IRLF IflD UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY LIBRARY OF THK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class BUILDERS OF THE NATION OR From the Indian Trail to the Railroad National Edition Complete in Twelve Volumes pfy jfr *f ILLUSTr. .-...* *... (I UNIVERSiTY 3 V, of / Nation Bag at fyt Asimcg -Watting for ttje From an original painting by F>ank ! . Johnson. NATIONAL EDITION COMPLETE IN TWELVE VOLUMES f -*^^^z < -~r^^ ~ ^ guifdecs^Nation THE INDIAN By George Bird Grinnell Author of Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales ILLUSTRATED "*- "=* NE\NT YORK TIlEBg^MPTONSOCIETY PUBLISHERS OFTHE UNIVERSITY rtf Copyright, 1895, By D. APPLETON & COMPANY Copyright, 1908 By THE BRAMPTON SOCIETY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE VIII. PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS 125 IX. IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES . . . .143 X. MAN AND NATURE 163 XI. HIS CREATION 182 XII. THE WORLD OF THE DEAD ..... 195 XIII. PAWNEE RELIGION 202 XIV. THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW .... 214 XV. THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN 224 APPENDIX. THE NORTH AMERICANS YESTER DAY AND TO-DAY 241 INDEX , 2G9 Indian. II. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS RATION DAY AT THE AGENCY WAITING FOR THE BEEF FRONTISPIECE From an Original Painting by Frank T. Johnson PAGE CROOKED HAND, A PAWNEE BRAVE 125 PIEGAN TRAVOIS 156 QUATSENA VILLAGE, WEST COAST VANCOUVER ISLAND, 162 CREE LODGE AND RED RIVER CART .... 176 PAWNEE DIRT LODGE 192 GROUP OF SAPALELLE LA TETES, WEST COAST VANCOU VER ISLAND 214 GROUP OF ASSINIBOINES 260 Indian. II. Crooked Hand, a Pawnee Brave. THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. CHAPTER VIII. PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. IK the historic period, the Indian has always been a warrior. Urged on by the hope of plunder, the longing for reputation, or the desire for revenge, he has raided the white settlements and made hostile in cursions against those of his own race ; and each war party that set out endeavoured to injure as much as possible the enemy it attacked. As each woman might fight or be a mother of warriors, and as each child might grow to be a warrior or a woman, women and children were slain in war as gladly as men, for the killing of each individual was a blow to the ene my. It helped to weaken his power and to strike ter ror to his heart. But the Indian has not always been a warrior. Long ago, there was a time when war was unknown and when all people lived on good terms with their neighbours, making friendly visits, and being hos pitably received, and when they in turn were visited, returning this hospitality. The Blackfeet say that " in the earliest times there was no war," and give a circumstantial account of the first time that a man was killed in war; the Arickaras have stories of a time when war was unknown, and tell about the first fighting that took place ; and in like manner many of the tribes, which, in our time have proved bravest 125 126 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. and most ferocious in war, tell of those primitive days before conflict was known. I have elsewhere * given my reasons for believing that previous to the coming of the whites there were no general or long-continued wars among the Indians, because there was then no motive for war. No doubt from time to time quarrels arose between different tribes or different bands of the same tribe, and in such disputes blood was occasionally shed, but I do not believe that there was anything like the systematic warfare that has existed in recent years. The quar rels that took place were usually trivial and about trivial subjects about women, about the division of a buffalo, etc. Real wars could have arisen only by the irruption of one tribe into the territory of an other, and the land was so broad and its inhabitants so few that this could have occurred but seldom. It is difficult for us, with our knowledge of im proved implements of war, to comprehend how blood less these early wars of the Indians must have been. A shield would stop a stone-headed arrow, and at a slightly greater distance a robe would do the same. Their stone-headed lances were adapted to tearing and bruising rather than to piercing the flesh, and their most effective weapon was no doubt the stone warclub, or battleaxe, which was heavy enough, if the blow was fairly delivered, to crush in a man s skull. In those old days, we may imagine that in many, if not in most, of the battles that took place, the combatants, however anxious they may have been to kill, were forced to content themselves with beating and poking each other, giving and receiving nothing * Blackfoot Lodge Tales, p. 243. PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. 127 more serious than a few bruises. Those who have witnessed fights in modern times between consider able bodies of Indians armed with iron-pointed arrows, knives, and hatchets, will remember how very trifling has been the loss of life in proportion to the numbers of the men engaged. Such battles, as I have elsewhere shown, might go on for half a day without loss of life on either side, but when one party acknowledged de feat and turned to run, the slaughter in the pursuit might be considerable. In these wars between different tribes, the greatest losses usually occurred when one party was surprised by another, the attacking party killing a number of men at the first onslaught, and perhaps in the ensuing panic. If, however, those attacked rallied and turned to fight, the assailants, unless they greatly outnum bered their enemy, often drew off at once, satisfied with what they had accomplished in the surprise. The story of the last great fight which took place between the three allied tribes of Pawnees and the Skidi tribe, just previous to the latter s incorporation into the Pawnee nation, is an example of this, and has never been told in detail. It gives a good idea of one view of Indian warfare, shows that they had some no tions of strategy, and also brings out in strong relief the common sense and benevolence of the Kit ka-hah- ki chief. The story was told me many years ago by an old Chaui , substantially as given below. He said : It was long ago. At that time my father was a young man. I had not been born. Many years before, the three tribes of Pawnees had come up from the south, and had found the Skidi living in this country. Their villages were scattered along the Broad River (the Platte) and the Many Potatoes River (Loup). 128 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. There were many of them, a great tribe. But there were many more of the Pawnees than there were of the Skidi. When our people first met the Skidi, we were friendly ; we found that we spoke a language almost the same, and so we learned that we were relations the same people so we smoked together and used to visit each other s villages, and to eat together. We were friends. But after a while, some of the Skidi and some of the Chaui got to quarrelling. I do not know what it was about. After that there were more quarrels, and at last a Skidi was killed ; and after that the people were afraid to go near the Skidi village, and the Skidi did not come near the Chaui village for fear they might be killed. One time in the winter, a party of men from the Chaui village, which then stood on the south side of the Broad Kiver, just below the place of the Lone Tree (now Central City, Neb.), crossed the river to hunt buffalo between the Platte and the Loup. While they were killing buffalo, a war party of the Skidi at tacked them and fought them, and killed almost all of them. Some of the Chaui got away and went back to their village and told what had happened, and how the Skidi had attacked them. Now at this time the Chaui and the Skidi tribes were about equal in numbers, and the Chaui did not feel strong enough to attack the Skidi alone. They were afraid, for they knew that if they did this, it might be that the Skidi would defeat them. The Kit ka-hah-ki tribe were living on the Much Manure River (Republican), and the Pita-hau-i rat on the Yel low Bank River (Smoky Hill). To these two tribes of their people the Chaui sent the pipe, telling them PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. 129 what had happened, and asking them for help against the Skidi. Each of the tribes held a council about the matter. All the best warriors and the wise old men talked about it, and each one gave his opinion as to what should be done ; and they decided to help the Chaui . The two villages moved north and camped close to the Chaui village, and all the warriors of all three tribes began to get ready for the attack. By this time it was early summer, and the Platte Kiver, swollen "by the melting of the snows in the mountains, was bank full too deep and swift to be crossed either by wading or swimming. So the women made many " bull boats " of fresh buffalo hides and willow branch es, and in these the Pawnee warriors crossed the stream. The main village of the Skidi was on the north side of the Loup River, only about twenty miles from that of the Chaui . The crossing of the Pawnees was ac complished late in the afternoon, and a night march was made to a point on the south side of the Loup, several miles below the Skidi village. Here they halted and distributed their forces. One hundred men, all mounted on dark-coloured horses, were sent further down the stream, and were told what to do when morning came. The remaining warriors hid themselves, half in the thick timber which grew in the wide bottom close along the river, and half in the ravines and among the ridges of the sandhills above this bottom. Between the sandhills and the timber was a wide, level, open space. The Pawnees were so many that their lines reached far up and down the stream. When daylight came, the one hundred men who had been sent down the stream came filing down from the prairie one after another. Each man was bent 130 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. down on his horse s neck and covered with his buffalo robe, so that at a distance these one hundred riders looked like one hundred buffalo, coming down to the water to drink. The spot chosen for them to pass could be seen from the village of the Skidi. In that village, a long way off, some one who was watching saw these animals, and called out to the others that buffalo were in sight. It was at once decided to go out and kill the game, and a large force of Skidi set out to do this. They crossed the river opposite the village, and galloped down the bottom on the south side. In doing this, they had to pass between the Pawnees who were hidden in the timber and those in the sandhills. They rode swiftly down the river, no one of them all suspecting that anything was wrong ; but after they had passed well within the Pawnee lines, these burst upon them from all sides and charged them. Attacked in front, on either side, and in the rear taken wholly by surprise, and seeing they were outnumbered the Skidi tried to retreat, and scat tering, broke through the lines wherever they could and ran, but all the way up that valley the victorious Pawnees slaughtered them as they fled. They took a good revenge, and killed more than twice as many of the Skidi as those had of the Chaui . At last the Skidi who were left alive had crossed the river and reached their village, and had told their people what had happened, and how they had been attacked and defeated, and had lost many of their men. All the warriors who were left in the village armed themselves, and came to the river bank to meet the Pawnees when they should cross, determined to die there fighting for their homes. When the Pawnees reached the crossing, a part of PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. them wanted to ford the river at once and attack the Skidi village and kill all the people in it, so that none of the Skidi should be left alive. The chiefs and head men of the Pita-hau-i rat and the Chaui wanted to do this, but the Kit ka-hah-ki chief said : " No, this shall not be so. They have fought us and made trouble, it is true, but now we have punished them for that. They speak our language, and they are the same peo ple with us. They are our relations, and they must not be destroyed." But the other two tribes were very bitter, and said that the Kit ka-hah-ki could do as they liked, but that they were going to attack the Skidi village, burn it, and kill the people. For a long time they disputed and almost quarrelled as to what should be done. At length the Kit ka-hah-ki chief got angry, and said to the others : " My friends, listen to me. You keep telling me what you are going to do, and that you intend to attack this village and destroy all these people, and you say that the Kit ka-hah-ki can do what they please, but that you intend to do as you have said. Very well, you will do what seems good to you. Now I will tell you what the Kit ka- hah-ki will do. They will cross this river to the Skidi village, and will take their stand by the side of the Skidi and defend that village, and you can then try whether you are strong enough and brave enough to conquer the Kit ka-hah-ki and the Skidi, fighting side by side as friends." When the Chaui and the Pita-hau-i rat heard this, they did not know what to say. They knew that the Skidi and the Kit ka-hah-ki were both brave, and that together these two tribes were as many as themselves. So they did not know what to do. They were doubtful. At last the Kit ka-hah-ki chief spoke again, and 10 132 THE STORY OP THE INDIAN. said : " Brothers, what is the use of quarrelling over this. The Skidi have made trouble. They live here by themselves, away from the rest of us. Now let us make them move their village over to the Platte and live close to us, so that they will be a part of the Paw nee tribe." To this proposition all the Pawnees, after some talk, agreed. They made signs to the Skidi on the other bank that they did not wish to fight any more, they wanted to talk now, and then they crossed over. They told the Skidi what they had decided to do, and these, cowed by their defeat and awed by the large force opposed to them, agreed to what had been decided. The Pawnees took for themselves much of the property of the Skidis many horses. This was to punish them for having broken the treaty. Also they made many of the Skidi women marry into the other Pawnee tribes, so as to establish closer relations with them. Since that time the Skidi have always been a part of the Pawnee nation. Cunning is matched with cunning in the following story, told me by the Cheyennes : About the year 1852 the Pawnees and the Chey ennes had a fight at a point on the Republican River, where there was a big horseshoe bend in which much timber grew. A war party of each tribe was passing through the country, and the scouts of each discovered the other at about the same time, but neither party knew that its presence had been detected. The Chey ennes, however, suspecting that perhaps they had been seen, displayed great shrewdness. They went into the timber, built a large fire, ate some food, and then cut a lot of logs, which they placed by the fire and about which they wrapped their blankets and robes, so that PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. j.33 they looked like human figures lying down asleep. Then the Cheyennes retired into the shadow of a cut bank and waited. Toward the middle of the night, after the fire had burned down, the Pawnees were seen coming, creeping stealthily through the brush, and when they had come close to the fire, they made an attack, shooting at the supposed sleepers, and then charging upon them. As soon as they were in the camp and were attacking the dummies, the Cheyennes began to shoot, and then in their turn charged, and in the fight which followed eighteen or nineteen Paw nees were killed. The old Cheyenne who told me this, chuckled de lightedly, as he remarked, " The Cheyennes often laugh at this now." The Indians set a high value on life, and do not willingly risk it. Warriors and chiefs always tried to keep those under their command from exposing them selves, for it was a disgrace for the leader of a war party to lose any of his men. It w r as their policy to inflict the greatest possible injury on the enemy with the least possible risk to themselves. They aimed to strike a telling blow, and before the enemy had recov ered from the surprise to put themselves out of the way of danger. Their war was one of ambuscades and surprises, and having been educated to this method of fighting, they were not at all fitted to carry on bat tles in which there was steady and open fighting. In light cavalry tactics or guerilla warfare they excelled, but in the early days they could not face the steady fire of men at bay. Under such conditions they be came unsteady and soon broke. The fact that they have been brought up to fight on a different principle from the white man has gained for Indians the repu- 134 THE STORY OF THE INDIAtf. tation of being cowards, but in later years the warfare of more than one tribe of plains Indians has demon strated that when they have learned the white man s way of fighting, they are as brave as he. Notwithstanding all that has been said, desperate battles were now and then waged between Indian tribes, fights which, for ferocity and bravery, perhaps equal anything that we know of in civilized warfare. The last considerable fight which took place between the Piegan tribe and the allied Crows and Gros Ven- tres of the Prairie was such an one. The story of this fight, as I give it below, is compiled from the narra tives which I took down in the year 1891 from the lips of three men who were engaged in the battle, and I have no doubt that it is a fairly accurate account of the events of the day. The occurrence is interesting from the completeness of the victory and the great number of the slain on the defeated side. Aside from this, the account, as here given, is full of characteristic Indian forms of thought, and, in the matter-of-fact way in which its bloody details are related, it furnishes an excellent illustration of the point of view from which Indians look at war and its events. It was toward the end of the summer, when the cherries were ripe twenty-four years ago (1867) that this fight took place. Wolf Calf was already old. Mad Wolf was a young man just in his prime. Eaven Lariat was a full-fledged warrior. Wolf Tail was very young ; he had not yet taken a woman to sit be side him. All the Piegans except Three Suns band in all perhaps two thousand lodges were camped about twenty miles east of the Cypress Hills. On the day before the fight, early in the morning, a single Piegan PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. 135 had been travelling along near the Cypress Hills, on his way back from a journey to war. He had only one horse. As he was riding along, he passed near a large camp of Crows and Gros Ventres. They saw him be fore he did them and chased him, but he rode in among the pines and got away from them, and reached the Piegan camp in safety. He gave the alarm, telling the people what he had seen, but they did not believe him. They said : " This cannot be true. If two people had said it, or three, we would believe it, but this man is just trying to frighten us." So they did nothing. The man who at this time was the chief of the Piegans was one of those who made the first treaty with the whites. His name in that treaty was Sits in the Middle. His last given name was Many Horses. On the day when the fight took place, early in the morn ing, before it was light, before they had turned loose the horses, the old chief got up and said to his wife, " Saddle up, now, and we will go out to where I killed buffalo yesterday, and get some meat and the brains." His wife saddled the horses and they started, and had ridden quite a long way out on the prairie before it became plain daylight. About this time Mad Wolf, as he lay in his lodge, heard a man on a little hill just outside the camp shout ing out : " Everybody get up and look. A great herd of buffalo is coming this way." Mad Wolf sprang out of bed and rushed out, naked as he was, and a few others with him, not many. They saw the buffalo coming. It was a great sight, a tremendous throng as far as you could see, coming toward the camp, but still far off. A man named Small Wolf took a few young men and started out toward them, to kill some. After a little time a man, who stood there on the hill looking, said ; 136 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. " Hold on. Perhaps those are not buffalo. Are there not some white animals among them ? They may be horses." He called to some one to bring him a field glass, and when he had looked through it, he said : " Oh, it is just a multitude of people coming. They are Crows and Gros Ventres." Then they all shouted in a loud voice, for most of the people were still in bed : " Get out here ! The Crows and Gros Ventres are coming ! Take courage ! " A war party of Piegans had been out, and, return ing, had camped close to the main Piegan camp ; also some people had gone out the night before to camp close to the buffalo, so as to make a run early in the morning. The enemy attacked these outlying parties first, and drove them, killing some, and the people in camp heard the shooting. About this time, Small Wolf came running into camp, gasping for breath, and called out: " Come quick and help us ; my party is almost overcome ! " By this time, too, the enemy had run off about half the band of horses belonging to Many Horses. In those days the people were not well armed. Some of them had guns, but most had only bows and arrows and lances and heavy whips. The Piegans had run to drive their horses into camp, and as they came in, they began to get ready to go out and fight. The head men tried to persuade the first ones to wait, so that all should start out to gether, but some were in too great a hurry to wait. By this time the enemy were close to the camp and on a little ridge. There were women and boys in the party. The Piegans had begun to fight, but not very many had yet gone out. A Piegan, named Scream ing Owl, whose medicine was very strong, was the PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. 137 first man shot. He was hit in the belly with a ball, but it did not go into his body. There was a Gros Ventre chief who was very brave. He seemed to be going everywhere among his peo ple, encouraging them and fighting bravely himself. Some Piegan shot this man, breaking his leg above the knee, and he fell. Then all the Crows and Gros Ventres cried out in a mournful way that the medi cine had been broken, but still they stood about their chief, and fought there and would not leave him, and the Piegans could not drive them. Not very long after the fight began, some of the people found lying on the prairie the bodies of the old chief Many Horses and his wife, and a man named Calf Bull, shouted out: "Now fight well and do your best. Our old chief is killed. We have found him over here dead. Let us take vengeance on these ene mies." The Piegans all cried out, " Our father and our chief is killed ! " and they all made a noise and slapped their mouths and made a rush for the Crows. In another part of the field one of the enemy, who could talk good Piegan, stepped out to one side and held up a pistol and said : " Piegans, here is your great chief s gun. I have killed him and taken it. Take courage now." Then an old Piegan, named Stinking Head, called out to the Piegans : " Men, women, and boys ! Old men, young men, and children ! They have killed our great chief ! Take great courage ! " Then they all took courage and shouted the warcry. When the Piegans all learned that Many Horses had been killed, they made so fierce a charge that the enemy turned and ran. In a coulee toward the Cypress Hills they had built some breastworks of 138 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. stones, and when the Piegans made this charge, the Crows and Gros Ventres ran to get behind this shelter. But the Piegans were so close behind them that they did not stop there, but ran on and out of the breast works on the other side, before they stopped and turned to fight. The Piegans were close behind them, and Wolf Calf was riding ahead of all the others. There was a Crow running on foot behind the rest, and Wolf Calf dropped his rein and got ready to shoot this man. He thought the young colt he was riding was then running as fast as it could, but when he fired his gun at the Crow, the horse ran so much faster that before he could catch his rein to stop it, he was right in the midst of the Crows. Half a dozen shot at him, killing his horse and wounding him in the leg above the ankle. As it happened, none of the Crows near him now had loaded guns, but when his horse went down, they all fell upon him and began to pound him with their coup sticks and whip handles. Then the Piegans who were near called out, " Come ! let us make a charge and save the old man before he gets killed ! " They rushed in and drove the enemy back, and rescued Wolf Calf; White Calf, and two others, now dead, pulling him out of the melee. Wolf Tail this day did two brave things. Some Piegans had surrounded a Gros Ventre, who was called He Stabbed a Good Many. This man still had his gun loaded, and was pointing it at the Piegans and keeping them off, for they were afraid of him. Wolf Tail was the last of the Piegans to get to him. He rode up to the Gros Ventre, jumped off his horse, snatched the gun, and took it away from him. Then he called out to the Piegans : " Come on now ; there is no longer any danger. Come up and kill him!" PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. 139 Wolf Tail walked away from the Gros Ventre, who was then killed by one of the Piegans. After this he came up with another Gros Ventre, who was shooting arrows. He also had a lance. Wolf Tail rode up behind him, jumped off his horse, and seized the man. He took away from him his lance and arrows, pulled out his pistol, and shot him. The Crows and Gros Ventres were now all running away, and the Piegans were following and killing them. They began with those who were on foot, cut ting them off a few at a time, killing the men and taking the women and boys prisoners. There are now some middle-aged men in the Piegan camp who were taken in this fight. At last the footmen were all killed, and they made a charge on the mounted men. They cut off a bunch of these from the main body, and rushed them toward a cut coulee and over a steep bank ; but when the Piegans saw the enemy falling down the side of the coulee, they rode around it and caught those who were left alive as they were coming out, and killed them in bunches of four or five. They kept following the main body for hours, and at last they had been running and fight ing so long that all the Indians were now very tired, and they could no longer run, but the enemy were walking away and the Piegans walking after them. The enemy s horses would give out and stop, and the Piegans would kill the riders, for by this time the Crows and Gros Ventres were so frightened that they no longer showed fight, and the Piegans had no trouble in killing them. Some one overtook an old Gros Ventre, who called out : " Spare me ! I am old ! " The Piegan s heart was touched and he was going to spare him, but another man ran up and said, THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. " Oh, yes, we will spare you," and he blew out his brains. Very few of the enemy were killed with guns. It was not necessary. They killed some by running over them with their horses, others with bows and arrows, others with hatchets, some they lanced, pounded some on the heads with whips, stabbed some, and killed some with stones. They followed them about eighteen miles. The trail that they made was a mile and a half wide, and all along this the enemy were dropped, here two or three, there half a dozen, as thick as buf falo after a killing. At last they reached the gap in the Cypress Hills where the pines are, and the enemy got in among the timber. Then the Piegans said : " Come. That will do. We have killed enough. Let us stop here and go back." So they returned to their camp. They counted as they were going back more than four hun dred dead of the enemy, and there must have been many more who had crawled into the grass and died. After the fight was over and the Piegans had turned back, a Gros Ventre woman, whose husband had been killed and her daughter captured, made up her mind that she would go back and look for them. When she got into the timber, she said to the others who were with her, " My man is killed and my daughter is gone, and I am going down into the Pie- gan camp to find out what has become of her." She still had a horse and rode down the mountain after the Piegans. Lying on the prairie there was a Gros Ventre Indian, who had been knocked down and scalped, and had pretended that he was dead. Some time after the Piegans had gone he opened his eyes, and as he did so, he saw this woman riding by him. PRAIRIE BATTLEFIELDS. 