IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) {./ k / // &? i/.A V. 1.0 I.I l^|2£ |2.5 p^ m^m HUH :^ 1^ 12.0 L25 i 1.4 1.8 1.6 V] % o / v^ V w. CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques 1980 Technical Notes / Notes techniques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Physical features of this copy which may alter any of the images in the reproduction are checked below. D D D Coloured covers/ Couvertures de couleur Coloured maps/ Cartes g6ographiques en couleur Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pages d6color6es, tachetdes ou piqudes Tight binding (may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin)/ Reliure serr6 (peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distortion le long de la marge intdrieure) L'Institut a microfilm^ le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Certains d6fauts susceptibles de nuire A la qualitd de la reproduction sont not6s ci-dessous. n D D Coloured pages/ Pages de couleur Coloured plates/ Planches en couleur Show through/ Transparence Pages damaged/ Pages endommagdes Th po of fill Th CO or ap Th fill ini Mj in up bo fol 21 Additional comments/ Commentaires suppl6mentaires Binding damaged. Bibliographic Notes / Notes bibliographiques D D D Only edition available/ Seule Edition disponible Bound with other material/ Reli6 avdc d'autres documents Cover title missing/ Le titre de couverture manque D D D Pagination incorrect/ Erreurs de pagination Pages missing/ Des pages manquent Maps missing/ Des cartes g^ographiques manquent D D Plates missing/ Des planches manquent Additional comments/ Commentaires suppldmentaires The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in iceeping with the filming contract specifications. The last recorded frame on each microfiche sh^'i contain the symbol -^(meaning CONTINUED"), or the symbol y (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le plus grand soin, compte tenu da la condition et de la nettetd de I'exemplaire film6, et t»,. conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. Un des symboles suivants apparattra sur la der- nidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols -«- signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbols y signifie "FIN". The original copy was borrowed from, and filmed with, the itind consent of the following institution: National Library of Canada L'exemplaire filmd fut reproduit grAce d la g6n6ro8it6 de l'6tablissement prdteur suivant : Bibliothdque nationaie du Canada Maps or plates too large to be entirely included in one exposur'3 are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes ou les planches trop grandes pour dtre reproduites en un seul clich6 sont film^es d partir de I'angle supdrieure gauche, de gauche d droite et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Le diagramme suivant illustre la mdthode : 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 r ^^ T THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN HIS ORIGIN r3EVELOPMENT DECLINE AND DESTINY •?! By ELBRIDGE S BROOKS BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY FRANKLIN AND IIAWLEY STREETS i --4 mmim^mmmmm -•"—■*-"" Press of BERWICK AND SMITH, BOSTON. Copyright, 1887, BY D. LoTHROP Company. Hi * ' « 'I 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. \l VI 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« i 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. '3 'S l6 i6 17 18 '9 20 21 22 22 25 =7 29 30 31 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 99 100 104 '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. XI 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>- n 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 II FT 12 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 I i ■l i J- -4- 1 ■ "S*" w«. THE ANCIENT AMERICAN. IS « %M 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 :'* .V US 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. 17 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^. i8 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. at 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^. m 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. 25 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. w 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 26 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- Ml MOTEUCZOMA, LURU OF THK AZTECS. ^^'^ . ^H^y -^^ i! I r ^^im^rmmmmmmmmimmmgmmmttmitmm wmm pi m m !i ^r-»^^ ;»'ft w^':'"-'*yi«s rfrjT . 'T' g gsaa '" 111" Ml THE ANCIENT AMERICAN 29 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 ! 30 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 ^ tbm i c^ ! l % e O-rr 0) =r ^ ,s I SOILE , 100 rCGT. GROUND PLAN OK THE PUEIU.O liONlTU, CTIACU CANoN, N. M. (Estu/n IS Spanish for Council Room.) ♦v» t!A €im t MMhMWH THE ANCIENT AMERICAN, 33 »^ ilm 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 ii T Ml I 34 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 : t i A TJIK AXCJK.\T AMERICAN. 35 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 36 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 ■i»i«"- THE ANCIENT AMERICAN. 37 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- *i 38 THE ANCIENT AMERICAN. I !j Wx 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. T !!< I ""^grnvn-m.-^- I THE ANCIEN2' AMERICAN. 39 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." i^ \ 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. I )rsa ta THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS. 41 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. 42 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 T i I THE A'/U) MAX BEFORE COLUMJWS. 43 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. N I J. 44 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. 4S . ■ 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 46 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. 49 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 r f il so 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- T ■tby I 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 f ; "1 i'i :i i liiii m m 52 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 ^* tr* I X T «e«c o a w c z, & o a: ■< o t i THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS. 55 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 3k 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 S6 THE RED MAN EEIORE COLUMBUS. I. I m I •■ '* |M 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 r T ; THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS. 57 4 r T 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. S8 THE RED MAN BEFORE COLUMBUS. ■ I 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 1 ; n > i " 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 59 1 1 i J i 6o RACJ'] DHISIONS AND KJASJJJT TIES. I 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. -L i'^^ifki^^^T- ^^ M- ■ i^>.