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faithfully except as shown in the TRANSCRIBER'S AMENDMENTS at the end of
the text. This etext presumes a mono-spaced font on the user's device,
such as Courier New. Words in italics are indicated like _this_. But the
publisher also wanted to emphasize names in sentences already italicized,
so he printed them in the regular font which is indicated here with: _The
pirates then went to +Hispaniola+._ Obscured letters in the original
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S^ta Maria. The FOOTNOTES: section is located near the end of the text.
[oe] represents the oe ligature.
There are two volumes in this etext: VOL. I and VOL. II.
Author: Francis Parkman (1823-1893).
* * * * *
THE
CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC
AND THE
INDIAN WAR
AFTER
THE CONQUEST OF CANADA.
VOL. I.
TO
JARED SPARKS, LL.D.,
PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED
AS A TESTIMONIAL OF HIGH PERSONAL REGARD,
AND A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT
FOR HIS DISTINGUISHED SERVICES TO
AMERICAN HISTORY.
Preface
TO THE SIXTH EDITION.
I chose the subject of this book as affording better opportunities than
any other portion of American history for portraying forest life and the
Indian character; and I have never seen reason to change this opinion. In
the nineteen years that have passed since the first edition was published,
a considerable amount of additional material has come to light. This has
been carefully collected, and is incorporated in the present edition. The
most interesting portion of this new material has been supplied by the
Bouquet and Haldimand Papers, added some years ago to the manuscript
collections of the British Museum. Among them are several hundred letters
from officers engaged in the Pontiac war, some official, others personal
and familiar, affording very curious illustrations of the events of the
day and of the characters of those engaged in them. Among the facts which
they bring to light, some are sufficiently startling; as, for example, the
proposal of the Commander-in-Chief to infect the hostile tribes with the
small-pox, and that of a distinguished subordinate officer to take revenge
on the Indians by permitting an unrestricted sale of rum.
The two volumes of the present edition have been made uniform with those
of the series "France and England in North America." I hope to continue
that series to the period of the extinction of French power on this
continent. "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" will then form a sequel; and its
introductory chapters will be, in a certain sense, a summary of what has
preceded. This will involve some repetition in the beginning of the book,
but I have nevertheless thought it best to let it remain as originally
written.
BOSTON, 16 September, 1870.
Preface
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The conquest of Canada was an event of momentous consequence in American
history. It changed the political aspect of the continent, prepared a way
for the independence of the British colonies, rescued the vast tracts of
the interior from the rule of military despotism, and gave them,
eventually, to the keeping of an ordered democracy. Yet to the red natives
of the soil its results were wholly disastrous. Could the French have
maintained their ground, the ruin of the Indian tribes might long have
been postponed; but the victory of Quebec was the signal of their swift
decline. Thenceforth they were destined to melt and vanish before the
advancing waves of Anglo-American power, which now rolled westward
unchecked and unopposed. They saw the danger, and, led by a great and
daring champion, struggled fiercely to avert it. The history of that
epoch, crowded as it is with scenes of tragic interest, with marvels of
suffering and vicissitude, of heroism and endurance, has been, as yet,
unwritten, buried in the archives of governments, or among the obscurer
records of private adventure. To rescue it from oblivion is the object of
the following work. It aims to portray the American forest and the
American Indian at the period when both received their final doom.
It is evident that other study than that of the closet is indispensable to
success in such an attempt. Habits of early reading had greatly aided to
prepare me for the task; but necessary knowledge of a more practical kind
has been supplied by the indulgence of a strong natural taste, which, at
various intervals, led me to the wild regions of the north and west. Here,
by the camp-fire, or in the canoe, I gained familiar acquaintance with the
men and scenery of the wilderness. In 1846, I visited various primitive
tribes of the Rocky Mountains, and was, for a time, domesticated in a
village of the western Dahcotah, on the high plains between Mount Laramie
and the range of the Medicine Bow.