141 He called out to her and asked her to take him back to the Gros Ventres, but she refused, telling him that she was going to look for her daughter. The man got up on his feet, but the skin of his forehead hung down over his eyes so that it blinded him, and he had to hold it up with one hand in order to see. He walked toward the woman, who had stopped, talking to her, and when he had come close to her, he made a rush toward her, so as to get hold of the horse s tail and take the horse away from the woman, so that he could ride after his people. But when he tried to grasp the tail, he reached out with both hands to catch it, and the skin dropped over his eyes and blinded him, and he stumbled and fell, and the woman avoided him, and presently when he got up and lifted his skin, the woman was a good way off. She rode on to the Piegan camp and found her daughter there, and both were adopted into the tribe and died there. Up to the time when they returned to their own camp, the Piegans had not known how many of their own people they had lost. Now they learned that three great chiefs, six warriors, and one woman had been killed. Then all the Piegans cried, because they thought so much of their chief Many Horses. His relations spoke to Four Bears, the camp orator, and he went out through the camp and called out and said : " Let every person bring one blanket each for the burial of this chief, and each one who brings a blanket shall take a rope and catch one horse out of his band." The people did this, and gave Many Horses a great funeral, for all liked him and his wife, because they had been kind and generous to everybody. Some time after the funeral, Four Bears went out again through the camp and shouted out : " Bring out 142 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. your captives, your women and children that you have taken. Bring out all the things that you have taken shields, guns, arrows, bows, scalps, medicine pipes; everything of value that you have taken and put them in a pile so that we can look at them." The people did this, and it made a nne show. When all these things were spread out, some great warrior went along the line and took up each thing in turn, as he came to it, and shouted out the name of the person who had taken it, so that everybody would know who was brave. This was a coup. Even women and chil dren counted coups on the things they had taken. CHAPTER IX. IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. THE white man found the Indian a savage in the stone age of development. For the most part the flesh of beasts and the wild fruits of the earth nourished him, skins sheltered and clad him, wood, stone, and bone armed and equipped him. He had no knowledge of metals, but he had learned how to fashion the stone mace or warclub, to chip out flint knives and arrow- points, to tan skins, to bake pots, and had invented that complex weapon the bow and arrow. He had a hunting companion, the dog, which was also his beast of burden. No one now can tell the story of the Indian s ad vance in culture : what was the history of the bow or the store-pointed arrow ; who first devised the lodge or the dog travois. All these things are said to have been given them by the Creator, who had pity on his children, once without means of defence against the stronger beasts, and who starved when roots and ber ries were not to be had. For tradition tells us of a time between the creation of the red man and the coming of the white man, when the Indian lacked even the simple weapons that his Creator gave him later. Some of the stories say that then men had no hands, only paws, armed with long claws like a bear, and that with these they unearthed the roots of the 143 144 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. prairie, or drew down to their faces the branches of the berry bushes laden with ripe fruit. Then, indeed, the people were poor, weak, and ignorant, and had no means of getting a living. Then they must have been a prey to the wild creatures. The buffalo are said to have eaten them, and not only the buffalo but the deer and the antelope as well. After this, the stories go on, they learned the art of making snares and traps, in which they took the smaller wild creatures, whose flesh furnished them a part of their subsistence, and whose skins were their first clothing. The club no doubt they already had, and from this the evolution of the stone-headed axe or hammer was natural. With these they pounded to death the animals that they caught in their snares. Perhaps the knife was next invented, and then the lance which is only a knife with a long handle and this may sometimes have been thrown from the hand. Last, and by far the greatest of all, must have come the wonderful discovery of the bow and arrow. But of the manner of these inventions and of their sequence no memory or tradition now remains. For the most part the Indians of the West lived in skin lodges. This was partly because such dwellings were warm, dry, and easily obtained, but especially be cause they were light and convenient and could readily be moved about from place to place, and so were in all respects suited to the needs of a nomadic people. But not all the Indians were dwellers in tents. The evolution of the house had progressed far beyond the single-roomed shelter of grass or bark or skins. The Indians of the East had large connected houses of poles, sometimes fortified. The Pawnees and Mandans built great sod or dirt houses, in which many families IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 145 lived in common, the sleeping places about the walls being separated by permanent wooden partitions, while in front of each a curtain was let down so as to form an actual room. Further to the south are still in use the many-roomed, many-storied houses of the Pueblo people, which were the highest development of the house among the Indians north of Mexico. Tradition warrants us in believing that many tribes who now live in lodges once had permanent houses, and that the exclusive use of skin lodges among the plains tribes may have come about in comparatively recent times. Many of these tribes have lived on these plains for a short time only say two or three cen turies having migrated thither from some earlier home, and many of them have traditions of a time when they lived in permanent houses, though often the story is so vague that nothing is known of the character of these dwellings. The Pawnees, on the other hand, say that in their ancient home which was probably on the Pacific slope they dwelt in houses built of stone. The highest development of architecture within the historic period was in the south, as shown by the ruins of Central America, Mexico, and Arizona ; yet tribes who lived in the north, whether on the Atlan tic or Pacific slopes, had permanent dwellings, and it seems probable that those which we have known only as nomads may have retrograded in this respect, and lost the art of building which they once possessed. The common movable home of the plains tribes was the conical tipi made of a number of dressed buffalo skins, sewed together and supported by about sixteen lodge poles. To the north, among the Lake Winni peg Chippeways, the tipi covering is of birch bark, 146 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. which, when done up for transportation, is in seven rolls. The largest and longest when unrolled reaches around the lodge poles at the ground from one side of the door to the other ; the one next in length fits around the lodge poles above the lower strip, lapping a little over it, so as to shed the rain. One still shorter goes on above this, and so on to the top of the cone. At both ends of each strip there is a lath-like stick of wood to keep the bark from fraying or splitting. The pieces of which these strips are composed are neatly sewed together with tamarak roots wattap . There are no wings or ears about the smokeholes of such a lodge, but these are not needed in the timber where it is used. The large sod houses of the Pawnees, Arickaras, and Mandans, have often been described. The Wichitas build odd-looking beehive-like dwellings of grass ; the hogans of the Navajoes are of brush and sticks ; both walls and roofs of the houses of the northwest coast Indians are made of shakes, split from the cedar. On the whole, the difference between the homes of the various tribes is very great. Food supply and defence against enemies depended on the warrior s weapons. These were his most precious possessions, and he gave much care to their manufac ture. Knowing nothing of metals, he made his edge tools of sharpened stones. Let us see how the arrow- maker worked. The camp is sleepy, for it is midday and the heat of the blazing sun has driven almost every one to seek the shade. The few young men who have not gone out to hunt are asleep in the lodges, and most of the women have put aside for the time their work on the hides and meat, and are sitting in the lodges sewing IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 147 moccasins, or else are pounding choke cherries, seated on the ground beneath skins spread over poles to make a shade. Only here and there one, old and very indus trious, is hard at work, careless of the heat. Even the children for the time have stopped their noise and retired to the fringe of bushes along the stream, where they are playing quietly. Near a lodge, small and weather-beaten, two men seated under a shade are hard at work. Each holds between his knees a block of stone, from which, by light sharp blows of a small stone hammer, he is chipping off triangular flakes of flint for making arrowheads. The material used by one of the men is a black obsidian obtained by trade from the Crows to the south, while the other has a piece of milky chalcedony picked up in the moun tains to the west. Each of these blocks has been sweated by being buried in wet earth, over which a fire has been built, the object of this treatment being to bring to light all the cracks and checks in the stone, so that no unnecessary labour need be performed on a piece too badly cracked to be profitably worked. As the workmen knock off the chips, they turn the blocks, so that after a little they become roughly cylindrical, always growing smaller and smaller, until at length each is too small to furnish more flakes. They are then put aside. Each man now collects all the flakes he had knocked off, and, piling them together on one corner of his robe, carefully examines each one. Some are rejected at a glance, some put in a pile together as satisfactory, while over others the arrow-maker pon ders for a while, as if in doubt. Presently he seems to have satisfied himself, and prepares for his second operation. For this he takes in his left palm a pad of 11 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. buckskin large enough to cover and protect it while holding the sharp flake, while over his right hand he slips another piece of tanned hide something like a sailmaker s " palm," and used for the same purpose. Against his " palm " the arrow-maker places the head of a small tool a straight piece of deer or antelope horn or of bone about four inches long, and pressing its point against the side of the piece of flint held in the other hand, he flakes off one little chip of the stone and then another close to it, thus passing along the edge of the unformed flint until one side of it is straight, and then along the other. He works quickly and apparently without much care, except when he is near the point, for this is a delicate place, and care lessness or haste here may endanger the arrowhead ; for, if its point should be broken, it is good for noth ing. Sometimes an unseen check will cause the head to break across without warning, and the labour ex pended on this particular piece is thus wasted. But usually the arrow-maker works rapidly and spoils but few points. After the head is shaped, there are often left some thin projecting edges which mar its sym metry and add nothing to its effectiveness. These are broken off either by pressure or by a sharp blow with some light instrument, such as a bit of bone or of hard wood. The making of these stone points has now been almost entirely forgotten, but I have seen a beautiful and perfect dagger, six or eight inches long, made from a piece of glass bottle. There is a wide variation in the shape and size of these stone points. Some are very small, others large, some are fine and delicate, and others coarse and clumsy. The edges are usually regular and fairly IMPLEMENTS AtfD INDUSTRIES. smooth, but sometimes serrated. A wound inflicted by one of them is said to have been much more serious than that inflicted by a hoop-iron point, and the In dian of to-day believes that the stone points had some what the effect of a poisoned arrowhead. There is a grain of foundation for this, since the stone point would make a ragged wound, and the point if deeply buried in the flesh could not easily be extracted or pushed on through, but would readily become detached from the arrow shaft. On the other hand, it would make a clean wound, which would heal much more easily than a bullet wound. These arrowheads were roughly triangular in shape, but often had a short shank for attachment to the shaft. This shank, or the middle part of the short side of the triangle, was set into a notch in the shaft, fastened by a glue made from the hoofs of the buffalo, and made additionally secure by being whipped in place by fine sinew strings, put on wet. The arrow shafts are not less important than the heads. They should be straight, strong, and heavy, and for this reason year-old shoots of the dogwood, cherry, or service berry make the best arrow wood. The Indians of the southwest use reeds of the cane, and with them the shaft is often composed of three or more pieces. Some tribes use shoots of the willow, but this warps so readily and is so light and weak that it will hardly be employed if any other wood can be had. The length and thickness of the shaft varies with the tribe as does also the manner of feathering, of fastening on the heads, and of painting but it almost always has two or three winding grooves throughout its length, the purpose of which is said to be to facilitate the flow of blood, and probably also the arrow s en- 150 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. trance into the flesh. The arrow shafts, after being cut and scraped free from bark, are bound together in bundles and hung up to dry in the lodge, where it is warm. When partly seasoned, they are taken down and picked over. Those which are not entirely straight are handled, bent this way and that, and the bundle is then again hung up, and left until the wood is thoroughly seasoned, when the shafts are again gone over and the bad ones rejected. Usually they are brought down to the proper thickness by scraping with a bit of flint or glass, or with a knife, but often a slab of grooved sandstone is used for this purpose. This has the same effect as if they were sandpapered down. The grooves in the shaft are made by passing it through a hole bored through a rib or a vertebra s dorsal spine, or sometimes, it is said, by pressure of the teeth, in which the wood is held while being bent. This hole is just large enough for the shaft to pass through, and is circular, except for one or two projections, which press into the wood and cut out the grooves. The feathers are usually three in number, put on with glue, but wound above and below with sinew. The notch for the string is deep and in the same plane with the arrow s head. The private mark of the owner is usually found close to the end of the feathers. It may be a fashion of painting or some arrangement of stained feathers. The feathers are rarely two or four, and their length varies greatly with the tribe. They are usually taken from birds of prey. The most important part of the warrior s equip ment was the bow, and over no part of it was more time and labour spent. In every lodge there were kept sticks of bow wood, some of them so far ad vanced in manufacture that but little labour was re- IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 151 quired to complete them. While the bow was usually made of wood, bone and horn were also used. Those of bone were fashioned of two or more pieces of the rib of some large animal an elk or a buffalo neatly fitted and spliced together. Those of elk horn were also made of several pieces, fitted and glued together, and wrapped with sinew. Buffalo or sheep horn bows were made of several pieces, which were boiled or steamed and straightened before being put to gether. Bows made of horn or bone were very stiff, and sometimes could hardly be drawn by a white man, though handled by their owners with apparent ease. Their manufacture was a long, slow process, and they were highly valued, and it was not easy to induce an owner to sell one. They were made chiefly among the mountain Indians, such as the Crows, Snakes, and Utes, but were often traded to other tribes. Almost all the native woods in one section of the country or another were used for bows. In later times hickory was a favourite wood, and old oxbows were highly valued by the Indians, who used to steam. and straighten them and then make them into bows. Other woods employed were the osage orange, ash, cedar, yew, choke cherry, and willow. The wood was seasoned with care, worked down carefully, straight ened again and again, oiled and handled, and, finally, as the last operation, the nocks were cut, the sinew backing applied, a wrapping of buckskin secured about the grip of the bow, and it was finished. Good bows of plains and mountain tribes were always backed with sinew, which added much to the spring and strength of the weapon. Some tribes toward the Pacific coast backed their bows with salmon skin. The bowstring was always made of twisted sinew. 152 MU STOEY OF THE INDIAN. The bow and arrows were carried in a bow case and quiver, fastened together and slung over the shoulder. The covering of these was often otter or panther skin, the hide of a buffalo calf, or, in later times, of domestic cattle. Among most of the plains tribes the use of the bow was discontinued long ago, and at the present time only boys bows are in use. The old familiarity and skill with the arm are lost. In old times, however, the bow at short range was an extremely effective weapon, and a skilled archer could shoot so rapidly that he had no difficulty in keeping several horizontally directed arrows in the air at the same time. The bow could be shot more rapidly and effectively than a revolving pistol. The power of the bow is well known. There are perfectly well authenticated instances where two buf falo, running side by side, have been killed by the same arrow, and it was not uncommon for an arrow to go so far through an animal that the point and a part of the shaft projected on the other side. The arrow could be shot to a distance of three or four hundred yards. The stone axe, the maul, and the lance were all simple weapons. The axehead was usually of soft stone, ground down to an edge, and a groove was worked out at right angles to its length, so that the green withe by which it was fastened to the handle should not slip off. Over this, green rawhide was sewed with sinew, and this hide usually extended over the whole length of the handle. The maul or war- club was made of a grooved oval stone, fastened to a handle in the same way as the axe. The club had a long handle and carried a small stone, no larger than .IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 153 a man s fist. The woman s maul was short handled and the stone was large and heavy. The lancehead was made of flint, flaked sharp, and lashed to a shaft with sinew or wet rawhide strings. A very important part of the warrior s outfit was the shield, with which he stopped or turned aside the arrows of his enemy. It was usually circular in shape, and was made of the thick, shrunken hide of a buffalo bull s neck. It was heavy enough to turn the ball from an old-fashioned smooth-bored gun. The shield was usually highly ornamented, and often had the warrior s " medicine " painted on it, and was often fringed with eagle feathers about its circumfer ence. Clothing was made of skins tanned with or without the fur. Buffalo tribes, as a rule, wore clothing made for the most part of the skins of this animal, and used comparatively little buckskin. As their work was chiefly on these large heavy skins, they were poor tan ners by comparison with those tribes which lived in the mountains and made their clothing largely of deer skin. The leggings, shirts, and women s dresses, have often been described. Moccasins for summer wear covered the foot only, not coming up over the ankle, but winter moccasins were provided with a high flap which tied about the ankle under the legging. Some tribes used moccasins made wholly of deer skin and without a sole ; with others a parfleche sole was al ways provided. They were ornamented in front with stained porcupine quills, or in later times with beads ; sometimes, too, there are little fringes about the ankle or down the front, and two little tags from the heels. All the sewing of this clothing was done with thread made of sinew, and in old times with awls made of 154: THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. bone or stiff thorns. Such sewing was very enduring, and the dressed skin would wear out before the seams gave way. Many of the tribes especially those to the south made a simple pottery, either formed on a mould or else within or without a frame of basket-work, which sometimes was afterward burned away in the baking. The best pottery, that of the southwest, was often, if not always, made by coiling a long rope of clay, tier above tier, until the vessel was completed. Some of the ware so made was singularly graceful and perfect. Often it was ornamented by indented markings drawn while the clay was soft, or by figures painted before the baking. With the advent of the whites and the introduction of vessels of metal, the manufacture of such pottery ceased, and it is now carried on in but very few tribes. Among the northern tribes, where pottery was least known, ladles, spoons, bowls, and dishes were usually formed from horn or wood. The horns of the buffalo, the mountain sheep, and the white goat were used for these purposes, those of the last-named species being often elaborately carved and ornamented by the north west coast tribes. Plates or dishes made of pieces of buffalo horn fitted and sewn together with sinew were common. Excrescences on tree trunks, knocked off and hollowed out, made good wooden bowls. Stone pots and ollas and stone mortars were common, es pecially on the southwest coast, as were also the basalt mills used for grinding the corn, metates. Some plains tribes used wooden mortars, usually made of oak or some other hard wood, with a long and heavy wood en pestle. The Lake Winnipeg Chippeways still use a mill of two circular stones, revolving one upon IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 155 the other, but the idea of this may have been bor rowed from the whites. By some tribes cups and buckets were made from the lining of the buffalo s paunch, and many others wove basketware, so tight that it would hold water, and such vessels were even used to cook in, the water being heated with hot stones. Implements for tanning fleshers were made of stone, with the edges flaked off until they were sharp, or of elkhorn steamed and bent at one end for three inches at right angles to the course of the antler and sharpened, or of bone, as the cannon bone of a buffalo, cut diagonally so as to give a sharp edge, and notched along this sharpened border. All these were servicea ble, and were commonly employed. The different tribes had but slight knowledge of the textile art, and this knowledge seems to have been greatest in the south and on the coast. Many tribes wove baskets and mats of reeds and grass, yet the plains Indians, who had in the fleece of the buffalo an excellent material for weaving cloth, never seem to have got any further than to twist ropes from it. The Mokis of the south and the coast tribes of the north practised the aboriginal art of blanket-weaving, and the Navajoes, after they obtained their flocks from the Spaniards, took up this art and now practise it in singular perfection. The blanket- weaving of the north is less skilful. The rounded hats woven of cedar bark by the northwest coast tribes deserve mention. The plains tribes plaited ropes of rawhide; those of the northern coast make ropes of cedar bark, and long fishing-lines by knotting together the slender stems of the kelp. Three vehicles were known to the primitive In- 156 THE STOIIY OF THE INDIAN. dian the travels in the south and the sledge in the north for land travel, and the canoe wherever there were water ways. The sledge could be used only when the ground was snow -covered, and it was scarcely known south of the parallel of 50. In primitive times both sledge and travois were drawn by dogs, but as soon as horses were obtained, the dogs were freed from the travois, and horses drew the loads. From time immemorial the travois has been used by the plains savage to transport his possessions, and it is only when he makes his first slow step toward civili zation that he exchanges it for a wagon. What his canoe is to the Indian who traverses the water ways of the north, or his dog sledge to the fur-clad Innuit, the travois * is to the dweller on the plains. Where in use to-day, it consists of two poles about the size of lodge poles, crossed near their smaller ends, and toward the larger held in place by crosspieces three feet apart. The space between these two cross braces is occupied by a stiff rawhide netting running from one pole to the other, and strong enough to carry a weight of sev eral hundred pounds. The crossed ends of the poles are placed over a horse s withers just at the front of the saddle, and the separated braced ends drag upon the ground behind. The body and hips of the horse are in the empty space between the angles at the withers and the first crosspiece, which comes close behind the hocks. Bearing a part of the weight on his shoulders, the horse drags this rude contrivance * This is a French trapper word, perhaps a corruption of travers or d travers, across, referring to the crossing of the poles over the horse s withers. It hardly seems that it can come from travaux or trqineau, as has been suggested. I- r-- IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 157 and its load over the rough prairie, along narrow mountain trails or through hurrying torrents, with rarely a mishap. On the platform of the travois are carried loads of meat from the buffalo-killing, the va rious possessions of the owner in moving camp from place to place, a sick or wounded individual too weak to ride, and sometimes a wickerwork cage shaped like a sweat lodge, in which are confined small children, or even a family of tiny puppies with their mother. Things that cannot be conveniently packed on the backs of the horses are put upon the travois. Some times the travois bears the dead, for with certain tribes it is essential to the future well-being of the departed that they be brought back to the tribal burying ground near the village. The highest type of Indian canoe is that of birch bark, employed by the tribes of the. north an^north- east, yet in many respects the canoe of the northwest coast equals or excels it. The latter being of wood, and of one piece, is much more substantial than thye birch ; yet even it must be cared for, since a rough knock or two on the beach may split it from end to end, and if it should receive injury, the work of repair ing is much more difficult than that of patching a bark canoe. The vessels used on the northwestern coast vary in length from ten to eighty feet, and are hollowed out from the trunk of a single tree of the white cedar. After the tree trunk has been flattened above and roughly shaped, the work of hollowing it out begins. Fires are built on the top of the log, care fully watched, and so controlled that they burn evenly and slowly down into the wood. When they have gone far enough, they are extinguished, the interior is ecraped, and then the canoe-builder, using a wooden )58 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. handle in which is fastened a small chisel, carefully goes over the whole surface. At each blow he takes off a little scale of wood, as large as a man s thumb and quite thin, and this he continues, within and without, until the canoe is completed. It is then braced by two or more crosspieces, which are sewed to the gun wales with steamed cedar twigs on either side, so that the vessel cannot spread. The painting follows, and the vessel is ready for use. Only seasoned and perfect timber is used for these canoes. In such canoes, the Indians of the north Pacific make long journeys over the open seas, often ventur ing out of sight of land, facing rough weather, and capturing sea otters, seals, sea lions, and whales. The larger canoes were used to carry war parties, and the sudden appearance of one of these great boats full of fighting men carried consternation to the hearts of the dwellers in the village that it threatened. Trav ellers in these canoes, when they meet a heavy head wind, are often obliged to lie windbound for days be fore they can continue their journey. Besides the long pointed paddles with a crossbar at the handle, which are used to propel the canoes, each of the larger ones is provided with a mast stepped in a chock in the bottom, and supported by one of the forward crossbars. A spritsail is used with a following wind, but as the canoes have no keel, it is impossible to beat, and even with a beam wind the vessel slips rapidly off to leeward. Dugouts widely different from those of the north west coast, and canoes made of pine or spruce bark, are used by some of the canoe people of the northern liocky Mountains, the Kutenais, Kalispels, and others. Those of bark are quite remarkable in type, being IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 159 much longer on the bottom than the top, and termi nating before and behind in a long slender point, which looks somewhat like the ram of a man-of-war. The bark is stripped off the tree trunk in a single piece, the outer surface being shaved or scraped smooth. It is then bent inside out, so that the in side of the canoe is formed of the outside of the bark. The ends are then brought together and sewed up with long fibres of roots, the awl or needle used being of bone. The seams are pitched with gum from the spruce. The gunwale on either side is strengthened by strips of hard wood, sewn to the bark by roots or cedar bark, and these strips meet and are fastened to gether at either end of the boat, and along the cut edge of the bark on either side of the two ends, a strip of hard wood is sewn and the two strips lashed togeth er. The boat is strengthened by ribs of ha%d wood, which run across from one gunwale to the other, fol lowing the skin of the canoe, and a number of longi tudinal strips form a flooring and strengthen the sides. Thus the vessel, like the birch canoe, has a real frame, though this is built inside the skin, reversing the usual order. Crossbars or thwarts run from gunwale to gun wale, and give additional stiffness. Sometimes the bark immediately below the gunwales is from the birch tree. The paddle has a straight, simple handle, with out crosspiece. These canoes are thus quite elaborate, but they are extremely difficult to handle by one who is not accustomed to them, and turn over on very small provocation. The birch bark canoe of the northern Indians is identical with that used in the east, and its form and material are familiar to all. It is a graceful, seaworthy structure, very light and easily transported from place 160 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. to place, and very readily repaired. It is in general use throughout the north. On the plains, canoes are unknown, for there are no water ways which make them necessary, and though many tribes which had migrated from the east had in their earlier homes made and used these vehicles, yet when the conditions of their life made them unneces sary, the art of building them was soon forgotten. On some of the larger streams, however, boats were needed to ferry across the chattels of the people when travel ling, and this want was supplied by the invention of the " bull boat." This was something like the skin coracle of the ancient Britons, but was even more primitive. It was a circular vessel, shaped like a shal low teacup, made of a fresh buffalo hide stretched over a frame of green willow branches. All the holes in the skin were sewed up, and all the seams pitched with tallow. The vessel was carefully loaded with goods for transportation, a place being left at one point for the paddler. Owing to the shape of the boat, it could not be rowed or paddled in the ordinary way. The woman dipped her paddle in the water and drew it directly toward her, and toward the side of the boat, and in this way pulled the boat to the opposite shore. Men did not often use these boats, but usually swam over with the horses. Such boats were not perma nent, for as soon as they had served their purpose, the frames were torn out of them and the hides were used for some other purpose. Bull boats were used chiefly on the lower Missouri and Platte rivers. On the upper Missouri, rafts were the only means of ferry ing across the streams. The Indian s ideas of art are rude. He has an eye for bright colors, but no notion of drawing. His fig- IMPLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES. 161 ures of men and animals are grotesque, and are as grotesquely painted in staring hues of red, yellow, and black, his paints being burned clays and charcoal. In his pottery and his carving, however, he is more ad vanced. Some of his water jars and other vessels have very graceful shapes, and some pots, representing human heads, which have been exhumed from the an cient mounds, are full of character. It is in the art of carving, however, that the great est skill was shown. Using the soft catlinite of the pipe-stone quarry, the plains warrior whittled out his great red pipe as symmetrically as if turned in a lathe, often ornamenting it with the head and neck of a horse or a bear. The canoe man of Puget Sound carved the soft cedar of the canoe prow into a figure head. The Navajoes of the south and the Haidahs of the north are skilled silversmiths to-day, and the dwellers on the British Columbia and Alaskan coasts still fashion the great totem poles, which tell the story of their descent from some mythical ancestor. Very remarkable skill is shown by the Queen Charlotte s Sound Indians in their work in a black slate rock which they carve into all sorts of shapes. I have seen platters and dishes, pipes, and models of houses, beautifully carved and often inlaid with carved bits of ivory taken from the teeth of the walrus or the whale. Great time and patience must be expended on this work, and on the drilling of straight holes through the stems of their pipes, some of them four feet in length. While the bowls of these pipes are most often of the stone known as catlinite, sometimes they are of wood or bone, or even petrified wood or quartz pebble. 