. Origin of the Narrative of the Onondaga Tradition of Hia-wat-ha,
and Correspondence relative thereto. .Syracuse, 1856. Svo.

•Wl

THE BEST IIUXDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN.

303

Colden (Cadwallader).
The History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New York. Re-
printed exactly from Bradford's New York Edition (1727). With an Introduction and Notes
by John Gilmary Shea. Svo, portrait, and pp. 199. New York, 1S66.
Colton (C).
Tour of the American Lakes, and among the Indians of the Northwest Territory in 1830 :
Disclosing the Character and Prospects of the Indian Race. 2 vols. London, 1833.
Copway (tleorge).
The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation, l)y G. Copway
(Kah-ge-ga-gah-bouh, Chief of the Ojibway Nation). 111. by Darley. i2mo, pp. 266, 2
plates. ISoston, 1S51.
Cremony (John C).
Life among the Apaches, by John C. Cremony, Interpreter to the U. S. Boundary Commis-
sion, in 1S49, '50 and '51. i2mo, pp. 322. San Francisco, 1868.
Custer (G. A.).

Mv Life on the Plains. 111. Svo. New York, 1874.
Davis (A. C).
Frauds of the Indian Office. Argument of A. C. Davis before the Committee of Indian
Affairs of the Mouse of Representatives, Jan. 12, 1867. . . . Washington, 1867.
Davis (W. W. IL).
The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico. Svo, pp. 438, map and portrait. Doyleston, Pa.,
1869.

" His narrative of tlie prolonged hostilities between the Spaniards and the Indians and of the religious rites, meth-
ods of warfare and peculiar ceremonies of the latter is fresh, vigorous and entertaining." — Field.
Dawson (Moses).
A Historical Narrative of the Civil and Military Services of Major General Harrison.
. . . . With a Detail of his Negotiations and Wars with the Indians, until the final
overthrow of the celebrated Chief, Tecunisch, and his Brother, the Prophet. Written and
compiled from original and authentic Documents. ... .... By Moses Daw-
son. Svo, j3p. 464. Cincinnati, 1S14.

One of the most thorough, complete and authentic treatises on the Border Wars of the West.
Dodge (J. R.).

Red Men of the Ohio Valley, an Aboriginal History of the period commencing A. D., 1650,
and ending at the treaty of Greenville, a. D., 1795, embracing notable facts and thrilling
incidents in the settlement by the Whites of the States of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois. i2mo, pp. 435. Springfield, O., 1S60.
Dodge (R. I.).
Our Wild Indians: with an introduction by General W. T Sherman. 111. Svo. Hartford,
Ct., 1HS2.
Dodge (R. I.).

I'.ains of the great West, and their inhabitants. 111. Svo. New York 1S77.
Drake (Benjamin).
Life of Tecumseh, and of his Brother, the Prophet ; with a Historical Sketch of the Shaw-
anoe Indians. By Benjamin Drake. 121110, pp. 235. Cincinnati, 1S41.
Drake (S. G.).
Biography and History of the Indians of North America, from its first Discovery. Svo, pp.
720 4- 8 plates. Boston, 1S57.
A stand.ird and valuable work.
Drake fS. G.).
The Old Indian Chronicle; being a Collection of exceeding rare Tracts, Written and Pub-
lished in the Time of King Philip's War, by persons residing in the country. To which are
now added an Introduction and Notes, by Samuel G. Drake, pp. 333. Boston, 1867,

304

THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN.

Drake (S. C).
The History of King Philip's War. By the Rev. Increase Mather, ]). D. Also a Historv
of the same War, by the Rev. Cotton Mather, 1). D., to which arc added, an Introduction
and Notes, by Samuel G. Drake. . . . 4to, pp. 281.

Dunn (/ohn).
History of the Oregon Territory and British North-American Fur Trade; with an Account
of the habits and custor.s of the principal native tribes on the Northern Continent. By
John Dunn, late of the Hudson's Bay Co. 8vo, pp. 359 ■\- map. Philadelphia, 1845.

Dunn (J. P. Jr.).
Massacres of the Mountains ; a history of the Indian wars of the Far West. pp. 784. ill.
and maps. New York, 1886.