The most troublesome part of the task was the collection of the necessary
documents. These consisted of letters, journals, reports, and despatches,
scattered among numerous public offices, and private families, in Europe
and America. When brought together, they amounted to about three thousand
four hundred manuscript pages. Contemporary newspapers, magazines, and
pamphlets have also been examined, and careful search made for every book
which, directly or indirectly, might throw light upon the subject. I have
visited the sites of all the principal events recorded in the narrative,
and gathered such local traditions as seemed worthy of confidence.
I am indebted to the liberality of Hon. Lewis Cass for a curious
collection of papers relating to the siege of Detroit by the Indians.
Other important contributions have been obtained from the state paper
offices of London and Paris, from the archives of New York, Pennsylvania,
and other states, and from the manuscript collections of several
historical societies. The late William L. Stone, Esq., commenced an
elaborate biography of Sir William Johnson, which it is much to be
lamented he did not live to complete. By the kindness of Mrs. Stone, I was
permitted to copy from his extensive collection of documents such portions
as would serve the purposes of the following History.
To President Sparks of Harvard University, General Whiting, U. S. A.,
Brantz Mayer, Esq., of Baltimore, Francis J. Fisher, Esq., of
Philadelphia, and Rev. George E. Ellis, of Charlestown, I beg to return a
warm acknowledgment for counsel and assistance. Mr. Benjamin Perley Poore
and Mr. Henry Stevens procured copies of valuable documents from the
archives of Paris and London. Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq., Dr. Elwyn, of
Philadelphia, Dr. O'Callaghan, of Albany, George H. Moore, Esq., of New
York, Lyman C. Draper, Esq., of Philadelphia, Judge Law, of Vincennes, and
many others, have kindly contributed materials to the work. Nor can I
withhold an expression of thanks to the aid so freely rendered in the dull
task of proof-reading and correction.
The crude and promiscuous mass of materials presented an aspect by no
means inviting. The field of the history was uncultured and unreclaimed,
and the labor that awaited me was like that of the border settler, who,
before he builds his rugged dwelling, must fell the forest-trees, burn the
undergrowth, clear the ground, and hew the fallen trunks to due
proportion.
Several obstacles have retarded the progress of the work. Of these, one of
the most considerable was the condition of my sight. For about three
years, the light of day was insupportable, and every attempt at reading or
writing completely debarred. Under these circumstances, the task of
sifting the materials and composing the work was begun and finished. The
papers were repeatedly read aloud by an amanuensis, copious notes and
extracts were made, and the narrative written down from my dictation. This
process, though extremely slow and laborious, was not without its
advantages; and I am well convinced that the authorities have been even
more minutely examined, more scrupulously collated, and more thoroughly
digested, than they would have been under ordinary circumstances.
In order to escape the tedious circumlocution, which, from the nature of
the subject, could not otherwise have been avoided, the name English is
applied, throughout the volume, to the British American colonists, as well
as to the people of the mother country. The necessity is somewhat to be
regretted, since, even at an early period, clear distinctions were visible
between the offshoot and the parent stock.
BOSTON, August 1, 1851.
Contents of Vol. I.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.--INDIAN TRIBES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
_General Characteristics.--Tribal Divisions.--Mode of Government.--
Social Harmony.--The Totem.--Classification of Tribes.--The Iroquois.--
Their Position and Character.--Their Political Organization.--
Traditions of their Confederacy.--Their Myths and Legends.--Their
Eloquence and Sagacity.--Arts.--Agriculture.--Their Dwellings,
Villages, and Forts.--Their Winter Life.--The War Path.--Festivals and
Pastimes.--Pride of the Iroquois.--The Hurons or Wyandots.--Their
Customs and Character.--Their Dispersion.--The Neutral Nation. Its
Fate.--The Eries and Andastes.--Triumphs of the Confederacy.--The
Adoption of Prisoners.--The Tuscaroras.--Superiority of the Iroquois
Race.--The Algonquins.--The Lenni Lenape.--Their changing Fortunes.--
The Shawanoes.--The Miamis and the Illinois.--The Ojibwas,
Pottawattamies, and Ottawas.--The Sacs and Foxes.--The Menomonies and
Knisteneaux.--Customs of the Northern Algonquins.--Their Summer and
Winter Life.--Legends of the Algonquins.--Religious Faith of the
Indians.--The Indian Character.--Its Inconsistencies.--Its Ruling
Passions.--Pride.--Hero-worship.--Coldness, Jealousy, Suspicion.--
Self-control.--Intellectual Traits.--Inflexibility.--Generous
Qualities._ 15
CHAPTER II.