162 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. The musical instruments of the Indians are few. Drums, whistles, rattles, an instrument called by the whites a " fiddle " consisting of a gourd and notched stick along which another stick is drawn and a flageolet with three or four stops were the principal ones. The flageolet used by some tribes is an instru ment of considerable range and power, and the music made on it, heard at night in the camp when some young man is serenading his sweetheart, is very charming. The whistles are used chiefly in war, the drums in festal or religious ceremonies, the rattles to beat time at the dance or to frighten away bad spirits. This rattle is one of the important possessions of the healer, and is often so highly valued that the owner refuses to sell it. The music of these people is chiefly vocal. They are unwearied singers, and love, war, religion, sorrow, or joy are alike expressed IL their songs. CHAPTER X. MAN AND NATUKE. LIKE the wild bird and the beast, like the cloud and the forest tree, the primitive savage is a part of nature. He is in it and of it. He studies it all through his life. He can read its language. It is the one thing that he knows. He is an observer. Nothing escapes his eye. The sighs of clouds, the blowing of the winds, the movements of birds and animals all tell to him some story. It is by observing these signs, reading them, and acting on them that he procures his food, that he saves himself from his ene mies, that he lives his life. But though a keen observer, the Indian is not a reasoner. He is quick to notice the connection be tween two events, but often he does not know what that connection is. He constantly mistakes effect for cause, post hoc for propter hoc. If the wind blows and the waves begin to roll on the surface of the lake, he says that the rolling of the waves causes the blow ing of the breeze. The natural phenomena which we understand so little, he does not understand at all. In his attempts to assign causes for them, he gives explanations which are grotesque. The moon wanes because it is sick, and at last it dies and a new one is created ; or it grows small because mice are gnaw ing at its edges, nibbling it away. He hears a grouse 12 163 , 164 THE STORY OP THE INDIAN. rise from the ground with a roar of wings, and con cludes that the roar of the thunder must be made by a bird much larger ; or he sees an unknown bird rise from the ground, and just as it flies the thunder rolls, hence this bird causes the thunder and is the thunder bird. To him the sun, moon, and stars are persons. The animals, trees, and mountains are powers and in telligences. The ravens foretell events to come, the wolves talk to him of matters which are happening at a distance. If he is unhappy and prays fervently for hel^>, some animal may take pity on him and assist him by its miraculous power. He understands his own weakness and realizes the strength of the forces of nature. He realizes, too, their incomprehensibility. To him they are mysteries. The Indian s life is full of things that he does not understand of the mysterious, of the superhuman. These mysteries he greatly fears, and he prays without ceasing that he may be delivered from the unknown perils which threaten him on every hand. He has a wholesome dread of material dangers, of enemies on the warpath, of bears in the mountains ; but far more than these he fears the mysterious powers that sur round him powers which are unseen until they strike, which leave no tracks upon the ground, the smoke of whose fires cannot be seen rising through the clear air. He fears the burning arrow shot by the thunder ; the unseen under-water animals which may seize him, as he is crossing stream or lake, and drag him beneath the waves; the invisible darts of evil spirits which cause disease not to be cured by any medicine of roots or herbs ; the ghost, terrible not for what it may do, "but only because it is a ghost. Against such dangers MAN AND NATURE. he feels that he has no defence. So it is that he prays to the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the ghosts, the above-people, and the under-water people. For pity and for protection he appeals to everything in nature that his imagination indues with a power greater than his own. In an Indian camp it is not the average man that has communication with the other and unseen world. All pray, it is true, but to most of these prayers no answer is vouchsafed. It is only now and then that visions or communications from the supernatural world come to men and women. Those who are thus especially favoured are not, so far as we can tell from their histories, particularly deserving. The help that they receive they owe not so much to any good works that they have performed, or to any merit of their own, as to the kindness of heart of the supernatural powers. In another volume * I have given some ac count of the practice of dreaming for power, an act of penance and self-sacrifice which, when carried out, often secured the pity and help of the supernatural powers, and which seems to have been well-nigh uni versal among the Indians. The powers influencing the Indian s life may be either malignant or beneficent, but by far the greater number seem to be well disposed and helpful. Stories about this latter class are much more numerous than those of hurtful powers, and it seems that usually these supernatual beings are easily moved by prayer and accessible to pity. On the other hand, a man who fails to show respect to these forces is likely to die. On the west side of the Eocky Mountains, there is a * Blackfoot Lodge Tales, p. 191. 166 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. mountain sheep skull grown into a great pine tree trunk. This is a sacred object, reverenced by all. Once, however, a Nez Perce laughed at his compan ions because they offered presents to this skull, and to show that he did not believe in it he shot at it with his gun. The next day as he was travelling along his rifle, accidentally discharged, killed him. The depths of the water shelter a horde of mys~ terious inhabitants. Some of them are people, but quite different from those who live on the prairie. Others are animals similar to those which we have on land, while others are monsters. The under-water people use the water fowl the swans, geese, and pelicans for their dogs ; that is, for their beasts of burden. Small water birds are used as messengers by the supernatural powers. The Dakotas and Chey- ennes tell us that the under-water monsters have long horns and are covered with hair. The Cheyennes say that they lay eggs, and that any human being who eats one of these eggs, shortly becomes himself one of these water monsters. With some prairie tribes there seems in early times to have been a tendency to explain the advent of any animal new to them by concluding that it was an under-water animal that had taken to living on the land. Thus, by some, the first white men were thought to be under-water people, just as by others they were believed to be spirits or mysteries. The Piegans tell with much detail how the first horses came up out of a lake. The story which was first told me by Almost-a-Dog, and since by other old people, is this : A long time ago a Piegan warrior s dream told him about a lake far away, where there were some MAN AND NATURE. large animals, which were harmless and which he could catch, tame, and use to pack on, like dogs. And because they were very large and could carry a heavy load, they would be better to use than the dogs, on which the people then carried their packs. " Go to this lake," said his dream, " and take with you a rope, so that you can catch these animals." So the man took a long rope of bull s hide, and went to the shore of the lake, and dug a hole in the sand there, and hid in it. While he watched, he saw many animals come down to the lake to drink. Deer came down and coyotes and elk and buffalo. They all came and drank. After a while, the wind began to blow and the waves to rise and roll upon the beach, saying sh-li-li-h, sh-h-h-h. At last came a band of large animals, unlike any that the man had ever seen before. They were big like an elk, and had small ears and long tails hanging down. Some were white, and some black, and some red and spotted. The young ones were smaller. When they came down to the water s edge and stopped to drink, his dream said to the man, " Throw your rope and catch one." So the man threw his rope, and caught one of the largest of the animals. It struggled and pulled and dragged the man about, and he was not strong enough to hold it, and at length it pulled the rope out of his hand, and the whole band ran into the lake and under the water and were not seen again. The man went back to camp feeling very sad. He prayed for help to his dream, which said : " Four times you may try to catch these animals. If in four times trying you do not get them, you will never see them again." Then the man made a sacrifice, and prayed to the Sun and to Old Man, and his dreain 168 ^HE STORY OF THE INDIAN. spoke to him in his sleep, and told him that he was not strong enough to catch a big one, that he ought try to catch one of the young then he could hold it. The man went again to the shores of the big lake, and again dug a hole in the sand and lay hidden there. He saw all the animals come down to drink the deer, the wolves, the elk, and the buffalo. At last the wind began to rise and the waves to roll and to say sh-li-li-li, sh-h-h-h upon the shore. Then came the band of strange animals to drink at the lake. Again the man threw his rope, and this time he caught one of the young and was able to hold it. He caught all of the young ones out of the band and took them to the camp. After they had been there a little while, the mares the mothers of these colts came trotting into the camp ; their udders were full of milk. After them came all the others of the band. At first the people were afraid of these new ani mals and would not go near them, but the man who had caught them told everybody that they were harm less. After a time they became tame, so that they did not have to be tied up, but followed the camp about as it moved from place to place. Then the people began to put packs on them, and they called them po-no-Jcah mi-ta,) that is, elk-dog, because they are big and shaped like an elk, and carry a pack like a dog. This is how the Piku ni got their horses. If the under- world is peopled with mysterious and terrible inhabitants, not less strange and powerful are those who dwell in the regions of the upper air. There lives the thunder, that fearful one, who strikes without warning, whose bolt shatters the lofty crag, blasts the tallest pine, and fells the strongest animal, a moment before active and full of life. There are MAN AND NATURE. 169 the winds, the clouds, the ghosts, and many other persons, whom sometimes we feel, but never see. As has been said, the thunder is usually regarded as a great bird, but this appears to have relation merely to the sound that it produces. Often the thunder is described as a person, sometimes as a dreadful man with threatening eyes, or again, young and handsome. Sometimes it is a monster, birdlike only in that it has wings and the power of flight. Thunder is terrible and must be prayed to, and be sides this, he brings the rain which makes the crops to grow and the berries large and sweet, and for this reason, too, he must be prayed to. The rainstorm and the thunder are scarcely separated in the Indian s mind. Sometimes, when the thunder appears most dangerous, it can be frightened away. A friend of mine was once on the prairie in a very severe storm. The hair of his head and the mane of his horse stood straight out. The thunder was crashing all about him and kept drawing nearer and nearer. The man was very much frightened and did not know what to do, but at length in despair he began to shoot his gun at the thunder, loading as fast as he could, and firing in the direction of the sound. Soon after he began to do this, the thunder commenced to move away and at last ceased altogether. Some tribes believe that a bitter hostility exists between the thunder birds and the under- water mon sters, the birds attacking these last when they see them, and striving to carry them off. The Rev. J. 0. Dorsey tells of a Winnebago In dian, who was said to have been an eye witness of such a conflict, and who was called on by each of the com batants for assistance in the fight, each promising to 170 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. reward him for his aid. The man was naturally very much afraid, and was doubtful what part he should take in the combat, but at length he determined to assist the thunder bird and shot an arrow into the water monster. This terminated the fight in favour . of the aerial power, which then flew away with its foe. But the wounded under-water monster called back to the man, " Yes, it is true that you may become great, but your relations must die." And it was so. The man did become great, but his relations died. Some times, however, arrows shot by man will not injure an under-water animal. It pays no attention to the arrows. One view taken of the thunder is given in a story told in the Blackf oot Lodge Tales ; another is found in the story of the Thunder Pipe, a Blood story : This happened long ago. In the camp the chil dren playing, had little lodges and sticks for lodge poles, and used to make travois for their dogs. A number of them would get together and harness their dogs and move camp about a mile, carrying their little brothers and sisters, and then put up their lodges. Such was the children s play. One day, while they were out doing this, a big cloud came up. The children said, " We had better go home. It looks as if it were going to rain." They waited too long, and before they had started, the storm began. Some went on home in the rain, and some went into the brush, to wait there till the storm had passed. It was thundering and lightening a very hard storm. It grew worse and worse, and the thun der came closer, and those who had stayed became frightened, and at length ran home in the rain. After the children had all reached the camp, one MAN AND NATURE. 171 was still missing a girl about fifteen years old, very pretty. When the storm had passed, some of the people went out to look for this child, but they could not find her. This alarmed the camp, and everybody turned out to try to find the little girl. They looked for her for three days, but could not find her. The mother was very sorry to have lost her child, and gashed her legs and arms and cut on the ends of her fingers, and the father did the same. They sat up on the hills mourning, and would not eat, nor drink, nor come to camp, they were so sorry for the loss of the girl. At last the camp moved and went to another stream. Soon after they got there, another terrible storm came up. The clouds were black, the rain poured down, and the thunder crashed everywhere about the camp. During the storm, while it was raining heavi est, a young man came running into the lodge of the mourners and said to them, "Your girl has come back." The girl was brought into the lodge, and her father and mother were very happy to see her. Be fore they had time to speak, she said to them, " Father and mother, I have been away, but it was not my fault." They asked her, " Where have you been ? " She replied : " I cannot tell you that. I do not know where I have been. While it was raining and thun dering the other day a young man came and stood beside me and said, Let us go. I did not want to go, but he took me. I have been crying all the time ever since, and at last he took pity on me and brought me back. If you will go to my grandmother s lodge you will see him. He is in there. You will also find a pipestem, which your son-in-law has given me. Bring it to this lodge." 172 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. The parents went over to the lodge to get the pipe- stem, and were much surprised to see what a hand some young man was there. They did not know him. He was a stranger to them. He was so handsome they were frightened. The old people took the stem and brought it to their lodge, and said to their daughter : " Well, it is good that you are married. Your husband is a very fine-looking man. Who is he ? " She answered, " I cannot tell you, for I do not know." " When did you first see him ? Where did he find you ? " they said. The girl replied : " I was bending down ovej a tree trunk when the thunder fell right in front of me. When I raised myself up quickly and looked, this young man was standing by me. I did not wish to go with him, but he took me. We had only walked a little way when I found I was in a strange land, and I have been crying ever since. At last he said to me, Well, if you are so lonesome, I will have to take you back to your people. It was a fine, bright day when we started this morning, but we had gone only a little way when we were walking in a small mist. As we came further this mist grew larger and rose and clouded over the whole sky, and we walked on in it. After a while, I found the rain pouring down, and the next thing I knew I was standing here in your camp." The parents talked to the young man, but he would not answer them. The girl told the people that while in the strange land the young man gave her a pipe- stem to give to her father. When he was in trouble and wanted help, he might ask for it from this pipe- stem. Then the Thunder power would aid him. " When your father is tired of it," he said " he may MAN AND NATURE. 173 give it to his children, and they may use it with the same power. So long as this stem is kept by your people it will be a great help to them." This is where the stem came from that belongs to Mahkwe yi pis to-ki. It has been kept in this tribe, handed down from those days, and is still in the Blood carnp. The winter storms of snow and cold are ruled by a person sometimes called Coldmaker. He is white, not as the white man is white, but rather like the snow, and is clad in white, and rides a white horse. He brings the storm, riding in the midst of it, and some people have the power to call him and to bring on a snowstorm. The wind does not often take material shape and is seldom seen, yet in some cases it speaks to people. Also it is sometimes made a messenger by the ruler. Various causes are assigned for the blowing of the wind, and one of these told me years ago by an old Blood Indian, who knew the men to whom this hap pened is perhaps worth repeating : A good many years ago the camp was moving from the north down through this country (that along Milk River and the head waters of the Marias). When they had got down here they ran out of Vherbe and moved up toward the mountains to gather some, and there they saw Windmaker. There were three young men who went out to gather Vherbe. They went up on the foothills, and as they were going along they saw, down below them in a valley, a strange animal. It was small the size of a white man s cow, blue-roan in colour, and had a very long tail. They stood looking down at it, and 174: THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. said to each other, " What kind of an animal is that ? " None of them had ever seen anything like it. At length, while it was walking about grazing, it raised its head and looked toward them, and they saw that it had very long ears. When it looked toward them, it moved its ears backward and forward two or three times, and at once there came two or three terrible gusts of wind. It turned, and started to trot off toward the mountains, and they followed it. It threw its ears backward and forward, and gusts of wind kept coming. They chased it, and it ran into a piece of timber, in which there was a lake. Here the men separated, one going around the timber on either side of the lake, while the third followed the animal. When the two men had gone around the timber and came to the further edge of the lake, the wind died down very suddenly. They stood there, waiting and looking for the animal. The man who had fol lowed it saw the tracks going into the lake, and signed to the others to come to him. They, too, saw where it had gone into the water, but although they went all around the lake, they could not see any tracks where it had come out. They waited about till dark, but it did not come out of the lake, so they went back to their camp and told the medicine man what they had seen. Before that the people had never known what it was that made the wind blow, but now, when they had seen this animal, the medicine man decided that it caused the wind, and they called it Windmaker. The beliefs in animals are as numerous as the tribes almost as the individuals of the tribes. Many of them have already been alluded to, or will be MAN AND NATURE. 175 spoken of in the chapter on religion. The Dakotas believe that the bear and the wolf exert evil influ ences, and cause disease and death, while the Pawnees regard them as friendly and helpful. Besides the reverence felt for the buffalo, there are believed to exist certain mysterious buffalo which cannot be killed and which have great power. The Pawnee Indians have a special belief about a little animal which they call ground dog, and which, from their description, I believe to be the black- footed ferret (Putorius nigripes). This animal, being nocturnal in habit and, spending most of its time in burrows under ground, is seldom seen. The Pawnees believe that if this animal sits up and looks at a man, working its jaws, as if chewing, the entrails of that man will at once be cut to pieces and he will die. A considerable proportion of the " medicine " per formances in any camp have to do with healing. While the Indians are skilful in curing simple ail ments and in surgery of a certain kind, there are many more serious diseases which they do not at all comprehend, and for which they have no medical treatment. Such diseases they believe to be caused by evil spirits, which must be driven away by the dream power of the doctor, who relies for help on this power and not on any curative agents. The treat ment consists of burning sweet-smelling vegetation to purify the air, of singing and praying to invoke the help of the power, of rattling and making alarming sounds to frighten away the evil spirits, and of suck ing and brushing off the skin of the patient to re move the mechanical causes of the disease. The dif ferent operations of this healing process have often been described. Usually such treatment gives no re- 176 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. lief and the patient dies, but in wounds or other in juries these doctors have a success which oftentimes is very remarkable. In another place I have given some examples of this success, and I add here two other cases where men have cured themselves or were cured by others through dream power. Some of these stories come from eyewitnesses. A small party of Piegans were camped at Fort Brule, at the mouth of the Marias River, when, one morning about daylight, a war party of enemies rushed upon them. The gates of the fort were barred, so some of the women put up their travois against the stockade and climbed over the walls for shelter, while some dug pits in the ground outside the stockade. A very heavy fight began. Two women and one man were killed just outside the stockade door by a lance in the hands of a Cree. There was another camp of Piegans not far off, and when the fight began one of the Indians ran from Fort Brule and told these others that the Crees were attacking them. A party of warriors hur ried down, and when they reached the fort, the Crees began to retreat. The Piegans followed them, and the two parties took their stand on a ridge, the Orees on one side and the Piegans on the other. A Piegan named White Bear was trying to get closer to the enemy, and a Cree crept up close to him and shot him through the body, the ball entering at the kid neys and coming out at the shoulders. His compan ions dragged the man to the camp. He was still breathing when they got him to the camp. Soon after he died. There was an old woman in the camp, a very power ful doctor, and when she saw that the man was dead, MAN AND NATURE. 177 she took her buffalo robe and painted it on the head and on the back and down the sides. She covered the boy with the painted robe, and then asked for a dish of yellow clay and some water. When these were brought to her, she untied from White Bear s neck the skin of a little mole that he used to carry about, and put this skin in the dish of yellow clay. Then she began to sing her medicine song, and went up to the dead man and caught him by the little finger and shook him, and said, " Wake up." At this time the lodge was crowded full, and many stood about looking under the lodge skins, which were raised. The woman would shake the robe which lay on the man, and say, " Wake up ; you are wanted to smoke." After she had done this four times, the fourth time she did it, this man moved. -When he moved, the old woman asked that the pipe be lighted. This was done and the pipe handed to her, and after taking a small smoke and making a prayer to the ghosts, she said to the young man, " Wake up," and at the same time pulled the robe off him. White Bear staggered to his feet and reached out his hand to take the pipe, but the old woman kept backing away from him, till she came to where stood the dish of yellow chalk with the skin in it. There the man took the pipe and began to smoke, and the blood poured from both the bullet holes. He sat down beside the dish that had the mole in it, and finally lay down and smoked, and when he smoked he blew the smoke toward the mole and the yellow clay. When he had finished smoking he covered the mole skin over with a piece of buckskin, and then after a minute or two took the skin off, and the mole was there alive, scratching and digging in the yellow clay. He lay down beside it, and the mole left the dish, ran over 178 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. on to his body, went to the bullet hole, put his head in it, and began to pull out clots of blood. After it had done this at one hole, it ran to the other and did the same thing, and when it had done that, it went back to the dish and remained there, and White Bear again covered it with the piece of buckskin. Then he took it off, and when he did so, there was nothing there but the stuffed skin. After he had sung a song, White Bear made a speech, saying that he had been dead, but now he had come to life, and that after four nights he would be well. The fourth day he was able to go about. A few days after he was able to get about, White Bear started out as leader of a war party against the Pend d Oreilles. One day, as they were marching along, he said to his fellows, " I am going ahead to see what I can discover." A war party of the ene my saw him coming, and lay in ambush for him in a ravine. As he was walking along with folded arms, they fired on him, and a ball went through his wrist and through his body. His party were not far behind, and when they heard the shooting, they rushed up and drove off the enemy and saved their leader. When the fight was over White Bear said : " I am badly hurt. We will have to go back." They started back, and when they reached the camp White Bear was nearly dead. They thought he was going to die. The same doctoring was gone through with that had been performed a few days before, and with the same result. W hite Bear was cured. Here is another example : The Big Snake a Piegan went to war. They passed along through the Cut Bank country to go MAN AND NATURE. 