" A graphic account of the Indian wars of the past fifty years. Written with unusual earnestness and a full appre-
ciation of the injustice done the Indians." — American Catalogue.

Dorman (Rushton M.).
The Origin of Primitive Superstitions and their Development into the Worship of Spirits
and the Doctrine of Spiritual Agency among the Aborigines of America. 8vo, pp. 398.
ill. Philadelphia, 188 1.

Doty (Lock wood L.).
History of Livingston Co., New York .... with an Account of the Seneca Nation
of Indians, etc. 8vo, pp. 685. Geneseo, 1876.
118 pages of this volume treat very fully of the Seneca Indians.

Eastman (Mrs. Mary).

Dah-co-tah, or Life and Legends of the Sioux around Fort Snelling, by Mrs. Mary Eastman,
with Preface by Mrs. C. M. Kirkland. 111. from drawings by Captain Eastman. 121110,
pp. xi4-268. New York, 1849.

Eggleston (Edward) {txnd otlicrs\.
(Famous American Indians.) 5 v., ill., i2mo. New York, 1878-80.

[Contain : Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet ; by E. P^ggleston and Mrs. L. E. Seelye. —
Red Eagle ; by G. C. Eggleston. — Pocahontas ; by E. Eggleston and Mrs. L. E. Seelye. —
Brant and Red Jacket ; by E. Eggleston and Mrs. L. E. Seelye. — Montezuma ; by E.
Eggleston and Mrs. L. E. Seelye.

Ellis (G. E.).
The red man and the white man in North America. 8vo. Boston, 1882.

Emerson (Ellen Russell).
Indian Myths; or Legends, Traditions and Symbols of the Aborigines of .\merica. Plates
and diagrams. 8vo. Boston, 1884.

Events in Indian History.
Beginning with an Account of the Origin of the American Indians and Early Settlements in
North America, and embracing concise Biogra])hies of the principal Chiefs and head Sa-
chems of the different Indian Tribes, with Narratives and Captivities. 111. with 8 fine
engravings. 8vo, pp. 633. Lancaster, 1841.

Finley(J. B.).
Life among the Indians ; or. Personal Reminiscences and Historical Incidents illustrative of
Indian Life and Character. By Rev. James B. Finley. 121110, pp. 548. Cincinnati, 1868.

Flint (Timothy).
Indian Wars of the West, containing Biographical Sketches of the Pioneers, together
with a View of the Character, Manners, Monuments and Antiquities of the Western In-
dians. i2mo, pp. 240. Cincinnati, 1833.

Goodrich (S. G.).
History of the Indians of North and South America. By the author of Peter Parley's Tales.
l6mo, pp. 320. Boston, 1855.

Manners and Customs of American Indians. 111. i6mo. Boston.
[These are volumes in Peter Parley's " Youth's Library of History."]

WP^

THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS OX THE AMERICAiV IXDJAN.

305

•?&

Hall (James).
Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the West. 2 vols. i2mo. Philadelphia, 1835.

Halkett (John).

Historical Notes respecting the Indians of North America, with remarks on the attempts
made to convert and civilize them. 8vo, pp. 408. London, 1825.

Harrison (J. \\.).
The latest Studies of Indian Reservations. A pamphlet issued by the Indian Rights Asso-
ciation. Philadelphia, 1887.
A valuable and careful study of the latest phases of Reservation life.

Harvey (Henry).

History of the Shawnee Indians, from the year 1681 to 1854 inclusive, by Henry Harvey, a
member of the Society of Friends. i2mo, pp. 316. Cincinnati, 1855.

Hawkins (ISenjamin).

Sketch of the Creek CoinUry with a Description of the Tribes, Government and Customs
of the Creek Indians, by Col. lienjamin Hawkins, for 20 years Resident Agent of that Nation.
Preceded by a Memoir of the Author and a history of the Creek Confederacy. Svo, pp. 88.
Savannah, 1848.

Heard (Isaac V. D.).

History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863. i2mo, pp. 354 with 33 plates.
New York, 1865.

Heckewelder (J.).

History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and
the neighboring States. New revised edition, introduction and notes by W C. Reichel.
8vo. Philadelphia, 1876.

Helps (.V'-thur).
The Life of Las Casas, " The Apostle of the Indies." i2mo, pp. 292. Philadelphia, 1868.