1663-1763.
FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN AMERICA.
_Contrast of French and English Colonies.--Feudalism in Canada.--
Priests and Monks.--Puritanism and Democracy in New England.--French
Life in Canada.--Military Strength of Canada.--Religious Zeal.--
Missions.--The Jesuits.--Brebeuf and Lallemant.--Martyrdom of Jogues.--
Results of the Missions.--French Explorers.--La Salle.--His Plan of
Discovery.--His Sufferings.--His Heroism.--He discovers the Mouth of
the Mississippi.--Louisiana.--France in the West.--Growth of English
Colonies.--Approaching Collision._ 46
CHAPTER III.
1608-1763.
THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, AND THE INDIANS.
_Champlain defeats the Iroquois.--The Iroquois Wars.--Misery of
Canada.--Expedition of Frontenac.--Success of the French.--French
Influence in the West.--La Verandrye.--The English Fur-trade.--
Protestant and Romish Missions.--The English and the Iroquois.--Policy
of the French.--The Frenchman in the Wigwam.--Coureurs des Bois.--The
White Savage.--The English Fur-trader.--William Penn and his
Eulogists.--The Indians and the Quakers.--Injustice of Penn's
Successors.--The Walking Purchase.--Speech of Canassatego.--Removal of
the Delawares.--Intrusion of Settlers.--Success of French Intrigues.--
Father Picquet.--Sir William Johnson.--Position of Parties._ 59
CHAPTER IV.
1700-1755.
COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES.
_The Puritan and the Canadian.--Fort Frederic.--Acadia.--The French on
the Ohio.--Mission of Washington.--Trent driven from the Ohio.--Death
of Jumonville.--Skirmish at the Great Meadows.--Alarm of the Indians.--
Congress at Albany.--French and English Diplomacy.--Braddock and
Dieskau.--Naval Engagement.--The War in Europe and America.--Braddock
in Virginia.--March of his Army.--Beaujeu at Fort du Quesne.--
Ambuscade at the Monongahela.--Rout of Braddock.--Its Consequences.--
Acadia, Niagara, and Crown Point.--Battle of Lake George.--Prosecution
of the War.--Oswego.--Fort William Henry.--Storming of Ticonderoga.--
State of Canada.--Plans for its Reduction.--Progress of the English
Arms.--Wolfe before Quebec.--Assault at Montmorenci.--Heroism of
Wolfe.--The Heights of Abraham.--Battle of Quebec.--Death of Wolfe.--
Death of Montcalm.--Surrender of Quebec.--Fall of Canada._ 79
CHAPTER V.
1755-1763.
THE WILDERNESS AND ITS TENANTS AT THE CLOSE OF THE FRENCH WAR.
_Sufferings of the Frontier.--Treaties with the Western Tribes.--
Christian Frederic Post.--The Iroquois.--The remote Tribes.--The
Forest.--Indian Population.--Condition of the Tribes.--Onondaga.--The
Delawares and neighboring Tribes.--Their Habits and Condition.--The
Shawanoes, Miamis, Illinois, and Wyandots.--English Settlements.--
Forest Thoroughfares.--Fur-traders.--Their Habits and Character.--The
Forest Traveller.--The French at the Illinois.--Military Life in the
Forest.--The Savage and the European.--Hunters and Trappers.--
Civilization and Barbarism._ 111
CHAPTER VI.
1760.
THE ENGLISH TAKE POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN POSTS.
_The victorious Armies at Montreal.--Major Robert Rogers.--His
Expedition up the Lakes.--His Meeting with Pontiac.--Ambitious Views
of Pontiac.--He befriends the English.--The English take Possession of
Detroit.--Of other French Posts.--British Power Predominant in the
West._ 124
CHAPTER VII.