179 across the mountains, and took the Good Hole through the Mountains (Cadotte) pass. One day, as they were going along, they met a war party of Crows. The Crows saw them first, and lay in ambush for them. As they were walking along, a volley was fired on them, and the leader was shot down and killed. Another one of the party was wounded, but the Piegans rushed on the Crows and drove them off. The Piegans started back, and when they had reached the Muddy, the wounded man was nearly dead. This man had with him the stuffed skin of a curlew. "When he found that he could go no further, he stopped and asked his companions to sing his medi cine song, saying that he would try whether he could do anything for himself. A sack of red paint was got out and untied, and he put the curlew skin down on the paint. The pipe was filled and handed to him lighted, and when he smoked he blew the smoke down onto the curlew skin. After the second song was sung, the curlew got up and shook itself, and dusted itself in the red paint. The man lay down on a robe spread out for him, and the curlew left the paint and walked up to him. It put its bill down in the wound and worked it about, doing this several times. Then the man turned over on his back, and the bird did the same thing to the other wound, every now and then uttering its call. After it had done this, it walked over to the red paint and sat down in it, and they covered it over with a skin. When they took the skin off, the bird was gone, and there was only the bird s skin there. The man got well at once. White Calf saw this himself. Other stories are told in which the skin of a weasel 13 180 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. and a skunk became alive and worked similar cures, and the list might be indefinitely prolonged. If a white man saw such things as these happen he could not explain them, and would be likely to con sider thorn the work of the devil, or at least of some supernatural power. The Indians cannot explain them either ; and believing the evidence of their eyes, they also believe that these things are done by the dream, or the secret helper, of the person who exer cises the power. All these things which we speak of as medicine the Indian calls mysterious, and when he calls them mys terious this only means that they are beyond his power to account for, that they are inexplicable. We say that the Indian calls whisky " medicine water." He really calls it mysterious water that is, water which acts in a way that he can not understand, making him dizzy, happy, drunk. In the same way some tribes call the horse " medicine dog," and the gun " medi cine iron," meaning mysterious dog and mysterious iron. He whom we call a medicine man may be a doctor, a healer of diseases ; or if he is a juggler, a worker of magic, he is a mystery man. All Indian languages have words which are the equivalents of our word medicine, something with curative properties; but the Indian s translation of " medicine," used in the sense of magical or supernatural, would be myste rious, inexplicable, unaccountable. The word " medicine," as we use it in this connec tion, is from the French word for doctor. The early trappers saw the possessors of this supernatural power use it in healing, and called the man who employed it a medecin or doctor. From calling the doctor medecin, it was an easy transition to call his power by the same MAN AND NATURE. isj name, and the similarity in sound of the English and French words made the term readily adopted by Eng lish-speaking people. The term " medicine man " originally meant doctor or healer, but one who effected his cures by supernatural power. So at last " medi cine " came to mean this power, and " medicine man " the person who controlled the power, and the notion of curing or healing became in a measure lost. CHAPTER XL HIS CREATION. CIVILIZED man has devoted much time to specu lation and theory as to the origin of the Indian with out as yet reaching any definite conclusion. The red man has been assigned to different races, and has been called a Hebrew, a Malay, and a Chinaman. Whence he came we do not know, but it is certain that he has inhabited this continent for a very long time long enough to have established here a well-differentiated race, about whose purity and antiquity there is no question. The curious resemblances to other races which have so often been noticed are probably en tirely fortuitous. But if the white man gropes in darkness searching for light as to this origin, the Indian himself has no such doubts. Each tribe has a definite story of its own creation, which has been handed down by oral tradition from father to son for many generations. A considerable number of these myths have been record ed, and they are of great interest as shedding some light on the primitive beliefs of a wholly primitive people. Such traditions have unquestionably under gone certain changes in process of transmission, but the modifications and additions are, I think, less con siderable than is commonly believed. The Indian pre serves in a remarkable way the tales handed down to _ 182 SIS CREATION. 183 him from his ancestors. To him such traditions have a certain sanctity, and he does not consciously change them. They are, as it were, chapters from his sacred book, and in repeating them he tries to give them ex actly as they have been told to him. In receiving these and other traditions from the Indians, I have often been interested to see the pains taken to give each tale in its proper form to tell the story exactly as it should be told. If in the course of his narration the speaker s memory proves at fault on any point, he will consult authorities, asking the opinions of old men who are best acquainted with the story, refresh ing his memory by their assistance, fully discussing the doubtful point, and weighing each remark and suggestion with care before continuing his tale. The creation stories of the various tribes are quite different, though in those which are akin there is usu ally more or less similarity. Often the stories are told with much detail.* In some cases the very spot at which their ancestors first had life is described, but in others no locality is assigned to the event. Such stories usually include, besides the mere act of cre ation, the early history of the tribes, and an account of how his primitive weapons and some instruction as to the manner of using them were given to early man. Sometimes the fact of creation is given in general terms only, or again the material used, and the differ ent acts performed in shaping man and giving him life are described with some minuteness. On the other hand, the earliest stories that we have of some tribes describe them as already existing, but in some far-away * See The Blackfoot Genesis. Blackfoot Lodge Tales, p. 137. 184 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. place, or perhaps under the ground, or beneath the surface of a lake. Such tales, bearing as they usually do on the first acts of the Creator, who is the principal God, have an intimate connection with the religious beliefs of the tribes, and are a part of their religious history. In an article * published in 1893 I gave the creation myth of the Pawnees. I quote the substance of it here : Tirdwa is the Creator. He made the mountains, the prairies, and the rivers. The men of the present era were not the original inhabitants of the earth. They were preceded by another race people of great size and strength. These were so swift of foot, and so powerful, that they could easily run down and kill the buffalo. A great bull was readily carried into camp on the back by these giants, and when a calf or a yearling was killed, tho man thrust its head under his belt and car ried it dangling against his leg, as the men of to-day carry a rabbit. Often when these people overtook a buffalo they would strike it with their hands, or kick it with the foot, to knock it down, and to-day, the Ari- karas say, you can see the marks of these blows the prints of the hands and the feet on the flesh of the buffalo beneath the skin, where these people kicked and scratched the animals. The race of giants had no respect for the Ruler. On the contrary, they derided and insulted him in every way possible. When the sun rose, or when it thundered and rained, they would defy him. They had great confidence in their own powers, and believed that they were able to cope with the Creator. As they * Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. vi, p. 113, 1893. HIS CREATION. 185 increased in numbers they grew more defiant, and at length became so bad that Tirdwa determined to de stroy them. This he attempted to do at first by shoot ing the lightning at them ; but the bolts glanced aside from their bodies without injuring them. When he found that they could not be killed by that means, he sent a great rain, which destroyed them by drowning. The ground became water-soaked and soft, and these large and heavy people sank into it and were engulfed in the mire. The great fossil bones of mastodons, ele phants, and Brontotheridce are said to be the bones of these giants ; and that such remains are often found sticking out of cut banks, or in deep cafions, buried under many feet of earth, is deemed conclusive evi dence that the giants did sink into the soft earth and so perish. After the giant race had passed away, Tirdwa cre ated a new people, a man and a woman, who were like those now on the earth. These people were at first poor, naked, and were without any knowledge of how they should live ; but after a time the Creator gave them the corn, the buffalo, and the wild roots and fruits of the prairie for food, bows and arrows to kill their game, and fire sticks to furnish a means of cook ing it. The Ruler provided for them these various things, such as trees bearing fruits, and things that grow in the ground, artichokes, wild turnips, and other roots. In the rivers he put fish, and on the land game. All these things, everything good to eat found on the plains or in the timber, was given to them by Tirdwa. All these gifts were presented to the Pawnees in the country in which they were originally created, and which, as clearly appears from the statements of the 186 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. oldest men, was far to the southwest. It was in this original country that the Pawnees received their sacred bundles. When they were given them, the people knew nothing of iron, but used flint knives and ar rowheads. The bundles are said to have been handed down from the Father, though in certain cases, special stories are told how particular bundles came to be re ceived. A more detailed account of the creation and the doings of the original people is given by the Arikaras, but it is not in all respects like that told by the Paw nees, for these two tribes, though belonging to the same family, separated long ago. This story, which is generally known in the Arikara tribe, has come to me from various sources. Two Crows the chief priest and the fountain of sacred learning for the tribe Pahukatawa, Fighting Bear, and others have given me portions of this history; but the most complete account I owe to the kindness of the Rev. C. L. Hall, who had it from a Ree known as Peter Burdash, arid he received it direct from Ka-ka-pit ka (Two Crows), the priest. The account is as follows : In the begin ning Atiucli (= Pawnee Atius] created the earth and a people of stone. These people were so strong that they had no need of the Creator, and would not obey him. They even defied him ; so he determined to put an end to them. He therefore caused a great rain, which fell continuously for many days, until the land was all covered with water, and the trees were dead and the tops of the hills were submerged. Many of these people being big and heavy, and so able to move only slowly, could not reach the tops of the hills, to which all tried to escape for safety, and even those who did so were drowned by the rising waters, which at last HIS CREATION. 187 covered the whole land. Everything on the earth was dead. To-day in the washed clay bluffs of the bad lands the horizontal lines of stratification are shown as marking the level of the waters at various times during this flood, and the hard sandstone pinnacles which cap the bluffs, and which sometimes present a rude semblance of the human form, are pointed out as the remains of these giants. Now when everything was dead, there were left a mosquito flying about over the water and a little duck swimming on it. These two met, and the duck said to the mosquito, " How is it that you are here ? " The mosquito said, " I can live on this foam ; how is it with you ? " The duck answered, " When I am hun gry, I can dive down and eat the green weed that grows under the water." Then said the mosquito : " I am tired of this foam. If you will take me with you to taste of the things of the earth, I shall know that you are true." So the duck took the mosquito under his wing, where he would keep dry, and dived down with him to the bottom of the water, and as soon as they touched the ground all the water disappeared. There was now nothing living on the earth. Then Atiucli determined that he would again make men, and he did so. But again he made them too nearly like himself. They were too powerful, and he was afraid of them, and again destroyed them all. Then he made one man like the men of to-day. When this man had been created he said to himself : " How is it now ? There is still something that does not quite please me." Then Atiucli made a woman, and set her by the man, and the man said : " You knew why I was not pleased. You knew what I wanted. Now I can walk the earth in gladness." 188 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. AtiucJi seems to have made men and the animals up above in the sky where he lives, and when he was satisfied with what he had made, he resolved to place them upon the earth. So he called the lightning to put them on the earth, and the lightning caused a cloud to come, and the cloud received what Atiucli had made. But the lightning, acting as he always does, set them down on the earth with a crash, and as the ground was still wet with the water that had cov ered it, they all sank into the soft earth. This made the lightning feel very badly, and he cried ; and to this day, whenever he strikes the earth, he cries. That is what we hear when it thunders. Now all living things were under the ground in confusion and asking one another what each was ; but one day, as the mole was digging around, he broke a hole through, so that the light streamed in, and he drew back frightened. He has never had any eyes since ; the light put them out. The mole did not want to come out, but all the others came out on to the earth through the hole the mole had made. After they had come out from the ground, the people looked about to see where they should go. They had nothing. They did not know what to do, nor how to support themselves. They began to travel, moving very slowly ; but after their third day s camp a boy, who had been left behind asleep at the first camp that they had made, overtook the company, carrying in his arms a large bundle. The people asked him what this was. He replied that when he woke up and found the people gone, he cried to Father for help, and Father gave him this bundle, which had taught him to find the way to his people. HIS CREATION. 189 Then the people were glad, and said that now they would find the way, and they went on. After they had gone a long way, they came to a deep ravine with high steep banks, and they could not cross it. There they had to stop. All came to this place, but they could not get over it. They asked the boy what they should do, and he opened the bundle, and out of it came a bird with a sharp bill * the most sacred of all birds, the bone striker. Wherever this bird strikes its bill, it makes a hole. This bird flew over the ravine and began to strike the bank with his bill, and flew against the bank again and again, and at last the dirt fell down and filled up the ravine and made a road for the people to pass across. A part of them passed over, but be fore all had crossed, the road closed up, and the ravine became as it had been at first. Those who were be hind perished. They were changed into badgers, snakes, and animals living in the ground. They went on further, and at length came to a thick wood so thick that they could not pass through it. Here they had to stop, for they did not know how they could get through this timber. Again they asked the boy what should be done, and he opened the bundle, and an owl came out from it and went into the wood and made a path through it. A number of the peo ple got through the wood, but some old women and poor children were lagging behind, and the road closed up and caught them, and these were changed to bears, wildcats, elks, and so on. The people went on further, and came to a big river which poured down and stopped them, and they * This is thought to be a woodpecker (Colaptes). 190 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. waited on the bank. When they went to the bundle, a big hawk came out of it. This bird flew across the river and caused the water to stop flowing. They started across the dry river bed, and when part had gone across and were on this side, and some old women and poor children were still in the stream bed, the water began to flow again and drowned them. These people were turned into fishes, and this is why fishes are related to men. They went on until they came to some high hills called the Blue Mountains, and from these mountains they saw a beautiful country that they thought would be good to live in ; but when they consulted the boy who carried the bundle, he said, " No, we shall see life and live in it." So they went on. Soon after this, some people began to gamble, and one party won everything that the others had, and at last they began to quarrel and then to fight, and the people separated and went different ways, and the animals, which had all this time been with them, got frightened and ran away. But some of the people still remained, and they asked the boy what they should do, and he went to the bundle and took from it a pipe, and when he held up the pipe the fighting ceased. With the pipe was a stone arrowhead, and the boy told them they must make others like this, for from now on they would have to fight ; but be fore this there had been no war. In the bundle they found also an ear of corn. The boy said : " We are to live by this. This is our Mother." The corn taught them how to make bows and arrows. Now the people no longer spoke one language, and the eight tribes who had run away no longer understood each other and lived together, but wan- HIS CREATION. 191 dered about, and the Mother (Atind = Pawnee Atira) no longer remained with them, but left them alone. The ninth or remaining band which included the Rees, Mandans, and Pawnees now left the Blue Mountains and travelled on until they reached a great river, and then they knew what the boy meant by saying " We shall see life and live in it." Life meant the Missouri River, and they said, " This is the place where our Mother means us to live." The first night they stayed by the river, but they went off in the morning and left behind them two dogs asleep. One was black, the other white ; one was male, the other female. At the third camp they said, " This is a good place ; we will live here." They asked the boy what they should do, and he told them that they should separate into three bands ; that he would di vide the corn among them, and they could plant it. He broke off the nub and gave it to the Mandans, the big end and gave it to the Pawnees, and the middle of the ear he gave to the Rees. To this day the Mandans have the shortest corn, the Rees next in size, and the Pawnees the best and largest. He also took from the bundle beans, which he divided among the people, and the sack of a buffalo s heart full of tobacco, Here by the river they first planted and ate, and were well off, while the eight bands that had run away were dying of hunger. When they got here they had no fire. They knew nothing of it. They tried to get it from the sun, and sent the swallow to bring it. He flew toward the sun, but could not get the fire, and came back saying that the sun had burned him. This is why the swallow s back is black to-day. The crow was sent. He used to be white, but the sun burned him too. Another kind of bird was sent, and he got the fire. 192 THE STORY OP THE INDIAN. After this they travelled again, and as they trav elled they were followed by two great fires, that came up on the hills behind them and shut them in, so that they did not know how to escape. The bundle told them to go to a cedar tree on a precipice, and that if they held fast to this, they would not be hurt by these two great bad things. They did so and escaped, but all cedars have been crooked ever since. These two great fires were the two dogs that had been left behind at their first camp. These dogs then came to them and said : "Our hearts are not all bad. We have bit ten you because you left us without waking us up, but now we have had our revenge, and we want to live with you." But sickness and death have followed the people ever since they first left these dogs behind. The dogs were taken back into the company and grew old. The female dog grew old and poor and died first, and was thrown into the river, and after that the male dog died ; but before he died they said to him, " Now you are going to die and be with your wife." " Yes," he replied. " But you will not hate us. From this time you will eat us, and so you will think well of us. And from the female dog s skin has come the squash, and you will like this, and on this account, also, you will not hate us." So ever since that day, dogs have been raised as friends, and after ward eaten for revenge, because of their treachery. After this, they looked out on the prairie and saw some great black animals having horns, and they looked as though they were going to attack them. The people dug a hole, and got in and covered it over, and when the buffalo rushed on them they were safe, though their dwelling trembled and the people thought the roof would fall in. Finally some one iT I HIS CREATION. 193 looked out and saw the buffalo standing around. They did not look very fierce, so forty men, women, and children ventured out ; but the buffalo attacked them, tore off their arms and ate them, and tore off their hair. Ever since that time there has been a lock of Eee hair in the buffalo s mouth, hanging down from his chin. One handsome young woman was car ried off by the buffalo. They held a council to know what they should do with her. She said she could not travel, and they did not wish to kill her. They did not wish to let her go either. But one night, when she was sleeping in the midst of the band, a young bull came to her and pulled her sleeve and told her to follow him, that he would show her the way back to her people. He did so, and his parting words to her were : " Tell your people that we do not like the bows and arrows that -they make, and so we have at tacked you." * The young woman was gladly received. They asked the boy with the bundle what should be done with the buffalo. He answered : " The buffalo are to be our food. They ate us first, so now we will always fol low them for food. We must make arrows like the * The Algonquin Blackfeet also tell of a time soon after the creation when the buffalo used to eat them. This was before they had bows and arrows ; in fact, in some accounts it is even said that then the people had paws like the bears, and supported themselves by digging roots and gathering berries. When Ndpi, the Blackfoot Creator, learned that the buffalo were killing and eating the people, he felt very badly, and he split their paws so as to make fingers on them, and made bows and arrows and taught the people how to use them. There is also a Blackfoot story of a young woman who was captured and taken away by the buffalo, and who afterward returned to the tribe. See Blackfoot Lodge Tales, pp. 104 and 140. 194: THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. one Tinawd ( Pawnee Tirdwa) gave us with the pipe, and fight the buffalo with them." After making many arrows of the flint they use for striking fires, they all came out of the hole in the earth and lived by plant ing and hunting. The Rees have always kept near the Missouri River, and have lived by planting. The bundle reputed to have been given to the boy in the beginning is now in the house of Two Crows. It is still powerful. It contains the ear of corn which was first given to the Rees. When a great young man dies a chief s son and the people mourn, the relations are asked to the Ree medicine lodge, and the ear of corn is taken from the bundle, put for a short time in a bucket of water and then replaced in the bundle. As many as drink of that water are cured of sad hearts, and never mourn their friends again. CHAPTER XII. THE WORLD OF THE DEAD. LIKE most people, civilized or savage, the Indian believes in the immortality of the soul. To him the future life is very real, for sometimes in dreams or during a fainting fit, or in delirium of sickness vi sions come to him which he believes are glimpses into the life of another world a world peopled by the spirits of the departed. It is always difficult to induce the Indian to formulate his views on the future life. Often perhaps he has none, or if he has such beliefs, like our own on the same subject, they are vague and hazy. Besides this, Indians are little accustomed to deal with abstract conceptions, and lack words to express them. Nevertheless, some notion of their be liefs may be gathered from the accounts which they give of ghosts and the ghost country, for all the tribes have tales which speak of the inhabitants of the spirit world, and tell us what they do and how they live. Such stories purport to come from those who have died and have been restored to life again, or from liv ing persons who have visited the country where the spirits dwell, and then returning to their tribe have reported the condition and the ways of the departed. The views held of this world of the dead differ widely in different tribes. With some it appears to be a real " happy hunting ground," a country of wide 14 195 196 THE STORY OP THE INDIAN. green prairies and cool clear streams, where the buffalo and other game are always plenty and fat, where the lodges are ever new and white, the ponies always swift, the war parties successful, and the people hap py. Sometimes, even now, the Indian of the south, when the slanting rays of the westering sun tinge the autumnal haze with red, beholds dimly, far away, the white lodges of such a happy camp, and, dazzled by the tinted beams, sees through the mist and dust ghostly warriors returning from the buffalo hunt, leading horses laden as in olden times with dripping meat and with shaggy skins. A speech made by the spirit of a Pawnee woman shows the feeling that these people have about the future life. This woman not long after her death appeared to her husband, who, holding their young child in his arms, was mourning for her, and said : " You are very unhappy here. There is a place to go where we would not be unhappy. Where I have been nothing bad happens to one. Here you never know what evil will come to you. You and the child had better come to me." In the same story father and mother and child at last die, and it is said of them, " They have gone to that place where there is a living " strong testimony to the Pawnee s faith in a happy future life.