Helps (Arthur).

The Spanish Conquest in America, and its relation to the History of Slavery and to the

Government of the Colonies. Four vols. 8vo. London, 1861.

" A noble work devoted to the history of the relations of the Indians of America to its .Spanish invaders and the

effect of their occupation and conquest upon the population, religion ard manners of the aborigines." — Fiblu.

Hubbard (William).
The History of the Indian Wars \\\ New England, from the First Settlement to the Termina-
tion of the War with King Philip in 1677. From the Original Work by Rev. Wm. Hubbard.
Carefully revised, and accompanied with an Historical Preface, Life and Pedigree of the
Author, and extensive Notes. By Samuel G. Drake. 2 vols. Large Svo. Roxbury,
Mass., 1865.

Indian Laws.

Laws of the Colonial and State Governments, relating to Indians and Indian Affairs from
1633 to 1831 inclusive; with an Appendix containing the Proceedings of the Congress of
the Confederation ; and the Laws of Congress from 1800 to 1830 on the same subject. Svo,
pp. 250 and Appendix pp. 72. Washington, 1832.

Indian Treaties.

And Laws and Regulations relating to Indian Affairs, to which is added, an Appendix con-
taining the ])roceedings of the Old Congress, and other important State papers in relation to
Indian Affairs. 8vo, pp. 661. Washington, 1826.
Contains an abstract < f treaty stipulations with the Indians, a statement of the obligations by which the savage

tribes and the United States authoritiei mutually bound themselves, Sequoyah's Cherokee Alphabet and a mass of

historic and personal data.

Irving (John T.).

Indian Sketches taken during an Expedition to the Pawnee Tribes. 2 vols. \2m.Q. Phila-
delphia. 1835.

306

THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN.

V t

Jackson (Mrs. Helen).

A ('eiitiiiy of Di.slionor : Sketch of the United S ;S Government's dealings with some of

the Indian tril)es. i2mo. New York, 1881.

All eloquent r.:-.'l ciithiisiastic plea for justice to the Indian by a writer of ability and considerable dramatic force.
Hur story of " Kainona " which is based upon the wrongs suffered by the Indians of Southern California has,
also, been the means of awakening public sympathy in behalf of a persecuted race. Both books, however, are
written in a spirit of indignant and unqualified censure and should be read rather with caution than absolute accep-
tance.
Jones (Charles C, Jr.).

Antiquities of the Southern Indians, particularly of the Georgia Tribes. 8vo, ])p. 352.

New York, 1873.
Jones (Charles C, Jr.).

Historical Sketch of Tomo-chi-chi, Mico of the Yamacraws. Svo, pp. 133. Albany, N. Y.

1 868.

Kohl (Johann).
Kitchi Garni. Wanderings around Lake Superior. London, i860.
" One of the most exhaustive and valuable treatises on Indian life ever written." — Field.

Leland (Charles G.).
Tiie Algonquin Legends of New England, or Myths and Folk lore of the Micmac, Passama-
(juoddy and Penobscot Tribes. 121110, pp., 379. III. Uoston, 1884.
Lewis and Clark.

History of the E,\pcdition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the Sources
of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the
Pacific Ocean. Performed during the years 1S04-5-6. I5y order of the Government of the
United States. Prepared for the press by Paul Allen. T'vo vols., Svo. Maps, plans
and copious tables. New ^'ork, 1868.

" An interesting work whose value to the historian, the student or the reader for amusement has not been super-
seded by the relations 01 expeditions which have succeeded it." — Field.

McKenney and Hall.

History of the Indian tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes
of the Principal Chiefs. E^mbellished with 120 jjortraits, from the Indian Gallery in the
Department of War at Washington. By Thos. L. McKenney and James Hall. Philadelphia,

1837-
One of the most costly and important works upon the American Indian ever published.

McKenney (Thomas L,).
Memoirs, Official and Personal, with Sketches of Travels among the Northern and Southern
Indians; embracing a War excursion and descriptions of scenes along the Western border
Svo, pp. 476, and twelve plates. New York, 1846.

McKenney (Thomas L.).

Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, of the Character and Customs of the Chippeway Indians.
And of incidents connected with the Treaty of Fond du Lac. Also, a Vocabulary of the
Algic, or Chippeway Language. . . . Ornamented with 29 engravings of Lake Superior
and other scenery, Indian likenesses, Costumes, etc. Svo, 29 plates and pp. 493. Balti-
moie, 1827.

Morgan (Lewis IL).

Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines. Vol. IV. of Contributions to North
American Ethnology, pp. xiv-f 28f. 111. 4to. Published by the United States Geograph-
ical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. Washington, 1881.

Morgan (Lewis II. ).
League of the Ilode-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. Svo, pp. 477+23 maps, plates, and plans.
Rochester, 185 1.

i-sawg;

THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN.

307

Morse (Rev. Jedediah).
A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs, comprising a
narrative of a tour performed in the summer of 1820, under a commission from the Presi-
dent of the United States, for the purpose of ascertaining, for the use of the government,
the actual state of the Indian tribes in our country. 8vo, pp. 500. New Haven, 1S22.
" Certainly the most complete and exhaustive report of the condition, numbers, names, territory, and general

affairs of the Indians (as they existed in ilie year 1S20) ever made." — Fibld.

Parkman (Francis).
The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada. 2 voIs.»
8vo. Boston, 1880.

Parkman (Francis).
The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century. Svo, pp. 463. lioston, 18S0.

Parkman (Francis).

\a\ Salle and the Discovery of the Great West. 8vo, pp. 483. Boston, 1879.

Parkman (Francis.)
The Oregon Trail. Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life. Svo, pp. 381. Boston,
1880.

Parkman (Francis).

Pioneers of France in the New World. Svo, pp. 427. Boston, 1879.

Parry (Capt. W. E.).
Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a Northwest passage from the Atlantic to
the Pacific; performed in the years 1S21-22-23 in His Majesty's Ships Fury and /A'c/i?, under
the orders of Captain Wm. Edward Parry, R. N., F. R. .S., and Connnander of the E.xpedi-
tion. 111., with numerous Plates. Published by authority of the Lords Commissioners of
the Admiralty. 4to. London, 1S24.
" A splendid treatise on aboriginal life." — Field.

Powell (J. W.).

Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology (devoted to practical researches among the
North American Indians) issued under the supervision of Major J. W. Powell, director of
the Bureau (with Illustrations). 4to. Government Printing Office, Washington.

Rultenber (E. M.).

History of the Indian Tribes of Hudson's River; their Origin, Manners and Customs;
Tribal and sub-tribal Organizations; Wars, Treaties, etc., etc. Svo, pp. 415 + 5 plates.
Albany, N. Y., 1872.

Swrn (James G. ).
The Northwest Coast ; or Three Years' Residence in Washington Territory. With numer-
ous Illustrations. i2ino, p[). 445. Map and 27 plates. New York, 1S57.
A minute record of the life, habits, ceremonies and conditions of the Indian of the Northwest.

Stone (William L.).
The Life and Times of Red-Jacket, or Sa-go-ye-wat-ha, chief of the Senecas. Svo, pp. 484
■\- portrait. New York and London, i84r.
Contains also a biography of Farmar's Brother and one of Cornplanter — two celebrated chiefs of the Senecas.

Stone (Williatn L.).

Life of Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), including the Border Wars of the American Rev-
olution and Sketches of the Indian Campaigns of Generals Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne,
and other matters connected with the Indian Relations of the United States and Great
Britain, from the peace of 1783 to the Indian peace of 1795. - vols. Albany, 1864.

Sprague (John T.).
The Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War, etc. Svo, pp. 557. New York,
1848.
"The story cf the wonderful contests of a savage tribe of less than 4000 in 1822 and less than 1000 in 1845 with

the disciplined forces of the United States." — Field.

3oR

THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN.

Sproat (G. M.). Scenes and Studies of Savage Life. i2mo, pp. 317. London, 1868.
A record of seven years' experience among the savages of Vancouver.

Smith (John).
A True Relation of Virginia by Captain John Smith, with an introduction and notes by
Charles Dcane. 4to, pp. 88. Boston, i886.

Simpson (James IL).
Journal of a Military Reconnoissance from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country
in 1849. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1852.
A complete and accurate account of life among the Zufli and Pueblo Indians.

Shea (John Gilniary).

History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States. 1529-1854.
i2mo, pp. 508+ 5 portraits. New York, 1855.