1760-1763.
ANGER OF THE INDIANS.--THE CONSPIRACY.
_Discontent of the Tribes.--Impolitic Course of the English.--
Disorders of the Fur-trade.--Military Insolence.--Intrusion of
Settlers.--French Intrigue.--The Delaware Prophet.--An abortive Plot.--
Pontiac's Conspiracy.--Character of Pontiac.--Gloomy Prospects of the
Indian Race.--Designs of Pontiac.--His War Messengers.--Tribes engaged
in the Conspiracy.--Dissimulation of the Indians.--The War-belt among
the Miamis._ 131
CHAPTER VIII.
1763.
INDIAN PREPARATION.
_The Indians as a military People.--Their inefficient Organization.--
Their insubordinate Spirit.--Their Improvidence.--Policy of the Indian
Leaders.--Difficulties of Forest Warfare.--Defenceless Condition of
the Colonies.--The Peace of Paris.--Royal Proclamation.--The
War-chief. His Fasts and Vigils.--The War-feast.--The War-dance.--
Departure of the Warriors.--The Bursting of the Storm._ 145
CHAPTER IX.
1763, April.
THE COUNCIL AT THE RIVER ECORCES.
_Pontiac musters his Warriors.--They assemble at the River Ecorces.--
The Council.--Speech of Pontiac.--Allegory of the Delaware.--The
Council dissolves.--Calumet Dance at Detroit.--Plan to surprise the
Garrison._ 151
CHAPTER X.
1763, May.
DETROIT.
_Strange Phenomenon.--Origin and History of Detroit.--Its Condition in
1763.--Character of its Inhabitants.--French Life at Detroit.--The
Fort and Garrison.--Pontiac at Isle a la Peche.--Suspicious Conduct of
the Indians.--Catharine, the Ojibwa Girl.--She reveals the Plot.--
Precautions of the Commandant.--A Night of Anxiety._ 159
CHAPTER XI.
1763.
TREACHERY OF PONTIAC.
_The Morning of the Council.--Pontiac enters the Port.--Address and
Courage of the Commandant.--The Plot defeated.--The Chiefs suffered to
escape.--Indian Idea of Honor.--Pontiac again visits the Fort.--False
Alarm.--Pontiac throws off the Mask.--Ferocity of his Warriors.--The
Ottawas cross the River.--Fate of Davers and Robertson.--General
Attack.--A Truce.--Major Campbell's Embassy.--He is made Prisoner by
Pontiac._ 169
CHAPTER XII.
1763.
PONTIAC AT THE SIEGE OF DETROIT.
_The Christian Wyandots join Pontiac.--Peril of the Garrison.--Indian
Courage--The English threatened with Famine.--Pontiac's Council with
the French.--His Speech.--He exacts Provision from the French.--He
appoints Commissaries.--He issues Promissory Notes.--His Acuteness and
Sagacity.--His Authority over his Followers.--His Magnanimity._ 183
CHAPTER XIII.
1763.
ROUT OF CUYLER'S DETACHMENT.--FATE OF THE FOREST GARRISONS.
_Re-enforcement sent to Detroit.--Attack on the Schooner.--Relief at
Hand.--Disappointment of the Garrison.--Escape of Prisoners.--Cuyler's
Defeat.--Indian Debauch.--Fate of the Captives.--Capture of Fort
Sandusky.--Strength of the Besiegers.--Capture of Fort St. Joseph.--
Capture of Fort Michillimackinac.--Capture of Fort Ouatanon.--Capture
of Fort Miami.--Defence of Fort Presqu' Isle.--Its Capture._ 195
CHAPTER XIV.
1763.
THE INDIANS CONTINUE TO BLOCKADE DETROIT.
_Attack on the Armed Vessel.--News of the Treaty of Paris.--Pontiac
summons the Garrison.--Council at the Ottawa Camp.--Disappointment of
Pontiac.--He is joined by the Coureurs de Bois.--Sortie of the
Garrison.--Death of Major Campbell.--Attack on Pontiac's Camp.--Fire
Rafts.--The Wyandots and Pottawattamies beg for Peace._ 214
CHAPTER XV.