* With other tribes the ghost country is a land of unrealities, where the unhappy shadows endure an existence which is an unsubstantial mockery of this life. Here they hunt shadow buffaloes with arrows, which, on being lifted from the ground, are found to be only blades of grass ; their camps or their buffalo traps when approached vanish from sight ; or their canoes, * Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, p. 129, . THE WORLD OF THE DEAD. 19? though real to the ghosts, are to mortal eyes rotten, moss-covered and full of holes ; their salmon and trout are only dead branches and leaves, floating on the river s current, and even the people themselves, though to all appearance human, turn to skeletons if a word is spoken above a whisper. To us, who have been reared in the hope of an im mortality which promises happiness, there is some thing inexpressibly pathetic in these vague concep tions of a future life which is so much more miserable than the savage existence in this world, checkered though it is ; for even to the savage, while he is still alive, hope always remains. If his camp has been at tacked, his people slain, and he himself is a fugitive, hiding from enemies who are eager to take his life, he looks forward to a time when he shall take vengeance for these wrongs and destroy those who have injured him ; or if the people are starving, and he sees his wives and little ones wasting away with hunger, he thinks always that to-morrow may bring the buffalo and plenty and contentment. But to this gloomy future life there is no period. It must go on forever. The melancholy views of a future state held by such tribes as the Blackfeet, the Gros Ventres of the Prairie, the Chinooks, and some other Pacific slope tribes, present singular resemblances to those ex pressed in the earlier Greek and Eoman mythology. The spirits of the dead take various forms, but they are always unsubstantial as air, though to the eye they may appear real. They are frequently seen by living persons, but are likely to vanish at any moment. The tiny whirlwinds of dust often seen moving about on the prairie in hot summer days are believed by the Pawnees to be ghosts, by other tribes owls are thought 198 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. to be ghosts. Sometimes spirits take the forms of skeletons, which may be able to walk about, or they may appear as ordinary men and women. It seems possible that these spirits can at will take forms such as please them, and in a specific case a ghost appeared in the form of a bear, and in another it took the shape of a wolf. To see a ghost is by no means an every- day matter. Much more often they are heard to speak or to whistle, and such sounds terrify those who hear them, for the Indians are much afraid of ghosts. Some of these spirits are beneficent, others are harm ful, and of the latter, being the more dreaded, much more is heard than of those which wield kindly pow ers. The hurtful ghosts frighten people by tugging at their blankets while they are walking through the timber at night, or they whistle down the smokehole, or tap on the lodge skins. Such acts, though suffi ciently alarming, are not in themselves very serious, and may perhaps be indulged in only for the sake of frightening people. But the spirits that are really inimical do much more terrible things than these. They shoot arrows of disease at people, causing rheu matism, paralysis, St. Vitus s dance, long wasting ill ness, and oftentimes death. The actual location of the world of spirits the home of the dead varies with the tribe. Many of the peoples of the southern plains believe to-day that this home of the dead is above us, in or above the sky ; others hold that it is to the west, beyond the big water ; others still think that it is in the south or east. The Blackfeet locate this country of the future close to their present home, in the desolate sandhills south of the Saskatchewan Kiver. Occasionally, glimpses are seen among some tribes THE WORLD OF THE DEAD. 199 of a belief in the transmigration of souls. The Kla- math and Modoc Indians believe that the spirits of the dead inhabit the bodies of fishes. The ghosts of medicine men, conjurors, or priests, after death are often thought to take the shape of an owl always a bird of mysterious, if not supernatural, powers or the soul of a very brave man might after death inhabit the body of some brave, fierce animal, like a bear. Yet this is not supposed to happen commonly, nor do the helpful animals which so constantly appear in the folk stories of the Indians ever seem to be the spirits of those who have lived on earth. These belong to a class of beings entirely different from mortals. On the other hand, in the creation story of the Arikaras, which details also the earlier wanderings of the first Indians, it is said, as already remarked, that certain people who were overwhelmed by water, by land slides, and in forest fallings, were changed into fishes and various other animals which live principally under ground or in the woods. Some Indians believe in reincarnation, the indi vidual at each succeeding birth retaining the sex and the same peculiar physical characteristics. It is re lated that a certain chief of the Wrangel Indians named Harsha, who died about two hundred years ago, has since been reincarnated five times, and at each birth is knov/n by the scar of a stab in the right groin. Another chief, reincarnated three times, is always recognised by a peculiar lock of gray hair. These Indians believe that heaven or the abode of the spirits is above us. It is reached by a ladder and entered through a hole at the point where the ladder ends. In almost all the tribes it is believed that per- 200 THE STOEY OF THE INDIAN. sons who have died may, under extraordinary circum stances, become alive again ; in other words, that the ghosts may return from the ghost country to the tribal home, resuming their mortal shapes, and to all appear ance again becoming persons. There seems always a possibility, however, that such returned ghosts will vanish on some provocation or other. This idea, which is found among the tribes of the plains, the moun tains, and the Pacific coast, is common to the folk stories of all races. It is to be remembered, however, that the story of a ghost who had returned to life and had afterward, through some fault of relations or friends, been forced to disappear, would be much more likely to be preserved in the unwritten literature of a tribe than one telling of a person who, after having died, has come to life, and then has remained with the tribe, living out a full term of years. I have met several men who believe that they them selves have died, visited the camps of the ghosts, and then for some reason returned to life and to their homes, and some of them have related to me what they had seen in the ghost country. Besides this, I have been told many other stories, which relate with more or less detail what is done and said there. A study of such stories will present as clear an idea of this future life, and the way it is regarded by the In dians, as can be given in any other way. Some of these stories resemble in a remarkable de gree tales of other lands, which are familiar even to our children. One of these, told with some detail, is of singular interest, for it presents a close parallel to the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but the Indian hero was more fortunate than his Old World prototype, for he was successful in his quest, and re- THE WORLD OF THE DEAD. 201 covered the wife for whose sake he had faced the hor rors of the ghost country and the peril of death. Interesting in connection with such visits paid by human beings to the supernatural world are the fre quent allusions in these accounts to the peculiar odour exhaled by living persons. The gods, or the ghosts, when they come near to the place where the individual is concealed, often discern his presence by this odour, and call out, " I smell a person," or " What is this bad smell?" The burning of sweet grass or sweet pine usually purifies the air, so that the smell is no longer complained of. CHAPTER XIII. PAWKEE KELIGI02ST. VOLUMES might be written on the Indian religion without exhausting it. The different beliefs of the various tribes, their ceremonial, and the religious his tory, as given in their traditions, comprise an interest ing and difficult study. As a specific example of the religious beliefs of a particular tribe, I quote an ac count of the Pawnee religion taken from the paper * already mentioned. It gives a somewhat detailed statement of the faith of that people when I first knew them, and before they had been greatly changed by contact with civilization. The Deity of the Pawnees is Atius Tirdtva.\ He is an intangible spirit, omnipotent and beneficent. He pervades the universe, and is its supreme ruler. Upon his will depends everything that happens. He can bring good luck or bad ; can give success or fail ure. Everything rests with him. As a natural con sequence of this conception of the Deity, the Pawnees are a very religious people. Nothing is undertaken without a prayer to the Father for assistance. When the pipe is lighted, the first few whiffs are blown to the Deity. When food is eaten, a small portion of it * Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. vi, p. 113, 1893. f Atius = father. Tirdwa spirit. 203 PAWNEE RELIGION. 2Q3 is placed on the ground as a sacrifice to him. He is propitiated by burnt offerings. When they started off on the summer and winter hunts, a part of the first animal which was killed, either a deer or buffalo, was burned to him. The first buffalo killed by a young boy was offered to him. The common prayer among the Pawnees is, " Father, you are the Euler." They always acknowledge his power and implore his help. He is called " Father, who is above " ; " Fa ther, who is in all places." Tirawa lives up above in the sky. They say, " The heavens are the house of Tirdwa, and we live inside of it." The overarching hemisphere of the sky, which on all sides reaches down to earth at the horizon, in their minds is likened to the walls and roof of the dome-shaped dirt lodges, which the Pawnees in habit. A similar conception prevails among the Black- feet. Next in importance to Atius comes the Earth, which is greatly reverenced. The Pawnees came out of the earth and return to it again. The first whiffs of the pipe are offered to Atius, but after these smokes to him, the next are blown to the earth, and the prayer, " Father of the dead, you see us," is expressed. Not very much is said by the Pawnees about the rev erence which they feel for the earth, but much is told about the power of the Mother Corn, " through which they worship," which cares for and protects them, which taught them much that they know, and which, symbolizing the earth, represents in material form something which they revere. A Ree priest said to me : " Just as the white people talk about Jesus Christ, so we feel about the corn." Various explana tions are given of the term " Mother," which is ap- 204 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. plied to the corn, but none are altogether satisfactory. The reference may be to the fact that the corn has always supported and nourished them, as the child is nourished and supported by its mother s milk, or, with a deeper meaning, it may be to the productive power of the earth, which each year brings forth its increase. The Sun and the Moon and the Stars are personi fied. They are regarded as people, and prayers are made to them. There is some reason for believing that the sun and the moon once occupied a more im portant position in the Pawnee religious system than they do to-day. There are some songs which refer to the Sun as the Father and the Moon as the Mother, as if the sun represented the male and the moon the female principle. O-pi-ri-kus, the Morning Star, is especially revered by the Skidi, and human sacrifices were made to it. It is represented that each day or night the Sun, Moon, and Stars paint themselves up and start out on a journey, returning to their respective lodges after their course is accomplished. There are two or three versions of a story which tells of a young woman taken up from earth by a Star and married to him. This young woman lived up in heaven for a time, but was killed while attempting to escape to earth again. Her child the son of the Star reached the earth, and lived long in the tribe. He had great power, which he derived from his father. The Thunder is reverenced by the Pawnees, and a special ceremony of sacrifice and worship is performed at the time of the first thunder in spring, which tells them that the winter is at an end, and that the season for planting is at hand. PAWNEE RELIGION. 205 The various wild animals are regarded as agents or servants of Atius, and are known as nahurac, a word which means animal. It does not refer par ticularly to these magical or mystical animals which are the Deity s servants, but is a general term applied to any fish, reptile, bird, or beast. The nahurac per sonify the various attributes of Atius. He uses them as his messengers, and they have great knowledge and power, which they derive from him. They hold a re lation to the supreme power very similar to that of the angels in the Old Testament. The animals which possess these peculiar powers are, of course, not real animals. They are we may presume spirits who assume these shapes when they appear to men. Some times, or in some of the stories, they are represented as changing from the animal shape to that of men as in the account of the origin of the Young Dog s Dance.* Perhaps no one at the present day could specify the precise attributes of each of the different nahurac, but there are certain characteristics which are well known to pertain to some of them. Of all the animals, none was so important to the Pawnees as the buffalo. It fed and clothed them, and, with their corn, was all their support. This alone was enough to entitle it to a very high place in their esteem. It was a sacred animal of great power, and was a favourite secret helper, and although it did not receive a measure of reverence equal to that felt for the Mother Corn, it was yet the most sacred and highly respected of all the animals. The eidolon of the buffalo its skull occupied a prominent position * Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. iv, p. 307. 206 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. in many of the Pawnee sacred ceremonies, and rested on the top of many a lodge, signifying that it was the special helper of the owner. Even to-day, although the buffalo has long been extinct, everywhere in the Ree village this same object may be seen, at once the relic of a noble animal which has disappeared from the land, and the symbol of a faith which is passing away with the passing of a people. The buffalo appears to have typified force or power, as well as the quality of dashing blindly onward. Besides this, there were some buffaloes which were invulnerable, which could not be killed by ordinary weapons. It was necessary to rub on the arrow used against them, or in later times on the bullet, a peculiar potent medicine before the missile would penetrate the skin. Such buffaloes were usually described as sexless, of enormous size, and without joints in their legs. While the bear was by no means so sacred as the buffalo, he was regarded as singular for wisdom and power. He symbolizes invulnerability. He knows how to cure himself. No matter how badly he may be wounded, if only a little breath is left in his body he can heal himself. It is said that sometimes he does this by plugging up with certain medicine herbs the wounds which have been inflicted on him. He has also the power of breathing out from his nostrils different-coloured dusts red, blue, and yellow or of spitting out different-coloured earths. Certain medi cine bears which belonged to two of the bands could not be wounded by ball or arrow. Of one of these it was said, " The lead will flatten out, the spike (of the arrow) will roll up " when it strikes his body. The beaver was regarded as an animal of great wisdom and power, and a beaver was always one of the PAWNEE RELIGION. 207 four chiefs who ruled the councils of the nahurac. Craft was typified in the wolf ; courage, fierceness, or success in war by the birds of prey, the eagle standing at the head ; the deer stood for fleetness, etc. The black eagle, the white-headed eagle, and the buzzard are messengers of Tirdwa ; by them he sent his orders to the first high priest, and instructed him in the secrets of his priestship and in the other se crets. The buzzard and the white-headed eagle repre sent the old men those who have little hair and those whose hair is white ; it is from these ancient men that the secrets have been handed down from generation to generation. The nahurac had an organization and methods of conveying information to favoured individuals. They had meeting places where they held councils which were presided over by chiefs. The meeting places were in underground lodges or caves, and there were known to the Pawnees, when they lived in their old home in Nebraska, no less than five such places. These were at Pa-huk, under the high bluff opposite Fremont, Nebraska ; at Ah-ka-ivit akol, under a high white bluff at the mouth of the Cedar River ; at La- la-iva-kotitl-td, under an island in the Platte Eiver opposite the Lone Tree (now Central City, Nebraska) ; under the Sacred Spring Kltz-a-wltz uk, on the Solo mon River in Kansas ; and at Paliu r, or Guide Rock, in Kansas. Persons who were pitied by the nahurac were sometimes taken into the lodges, where their cases were discussed in council, and they were helped, and power and wisdom were given them by the animals. After it had been determined that he should thus be helped, the various animals, one after another, would 208 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. rise in their places and speak to the man, each one giving him the power which was peculiar to itself. In such a council the buffalo would often give the man the power of running over those opposed to him : " You shall run over your enemies, as I do over mine." The bear would give him the power to heal himself if wounded and to cure others. The eagle would give him his own courage and fierceness : " You shall kill your enemies, as I do mine." The wolf would give him the power to creep right into the midst of the enemy s camp without being seen. The owl would say to him, " You shall see in the night as I do " ; the deer, " You shall run as fast as I can." So it would go on around the circle, each animal giving him that power or that knowledge which it typified. The speeches made in such nahurac councils were similar in character to those which would be made in any council of men. Usually much of the knowledge taught a person, who was being helped by the nahurac, was that of the doctors, and those who had received this help were able to perform all those wonderful feats in the doc tor s dances for which the Pawnees were so justly re nowned. Often, too, these persons were made invul nerable, so that the arrows or the bullets of the enemy would not penetrate their flesh. The stay of the individuals who might be taken into the nahurac lodges did not, as a rule, last longer than four days, though often a man who had been once received there might come again. If the time mentioned was not long enough to enable him to ac quire all the knowledge of the naliurac, it sometimes happened that after such a visit the various animals would meet the person singly out in the hills or on PAWNEE RELIGION. 209 the prairie, and would there communicate to him addi tional knowledge, especially that touching on the effi cacy of various roots and herbs used in healing. It is to be noted that the nahurac did not content themselves with giving to the person whom they pitied help, and nothing more. They also gave him good advice, telling him to trust always in the Euler, and to look to One above, who is the giver of all power. Often they explained that all their power came from Atius ) whose servants they were ; that they did not make themselves great, that they were mortal, and there would be an end to their days. It is not always specified what shape was taken by the four chiefs who ruled the nahurac councils ; but in at least one story it is stated that these were a beaver, an otter, a sandhill crane, and a garfish. In another story a dog appears to have been the chief. These animal councils had a servant who acted as their mes senger, and carried word from one nahurac lodge to another. This bird is described with some detail in more than one of the Pawnee stories, and was evi dently a species of tern. The animals were the usual medium of communi cation between Atius and man. They most often appeared to persons in sleep, telling them what to do, giving them good advice, and generally ordering their lives for them. But there is one story in which an individual is said to have spoken face to face with the Father. The four cardinal points were respected by the Pawnees, and their place was high, although they were not often spoken of, except in prayers. Still, the formula in smoking was to blow first four smokes to Atius , then four to the earth, and last of all to each 210 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. of the cardinal points. The east represented the night, for it is from that direction that the darkness comes. So, in one of the stories, a speaker, in advising a young man as to how he should act, says of smoking : "And always blow four smokes to the east, to the night ; for in the night something may come to you. which will tell you a thing which will happen," that is, come true. It would be hard to find a closer par allel to our saying, " The night brings counsel." It is worthy of note that this conception of the east is the absolute reversal of our notion that the east brings the light the morning ; one of the most familiar fig ures in our literature. Closely connected with their respect for the night is their firm confidence in dreams, which to a great extent govern their lives. Their belief in a future life is in part founded on dreams which they have had of being themselves dead, and finding themselves in vil lages where they recognised among the inhabitants relations and acquaintances who had long been dead. The faith in another life after this one is ended is ex emplified by stories already published, which tell of the coming to life of persons who have died, and is fortified by the experiences of certain living men who believe themselves once to have died and visited these villages of the dead. Prayers for direct help are, as a rule, made only to the Father, and not to the animals, nor to the Sun, Moon, and Stars. But the last are constantly implored to act as intercessors with Atius to help the people. A prayer frequently made to the animals by a person in distress was this : " If you have any power, inter cede for me." It is constantly stated in the tales cur rent among the Pawnees that in minor matters the PAWNEE RELIGION. 211 animals may be depended on for help, but if anything very difficult is sought, the petitioner must look only to the Father. The animals seem in many ways to hold a position in the Pawnee religious system anal ogous to that of the saints in the Koman Catholic faith. Something must be said about the sacred bundles which are to the Pawnees what the Ark of the Cove nant was to the ancient Israelites. Concerning these I may quote what has been written : " In the lodge or house of every Pawnee of influ ence, hanging on the west side, and so opposite the door, is the sacred bundle, neatly wrapped in buck skin, and black with smoke and age. What these bundles contain we do not know. Sometimes, from the ends, protrude bits of scalps, and the tips of pipe- stems and slender sticks ; but the whole contents of the bundle are known only to the priests and to its owner perhaps not always even to him. The sacred bundles are kept on the west side of the lodge, because, being thus furthest from the door, fewer people will pass by them than if they were hung in any other part of the lodge. Various superstitions attach to these bundles. In the lodges where certain of them are kept it is forbidden to put a knife in the fire ; in others, a knife may not be thrown ; in others, it is not permitted to enter the lodge with the face painted ; or, again, a man cannot go in if he has feathers tied in his head. " No one knows whence the bundles came. Many of them are very old ; too old, even, to have a history. Their origin is lost in the haze of the long ago. They say : < The sacred bundles were given us long ago. No one knows when they came to us. " 15 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. It is to be observed that the miracles which so fre quently occur in the heroic myths of the Pawnees, and which generally result in the bringing to life of the person who is pitied by the nahurac, often take place during a storm of rain accompanied by wind and thun der. Examples of this are found in the stories of the Dun Horse, Pahukatawa, Ore ke rahr, and others. The rain, the wind, and the thunder may be regarded as special manifestations of the power of the Deity, or these may perhaps be considered as veils which he uses to conceal the manifestations of this power from the eyes of men. What has already been said shows that the mythol ogy of the Pawnees inculcates strongly the religious idea, and impresses upon the listener the importance of trusting in the Ruler and asking his help. Perhaps the most singular thing about this Paw nee religion, as it has been taught to me, is its close resemblance in many particulars to certain forms of the religion of Christ as it exists to-day. While their practices were those of a savage people, their theories of duty and their attitude toward the Supreme Being were on a much more lofty plane. The importance of faith in the Deity is most strongly insisted on ; sac rifices must be made to him offerings of the good things of this earth, often of parts of their own bodies ; penance must be done. But, above all things else, those who desire success in life must humble them selves before the Deity and must implore his help. The lessons taught by many of the myths are precisely those which would be taught by the Christian priest to-day, while the burnt-offerings to Atius may be compared with like sacrifices spoken of in the Old Testament, and the personal tortures undergone dur- PAWNEE .RELIGION. 213 ing certain of their ceremonies are almost the exact equivalents of the sufferings inflicted on themselves by certain religionists of the middle ages. On the whole, the Pawnee religion, so far as I un derstand it, is a singularly pure faith, and in its essen tial features will compare favourably with any savage system. If written in our own sacred books, the trust and submission to the will of the Ruler shown in some of the myths, which I have elsewhere recorded, would be called sublime. What, for example, could be finer than the prayer offered by a man who, through the hostility of a rival, is in the deepest distress and ut terly hopeless of human aid, and who throws himself on the mercy of the Creator, and at the same time im plores the intercession of the nahurac ? This man pre pares to offer his horse as a sacrifice to the animals, but before killing it he says : " My Father [who dwells] in all places, it is through you that I am living. Perhaps it was through you that this man put me in this con dition. You are the Ruler. Nothing is impossible to you. If you see fit, take this [trouble] away from me. Now you, all fish of the rivers, and you, all birds of the air, and all animals that move upon the earth, and you, Sun ! I present to you this animal. You birds in the air, and you animals upon the earth, we are re lated ; we are alike in this respect, that one Ruler made us all. You see me, how unhappy I am. If you have any power, intercede for me." CHAPTER XIV. THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. No subject is more difficult than the religion of a savage people. It is not always easy to determine just what are the beliefs of a civilized race. Certain marked differences between various sects, and the form and ritual of each, may be described with more or less accuracy, but the actual beliefs are hardly to be arrived at. This is partly because most people do not them selves know what they believe or at least have never put in words all the points of their faith and also because no two individuals have precisely the same belief. We have been told of late years that there is no evidence that any tribe of Indians ever believed in one overruling power, yet in the early part of the seven teenth century Jesuits and Puritans alike testified that tribes which they met believed in a god, and it is cer tain that at the present time many tribes worship a Supreme Being who is the Ruler of the universe. In the case of many of these tribes this god lives up above in the sky in what we would call heaven, but sometimes his abiding place is under the ground or again at the different cardinal points. The Pawnees, as already stated, now locate him above, yet one story which they tell places him in the west beyond the big water. In the same region is the dwelling-place 214 THE OLD FAITH AND THE NSW. 215 of the Sun, the chief Blackfoot god. Other tribes place their principal god in the east, and often his home is beyond the big water which surrounds the continent. Some tribes west of the Rockies worship the Wolf as chief god and creator. I am inclined to believe that many of the tribes of this continent once worshipped the Sun as some still do or perhaps originally the light or the dawn was the god. The prayer of the Blackfoot invariably be gins, " Hear Sun, hear Old Man, Above People listen, Under- water People listen." This might fairly be called a prayer to the Sun as the supreme ruler, but also an appeal to all the powers of Nature as well. A Pawnee prayer already quoted reverses this order, and is addressed more specifically to " You all fish of the rivers, you all birds of the air, and all animals that move upon the earth, and you, Sun ! " In cases where the Sun is the Supreme Father, or old man, the Moon is often the sun s wife, the mother, the old woman ; or, on the other hand, the Earth may be the mother. In any case it is true that all tribes have a great reverence for the earth, which they regard as the producer not only of themselves but of all food, the fruitful one, from whom comes all their support. But this is an idea which is as broad as humanity; witness our own figure of Mother Earth. In fact, with many tribes the earth seems to rank as the second of the powers or influences that are prayed to, and in smoking, though the first smoke and prayer is offered to the power above, the second is almost invariably blown downward to the earth. In like manner, while some tribes in blessing or in healing hold up the palms of the hands to the sunlight before passing them over the person to be blessed or the part to be cured, 216 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. others, as the Cheyennes, place the palms upon the ground, as if the good influence was to be derived from the earth. Besides the sun, moon, and earth, certain of the stars are held in especial reverence, and this is true particularly of the morning star, which by the Black- feet is called Early Eiser, and is believed to be the son of the Sun and Moon. The Skidi, as has elsewhere been stated, made special sacrifices to this planet, which they believed to have great influence over their crops. Many of the tribes have names for the planets, the brighter stars, and the more important constella tions, and relate stories to account for their existence or for the grouping of the stars. Thus the Great Bear is called the Seven Persons by the Blackfeet, and Broken Back by the Arapahoes ; the Pleiades, the Seven Stars by Pawnees and Blackfeet, Grouped Together Stars by the Cheyennes. Venus is known by the Cheyennes as " Belonging to the Moon." The Milky Way is called Spirit Eoad by the Cheyennes, and is the road travelled by the spirits of the departed on their way to the future world. The Blackfeet call it the Wolf Road, and believe it the short trail from the Sun s lodge to this world. Most tribes call it the Ghost s Road. Besides such intangible and all-pervading spirits as the Spirit Father of the Pawnees, already men tioned, and the heavenly bodies, there are many su pernatural agencies of another and secondary class, which are often spoken of as minor gods, but which seem rather to occupy a position corresponding very closely to the saints and angels of our religious sys tem. To such agencies all of them subordinate- to the supreme power prayers are offered in much the THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. 