Shea (John Gilniary.)

Early voyages up and down the Mississijjpi, by Cavalier, St. Ccsme, Le Suer, (iravier, and
Guignas. With an Introduction, Notes, and an Index. 4to. Albany, 1861.
Filled with interesting details of the peculiarities of the Indians of the Mississippi Valley at discovery.

Statistical Report
of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 8vo. Washington, 1835 to 1887.
*' A body of material relating to the Indians almost unrivalled for its minuteness in any department of history.'' —

Field.

Shea (John Gilmary).

Discovery and E.xploration of the Mississippi Valley : with the original narratives of Mar-
quette, Allouez, Membre, Hennepin and Anastase Douay. Hy John Gilmary Shea, with a
fac-simile of the newly-discovered map of Marquette. 8vo, pp. 26S. New York, 1853.

Schoolcraft (Henry R.).

Information respecting the History. Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the
United States. Collected and prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
per Act of Congress March 3, 1847. Published by authority of Congress. 6 vols., 4to.
Philadelphia, 1857.
" With great earnestness, some fitness for research and a good deal of experience of Indian life, Mr. Schoolcraft

had but little learning and no scientific training. His six volumes are badly arranged and selected, but contain a vast

mass of really valuable material." — Field.

Transactions

Of the American Ethnological Society. New York, 1845-1848.

A large and valuable collection of material descriptive of the history, antiquities, language and origin of the
American Indian.

;

INDEX.

ACTAHACHI the Creek 276

Agriculture |6o

Algonquin family, the 67

Appalachian races 71

America, Pre-Columbian discoverers of 58

America, Primeval, Possibilities of 37

America, Savage 16-20

Americans, Preliistoric 12-16

American race, Origin of 12-16

Anilco the Chickasaw 263

Arapalio War (of 1864) 226

Apache War (of 1S61) 226

Arber, Professor (as to the Pocahontas story) 264

Archeiy ,(,1

Archilies, the Maryland sagamore 212
Asseola (Osceola) the Seminole, 71
Atkins, Commissioner
Atotarho, Myth of 45
Athabascan family, the
Aztec civilization
Aztec Confederacy

220, 225, 260, 275

2,S8, 295

as a personification, 50

a6, loS

104

BACHOFEN, Prof, (on gyneocrncy)

Balboa (on Spanish ill-treatment)

Bancroft, H. H. (on the oppression of Indian

women)
Bi-aus-wah the Ojibway, Anecdote of
Blackfeet war (of 1869)
Black Hawk (see Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiah)
Black Hawk's War (of 1832)
Brant, Joseph (see Tha-yen-da-ne-gea)
Books on American Indian, Best hundred
Border life. Demoralizing effects of
Brice, John (description of Indian council)
Brinton, Dr. D. G. (on primitive superstition)
Burke, Kdmund (definition of government)
Byam, Mr. (on the status of the Indian)

"23

(>o

159

226

224

300
210, 224

166
87
72

283

178,

"Si

CABOTS, the

Californij Massacres (of 1851)

C'alifornian races

Capafi the Creek

Captain Jack (see Kient-poos)

Cartier, Jacques

Cayugas

Cayuse Massacres (of 1847)

Cave-dwellers

Charleviox, P. V. X. de (on Indian intelligence)

Chata, " War Woman " of

Cheeshabteaiimuck Caleb, Harvard graduate

Cherokees 185,276; Present condition of, 287,

Chickataubut the Massachusett

'93

225

196

1S4

225

•45
276
284
288
376

Choclaws, Present condition of 287,

Clan and tribe, Difference between

Cliff-dwellers

Cofitachiqui, the Chieftainess of 115, 196,

Colorow the Ute

Columbian races

Columbus ,,, 59. 60, ,76, 177, ,83, 193,

Comanches, Present condition of

Commercial intercourse between tribes

Consanguinity, Law of

Controversy, Law of

Cooke, John Esten (on women chiefs)

Coolidge, A. J. (on Colonial treatment)

Corn-planter the Iroquois

Cortcreal

Cradle, the Indian

Creation, Iroquois account of

Creeks 104 ; Present condition of

Creek War (1813)

Crook, General George (on Indian intelligence)

287,
163,

'78, 183,

287,

67, 98,

DAKOTA family, the

Dances

De Ayllon

De Cordova

De Leon, Ponce

De Quexos

De Soto, Hernando 115. 183, 185, 295, 197, 252, 276,

De Vaca, Cabeca ,^5^

Diaz, Bernal ; his story of the Conquest of Mexico

discredited,
DiggarWar(of 1858)

Divorce ,24

Donnacona the Algonquin ,,5.