1763.
THE FIGHT OF BLOODY BRIDGE.
_Dalzell's Detachment.--Dalzell reaches Detroit.--Stratagem of the
Wyandots.--Night Attack on Pontiac's Camp.--Indian Ambuscade.--Retreat
of the English.--Terror of Dalzell's Troops.--Death of Dalzell.--
Defence of Campau's House.--Grant conducts the Retreat.--Exultation of
the Indians.--Defence of the Schooner Gladwyn._ 226
CHAPTER XVI.
1763.
MICHILLIMACKINAC.
_The Voyager on the Lakes.--Michillimackinac in 1763.--Green Bay and
Ste. Marie.--The Northern Wilderness.--Tribes of the Lakes.--
Adventures of a Trader.--Speech of Minavavana.--Arrival of English
Troops.--Disposition of the Indians.--The Ojibwa War-chief.--
Ambassador from Pontiac.--Sinister Designs of the Ojibwas.--Warnings
of Danger.--Wawatam.--Eve of the Massacre._ 238
CHAPTER XVII.
1763.
THE MASSACRE.
_The King's Birthday.--Heedlessness of the Garrison.--Indian
Ball-play.--The Stratagem.--Slaughter of the Soldiers.--Escape of
Alexander Henry.--His appalling Situation.--His Hiding-place
discovered.--Survivors of the Massacre.--Plan of retaking the Fort.--
Adventures of Henry.--Unexpected Behavior of the Ottawas.--They take
Possession of the Fort.--Their Council with the Ojibwas.--Henry and
his Fellow-prisoners.--He is rescued by Wawatam.--Cannibalism.--Panic
among the Conquerors.--They retire to Mackinaw.--The Island of
Mackinaw.--Indian Carouse.--Famine among the Indians.--They disperse
to their Wintering Grounds.--Green Bay. The neighboring Tribes.--
Gorell. His Address and Prudence.--He conciliates the Indians.--He
abandons Green Bay.--The English driven from the Upper Lakes._ 249
List of Illustrations.
Forts and Settlements in America, 1763 A. D. 12
Fort and Settlements of Detroit, A. D. 1763 161
[Illustration: FORTS AND SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA, 1763 A. D.]
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.--INDIAN TRIBES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
The Indian is a true child of the forest and the desert. The wastes and
solitudes of nature are his congenial home. His haughty mind is imbued
with the spirit of the wilderness, and the light of civilization falls on
him with a blighting power. His unruly pride and untamed freedom are in
harmony with the lonely mountains, cataracts, and rivers among which he
dwells; and primitive America, with her savage scenery and savage men,
opens to the imagination a boundless world, unmatched in wild sublimity.
The Indians east of the Mississippi may be divided into several great
families, each distinguished by a radical peculiarity of language. In
their moral and intellectual, their social and political state, these
various families exhibit strong shades of distinction; but, before
pointing them out, I shall indicate a few prominent characteristics,
which, faintly or distinctly, mark the whole in common.
All are alike a race of hunters, sustaining life wholly, or in part, by
the fruits of the chase. Each family is split into tribes; and these
tribes, by the exigencies of the hunter life, are again divided into
sub-tribes, bands, or villages, often scattered far asunder, over a wide
extent of wilderness. Unhappily for the strength and harmony of the Indian
race, each tribe is prone to regard itself, not as the member of a great
whole, but as a sovereign and independent nation, often arrogating to
itself an importance superior to all the rest of mankind;[1] and the
warrior whose petty horde might muster a few scores of half-starved
fighting men, strikes his hand upon his heart, and exclaims, in all the
pride of patriotism, "I am a _Menomone_."