217 same way that for many centuries petitions have been made by certain sects of the Christian religion to saints and holy personages. These agencies, which often as sume a material shape, and which appear to men in the form of beasts, birds, rocks, buttes, or mountains, sometimes represent certain forces of Nature, or again only qualities or powers, mental or physical. These forces or qualities do not, however, invariably take a visible shape ; and although the thunder is believed by many tribes to have the form of a bird, there are others by which it has never been seen. In all the important affairs of life help is asked of these supernatural agencies ; prayers are made to them and sacrifices offered a puff of smoke, a little food, or a bit of tobacco or red cloth. They occupy the posi tion of intercessors, mediators between man and the supreme power. The different classes of these super natural agencies which appear to inhabit the air and sky above, the world about us and the world beneath us, have already been referred to. They have the power to give to favoured ones the special qualities which each represents, and, besides, to implore for him the help of the Deity. To the man who fasted and dreamed for power, and who steadfastly enduring the hunger and thirst and the frightful visions which so often caused him to give up the attempt bore all this suffering to the end, one of these supernatural agencies would often appear as his struggle drew to a close, and though at first perhaps seeming severe and stern, would at length soften and become more kindly, and would then offer wise counsel and friendly ad vice, promising to give him its power and to help him through life. This was the man s secret helper, his "medicine," the special being to whom his prayers 218 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. were hereafter offered. This is what is meant when an Indian is spoken of as having been " helped by a wolf," a bear, or an eagle. The Indian, however, does not call this assisting power by any of these names. He usually speaks of it as his dream or sleep, and says, " It came to me in my sleep," or " A spirit told me in my sleep," and the Blackfoot when he prays says, " Listen, my dream." The so-called " medicine " or bundle of sacred things, which many Indians always carry with them is called by the same name. The owner believes these things to have been given him, or that he has been directed to make them by his dream, and such articles, while he has them about his person, protect him from harm. A friend to whom I was once of service afterward gave me his dream. He told me that he had carried it in battle for many years, and that it had always kept him safe. It was a necklace of bear claws and spherical leaden bullets, and was perhaps the most highly valued of all his possessions. Whirlwind, the chief of the Cheyennes, used to tell of the power of his dream a little hawk which he wore on his war bonnet which had always protected him in battle, and especially in one fight, when, during a charge on his enemies, who were fighting behind cover, the bullets flew so thick about him that every feather on his bonnet was cut away, yet no ball touched him, nor was the hawk hit. Instances where men have been struck and knocked down by balls, which yet, on account of the power of this protection, did not enter the flesh or inflict a wound, are commonly spoken of. It is impossible to state definitely just how these different powers are regarded whether it is an actual worship that is offered to them ; whether, as has been THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. 210 said, " All nature is alive with gods ; every mountain, every tree is worshipped, and the commonest animals are objects of adoration " ; or whether one supreme god is adored through these various objects and creatures which typify that god s various attributes. Even the Indian himself does not know just which of these is true. Probably the average red man actually worships each such object. At least it is certain that every ob ject in Nature may have its special property or power which is to be reverenced, and perhaps propitiated. Such objects are probably types, an animal, or plant, or butte, standing for a quality, and being reverenced as the material embodiment of that quality. If, for example, the eagle typifies courage and dash in war, young men about to go on the warpath offer prayers and sacrifices to the eagle, asking him to give them some of his bravery. Yet such prayer is not offered to any actual bird but to some representative eagle per haps a spiritual one which stands for bravery ; for while many animals stand for qualities or special pow ers, the actual animals are in no sense sacred. Some tribes teach kindness and consideration to all living things, and forbid their unnecessary destruction ; but even these tribes do not regard any animals as sacred in the sense that they are not to be killed when it is necessary. The animals representing these quali ties have special powers, they are supernatural, they are nearer the Deity than men, yet they are his serv ants. Whatever powers they may possess are not cre ated by themselves nor in any sense inherent in them, but have been given to them by the Ruler, and are ex ercised only by his permission. The coming of the white man has brought to the Indian even to him who has not been exposed to the 220 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. teaching of the missionaries more or less of skepti cism as to his own religion. He believes that all good gifts, whether mental or material, come from the su preme power, and he sees that the white man has a monopoly of such gifts. Hence, in many cases, he has come to think that the white man s god is rich and wise, while the Indian s is poor and foolish. The one taught his children well, and gave them guns, machin ery, and money, the power to talk to each other at a distance, the wisdom to know beforehand what to do in certain circumstances, and great shrewdness in all the affairs of life. The other furnished to his children only their simple arms and utensils and the buffalo for their food. These things satisfied the Indian so long as he knew of nothing better, but now that he is wiser, he cannot but feel more or less contempt for a god who could do no more for his children than this, and he does not hesitate to express the contempt which he feels. On the other hand, this does not make him more ready for conversion to a belief in the white man s re ligion. This religion offers to him a set of ideas entirely new and entirely different in character from any that he has ever had before, and he cannot at first com prehend them at all. An Indian friend, who had listened long to the arguments of a Christian mission ary, spoke to me with severe scorn of the foolishness of the latter s promises of heaven and threats of hell. "How is it possible for me to go up into the sky?" he said. " Have I wings like an eagle to fly away ? Or how can I get to that place down below ? I have no claws like a badger to dig down through the ground." The Indians, as has often been pointed out, are es- THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. 221 sentlally a religious people. They realize man s feeble ness, his inability to successfully contend with the powers of Nature, and so they ask for the assistance of all those beings whom they believe to have powers greater than themselves. The sacrifices with which they accompany their prayers may vary from a spoon ful of food or a bit of calico to a scalp taken in war, a horse, or a piece of flesh cut from the body. An ac quaintance of mine, who had lost three fingers from his left hand and two from his right, told me that at different times in the course of seven years he had sacrificed these missing members in the furtherance of a special object, which he at last attained. In one of the Pawnee stories which I have recorded * a father is related to have sacrificed his only son, whom he dearly loved, in the belief that this act would secure divine favour. There can be no doubt that in many cases the In dian religion of to-day has been greatly influenced by the teachings of Christian missionaries, and this seems to be true of Pacific coast tribes to a much greater degree than of those dwelling on the plains. More than once, when camping with Indians whose home lay on the west side of the Rocky Mountains, I have been impressed by the survival of evidences of Christian teachings among people who have apparently forgot ten those teachings, even though some of their forms still persist. And when one sees a wild Indian one whom he knows to be a thorough pagan make the sign of the cross before he prays, one cannot but wonder whence came this man s knowledge of God, who told him the story of the cross. * Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, p. 161. 222 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. Such a sight carries the mind back over the cen turies, and makes real to the observer the extent and the permanence of the devoted work done here in America by the black-robed priests who marched with the little steel-clad army of the Conquistadores when, with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, they entered Mexico. At first these fathers made their converts by the sword. Later their unflagging zeal and patient faith subdued tribe after tribe, until at length they reached the western ocean. Slowly they spread along the coast, north and south, and to the outlying islands of the sea, and planted the cross deeper and deeper in the wilderness. In trackless deserts, in tangled forests they preached Christ and his kingdom. The wild tribes of the parched cactus plains, the gentle races of the Pueblo villages, the hardy fishermen of the seashore alike yielded to the faith and energy which inspired these ministers of God. Little by little they made their way up the coast you can trace their progress on the map to day San Diego, San Pedro, San Luis, San Jose, San Francisco, San Juan ever fighting the battle of the cross, upheld by their faith. The blazing sun of sum mer poured down upon them his withering heat ; they did not blench. The frosts and snows of winter chilled them ; they pushed on. Sky-reaching moun tains barred their progress; they surmounted them. Floods stood in their way ; they crossed them. Pain fully, slowly, on foot through an unknown country, in perils of waters, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the wilderness, " in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness," they held their stead fast way. No danger daunted them, no difficulty THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. 223 turned them back. Death did not stop their march. If one faltered and stumbled and fell, another stepped calmly forward and took his place. No need now to look at the means they sometimes employed, nor to remember that among these servants of God all were not alike worthy. Look only at what they accom plished, and remember at what a cost. And though their earnest labours failed to establish here in the new world the religious empire of which they dreamed, yet no doubt each faithful soul had, in the consciousness of duty well performed, his own abundant reward. And although of their teachings in many tribes much or all has been forgotten, still, even now in wild camps in the distant mountains, the sign of the cross and the vesper bell may remind the wanderer of a time, now long past, when faith was strong and men were willing to die for God s glory. There, in such lonely camps among rugged peaks and far from the haunts of men, is still practiced a rite of the Church. There still grows, though stunted, deformed, and changed, the plant whose seed was first sown centuries ago by that devoted band. CHAPTER XV. THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN". KNOWLEDGE of the white man came to the differ ent tribes of the west at different times, but a cen tury ago most of them knew little of him, and there are many tribes which have had a real intercourse with the whites for a still shorter time. Long before this the Spaniards in the southwest and 011 the Pacific coast had made their presence felt, but the Indians usually do not consider that Spaniards are of the same race with the people of European origin who came to them from the east, and often they have a special name for them. Even after the Indians had learned of the existence of white people, they did not at once come into con tact with them. It was often quite a long time before they even began to trade with them, and when they did so, it was in a very small way. The first articles traded for were arms, beads, blankets, and the gaudy finery that the savage loves. Horses which trans formed the Indian, which changed him from a mild and peaceful seeker after food to a warrior and a raider were by many tribes first obtained not directly from the whites, but by barter from those of their own race. Most tribes still preserve traditions of the time when they met the first white men, as well as of the 224 THK COMING OF THE WHITE MAN. 225 time when they first saw horses ; but in many cases this was so long ago that all details of the occurrence have been lost. It is certain that the Spaniards and their horses had worked their way up the Pacific slope into Oregon and Washington long before there was any considerable influx of white trappers into the plains country and the Rocky Mountains ; and that of the western tribes, those which in miles were furthest from Mexico were the last to learn of the whites and their wonderful powers. One of these peoples was the Blackfeet, of whom I have been told by men still living in the tribe that fifty years ago no Blackfoot could count up to ten, and that a little earlier the number of horses in all three tribes of that confedera tion was very small. Then they had but few guns, and many of them even used still the stone arrowheads and hatchets and the bone knives of their primitive ancestors. A people whose intercourse with the whites has been so short and, until recent times, so limited, ought to retain some detailed account of their earliest meet ing with civilized men, and such a tradition has come to me from John Monroe, a half-breed Piegan, now nearly seventy years old. It tells of the first time the Blackfeet saw white people a party of traders from the east, either Frenchmen from Montreal, or one of the very earliest parties of Hudson Bay men which ascended the Saskatchewan River. John Monroe first heard the narrative when a boy from a Blood Indian named Sutane, who was then an old man, and Su- tane s grandfather was one of the party who met the white people. The occurrence probably took place during the latter half of the eighteenth century. When this people lived in the north, a party of the 226 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. Blackfeet started out to war. They travelled on, al ways going southward, until they came to a big water. While passing through a belt of timber on the north bank of this river, they came upon what they took for strange beaver work, where these animals had been cutting down the trees. But on looking closely at the cuttings, they saw that the chips were so large that it must have been an animal much bigger than a beaver that could open its mouth wide enough to cut such chips. They did not understand what this could be, for none of them had ever seen anything like it before. Each man expressed his mind about this, and at last they concluded that some great under- water animal must have done it. At one place they saw that the trunk of a tree was missing, and found the trail over the ground where it had been dragged away from the stump. They followed this trail, so as to see where the animals had taken the log, and what they had done with it, and as they went on, they found many other small trails like this one, all leading into one larger main trail. They then saw the foot prints of persons, but they were prints of a foot shaped differently from theirs. There was a deep mark at the heel ; the tracks were not flat like those made by people.* They followed the trail, which kept getting larger and wider as it went. Every little while, another trail joined it. When they came to where they could look through the timber, they saw before them a little open spot on the bank of the river. They looked through the underbrush, and saw what they at first thought * This deep mark was no doubt the imprint of the heel of a shoe. THE COMING OF THE WHITS MAN. 227 were bears, and afterward took to be persons, lifting logs and putting them up in a large pile. They crept closer, to where they could see better, and then con cluded that these were not people. They were very woolly on the face. Long masses of hair hung down from their chins. They were not clothed wore no robes. The Blackfeet said : " Why, they have nothing on ! They are naked ! " Some of them said, " Those are Suye tuppi " (water people). They stole around to another point of the timber, still nearer, where they could see better. There they came close to one of these people alone. He was gathering sticks and put ting them in a pile. They saw that the skin of his hands and face was white. This one had no hair on his face.* So they said : " Well, this must be a she water animal. The he ones have hair on the face, and the she ones do not." The oldest man of the party then said : " We had better go away. Maybe they will smell us or feel us here, and perhaps they will kill us, or do something fearful Let us go." So they went away. When they got back to their camp, they told what they had seen ; that to the south they had found ani mals that were very much like people water animals. They said that these animals were naked. That some of them had red bodies, f and some were black all over, except a red mark around the bodies and a fine red tail. I Moreover, these people wore no robes or leg gings and no breech-clouts. * This was probably a boy gathering poles for roofing. f Wore red shirts. \ The old Hudson Bay men used to wear about the waist a red sash the ends of which hung down in front. When they were working, to get these ends out of the way, they would pass 16 228 THE STOftY OF THE INDIAN. This description caused a great excitement in the camp. Some thought that the strange beings were water animals, and others that they were a new peo ple. All the men of the camp started south to see what this could be. Before they left the camp, the head man told them to be very careful in dealing with the animals, not to interfere with them nor to get in their way, and not to try to hurt them nor to anger them. The party started, and when they reached the opening, the animals were still there at work. After they had watched them for some time the head man of the party said to the others : " All you stay here, and I will go down to them alone. If they do nothing to me you wait here, but if they attack or hurt me, you rush on them, and we will fight hard, and try not to let them capture any of us." The man started, and when he came close to the corner of the houses he stood still. One of the men, who was working near by, walked up to him, looked him straight in the face, and stretched out his arm. The Indian looked at him, and did not know what he wanted. Some more of the men came up to him, and the Indian saw that all of them were persons like himself, except that they were of a different colour and had a different voice. The hair on their faces was fair. When the other Indians saw that no harm had been done to their leader, some of them went down to him, one by one, and by twos and threes, but most of the party remained hidden in the timber. They were still afraid of these strange new beings. them around the body and under the sash, so that they hung down behind. THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN. 229 The whites spoke to them, and asked them to come into the house, making motions to them, but the Indians did not understand what was meant by these signs. The whites would walk away, and then come back and take hold of the Indians robes and pull them. At last some of the Blackfeet followed the white men into the house. Those who had gone in came back and told the others strange stories of the wonderful things they had seen in this house. As they gained confidence, many others went in, while still others would not go in, nor would they go close to the new people. The whites showed them a long and curious-look ing piece of wood. They did not know of what kind of stone one part of it was made. It was hard and black. The white man took down from the wall a white cow s horn and poured out some black sand into his hand, and poured it down into a hole in this long stick. Then he took a little bunch of grass and pushed this into the hole with another stick, then measured with his fingers the length of the stick left out of the hole. Then he took a round thing out of a bag, and put it into the hole, and put down some more fine grass. Then he poured out some more of the black sand into the side of the stick. The Indians stood around, taking great interest in the way the man was hand ling this stick. The white man now began to make all kinds of signs to the Indians, which they did not understand. Sometimes he would make a big sound with his mouth, and then point to the stick. He would put the stick to his shoulder, holding it out in front of him, and make a great many motions. Then he gave it to one of the Indians. He showed him the under parts, and put his finger there. The Indian 230 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. touched the under part and the stick went off in the air and made a thundering sound, a terrible crash. The Indian staggered back, and the others were very much scared. Some dropped to the ground, while all the whites laughed and shook their heads at them. All laughed, and made many signs to the Blackfeet, none of which they understood. The white man took down the horn of black sand, and again did these things to the stick, but this time the Indians all stood back. They were afraid. When he had finished the motions, the white man invited them out of doors. Then he sat down, and took aim at a log lying on the ground. The same great thunder sounded. He walked up to the log, showed the bullet hole, and pushed a little stick into it ; then he loaded the gun again. By this time the Indians were beginning to under stand the power of the stick. After the white man had loaded it, he handed the gun to the Indian, took him close to the log, showed him how to aim the gun and how to pull the trigger. The Indian fired and hit the log. The white men showed these Blackfeet their knives, whittling sticks with them, and showing them how well they could cut. The Indians were very much de lighted with the power of these knives. Then they saw a big, woolly white man standing out in front of the house, and he with his axe would cut a big log in two in only a short time. All these things were very strange to them. The white men looked closely at the Blackfoot war dresses and arms and wanted them, and gave their visitors some knives and copper cups for their dresses and the skins that they wore. The visitors stayed with the white men some days, camping THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN. 231 near by. They kept wondering at these people, at how they looked, the things which they had, and what they did. The white men kept making signs to them, but they understood nothing of it all. After a time the Blackfeet returned to their camp. Afterward, many others visited the whites, and this was the beginning of a friendly intercourse between the two peoples. After a time they came to under stand each other a little, and trade relations were opened. The Indians learned that they could get the white man s things in exchange for the skins of small animals, and they began to trade and to get guns. It was when they got these arms that they first began to take courage, and to go out of the timber on to the prairie toward the mountains. In those old days the Hudson Bay traders used to tell the Indians to bring in the hair from the skins of buffalo, to put it in sacks and bring it in to trade. They did so, but all of a sudden the traders would take no more buffalo hair. This probably refers to the attempt made during the last century in the Selkirk settlement to establish a corporation for making cloth from buffalo hair. Of the special articles brought by the white men, the first to exercise an important influence on the people were horses. The possession of these animals greatly increased their liberty, stimulated them to wars with their neighbours, and in fact wrought a most important change in the character of the peo ple.* The knowledge of the horse advanced from the south northward, and these animals spread northward * Blackfoot Lodge Tales, p. 242. 