Dorman (on Indian superstitions) 147,

Dorsey, Rev. J. Owen 75, 142,

Doty, Lockwood L. (on Indians during Am.

Revolution) 217; (on Iroquois intelligence)
Drake, S. G. (Indian anecdotes)
Dreams
Drunkenness

Duncan, William (Indian benefactor)
Dunn, Jr., J. P.
Dunraven, Earl of (on Indian's inner life)

208,
186,

229, 252,

, 288

263

295

ig<j

288

'74

'7'

170

'59
201
276
'93
>3S
II
288
234
249

to4
148

'94
'94
194

'94

287
287

26
226
126
185
'52

e6i

291

237
'98
189
294
276
'53

EGGLESTON, Rev. Edward 129, 16., 192, 213, 242
Eliot (apostle to the Indians) 208, 236

" Elk Nation," the 44

Elliott, H. W. (on Indian children) 141, ,46

Ellis, Rev. Geo. E. 59, 60, iSi, 209, 238

Emerson, Mrs. Ellen Russell (Navajo legend) 97

Endicott, Governor 202

European duplicity 63, 193, 208, 215, 229

European vs Indian faiths 88, 235

309

n_.

310

INDEX,

FESSENDEN, Mr. (on Massasoit)

Fetich (see Totem)

Fires, Hoiiselioici, Importance of

" Fire Water " (see Drunkenness)

Frdmont, Gen. J. C. (on Columbia River Indians) i6i

" French and Indian " War 205

263

'23

GAMES, Children's

Garay

Geroniino tlie Apache

Glooskap the Micinac, Legend of

Gj-anj;anitiieo of Ghanok

" (ireat Spirit," the

Gomez, Estavan

(Jovernmeiit, United States, Responsibility of

Gyneocracy among Indians (see " Mother right ")

146
194
276

2Q7

263

104

aS3

84
240
202

24S
1S4
252
If/>

HANGA (Omaha benefactor)

" Ha|.,-y H.|,uing Ground," the

Hare, Uishop

Harlow, Captain

Hariison, J. 15. (on Indian character) 235 ; (on the

Indian Problem) 245 ; (on white treatment)
Hawkins, Captain John
Ha-won-je-tah the Minneconjou
Hirihigua the Seminole
" H. H." (see Jackson, Mrs.)
Hiawatha, Myth of 45; as a personification 50;

Longfellow's poem of 49

Hobbamok tlie Wampanonj; 26?

Hoddnosaunee (see Iroquois)

Hollister, Mr. (anecdote of Nanuntenoo) 255

Holmes, William H. (on art in shells) 165

Hostilities, Indian, Causes of 21s, 220

Howlai:d, Edward (on influence of the soldiers) 223
Hunt, Captain 202

Hunting 161

Hutchinson, Thomas (on white intolerance) 23S

Hypoborean race 6S

INDIAN, North American, the: —

At discovery 175

Area of possession at close of Revolution 218

Babies 13S

Barbarities, Reasons for, 147, 217

Beliefs 83, 87, 90

Best books on, 301; status of, 283

Character, Types of 279
Colonial treatment of 202, 207, 216, 23S

A democrat 214

Development, Stages of lof,

Endurance of ' 136

Enslrvement of 60, 193, 202

Equal, y 79, 156

Estimate of 246

European contact with 200,214,231

Government, a "kinship state" 75

Government autonomic 75

Hatred of Spaniards 184

INDIAN, North American, \\\ii{cnntinued)
Hospitality 113; law of
Hostility, Causes of

Houses ,jQ

Inde))endence
Knowledge of white man
Life comnuniistic
Love of family
Love of home- land
Loyalty to England

Migrations ,,

Myths

Patriotism ,q6, 197, 229, 251,

Population at discovery 63 ; race division at

discovery f,.