In an Indian community, each man is his own master. He abhors restraint,
and owns no other authority than his own capricious will; and yet this
wild notion of liberty is not inconsistent with certain gradations of rank
and influence. Each tribe has its sachem, or civil chief, whose office is
in a manner hereditary, and, among many, though by no means among all
tribes, descends in the female line; so that the brother of the incumbent,
or the son of his sister, and not his own son, is the rightful successor
to his dignities.[2] If, however, in the opinion of the old men and
subordinate chiefs, the heir should be disqualified for the exercise of
the office by cowardice, incapacity, or any defect of character, they do
not scruple to discard him, and elect another in his place, usually fixing
their choice on one of his relatives. The office of the sachem is no
enviable one. He has neither laws to administer nor power to enforce his
commands. His counsellors are the inferior chiefs and principal men of the
tribe; and he never sets himself in opposition to the popular will, which
is the sovereign power of these savage democracies. His province is to
advise, and not to dictate; but, should he be a man of energy, talent, and
address, and especially should he be supported by numerous relatives and
friends, he may often acquire no small measure of respect and power. A
clear distinction is drawn between the civil and military authority,
though both are often united in the same person. The functions of
war-chief may, for the most part, be exercised by any one whose prowess
and reputation are sufficient to induce the young men to follow him to
battle; and he may, whenever he thinks proper, raise a band of volunteers,
and go out against the common enemy.
We might imagine that a society so loosely framed would soon resolve
itself into anarchy; yet this is not the case, and an Indian village is
singularly free from wranglings and petty strife. Several causes conspire
to this result. The necessities of the hunter life, preventing the
accumulation of large communities, make more stringent organization
needless; while a species of self-control, inculcated from childhood upon
every individual, enforced by a sentiment of dignity and manhood, and
greatly aided by the peculiar temperament of the race, tends strongly to
the promotion of harmony. Though he owns no law, the Indian is inflexible
in his adherence to ancient usages and customs; and the principle of
hero-worship, which belongs to his nature, inspires him with deep respect
for the sages and captains of his tribe. The very rudeness of his
condition, and the absence of the passions which wealth, luxury, and the
other incidents of civilization engender, are favorable to internal
harmony; and to the same cause must likewise be ascribed too many of his
virtues, which would quickly vanish, were he elevated from his savage
state.
A peculiar social institution exists among the Indians, very curious in
its character; and though I am not prepared to say that it may be traced
through all the tribes east of the Mississippi, yet its prevalence is so
general, and its influence on political relations so important, as to
claim especial attention. Indian communities, independently of their local
distribution into tribes, bands, and villages, are composed of several
distinct clans. Each clan has its emblem, consisting of the figure of some
bird, beast, or reptile; and each is distinguished by the name of the
animal which it thus bears as its device; as, for example, the clan of the
Wolf, the Deer, the Otter, or the Hawk. In the language of the Algonquins,
these emblems are known by the name of _Totems_.[3] The members of the
same clan, being connected, or supposed to be so, by ties of kindred, more
or less remote, are prohibited from intermarriage. Thus Wolf cannot marry
Wolf; but he may, if he chooses, take a wife from the clan of Hawks, or
any other clan but his own. It follows that when this prohibition is
rigidly observed, no single clan can live apart from the rest; but the
whole must be mingled together, and in every family the husband and wife
must be of different clans.
To different totems attach different degrees of rank and dignity; and
those of the Bear, the Tortoise, and the Wolf are among the first in
honor. Each man is proud of his badge, jealously asserting its claims to
respect; and the members of the same clan, though they may, perhaps, speak
different dialects, and dwell far asunder, are yet bound together by the
closest ties of fraternity. If a man is killed, every member of the clan
feels called upon to avenge him; and the wayfarer, the hunter, or the
warrior is sure of a cordial welcome in the distant lodge of the clansman
whose face perhaps he has never seen. It may be added that certain
privileges, highly prized as hereditary rights, sometimes reside in
particular clans; such as that of furnishing a sachem to the tribe, or of
performing certain religious ceremonies or magic rites.