-r ^X'-i- ■>:'.■'■■ i'-':¥y l:'^. m>^ '■\K' »A •.■, ;'■■ tg-vv;'; ^•^ ;.--.,X. 'h ill THK I.ANDINd OF CCJUTMHUS. 1 ■i I RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES. Ox t . 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. 64 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 i- <- THK RKTURN OF COLUMliUS. 55 li 5 •'• i r.' MhwbiaMj-b V^woifef A ^ V-» T f RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES. 67 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 -^ 68 A'ACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES. •111 I! 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. !h vU f h' V^i THE GATE Of LAUOKE. — THE UUME Oh IHE bllOSUUNE RACE. -T1 1 1 ' ' ill 1 '¥ iHrl ri! P I ii i •^^ ^ RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES. n 'J 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 "C m:^ 'ft i li|!i 'i ^ 72 /^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- i t %r i A PUEBLO BOY. ' r asd ^, ; i li^^ i i M t m V I I I t RACE DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES. 75 •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. 76 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. 77 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- 1 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, 79 \ . An Indian chief being once asked whether liis people were free, replied, " Why not; since I myself am free, although tiieir chief." Th 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. wa i*w^ ^mimmmU9 ' m lyui iii ni i ii f I I i j I L 80 A'^Cili DIVISIONS AND KINSHIP TIES, 1 m 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. 8i ■• 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." 82 1 T :vi^Vv INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS. 83 T 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." 1 1 \ 1 84 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. 1 II 1 "THE bl'IKlT Ul' I'EACE. 11: If JL IlJl> " ll 3»lf I \ s I 1 INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS. 8r 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 88 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 ; i 4 ■pi^ i^ggE^gg , INDIAN FATTHS AND CONFEDERATION^;, 89 I % 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. '■ i. 11 ii I 1 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) h A :/ i.;^ 1.0 I.I IU|2a |2.5 2.2 2.0 11:25 i 1.4 1.6 '^ fV ^v N> <^ .V % v« 4^ -^^ &?. a INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS. 93 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 94 INDIAN FAITHS AND CONFEDERATIONS. u 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. 95 A* 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 f 96 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. 97 X. 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- 98 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 \\\ 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. {From n» old cut J) T i T 1 ^am «#> 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 V 1 ! i: Ml I I [!:'> 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. s 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. h n 104 CULTURE AND COMMUNISM. '^1 II! w 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). I wmmmmmmmmm im wmmm T 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. I n tiT xo6 CULTURE AND COMMUNISM. I \ i 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 T 1 e &K T 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 I ■w r ! k 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 1 i ni^p^^n««fM*)i«pi w^^i ^^tmtif^im ^m^no^^m i^^^^mmwmmmm^mmi^ rr- Tlf^ 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- V r i' i \ ■ I) Hi ii no 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.) V CULTURE AND COMMUNISM, XXX \ M .. 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 \>t) : H 'I ■i ir 1^ Wi Mi! I>i -A ' -! ! [J: I 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. ;: \ T T^ CULTURE AXD COMMUNISM, "3 '* 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;: // 'ft pi' ' ■'■ 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." f A 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 \ TT 130 THE INDIAN HOME. % (I WW 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. r THE INDIAN HOME. 131 L 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." f 1 B I '■1 w. 1 in: : :H:i pi i ( 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 t r^ 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 r 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. \m \ i 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. I w^ CHAPTER VII. THE INDIAN YOUTH. fi \ Hill 1 Si i ! . 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 T THE INDIAN YOUTH, 137 7 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, »- \ |l m m v^-\ iM 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 r AN EDUCATION IN DRUDGERY. iM « »» 'i! THE INDIAN YOUTH. H3 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. II; ¥ 1 1 I! K h If I r liill '''iw- - 1 ■\ 1 ' jji m I iiffiif 1 ■ il;^i:, i 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." t i PI m kl'. m m I ((:. m h 'm I ■ J ■ -il' * 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 ,. 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 % ill i \ «»B*«« j WgWn i. TW am ! ^li i ! I I I — r i ■I r|| r%m \jMm B 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 *. •>' J 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* « ! \m 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 I - . : 1, !.,' - ?•, '— ;;^ r"r- ; — ■_ ^^^HHHHH ■'--.'"■;" *-P-- ' *^#»^^^r' ■:>•„; f .'^ • \f^' ■ "" -, 'O^-' ■■I.»tf ; ; ._ r *■"'■" I#-:.^'''^ * _ _.-.Tw'^?"fei.;,-*^^-"- ;■ ■ .7 ' ■: H -m iiV ■ ' . , :' ■ . ■'' • 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. I :1: lii |I >. «> * W mmm m J 152 rJI£ INDIAN YOUTH. ^'.^ -i'; 1lil 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:: ! ' !'' i; i ?« "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. PI I m «■;■ 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. 