Present population, Statistics of
Property in land

Rece|)tion of white man 115, 18,,

Schools

Spain's treatment of (see Spain)
Supremacy, Probable duration of

136, 141, 142, 144,

Youth
Indian problem, the
Iroquois race (.see Wyandot)
Iroquois Agricultural Society
Irociuois, Present condition of
Insh-taXhe-am-ba (" Bright Eyes ")
Industries ,63, ,67,

''■°'l""'s. 98, lOI, 103, 104, no,

Im-mut-too-yah-lat-yat (Joseph) the Nez Perce

220, 252, 25s,

"4
2'3
127
220

'77
III
76
So

2ir)

.5''>

267

. 71
287
21 1
212
284

'52
2 So

288
2^8
2»4
168
123

276

JESUIT conversion, the igg, 200

Junipero Seno, Kra 249

Joseph the Nez Perce (see Im-nnit-too-yah-lat-yat)
Jackson, Mrs. Helen Hunt (" H. H. ") 205, 249, 293

KATONAH the Westchester Sagamore
Keokuk the Fox

Kient-poos (Captain Jack) ihe Modoc
" King Philip's War," causes of

276

223,

276

220,

236

781 >24,

127

172,

lyS

Kinship bond, the

Kohl, Johann (anecdotes)

LAFITAU, Mons. (on wampun) 166

Land, Indian property in 211

Land, Purchase of, by Colonists 239

Las Casas the Clerigo 59, 20S, 249

Lau-le-wa-si-kan the Prophet 276

Lawson, John (on Indian greed for wampum) 165

Le Jeune, Father (on Indian intelligence) 145

Lewi,-, and Clark (on Columbia River Indians) ift;

Liquor, Influence of on Indian nature 186

" Long House '' of Ihe Iroquois loi, 127

MAHTO-TATONKA the Ogallalla 109, 276

Mah-to-ti-pa the Mandan 252

Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiah (Black Hawk) 220, 272, 275

Man, Antiquity of in America 15

% '

mmmummmmm

INDEX.

3'i

2.V>
202, 236, j6o, 2')3, 267

172, 203, 264

23'
185, 276

293
I2S, 134

■43. '47
235

"97

Manabozo, Myth of 49 ; as a personification
Maiiua-comon, the I'awtuxeiit
Ma-se-wa-pe-Ra the Ojiljway

I'.^assdU ihe VVampaiiog
Ma-ta-oka (P()c;i!ioiitas)
Mather, Rev Increase
Mauvila, Itattle of
McNaughton, Mr. (anecdote)
Meals

"Medicnie"

Membertou tlie Algonqnin
Meiuldza (on Indian patriotism)
Metacomet (" King Philip ") 105, aoj, 211, 260,

2C4, 267
Me-tla-kah-tlia (Indian colony) 294

Miantononiah the Narragansett 27^)

Migrations of Indian races (see Indian inigrations)
Miruelo

Missionaries, conduct of 236; heroism of
Moc-peah-lii-tah (Red Cloud) the Sioux
Modoc War (of 1872)
Mohawks
Moki Confederacy
Mo-ko-ho-ko Sacs
Montezuma (see Moteuczoma)
Moquis (or Mokis)
Morgan, Lewis H. loi, 103, 106, iit, 114,

104

2 86

223, 276

226

99
104

293

Moteuczoma (Aztec benefactor)
" Mother right," the (see Woman)
Mound-builders

NADAII.LAC, Marquis de

Nanuntenoo tlie Narragansett

Narvaez

Natchez

Navajos

Navajo War (of 1858)

Nez Perce War (of 1876)

OGANASDODA the Cherokee

Oglethorpe, James E.

Ojibways

Ojeda

Oinahas

Oneiclas

Oiiondagas

Oregon massacres (of 1855)

Osceola (see Asseola)

Ortiz, Juan

PARKMAN, Francis A.

.28,
«6Si '73.

.89
45

22, 26

255

'94

142

'5°

'63
287
226

229

250

7'.

276

a32.

ZS*"'.

287

187,

198
.78

153.