The Indians east of the Mississippi may be divided into three great
families: the Iroquois, the Algonquin, and the Mobilian, each speaking a
language of its own, varied by numerous dialectic forms. To these families
must be added a few stragglers from the great western race of the
Dahcotah, besides several distinct tribes of the south, each of which has
been regarded as speaking a tongue peculiar to itself.[4] The Mobilian
group embraces the motley confederacy of the Creeks, the crafty Choctaws,
and the stanch and warlike Chickasaws. Of these, and of the distinct
tribes dwelling in their vicinity, or within their limits, I shall only
observe that they offer, with many modifications, and under different
aspects, the same essential features which mark the Iroquois and the
Algonquins, the two great families of the north.[5] The latter, who were
the conspicuous actors in the events of the ensuing narrative, demand a
closer attention.
THE IROQUOIS FAMILY.
Foremost in war, foremost in eloquence, foremost in their savage arts of
policy, stood the fierce people called by themselves the _Hodenosaunee_,
and by the French the _Iroquois_, a name which has since been applied to
the entire family of which they formed the dominant member.[6] They
extended their conquests and their depredations from Quebec to the
Carolinas, and from the western prairies to the forests of Maine.[7] On
the south, they forced tribute from the subjugated Delawares, and pierced
the mountain fastnesses of the Cherokees with incessant forays.[8] On the
north, they uprooted the ancient settlements of the Wyandots; on the west
they exterminated the Eries and the Andastes, and spread havoc and dismay
among the tribes of the Illinois; and on the east, the Indians of New
England fled at the first peal of the Mohawk war-cry. Nor was it the
Indian race alone who quailed before their ferocious valor. All Canada
shook with the fury of their onset; the people fled to the forts for
refuge; the blood-besmeared conquerors roamed like wolves among the
burning settlements, and the colony trembled on the brink of ruin.
The Iroquois in some measure owed their triumphs to the position of their
country; for they dwelt within the present limits of the State of New
York, whence several great rivers and the inland oceans of the northern
lakes opened ready thoroughfares to their roving warriors through all the
adjacent wilderness. But the true fountain of their success is to be
sought in their own inherent energies, wrought to the most effective
action under a political fabric well suited to the Indian life; in their
mental and moral organization; in their insatiable ambition and restless
ferocity.
In their scheme of government, as in their social customs and religious
observances, the Iroquois displayed, in full symmetry and matured
strength, the same characteristics which in other tribes are found
distorted, withered, decayed to the root, or, perhaps, faintly visible in
an imperfect germ. They consisted of five tribes or nations--the Mohawks,
the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, to whom a sixth,
the Tuscaroras, was afterwards added.[9] To each of these tribes belonged
an organization of its own. Each had several sachems, who, with the
subordinate chiefs and principal men, regulated all its internal affairs;
but, when foreign powers were to be treated with, or matters involving the
whole confederacy required deliberation, all the sachems of the several
tribes convened in general assembly at the great council-house, in the
Valley of Onondaga. Here ambassadors were received, alliances were
adjusted, and all subjects of general interest discussed with exemplary
harmony.[10] The order of debate was prescribed by time-honored customs;
and, in the fiercest heat of controversy, the assembly maintained its
self-control.
But the main stay of Iroquois polity was the system of _totemship_. It was
this which gave the structure its elastic strength; and but for this, a
mere confederacy of jealous and warlike tribes must soon have been rent
asunder by shocks from without or discord from within. At some early
period, the Iroquois probably formed an individual nation; for the whole
people, irrespective of their separation into tribes, consisted of eight
totemic clans; and the members of each clan, to what nation soever they
belonged, were mutually bound to one another by those close ties of
fraternity which mark this singular institution. Thus the five nations of
the confederacy were laced together by an eight-fold band; and to this
hour their slender remnants cling to one another with invincible tenacity.
It was no small security to the liberties of the Iroquois--liberties which
they valued beyond any other possession--that by the Indian custom of
descent in the female line, which among them was more rigidly adhered to
than elsewhere, the office of the sachem must pass, not to his son, but to
his brother, his sister's son, or some yet remoter kinsman. His power was
constantly deflected into the collateral branches of his family; and thus
one of the strongest temptations of ambition was cut off.[11] The Iroquois
had no laws; but they had ancient customs which took the place of laws.