4 f-ti'^ m- ^'V*' CHAPTER VIII. ,1 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 i m m ' 111 t «S6 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 i 1 «^ ' H 23 3 i4 ■•J i' I I , 51 I i«i ! I 1iriii 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. W ;5 I 1! y\ m li: ' m ! IB ^i hti i6o 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 1 T ^" i ,^ MANNERS AND MATERIALS, i6i 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 ii I ;'5> 11 I V. nil I \-A-^ a. . ; mi ] 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 t •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. lii: ;'' ' KltiJI - I 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. r * ^ 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. I ^m 1 \\i M Kit J. I V !l t it' •I >■ 1 66 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. m Y I 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 H; it; ■i 't Ik -Sill I 'i I 1 68 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. T Y i ■^ T MANNERS AND MATERIALS. 169 The main barrier to the lii 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 '11 7 r~^2^ INDIAN UKAl'ONS. T 1 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. V -«3» r 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 li a ifii I ' 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 T ' WVIVH'"'*"' CHAPTER IX. THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN. J- mmm :>^>!^^ 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. i !=« u^ THE COMING OF THE IVHETE MAN. 177 ^ 1. t, 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 I % ii: ■*_ I 178 THE COMIXG OF THE JV/f/TT MAN. ^1 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.. m t THE COMfNG OF TIfl' U'lfJTE MAN. i8i «j at*. 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 I t ; i 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 1 w TJIE COMING OF THE U'JIJTE MAN. 183 i'> 1* 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 :m ^^^ i 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 4^ 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. n rw .III a^iap m i IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 4 // /- Q, ^ C/.x 1.0 Ifl^ 125 I.I «« |40 u 2.0 1.8 11.25 il.4 mil 1.6 <5> ^ y] /2 /a M L f^ THE COi\f/XG OF TlfE WHITE AfAN. 18) \ ^ L 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 l^ 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, " ■ ■'••■' ^■'_?:>^'"' i If 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. P n ■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,. I 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. ! H 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'.' 10 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. ; i COLONIAL INJUSTICE. 199 \ \ T/ 1 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. V :■ r ^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.' 'I 1 i 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 1 .r' s; - 1 ' V i n f I '■'■: i ;i 202 COL ONI A I. INJl 'S 1 ICK. m 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, 'f 1 ..^i^-atAikiii^Mat- I t| i 1 AN EPISODE 01-- THE lUKNCIl AND INDIAN ^VAR-RESCI'K or ISUAEI. PUTNAM. ^f] .1 COLONIAL INJUSTICE. 205 T T 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. k W ii I! 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 ? " 1^ 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." i T I 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 11 I M inim.>^ \M 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 V MO K?^".'>™ rr.AClXG THE RESrONSnUI.ITY. an 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 i 4. ^ K 1 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 N>r>?/>j.', ATTACK (JN Sl()( KADK. BUS ■i> 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 ■i .J 224 PLACING THE KESFOXSIBILITY. :l 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 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 M T ■Sit -t 1^1 < i ie- • j. -f. '1' i 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- I J ?j 232 PUSHED TO THE WALL I \ : \ \ ^ 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 Mm I AN KI'ISODK OK lUK SKMINCil.E WAR. ,;: i ';■ i Ut •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 ' 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 ; I I ii » B I PUSHED TO THE IVAr.L. 245 i 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 i 246 PUSHED TO THE WALL, II! \ i 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,. ] I 1 I 1 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. f " 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 wm 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. i 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 i ■ ^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 ll n i 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 E l« 7. C y. lit 4* JUp|fc a3SM)g^I^-J !.\JLS._ /.Vn/.LV TYJ'ES. 259 savages <> « f 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. I 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. f 1 u 1 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.) w I MiliHIii JiVniAX TYPES. 263 J: 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 rr rE-CUM-Tllli, ClllhK Ol- Till SllAUANUE. I 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 ^ lO' ^^n^^Vn V % <*>.' ^^ w .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 q i. ^ • 1 'A 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 Ml 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 Y 388 THE JXniAX'S OUTLOOK. 'm ^.l III independent and self-suj)portin<;. They are owners by their own efforts of 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. i 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 I \ 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. i 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!" i K:tll ill i ' i|: ■■ ■HHI TH1-: Hi<:sT MiJNi):ii':n books on AMERICAN INDIAN. THE i 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^ i THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS OX THE AMERICAiV IXDJAN. 305 •?& 1 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. IL 306 THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN. V t i 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 67 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 76 226 224 300 210, 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 68 196 1S4 99 225 18 •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 97 34 263 295 68 ig3S 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 1 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 84 104 aS3 45 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''> 03 267 . 71 287 21 1 212 284 40 '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 276 276 223, 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 ^9 % ' mmmummmmm INDEX. 3'i 5> 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 zn 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) 30 225 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 92 224 312 INDEX. T 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 78 a04 I3i, 188, 189 - 196 99 206 183 '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 67 VAKAMAS VounK, Charles S. (on Indian progress) Yuma race V • 294 291 7' ^ W^ v» 4 ^