232 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. up the Pacific coast more rapidly than on the east side of the mountains. The tribes of the southern plains Comanches, Kiowas, Wichitas, Arapahoes, Navajoes, and others obtained horses very early. The Pawnees and various tribes of the Dakotas later. The Utes, Snakes, and Kutenais had horses early ; and the last of the plains tribe to obtain them were the Blackfeet, Assiniboines, and Plains Crees. In the case of tribes that have long had horses, it is impossible to even ap proximate the date at which they were obtained it happened too long ago but with the more northern tribes, which have had horses for a short time only, I have been more successful in my inquiries, and from several old men among the Piegans I have accounts of the first coming of horses. As I have said, many myths exist to account for the coming of the horse, but this Piegan testimony is that of an eye-witness. Wolf Calf is probably over one hundred years old. He well remembers when the first white men passed through the country, and old men of seventy years or thereabouts tell me that he was a proved warrior when they were little boys. He believes that he was born in 1793. From him I have definite and detailed accounts of the ways of the Pie gans in days before they had been at all influenced by civilized man. I believe his statements to be as worthy of credence as any can be which depend solely on memory. The account which follows is a transla tion of his narrative, taken down from his own lips some years ago. He said : " Long ago, when I was young, just getting big enough to use a bow, we used arrowpoints of stone. Then the knives were made of flint. Not long after this, arrowpoints of sheet iron began to come into use. THE COMING OP THE WHITE MAN. 233 After we used the stone knives, we began to get white men s knives. The first of these that we had were made of a strip of tin. This was set into a bone, so that only a narrow edge of the tin protruded, and this was sharpened and used for skinning. " Before that time the Piegans had no horses. When they moved their camp they packed their lodges on dogs. " The first horses we ever saw came from west of the mountains. A band of the Piegans were camped on Belly River, at a place that we call Smash the Heads, where we jumped buffalo. They had been driving buffalo over the cliff here, so that they had plenty of meat. " There had come over the mountains to hunt buf falo a Kutenai who had some horses, and he was run ning buffalo ; but for some reason he had no luck. He could kill nothing. He had seen from far off the Piegan camp, but he did not go near it, for the Piegans and the Kutenais were enemies. " This Kutenai could not kill anything, and he and his family had nothing to eat and were starving. At last he made up his mind that he would go into the camp of his enemies and give himself up, for he said, I might as well be killed at once as die of hun ger. So with his wife and children he rode away from his camp up in the mountains, leaving his lodge standing and his horses feeding about it, all except those which his woman and his three children were riding, and started for the camp of the Piegans. " They had just made a big drive, and had run a great lot of buffalo over the cliff. There were many dead in the piskun, and the men were killing those that were left alive, when suddenly the Kutenai, on 234 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. his horse, followed by his wife and children on theirs, rode over a hill near by. When they saw him, all the Piegans were astonished and wondered what this could be. None of them had ever seen anything like it, and they were afraid. They thought it was something mysterious. The chief of the Piegans called out to his people : This is something very strange. I have heard of wonderful things that have happened from the earliest times until now, but I never heard of any thing like this. This thing must have come from above (i. e., from the sun), or else it must have come out of the hill (i. e., from the earth). Do not do any thing to it ; be still and wait. If we try to hurt it, may be it will ride into that hill again, or may be some thing bad will happen. Let us wait. " As it drew nearer, they could see that it was a man coming, and that he was on some strange animal. The Piegans wanted their chief to go toward him and speak to him. The chief did not wish to do this ; he was afraid ; but at last he started to go to meet the Kute- nai, who was coming. When he got near to him, the Kutenai made signs that he was friendly, and patted his horse on his neck and made signs to the chief. I give you this animal. The chief made signs that he was friendly, and the Kutenais rode into the camp and were received as friends, and food was given them and they ate, and their hunger was satisfied. " The Kutenai stayed with these Piegans for some time, and the Kutenai man told the chief that he had more horses at his camp up in the mountains, and that beyond the mountains there were plenty of horses. The Piegan said, 1 1 have never heard of a man riding an animal like this. He asked the Kutenai to bring in the rest of his horses ; and one night he started out, THE COMING OP THE WHITE MAN. 235 and the next day came back driving all his horses be fore him, and they came to the camp, and all the peo ple saw them and looked at them and wondered. " Some time after this the Kutenai said to the Pie- gan chief : c My friend, why not come across the moun tains to my country and visit me ? I should like to have you see my country. Bring with you those of your people who wish to come. My people will give you many horses. " Then the Piegan chief said : It is good. I will go with you and visit you. He told his people that he was going with this Kutenai, and that any of them who wished to do so might go with him. Many of the Piegans packed their dogs with their lodges and with dried meat and started with the Kutenai, and those who had no dogs packed dried meat in their parfleches and carried it on their backs. " In those days the Piegans did not take women to sit beside them until they were near middle life about thirty-five or forty years old ; but among those who went across the mountains was a young man less than thirty years old, who had taken a wife. Many of the people did not like this, and some made fun of him because he had taken a wife so young. " The party had not travelled many days when they got across the mountains, and near to where the Ku tenai camp was. When they had come near it, the Kutenai man went on ahead, and when he had reached his village, he told the chief that he had with him vis itors, Piegans who lived on the prairie, and that they had no horses, but had plenty of buffalo meat. The Kutenai chief told the man to bring these Piegans into the camp. He did so, and they were well re ceived and were given presents of horses, and they 236 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. traded their buffalo meat for more horses. The young man with the wife had four parfleches of dried meat, and for each one of these he received a horse, and all four were mares. " The Piegans stayed with the Kutenais a long time, but at length they returned over the mountains to their own country, taking their horses with them. When the other bands of the Piegans saw these horses and heard what had happened, they began to make peace with the Kutenais, and to trade with them for more horses. The young man who had a wife kept the four mares, and took them about with him wher ever he went. He said to his wife : " We will not give away any of these horses. They are all mares and all young. They will breed and soon we will have more. The mares bred, and the young man, as he grew older, proved to be a good warrior. He began to go to war against the Snakes, and to take horses from them, and after a time he had a great herd of horses. " This young man, though once everybody had laughed at him, finally became head chief of the Pie gans. His name at first was Dog, and afterward Sits in the Middle, and at last Many Horses. He had so many horses he could not keep track of them all. After he had so many horses, he would select ten boys out of each band of the Piegans to care for his horses. Many Horses had more horses than all the rest of the tribe. Many Horses died a good many years ago. These were the first horses the Piegans saw. " When they first got horses the people did not know what they fed on. They would offer the ani mals pieces of dried meat, or would take a piece of backfat and rub their noses with it, to try to get them to eat it. Then the horses would turn away and put THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN. 237 down their heads, and begin to eat the grass of the prairie." The date first mentioned by Wolf Calf would be if we assume his age to be given correctly about 1804-1806, or when he was from ten to twelve years of age, and I presume that their first horses may have come into the hands of the Blackfeet about that time, or in the very earliest years of the present century. This would agree fairly well with the statement of Mr. Hugh Monroe, who says that in 1813, when he first came among this people, they had possessed horses for a short time only, and had recently begun to make war excursions to the south on a large scale for the purpose of securing more horses from their enemies. Hugh Monroe s wife, who was born about 1796-1798, used to say that when she was a little girl the Piegans had no horses, dogs being their only beasts of burden, and all the evidence that I can gather in this tribe seems to point to the date given as that at which they ob tained their first horses. We know that the chief Many Horses was killed in the great battle of the Cy press Hills in the autumn of 1867, and he is always spoken of as a very old man at that time. Wolf Calf also gave the following account of the first visit of white traders to a Piegan camp. He said : " White people had begun to come into this country, and Many Horses young men wanted ropes and iron arrowpoints and saddle blankets, and the people were beginning to kill furs and skins to trade. Many Horses began to trade with his own people for these things. He would ask the young men of the tribe to kill skins for him, and they would bring them to him and he would give them a horse or two in exchange. Then he would send his relations in to the Hudson 238 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. Bay post to trade, but he would never go himself. The white men wanted to see him, and sent word to him to come in, but he would never do so. " At length, one winter, these white men packed their dog sledges with goods and started to see Many Horses. They took with them guns. The Piegans heard that the whites were coming, and Many Horses sent word to all the people to come together and meet him at a certain place, where the whites were coming. When these came to the camp, they asked where Many Horses lodge was, and the people pointed out to them the Crow painted lodge. The whites went to this lodge and began to unpack their things guns, cloth ing, knives, and goods of all kinds. " Many Horses sent two men to go in different di rections through the camp and ask all the principal men, young and old, to come together to his lodge. They all came. Some went in and some sat outside. Then these white men began to distribute the guns, and with each gun they gave a bundle of powder and ball. At this same time, the young men received white blankets and the old men black coats. Then we first got knives, and the white men showed us how to use knives ; to split down the legs and rip up the belly to skin for trade. There were not knives enough for each to have one, and it was then that knives with tin edges were made. " The whites showed us many things. They had flint, steel, and punk, and showed the Indians how to use them. A white man held the flint and struck it with the steel and lighted the punk. Then he gave them to an Indian and told him to do the same. He did so, but when he saw the spark burning the tinder, he was frightened and dropped it, THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN. 239 " Before that, fire was made with firesticks, the twirling stick, being made of greasewood, was hard, and in the hollow which received the point, finely powdered dry grass was put, which caught the fire. This was transferred to tinder and blown into a flame." As I have said elsewhere, the possession of guns and horses transformed the Blackfeet from a more or less stationary people dwelling in the timber, and de voting all their energies to hunting and the food sup ply, to a tribe whose chief ambition was the acquiring of glory and riches by warlike pursuits. Now they began to go to war, and in a few years they had con quered from their enemies on the south a great terri tory, and had begun to make themselves rich in horses. Inhabiting a country abounding in buffalo, it was easy for them to procure robes to supply to the traders who at length penetrated their country, and so to provide themselves with all the goods that the white men of fered. But fast in the wake of the white men followed disease, and smallpox and measles and scarlet fever breaking out in their camps, swept off thousands upon thousands of the race. The white men learned that Indians liked liquor and began to use this in trade, and liquor killed more than disease. Any tribe of Indians who had obtained possessions of any sort from the white men had manifestly a tre mendous advantage over any other tribe who still had only their primitive equipment, and we are told by Cheyenne tradition that that brave and warlike people during their migration toward the southwest were ut terly routed and put to flight by the Assiniboines, who had recently obtained guns from the white traders. As a rule, the early intercourse between Indians 240 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. and whites in the west was friendly, and their rela tions pleasant. Yet among the more warlike tribes, stranger and enemy were synonymous terms, so that the horses of white men were often stolen. Of course, when this occurred, efforts were made to kill the thieves, and thus active war was very often brought about. A man or two killed on either side would for some time to come insure reprisals and fighting at all subsequent meetings of parties of whites and Indians belonging to the tribe engaged, and each battle would make others more probable. Sometimes a peace would be made which was lasting, and there are some tribes which have never engaged in any wars with the whites, while others, in the face of shameful injury and ill treatment, have always been their faithful allies in their wars with other tribes. APPENDIX. THE NORTH AMERICANS YESTEKDAY AND TO-DAY. THE Indians of this continent constitute a single race, whose physical characteristics are remarkably alike throughout all tribes. Though the diverse condi tions of life in various parts of a wide continent have caused differences of stature, colour, and development in certain directions, these differences are of minor importance, and it is probable that there is no such wide variation as is found among different groups of the white, black, and yellow races. An Indian is always an Indian, yet each tribe has its own characteristics. The popular notion that all Indians have the same speech and the same modes of life is wholly erroneous. In North America, north of Mexico, there were nearly sixty distinct linguistic stocks or groups of languages, which, so far as known, had no relation to each other, and represent groups of Indians apparently unconnected by ties of blood with any other family. In other words, these tribes differ from each other in speech more widely than do the different European nations ; for all the European na tions, such as Russian, German, Italian except the intrusive Turks, Huns, etc. constitute parts of a sin gle linguistic stock, the Indo-European or Aryan. The difference between two Indian linguistic stocks, 241 24:2 THE STORY OP THE INDIAN. such as Algonquin and Dakota, is, therefore, not that between Greeks and Germans, but between the greater groups Aryan and Turanian, or Aryan and Semetic, and such stocks as Algonquin, Dakota, Pawnee, Atha bascan, and Iroquois constitute families of equal rela tive rank with the Old World families just men tioned. While some of the Indian families were made up of many tribes speaking different dialects, or even using languages unintelligible to each other, and con trolling a vast extent of territory, others consisted of a single small tribe without apparent affinities with any of its neighbours. So, on the Pacific coast, where about two thirds of the different linguistic stocks ex ist, one may find a little village of fishing Indians who they say have from time immemorial inhabited this same region, and who yet have nothing in common with their nearest neighbours a few miles away, and are unable to communicate with them except by signs, or to-day by the so-called Chinook jargon, the com mon trade language of the northwest coast. But while a vast territory might be inhabited and controlled by one family, as much of the eastern United States and Canada nearly as far as the Rocky Moun tains was controlled by the Algonquin family, this occupancy did not necessarily mean that all other families were excluded from such territory. At va rious points all over such a region, there might be areas, large or small, which were held by tribes genet ically distinct from the prevailing family and holding their own against their neighbours. As the families differed from each other in lan guage, so the tribes differed in culture. North of the Mexican boundary, all tribes were practically in the THE NORTH AMERICANS. 243 stone age of development. The use of metals was un known. In a few cases, native copper was employed for ornament or utensil, but it was treated as a stone hammered into shape. It was not known as a metal. The Indian s arms were made of stone, chipped, ham mered, and ground from flint or some other hard rock. His clothing was made of skin. Many tribes made pottery of a very simple kind, useful for dishes and cooking utensils. Their permanent dwellings were as varied as the regions which they inhabited, yet in their movable lodges or tipis, which were made of skins or bark, one type prevailed over almost the whole conti nent. While the subsistence of the people was largely derived from hunting and fishing, or from the wild fruits of the earth, yet a very large proportion of the tribes practised agriculture. This is especially true of those which inhabited the country of abundant rain fall lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Missis sippi River, yet it was by no means confined to these alone, for many tribes of the high dry plains, of Paw nee, Dakota, and, in ancient times, Algonquin stock, raised crops of corn, beans, and squashes. The tribes of the extreme southwest depended for support very largely on agriculture, and practised irrigation. Picture writings were used among almost all the tribes, but were, of course, carried to their greatest perfection among those families whose culture was highest. Among the Nahuatl and Mayas of the south, and the Algonquins and Iroquois of the north, such picture writings on skin, bark, or cloth sometimes took the form of long historical documents, or served to render permanent the ritual of important ceremo nies. But even among the nomads of the plains, paintings on skins often commemorated the important IT 244: THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. events of the year, sometimes by months, and some of these ran back for many years even, it is said, for a century. Such writings were, if not history, at least records. The social condition of the North Americans has been greatly misunderstood. The place of woman in the tribe was not that of a slave or of a beast of bur den. The existence of the gentile organization, in most tribes with descent in the female line, forbade any such subjugation of woman. In many tribes women took part in the councils of the chiefs ; in some, women were even the tribal rulers ; while in all they received a fair measure of respect and affec tion from those related to them. At a council held in 1791 with the Huron-Iroquois the women spoke to the American commissioner as follows : " You ought to hear and listen to what we women shall speak as well as the sachems, for we are the owners of this land, and it is ours. It is we that plant it for our and their use. Hear us, therefore, for we speak of things that concern us and our children." Among the Mokis and other Pueblos, and among the Navajoes, men and women work together in the fields. With the Mokis the young unmarried women are not expected or allowed to perform such heavy work as carrying water up the mesa, and with the ISTavajoes a man may even cut out and sew a buckskin shirt. Just at present, the keeper of the tribal medi cine of the Kiowas is a woman, and in the same tribe the grandmother practically rules the family, although she works as hard as the other women. Among the Cheyennes the woman has great influence. The notion that women were slaves no doubt had its origin in the fact that their duties are such as civ- THE NORTH AMERICANS. 245 ilized men commonly regard as toil, while the more arduous pursuits of hunting and war are looked upon by white men as amusements. As a matter of fact, the labours of this savage life were not unevenly divided between the sexes. In their home life the Indians were much like other people. The men, as a rule, were affectionate husbands and fathers, often un dergoing severe sacrifices and privations for the sake of their families. Parents were devotedly attached to their children, and a strong feeling existed between the members of a family, even though the tie of blood uniting them was remote. Another misconception of Indian character has obtained a firm footing in the popular mind. It is generally believed that these people are grave, taci turn, and sullen in their ordinary life. This is far from being true. Instead, they are fond of society, gossipy, great talkers, with a keen sense of humour and great quickness of repartee. In their villages and their camps, frequent visits were paid from lodge to lodge. In time of plenty, feasts were continual, and social gatherings for dancing, story-telling, or conversation occurred more often than in civilized communities. Constantly among young men, and often among young women, were formed friendships which remind one of the attachment that existed between David and Jona than, and such friendships frequently lasted through life, or were interrupted only when family ties were assumed. It is in the system of government devised by some of them that the North Americans show their greatest advance in culture. The so-called civilizations of the south of Peru and Mexico while much higher than those of tribes inhabiting the territory now the United 246 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. States and Canada, yet differed from them in degree rather than in kind, and the league of the Iroquois, since it has been thoroughly understood, has chal lenged admiration both for its organization and its purposes. This was an offensive and defensive feder ation of five tribes the Onondagas, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas, and Mohawks formed by the Onondaga chief Hiawatha about the middle of the sixteenth century. Of it Mr. Hale says : " The system he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives to be elected by each nation, hold ing office during good behaviour, and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still further and more remarkable, the federation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expan sible. The avowed design of its purpose was to abolish war altogether." As is well said by Dr. Brinton, " Cer tainly this scheme was one of the most farsighted, and in its aim beneficent, which any statesman has ever designed for man." As a rule, the government of the Indians was a simple democracy. The chiefs were usually elected though sometimes hereditary and held office for life, or until advancing years caused their resignation. As has been said, women were sometimes made chiefs. Often the chief of a tribe was chosen from the chiefs of the gentes by his fellow chiefs. In one of the tribes of the Iroquois league the council which elected the chief was composed altogether of women. But the chief s power was not absolute. In minor mat ters which pertained to the ordinary affairs of the - THE NORTH AMERICANS. 247 everyday life of the people, he acted independently and his orders were obeyed, but grave concerns, such as quarrels between prominent men, relations with neighbouring tribes, the making of war or peace, were discussed in a council of chiefs and prominent men, where each individual was at liberty to express his opinion and to cast his vote. The head chief acted as the presiding officer of such council, and if he was a strong man his views carried great weight ; but un less he could win over to his side a majority of the council he had to yield. Thus the chief s authority was personal rather than official, but for this very rea son it was strong ; for, where the office was elective, that man was made chief who had proved by his deeds from childhood to middle age that he was a more able man than his fellows that he was brave in war, wise in peace, careful for the well-being of his people in the everyday affairs of life, generous and kindly, yet firm in short, that he was a leader in time of war and a father in time of peace. His council was com posed of men young and old, some one of whom might later take his place. I give a brief sketch of the past and present homes and conditions of some of the more important of the North American family stocks. ALGONQUIN". The area occupied by this family was far more ex tensive than that held by any other North American stock. On the Atlantic seaboard they controlled the territory from Labrador on the north to North Caro lina on the south. From Labrador westward, tribes of this stock occupied all of British America nearly to the Rocky Mountains and south of Peace River and 24:8 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. Churchill Eiver. They also held parts of what are now North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Mis souri, all of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, and most of Michigan, Ohio, and Maryland. There was a settlement in South Carolina, and a west ern branch had pushed its way into South Dakota and Wyoming, and westward into Colorado. No other family of North Americans held territory at all com parable for extent or for excellence either in fertility or abundance of game with that possessed by the Al- gonquins, who, in numbers, intelligence, and physical qualities, stand among the first of the families of North American Indians. It is impossible to conjecture what were the num bers of the Algon quins before the coming of the whites, but we may imagine that they were large. If the territory which they inhabited was thinly settled, it was also vast. Most of the southeastern tribes of this stock practised agriculture as well as hunting, and inhabiting as they did a fertile country, which also abounded in game and in natural fruits, it may be conjectured that they found little or no difficulty in supporting life. It is not likely that in primitive times they often suffered from hunger. They were brave, too, and well able to defend themselves against the attacks of their enemies, and there would seem to be no reason why this naturally vigorous stock should not have been very numerous, at least until it ap proached the point where the food question became troublesome. In the vast territory occupied by the Algonquins there were many different tribes, and it is not to be imagined that all of these recognised the tie of blood which connected them, or that all of this family were THE NORTH AMERICANS. 249 necessarily friends and allies. The reverse of this was true, and quarrels and wars between different tribes probably took place frequently. Yet often the tribes of this blood united against the fierce Iroquois, whose territory about the easternmost of the Great Lakes and the upper St. Lawrence River, lay in the very midst of the Algonquin lands, and another division of which bor dered these lands upon the south. Between these two great families there was a deep and bitter hostility, sometimes interrupted by intervals of peace, which, however, were not of long duration. To this rule the Wyandots, descendants of the old Hurons, were a no table exception. They were uniformly allies of the Algonquins. The date at which the westernmost branches of the Algonquin stock came to their present homes is com paratively recent, for it is within the last two hundred and fifty years that the Arapahoes including the Gros Ventres of the prairie the Blackfeet, and the Chey- ennes reached the Continental Divide. If we may believe Cheyenne tradition, they were the first tribe to penetrate as far as the Rocky Mountains. Their oral history tells that with the Arapahoes they came into the Black Hills country, in Dakota, about two hundred and twenty-five years ago, having journeyed from the northeast, perhaps originally from the shores of Lake Superior, or possibly of Hudson Bay, for they describe an immense body of water in a barren, treeless country, abounding in great rocks. The Black- feet came next. They say that not many generations ago they lived near Peace River, far from the moun tains. To the east of them were the timber Crees, and to the north tribes of Athabascan stock. They made their way slowly south and west, and probably 250 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. reached the Rocky Mountains less than one hundred and fifty years ago. The following list of the principal tribes of the Algonquin stock is taken in part from Brinton and from Powell : ABNAKI " eastlanders." Nova Scotia and south bank of the St. Lawrence River. ALGONQUIN = people living " on the other side " of the stream. North of the St. Lawrence River, Ontario, and Quebec. ARAPAHOE = " traders " (!) (Dunbar). Flanks of the Rocky Mountains from Black Hills to head waters of the Arkansas River. BLACKFOOT. Flanks of the Rocky Mountains from the Sas katchewan River south to Yellowstone River. CHEYENNE = " red or painted " i. e., alien, so-called by the Sioux (Clark). Flanks of the Rocky Mountains from Black Hills to head waters of Arkansas River. CREE, abbreviated from Kiristinon "killer" (f). Southern and western shores of Hudson Bay, west to Rocky Moun tains. DELAWARE, or Leni Lenapi = " original, or principal, men." Along the Delaware River. ILLINOIS, from ilini = " men." On the Illinois River. KICKAPOO = people of the river, " easily navigable." Upper Illinois River. MAHICAN, a dialectic form of Mohegan, but a distinct tribe. Lower Hudson River. MIAMI = " pigeon." Miami and Upper Wabash Rivers. MIKMAK. Nova Scotia. MILISIT = " broken talkers." New Brunswick. MENOMINI " wild rice people." About Green Bay, Wisconsin. MOHEGAN. Lower Connecticut River. MONTAGNAIS " mountaineers " (French writers). Northern shores of lower St. Lawrence River. MASSACHUSETT = people " at the Blue Hills." On Massachu setts Bay. MONTAUK = people at the " manito tree." Eastern Long Island. NANTICOKE. Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. THE NORTH AMERICANS. 251 OJIBWA or CHIPPEWA = people of the " puckered moccasin " (?) (Warren). Ontario River. PANTICO. North of Pamlico Sound. PIANKASHA = " western people." On lower Wabash River. POTTAWATOMI = " blowers " i. e., " council firemakers." South of Lake Michigan. SAC (Fox) = " yellow earth " people (Drake). About Rock River, Illinois. SHAWANO or SHAWNEE = southern people. On Cumberland River. Most of the eastern tribes of the Algonquins have long been extinct, having either perished utterly, or their scattered fragments having migrated and joined other tribes, in which they have become merged. But these extinct tribes will not be wholly forgotten, for their names are fixed in the geography of this coun try, and will thus be preserved so long as America shall endure. In the Seventh Annual Eeport of the Bureau of Ethnology, published in 1891, the present number of the Algonquin race is given as ninety-five thousand, of which about sixty thousand are in Canada and the remainder in the United States. Many of these last are self-supporting and more or less civilized, though still clinging tenaciously to many of their ancient be liefs and practices. The same volume contains a list of the tribes officially recognized, and their present numbers and locations, compiled chiefly from the Re port for 1889 of the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the Canadian Report for 1888, which gives the following facts : ABNAKI, including Passamaquoddies and Milisits in Maine, New Brunswick, and Quebec. 1,874 (?). ALGONQUIN, in Ontario and Quebec. Canada. 4,767 (f). ARAPAHOE, at Cheyenne agency, Oklahoma Territory, and at Shoshoni agency, Wyoming. 2,157. 252 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. The Atse na or Gros Ventres of the Prairie, a detached band of the Arapahoes, are not mentioned in this list. They are at the Fort Belknap agency in northern Montana with the Assiniboines, and number about 509. BLACKFOOT, at the Blackfoot agency, Montana, at Calgary, and on Belly River, in Northwest Territories, 6,743. CHEYENNE, at Cheyenne agency, Oklahoma Territory, Tongue River agency, Montana, and Pine Ridge agency, South Da kota, 3,473. CREE, in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. A few Crees who were engaged in the Riel rebellion took refuge in Mon tana, where they still remain, supporting themselves by trapping and the sale of articles which they manufacture. 