171
99
99

225

2'3

84, 89, 95, 98, 100,

109, 113, 194, 200, 22U, 223, 256, 268

Pawnee race (see Shoshone)

Pequots 197; war with,

Pe-ta-le-shar-ro the Pawnee

" Philip, King " (see Metacomet)

Philhps, Wendell (on Indian patriotism)

Pidgeon, William (Story of " Elk Nation ")

Pocahontas (see Ma-ta-oka)

202
252

251
44

Polygamy ,35

Pontiac the Ottawa 105, 219, 223, 267, 268; con-
spiracy of, 219,220,224
Popham's t'dlony 202
Po-shai-an-kia (Zurti benefactor) 45
Powell, Maj. J. W. ;j, 134, ,6g, 1S8
Powers, .Stephen (on equality of Indian women) 15^
Powhatan (see Wa-bun-so-na-cook)
Pueblo-dwellers
Pueblo race
Pueblo War (of 1S47)

225

QUIGUALTANQUI the Chickasaw

197, 252

RAMIREZ (on the war spirit)

Red Cloud (see Moc-peah-lu-tah)

Red Jacket (see Sa-go-ye-\vat-lia)

Religion (see Indian beliefs)

Reservation, Indian, Plan of 241 ; statistics of

Reticence as to name

Rolfe, John

130

242

'72
264

SA-GO-YE-WAT-HA (Red Jacket)

'59.
Scalp-taking, Significance ot
Schoolcraft, Henry R.
Schools (see Indian schools)
Seminole War (of 1835)
Seiiecas

Sequoyah, the Cherokee
Shell money (see Wampum)
Sherman, Cenl. \. . T. (on Nez Perce
Shoshone race
Sioux wars (of 1854) 225 ; (of 1862)226

226; (of 1S76)
Sitting RiiU the Ogallalla
" Six Nations," Ihe (^ee Iroquois)
Smith, Krniinie A.
Smi;h, Captain John
Spain's treatment of the Indian
Spotted Tail the Sioux
Sprague, Charles (ode)
Stoddard, Rev. Samuel (on the need

lion)
Sully, General (on Blackfeet war)

the Seneca
gi, 237, 267, 272
'5°
49. 76. '30, 173

99. '35. '37. '7'
276

war) 250

71
; (of 1866)

229
230, 2/6

45. 84

12, 20J, 263

60, 194, 207

2;'>

209

of retalia-

226

TA-RHU-HIA-WA-KU the sky-holder, Legend

of
Tomahawk a white man's creation
Tomo-chi-chi the Cherokee
Totem, the 93, 96 j Zuni legend of
Tecumseh (see Te-cum-the)
Te-cum-the the Shawanoe ti2, 220, 271; war

with,

Tha-yen-da-ne-gea (Brant) loi, 217, 268, 271

Thegiha Union, the 104

Thlinkeet race 68

Thwing, Charles F. (on Indian progress) 286

Tiele, Prof. C. P. (on primitive worship) 38

II
161
263

224

312

INDEX.

Treaty of Fort Stanwln

Tribal divisions

Tsimsheans, Canadian trsatmerit of

Turner, Mr.

TuKaloosa the ('liickoMw

Tutcarorai

VAN TWILLER, Womer

Velasquez

Verrazano

Vespucci

Village Indians

UCITA the Sachem, Daughter of

Uncas the Mohican

Utes

VVA-BUN-SO-NA-COOK (Powhatan)
Wadsworth, Gen. James (on Indian citizenship)

ai8

a04

I3i, 188,

189

196

206

183

'94

• 83

.78

3°!

122

263

136

192,

»9S

136,

276

)ship)

349 1

Waldron, Major (anecdote)

Wampum ,(^,

Warfare 129, 147, 149, ,5,, jjg; Philosophy of,

Washington, George, Foresight of

We-ta-mooof PiKasset ijq

Weymouth, Captain

Whittle»ey, Charles (on Treaty of Fort Stanwix)

Wilkie, F. B. (on Colonial aggression)

Wilson, Robert A., denies story of the Conquest

of Mexico
Winslow, John
Wollaston

Woman, Importance of 123, 129, 156

Wood, William (on influence of liquor)
Worship (see Indian beliefs)
Wright, Rev. Ashur (on woman's supremacy)
Wyandot- Iroquois race

59,

108
167

■30
219

a?"
202

2l8

240

29
263
202
160
187

124

VAKAMAS

VounK, Charles S. (on Indian progress)
Yuma race

V •

294

291

v»