17,386. DELAWARE, about one thousand are incorporated and live with the Cherokees in the Indian Territory, others are with the Wichitas in the Indian Territory, the Senecas and Onon- dagas in New York, the Chippewas on the Thames River in Ontario, the Six Nations on Grand River, Ontario, and with the Chippewas at the Pottawatomi agency in Kansas. 1,750 (?). KICKAPOO a part are at the Sac and Fox agency, Indian Terri tory, others at the Pottawatomi agency, Kansas, and some in Mexico. 762 (?). MENOMINI, at Green Bay agency, Wisconsin. 1,311. MIAMI, Quapaw agency, Indian Territory, and in Indiana. 374 (!). MICMAC, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec, Canada. 4,108. MISSISAUGA, with Monsoni, Muskegon, etc., in Ontario and Ru pert s Land, Canada. 4,790. MONTAGANIS, Quebec. 1,919. NASCOAPEE, Quebec. 2,860. OJIBWA or CHIPPEWA, at White Earth agency, Minnesota ; La Pointe agency, Wisconsin ; Mackina agency, Michigan ; Devil s Lake agency, North Dakota ; Pottawatomi agency, Kansas ; Chippewas of Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Sarnia, on the Thames, on Walpole Island, on Manitoulin and Cock- burn Islands, all in Ontario, Canada, and Sauteux and Chip pewas in Manitoba. 31,928 (?). THE NORTH AMERICANS. 253 OTTAWA, at Quapaw agency, Indian Territory ; at Mackina agency, Michigan ; on Manitoulin and Cockburn Islands, Ontario, Canada. 4,794 (f). PEORIA, Quapaw agency, Indian Territory. 160. POTTAWATOMI, at the Sac and Fox agency, Oklahoma Territory ; Pottawatomi agency, Kansas ; Mackina agency, Michi gan ; Prairie Band, Wisconsin ; on Walpole Island, On tario, Canada. 1,465. SAC and Fox, at Sac and Fox agency, Oklahoma Territory ; Sac and Fox agency, Iowa ; Pottawatomi agency, Kansas. 973. SHAWNEE, Quapaw agency, Indian Territory ; Sac and Fox agency, Oklahoma Territory ; incorporated with the Chero- kees, Indian Territory. 1,519. STOCKBRIDGE (Mohican), at Green Bay, Wisconsin, and in New York with the Tuscaroras and Senecas. 117. ATHABASCAN. What the Algonquin linguistic family was to east ern North America the Athabascan was to the west. Both touched the land of the Innuit on the north, and the east and west range of each covered sixty degrees of longitude, so that between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains the countries of the two overlapped ; but while the southernmost tribe of the Algonquin was only thirty degrees from the northern limit of the family, at least forty degrees of latitude separated the Athabascans of the Arctic from those of Mexico. This great north and south area was, however, not contin uous. There was a wide territory, extending over four teen or fifteen degrees of latitude, where except for a few small settlements on the Pacific coast no Atha bascans were found. Although the area occupied by the Athabascans was so extensive, it presented in its adaptability for human occupancy a marked contrast to that possessed by the Algonquins. These, in their southern terri- 254: THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. tory, inhabited a country of abundant rainfall, fertile and admirably adapted for agricultural pursuits, while those Athabascans who were not dwellers in the frozen north occupied an arid, desert country, where rains are infrequent and agriculture impossible, except by means of irrigation. Physically, the members of this family are moder ately well developed, being often tall and muscular and very enduring, but those of the north are said to be short-lived. They are a strong and masterful peo ple, and Mr. Mooney, who has seen much of them, writes me : " Excepting in the extreme north we find the Tinne tribes almost everywhere asserting and exer cising superiority over their neighbours. This applies to the detached bands in Washington, Oregon, and California, and to the Navajoes in the south. The Tinne tribes in California have imposed their lan guage and tribal regulations upon their neighbours. The Navajoes are pre-eminent stock raisers, weavers, and metal workers. The Apache are our wiliest In dian fighters, and were steadily driving the civilized Mexicans southward, when the United States inter fered." As might be supposed from the distance which separates the homes of the northern and southern groups of this family, the two differed widely in their ways and modes of life. The Athabascans of the north were hunters and fishermen. In summer they followed the great game or spread their nets in the lakes ; in winter they harnessed their dogs to the sledges and careered over the frozen wastes. The desert-inhabit ing Apaches and Navajoes of the south know neither dog sledges nor boats. They are mountaineers and hunters, famed for their endurance and able to take THE NORTH AMERICANS, 255 up the track of a deer, and between sunrise and sun set to run him down and kill him with a knife. Al though hunters, they are also tillers of the soil, raising corn and other vegetables, and gathering the nuts of the pifion, the bean of the mesquite, and the root of the American aloe. The Athabascans use lodges of skin or bark in the north, and in the south rude huts made of branches of trees. They make pottery and wickerwork baskets, which are so tightly woven that they serve as water vessels, and their stone nictates used for grinding corn are far more efficient implements than the mortar in which the grain was pounded by tribes further to the east. The canoes of the interior tribes of the north are of bark. The Navajoes have long been renowned for the handsome blankets which they weave. This with them is not an aboriginal art, but is borrowed from their immediate neighbours the Mokis and Zunis, with whom and with some northwest coast tribes it is aboriginal, for the latter weave excellent blankets from the fleece of the wild white goat. Among the tribes of this family, great differences exist in the gentile systems and in the laws of con sanguinity. In some tribes, descent is in the female line, and a man considers his father no relation, while in other tribes the son belongs to his father s gens. Of the northern group of the Athabascans, the southernmost tribe inhabiting the central region are the Sarsi, who for many years have lived with the Blackfeet. These are an offshoot of the Beaver In dians, and, according to tradition, left their own coun try about one hundred years ago on account of a quarrel with another camp of their own people, and 256 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. migrated southward. They joined the Blackfeet, and have lived with them ever since. Among the best-known tribes of Athabascan stock are the APACHE = " enemies." Arizona and Northern Mexico. ATNA = "strangers." On Copper River, Alaska. BEAVER. On Peace River, British America. CHIPPEWYAN = " pointed coats." Coast of Hudson Bay and north of Crees. HUPA. California, Trinity River. KENAI = " people." Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. KUCHIN = " people." Yukon River, Alaska. NAVAJO = " whetstone or knife - whetting people" (Mooney). New Mexico and Arizona. NEHANI = " yellow knives " (?). Upper Stikine River, Alaska. SARSI. Beaver offshoot. SIKANI. Upper Peace River, British America. SLAVE. Upper Mackenzie River, British America. TAKULI = " carriers." Fraser River, British Columbia. TUTUTENA. Rogue River, Oregon. UMPQUA. Near Salem, Oregon. WAILAKI people of the " northern language." Northern California. The northern tribes of this group are more gener ally known as Hare Indians, Dog Ribs, Chippewyans, Yellow Knives (Nehani), Strong Bows, Carrier (Ta- kuli), etc. There are supposed to be about thirty- three thousand Athabascans, of whom about one fourth belong to the northern group. Of the south ern tribes tKe best known are the various bands of Apaches inhabiting Arizona and Mexico, who have shown themselves so fierce in war and so apt in escap ing the troops sent in pursuit of them, and the Nava- joes, whose fame rests in large measure on the peaceful art of blanket weaving. The Apaches are still more or less wild, and have not made very great progress - THE NORTH AMERICANS. 257 toward civilization ; but tlie Navajoes possess some cat tle, many horses, and great herds of sheep and goats, and have long been self-supporting. They are well- disposed and industrious, saving and progressive, and in advancement toward civilization stand high among the tribes of the west. They probably number be tween eighteen and twenty thousand. The small tribes of Athabascans of the Pacific coast are at various agencies in California and Ore gon, usually with tribes of other stocks. They are moderately advanced, till the ground, raise some live stock, and the men labour for the whites in the salmon canneries, the hop fields, and on the farms. DAKOTA. Six States of the Union bear the names of tribes of the Dakota stock, and of late years no group of North American Indians has been better known than these. At the time when general immigration to the country west of the Mississippi began, this family occupied much of the territory entered on by the whites, and for a number of years conflicts and wars were frequent, culminating in 1876 with the Ouster battle. For a few years after that, the army was at work clearing out the scattered camps of hostile Sioux in Montana and Dakota, but since that time there has been nothing in the nature of a general war between this stock and the whites, though there was a short-lived but bloody out break in 1890- 91. The name Dakota or Lahkota, by which the prin cipal tribes of this stock, the Sioux, call themselves, means " confederated," " allied," while the commoner term Sioux is a French corruption of an Algonquin word, nadowe si-iig, meaning originally " snakes," and 258 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. so enemies. In this sense it has been used by the Ojibwa in modern times, although not as applied to the Sioux. History and tradition find several of the most im portant tribes of the Dakotas occupying upper Michi gan, Wisconsin, and eastern Minnesota, though long before this some must have taken the journey to and across the Great Plains. The Crows have occupied the eastern flanks of the Rocky Mountains, and the Stonies a tribe of the Assiniboines the mountains still further north for a very long time. The Assini boines, too, must long have lived in the prairie coun try of what is now eastern North Dakota, for accord ing to Cheyenne tradition they were there when these last migrated from the northeast. It is probable, how ever, that the great body of those tribes now known in the vernacular as Sioux, lived in early historic times about the western great lakes and the head waters of the Mississippi. From this territory they were driven, or crowded out, by the westward movement of the Al gonquin tribes and by settlements, and spread them selves over much of the Great Plains. An eastern origin is now pretty well established for this stock, for in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Mississippi were the homes of tribes now extinct, which philologists class with this stock.* Such were the Catawba in South Carolina; the Tutelo, Saponi, and Woccon, in North Carolina; the Occaneechi in Virginia ; the Biloxi and possibly other tribes in Mis sissippi. Catlin has shown that the Mandans reached the Missouri River by travelling down the Ohio. With- * Mooney, The Siouan Tribes of the East, Bulletin Bureau of Ethnology, Washington. , THE NORTH AMERICANS. 250 in recent times a number of the Dakota tribes have occupied the timbered country, and have not been dwellers on the plains. Such are the Winnebagoes, Osages, Quapaws, Missourias, and others. Physically and intellectually the Dakotas stand high, and in stature and development the mountain Crows are exceeded by no tribe in the west, unless it be the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Most of the tribes have lost the agricultural habits which all probably once possessed, and which the Man- dans, Hidatsa. and some others still practise. Others have only recently given up this habit, as occasionally shown by a sub-tribal name as Mini-co-o-ju " They plant by the water." Some of the Dakotas manufac tured pottery, and the Mandans even made blue glass beads after the coming of the whites. This tribe, too, occupied permanent houses. There was the widest variation in the gentile sys tem, where it existed at all. With some, descent was in the male, with others, in the female line. The chieftainship was hereditary, descending from father to son, though an early traveller found the Winne bagoes ruled over by a woman chief. The country held by the Dakota stock in modern times included a part of Wisconsin and of western Minnesota, most of North Dakota, Iowa, and Missouri, more than half of Arkansas, Montana, and Wyoming, South Dakota, and a large part of eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and parts of British Ame ica near the Eocky Mountains. Within the last hundred years their neighbours have been, on the north and east and a part of the west, Algonquins ; on the south Pawnees, Shoshonis, and Kiowas ; and on the west, Shoshonis, Kiowas, and Al gonquins. Besides this, their territory was interrupted 18 2(50 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. by settlements of Pawnees, who, having invaded their territory, had driven out, conquered, or were still at war with various tribes of this stock. Most of the plains tribes of Dakota stock depended for food upon the buffalo and were wanderers, follow ing the herds from place to place, and, on the prairie, dwelling in the conical skin lodges, which were the common habitations of the plains tribes. The principal tribes of the Dakota stock are : ABSORAKA = " Crows " (?). (The name seems to refer to some kind of bird.) ASSINIBOINES = " stone boilers." On Saskatchewan, Souris, and Assiniboine River, British America. BILOXI. Biloxi Bay, Mississippi. CATAWBA. Catawba River, South Carolina. CROWS (or Absoraka). On Yellowstone River, North Dakota. DAKOTA PROPER or Sioux " confederate." Western Minnesota, North and South Dakota. IOWA = " sleepy ones." On the Iowa River, Iowa. KANSA or KAW. On the Kansas River, Kansas. MANDAN. Upper Missouri River, North Dakota. HIDATSA or MINITARIS, a branch of the Crows = " those who cross the water " (Minitari). Upper Missouri River, North Dakota. MISSOURIA = people of the Great Muddy. Originally on lower Missouri River, Missouri. OCCANEECHI. Southern Virginia. OMAHA = " upper stream people." Niobrara River, Nebraska. OSAGE. In southern Missouri. OTO. On lower Platte River, Nebraska. PONCA. Northwestern Nebraska. QUAPAW or ARKANSA, "down stream people." On the lower Arkansas, Arkansas. SAPONI. Central North Carolina. WINNEBAGO = " stinking lake people." Eastern Wisconsin. The number of people of the Dakota stock is esti mated to be about 45,000, and of these about 42,000 THE NORTH AMERICANS. 261 are in the United States. About 24,000 belong to the Sioux tribes, as the term is commonly applied, 1,700 to the Assiniboines, 1,200 to the Omahas, 1,600 to the Osages, 2,200 to the Winnebagoes, and 3,000 to the Crows, including the Minitaris or Hidatsa. Most of these Indians have made considerable progress toward civilization. They have cattle, cultivate the ground with some success, and, as a rule, live in log houses. There are no longer any " wild " Indians among them, and they are becoming though slowly a fairly hard working part of the population of the West. Their various reservations and agencies, of which there are many, are situated in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Da- kotas, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. IROQUOIS. In the early history of America no Indian family was better known than the Iroquois a name given to a group of tribes, some of whom made up the celebrated Six Nations. The territory occupied by this family lay wholly in the east, and in two principal situations. The northernmost of these included territory on both sides of the St. Lawrence Kiver, from where Quebec now stands, westward to Lake Huron, all about Lakes Ontario and Erie, and south to the Chesapeake Bay. They thus held portions of Canada, Ohio, Michigan, Central New York, and the greater part of Pennsyl vania, southward along the valley of the Susquehanna to the salt water. The other Iroquois were established almost in one body in Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. The northern territory was surrounded on all sides by lands occupied by the Algonquins, while the southern group of the 202 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. tribes had for neighbours Algonquins on the north and west, Dakotas on the east, and Muskogis on the south. No Indian family excelled the Iroquois in physical development or in culture. The records of the civil war, in which some companies of Iroquois fought, show that these stood highest of any bodies of our soldiers in stature and in physical strength and vigour. Intellectually they ranked as high. The league of the five nations Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas to which was afterward added a sixth, the Tuscaroras, alone stamps them as a stock whose intellectual vigour exceeded that of their neighbours. Their intelligence was shown in other ways. They were, to a greater extent than almost any other Indian family, agriculturists, and their crops supplied each year more food than they could possibly consume. They lived in permanent villages, but in most other respects their everyday life was not markedly different from that of other Indians. It was among the Iroquois that the gentile system obtained its highest development among our northern tribes. Descent was in the female line, and mothers in the Iroquois villages had a power and an influence greater than those of the men. They were the owners of the land and of most of the personal property ; they were the councillors of the tribes, and sometimes even its chiefs. The ancient gentile system of these people still persists, even among the civilized Iroquois, on their reservations in Central New York, and on Grand River, Ontario, and of late years this has become a cause of more or less heartburning and dissatisfac tion. Among the Senecas to-day half-breed children of an Indian father and a white woman are called by THE NORTH AMERICANS. 263 the Senecas whites, are not allowed to draw tribal an nuities, nor to have any share in the public affairs of the nation ; while the children of a white father and an Indian mother are regarded as Indians, and have all an Indian s rights and privileges. The same rule holds in marriages between Indians of the different tribes, the child belonging to the tribe of the mother and not to that of the father. This matter has several times come up in the courts for adjudication. The southern group of the Iroquois included the Cherokees and the Tuscaroras, the former chiefly in the mountain region of North Carolina and Tennessee, and the latter in eastern North Carolina. They did not differ especially from their northern relations. Like them, they built connected houses of logs, and fortified their villages. They were industrious agri culturists and made good pottery. The ancestors of the Cherokees were quite certainly the builders of some of the famous mounds in Ohio. The myths, legends, and sacred rituals of the Iro quois are perhaps better known than those of any other- Indians. To assist in the preservation of these they used certain aids to memory in the shape of beads or shells strung on buckskin strings, the combination of the beads suggesting certain facts and events. The Book of Rites, edited by Mr. Horatio Hale, is an ex ample of the ritual of this remarkable people. The Cherokees, likewise, had a great body of ritual record ed in their modern native alphabet. Mr. Mooney has procured practically all of this about seven hundred formulas and expects to translate it all. A part has already appeared in his Sacred Formulas of the Chero kees, in the Seventh Annual Eeport of the Bureau of Ethnology. There is a mass of similar material still 264 ME STORY OF THE INDIAN. existing in many, if not in most other tribes, although few of these extended productions have been reduced to writing and translated. The principal tribes of the Iroquois were these : CAYUGA = people of the " swampy land." South of Lake On tario, New York. CHEROKEE. Mountain region of Carolina, Georgia, and Ten nessee. CONESTOGA = " lodge pole people." Lower Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. ERIE = " wild cats." South of Lake Erie, Ohio, and New York. NEUTRAL NATION. West of Niagara River, Ontario. NOTTAWA = " snake," i. e., enemy. Southern Virginia. ONEIDA = people of the " stone." Central New York. ONONDAGA = people of the " little hill." Central New York. SENECA. Western New York. TUSCARORA = flax or hemp pullers (?) (Hewitt ; Morgan makes it "shirt weavers"). The name refers to a vegetable cloth fibre. Eastern North Carolina. WYANDOT or HURONS Huron is the old provincial French for " bear." East of Georgian Bay, Ontario, and south ; south west of Lake Erie in Ohio and Michigan. The present number of the Iroquois is estimated at about 44,000, of whom about 9,000 are in Canada. The Cherokees one of the five civilized tribes make up by far the greater part of these, numbering not far from 28,000, of whom more than 26,000 are in Indian Territory, the remainder forming the eastern band, who are in the counties of Swain, Jackson, Cherokee, and Graham, in North Carolina. The Cherokee na tion, however, includes a large number of adopted whites and negroes. Of the Cayugas there are about 1,300, most of them in Canada, but a few in New York and the Indian Territory. About 2,400 Mohawks are in Canada, as are also 1,000 Oneidas, 300 of whom are in New York and 1,700 at Green Bay agency, THE NORTH AMERICANS. 265 consin ; 350 Onondagas are in Canada, and 550 on New York reservations. Of the 3,100 Senecas, 127 are at the Quapaw agency, Indian Territory, 200 are in Canada, and the remainder in New York. The Tuscaroras number about 750, of whom about half are in Canada and half in New York. There are 700 Wyandots, 300 at the Quapaw agency and 400 in Canada. Besides these, there are about 4,400 Indians of this stock known as Caughnawagas and St. Regis, in Canada and southern New York, who seem to be a mixture of all the tribes of the Six Nations, the Mo hawks predominating. All the Cherokees and all the New York reservation Indians are civilized and self- supporting. MUSKOGI. An especial interest attaches to the Muskogi or Chocta-Muskhogi linguistic stock, because its sur vivors constitute four out of the five so-called civi lized tribes, and also because there is a reasonable probability that they are the descendants of some of those people who built the great mounds in the Mis sissippi Valley and in the Gulf States, which have given rise to so many speculations and theories as to their origin. This stock inhabited the country " from the Savannah Kiver and the Atlantic west to the Mississippi, and from the Gulf of Mexico north to the Tennessee River " ; and although the tribes dif fered somewhat from one another in physical charac teristics, their relationship is close. The culture of this people was high. They were industrious cultivators of the soil, and raised large crops of corn, beans, squashes, and tobacco. Their towns were large and fortified, and often built on 266 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. high mounds artificially constructed, and their houses substantial, and containing several rooms. Though made of stone, their weapons and utensils were very finely finished. Their religious system was highly developed and its ritual elaborate, and they had an extensive oral literature. Their mortuary customs were singular, the bodies of the dead in some tribes being exposed until the flesh decayed, when the bones were cleaned and buried in the gentile mound. The gentile system prevailed, descent being in the female line. Women had a standing equal to that of men, and occasionally one filled the office of chief. The neighbours of the Muskogi stock were the Algonquins and Iroquois on the north, the Timu- quans of Florida, and the isolated Dakota colony of the Biloxi on the south, and the Natches, Tonicas, and southern Dakotas on the west. Some of the tribes of the Muskogi stock were : ALIBAMU = " burnt clearing " (not " here we rest ") (Gatschet). On the Alabama River, Alabama. APALACHI = " people on the other side " (Gatschet). Apalachi Bay, Florida. CHAKTA or OHOCTA from a Spanish word, meaning "flat head" (Gatschet). Southern Mississippi. CHIKASA or CHICKASAW = " rebels or renegades." Northern Mississippi. HITCHITI = " looking up ahead " (Gatschet). Southeastern Georgia. MASKOGI or CREEK PROPER doubtfully from the Algonquin word maskigo, meaning " swampy." Central Alabama. SEMINOLE = " wanderers or runaways." Northern and Central Florida. YAMASI = " gentle " (Gatschet). Southern coast of South Caro lina THE NORTH AMERICANS. 267 The territory occupied by this stock is thus seen to be not very large, yet owing to their industrious habits and their adaptability to civilized pursuits, they have made a good struggle for existence, and to-day are doing well and increasing in numbers. The Apa- lachi and Yamasi are extinct, and but few remain of the Alibamu ; but there are 10,000 Choctaws, 2,500 Chickasaws, 9,500 Creeks, and 2, GOO Seminoles in the Indian Territory, a few Choctaws in Louisiana, and about 400 Seminoles in Florida. The Indians of this stock who are in the Indian Territory are civilized and well to do. Besides the stocks already spoken of, there are others, whose importance deserves a more extended mention than can here be given. One of these is the Shoshoni, a family occupying the Rocky Mountains and the plains on the flanks of that range from Red Deer s River which flows into the Saskatchewan or perhaps even from the head of Peace River, south through Mexico. This stock includes tribes whose names are well known, and its culture ranged from the lowest to the highest, from the miserable Diggers and Sheep-eaters to the Aztecs, who had some acquaint ance with metal, and far exceeded any other North American tribe in their approach to civilization. To this stock belong the brave but peaceful Snakes, the warlike Comanches, the Pai-Utes, the Gosiutes, the mountain-loving Utes, the Mokis, the Guaymas, the Mayas, the Papagos, the Pimas, the Yaquis, the Az tecs, the Tlascalans, and others reaching south to Guatemala. Dr. Brinton gives forty-four tribes of this stock, divided into three groups, and covering territory from British to Central America. 268 THE STORY OF THE INDIAN. Another family of importance is the Pawnee or Caddo, whose territory extended interruptedly from the Gulf of Mexico to the upper Missouri. They were immigrants from the southwest, probably from the shores of the Gulf of California, and brought with them to their northern home some religious cere monies and beliefs which remind us of the Aztecs. The usual form of sacrifice was a burnt offering". o They lived in permanent villages, tilled the soil, and manufactured pottery. Some of their traditions al lude to a time when a woman was their chief. It is hoped that from the foregoing pages some notion may be had of the past and present condition of some of the best-known tribes of the North Amer icans. INDEX. Agriculture, 48, 64. Algonquins, 247. Animal beliefs. 174, 205. Antelope, 87. Arrow making, 146. Athabascans, 253. Atius Tirawa, 202. Axe, 152. Bear, beliefs about, 206. Beaver, beliefs about, 206. Berries, 65, 71. Berry Child, 109. Big Snake, 178. Boats, 160. Bone, gambling with, 2T. Bow, 150. Bridled Man, 115. Buffalo hunting, 71. Buffalo, in mythology, 192. Buffalo, sacred animal, 205. Buffalo stone, 60. Buffalo traps, 57. Buffalo, 52, et seq. Bundles, sacred, 91, 105, 189, 211, 218. Buzzard, belief about, 207. Caches, 49. Caddos, 268. Camas root, 65, 72. Canoe, 157 et seq. Cardinal points, 210. Carving, 161. Children s games, 17. Children, 17, 78. Christianity, teachings of, 221 Clothing, 153. Coldmaker, 173. Corn, Mother, 190, 208. Corn, origin, 190, 203. Coup, 142. Creation, 183. Dakotas, 257. Dancing, social, 24. Deer, 81. Dolls, 19. Dreams and dreaming, 10^ i(J6, 175, 210, 217. Dress, 6, 37, 153. Dwellings, 144 et seq. Eagle, belief* about, 207. Elk, 81, 87. Feasting, 9, 81. Ferret, black-footed, 175. Firesticks, 239. Fishing, 49. Four Bears, 97, 141. Future life, 195 et sg. Gambling, 22, 24, 26, lOO t ita Game as food, 50. Gardens, 48. Ghosts, 196 et seq. Giants, 184. Government, 245. Hands, gambling game, 27. Horse racing, 29. Horses, first possession of, 231. 270 INDEX. Horses taken by war parties, 88. Household utensils, 154. Hunting buffalo, 71. Hunting mountain sheep, 82. Implements, 143 et seq. I-nis kim, 60. Iroquois. 261. Left Hand, 94. Lodges, 144 et seq. Marriage, 8, 30 et seq. Maul, 152. Medicine, 175. Medicine man, 180. Medicine sweat, 5. Missionaries, 221. Moccasins, 153. Moon, 204, 215. Mountain sheep, 81. Mountain sheep, hunting the, 82. Musical instruments, 162. Muskogis, 265. Nahurac, 205. Painting bodies, 4, 25. Pawnees, 268. Pawnee creation myths, 184. Pawnee marriage, 41. Pawnee-Skidi fight, 127. Pemmican, 49. Picture writing, 243. Piegan and Crow and Gros Ven- tres fight, 134. Pipes and smoking, 31, 45, 161, 202, 209. Pottery, 154. Prayers and praying, 52. 61, 68, 73, 87, 91, 165, 175, 202, 210, 213, 215. Keincarnation, 199. Religious ceremonies, 52, 61, 68, 73, 87, 91, 203, 204. King game, 5, 21. Roots for food, 64. Sacred bundles, 91, 105, 189, 211, 218. Sacrifices, 52, 68, 87, 124, 204, Salmon fishing, 66. Shields, 153. Shoshoni, 267. Skidi war woman, 104. Sledges, 156. Smoking, 31, 45, 161, 202, 209. Spirits, 196. Stars, 204, 216. Stick game, 5, 21. Stone implements, 143. Subsistence, 48. Sun, 204, 215. Sweat lodge, 3, 5. Three Suns, 12, 30, 82. Thunder, 204. Thunder bird, 169. Thunder pipe, 170. Tipi, 145. Tirawa, 184, 202 et seq. Traps for game, 57. Travois, 156. Under-water people, 166. Utensils, 143 et seq. War parties, 88 et seq. Weaving, 155. Wheel game, 21. White Bear, 177. White men, first meeting, 224. Wife, 46. Windmaker, 173. Wolf Calf, 232. Woman changed to rock, 69. Woman s position, 46, 244. Women, daily life of, 6. THE END. (16) UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRA BERKELEY ARY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 9Jan 58JP REC D LD OCT5 64 -11 A KB 2 5 RECEIVED FB27 68-11PM LD 21-100m-7, 52(A2528sl6)476