Each man, or rather, each clan, was the avenger of its own wrongs; but the
manner of the retaliation was fixed by established usage. The tribal
sachems, and even the great council at Onondaga, had no power to compel
the execution of their decrees; yet they were looked up to with a respect
which the soldier's bayonet or the sheriff's staff would never have
commanded; and it is highly to the honor of the Indian character that they
could exert so great an authority where there was nothing to enforce it
but the weight of moral power.[12]
The origin of the Iroquois is lost in hopeless obscurity. That they came
from the west; that they came from the north; that they sprang from the
soil of New York, are the testimonies of three conflicting traditions, all
equally worthless as aids to historic inquiry.[13] It is at the era of
their confederacy--the event to which the five tribes owed all their
greatness and power, and to which we need assign no remoter date than that
of a century before the first arrival of the Dutch in New York--that faint
rays of light begin to pierce the gloom, and the chaotic traditions of the
earlier epoch mould themselves into forms more palpable and distinct.
Taounyawatha, the God of the Waters--such is the belief of the
Iroquois--descended to the earth to instruct his favorite people in the
arts of savage life; and when he saw how they were tormented by giants,
monsters, and evil spirits, he urged the divided tribes, for the common
defence, to band themselves together in an everlasting league. While the
injunction was as yet unfulfilled, the sacred messenger was recalled to
the Great Spirit; but, before his departure, he promised that another
should appear, empowered to instruct the people in all that pertained to
their confederation. And accordingly, as a band of Mohawk warriors was
threading the funereal labyrinth of an ancient pine forest, they heard,
amid its blackest depths, a hoarse voice chanting in measured cadence;
and, following the sound, they saw, seated among the trees, a monster so
hideous, that they stood benumbed with terror. His features were wild and
frightful. He was encompassed by hissing rattlesnakes, which, Medusa-like,
hung writhing from his head; and on the ground around him were strewn
implements of incantation, and magic vessels formed of human skulls.
Recovering from their amazement, the warriors could perceive that in the
mystic words of the chant, which he still poured forth, were couched the
laws and principles of the destined confederacy. The tradition further
declares that the monster, being surrounded and captured, was presently
transformed to human shape, that he became a chief of transcendent wisdom
and prowess, and to the day of his death ruled the councils of the now
united tribes. To this hour the presiding sachem of the council at
Onondaga inherits from him the honored name of Atotarho.[14]
The traditional epoch which preceded the auspicious event of the
confederacy, though wrapped in clouds and darkness, and defying historic
scrutiny, has yet a character and meaning of its own. The gloom is peopled
thick with phantoms; with monsters and prodigies, shapes of wild enormity,
yet offering, in the Teutonic strength of their conception, the evidence
of a robustness of mind unparalleled among tribes of a different lineage.
In these evil days, the scattered and divided Iroquois were beset with
every form of peril and disaster. Giants, cased in armor of stone,
descended on them from the mountains of the north. Huge beasts trampled
down their forests like fields of grass. Human heads, with streaming hair
and glaring eyeballs, shot through the air like meteors, shedding
pestilence and death throughout the land. A great horned serpent rose from
Lake Ontario; and only the thunder-bolts of the skies could stay his
ravages, and drive him back to his native deeps. The skeletons of men,
victims of some monster of the forest, were seen swimming in the Lake of
Teungktoo; and around the Seneca village on the Hill of Genundewah, a
two-headed serpent coiled himself, of size so monstrous that the wretched
people were unable to ascend his scaly sides, and perished in multitudes
by his pestilential breath. Mortally wounded at length by the magic arrow
of a child, he rolled down the steep, sweeping away the forest with his
writhings, and plunging into the lake below, where he lashed the black
waters till they boiled with blood and foam, and at length, exhausted
with his agony, sank, and perished at the bottom. Under the Falls of
Niagara dwelt the Spirit of the Thunder, with his brood of giant sons; and
the Iroquois trembled in their villages when, amid the blackening shadows
of the storm, they heard his deep shout roll along the firmament.
The energy of fancy, whence these barbarous creations drew their birth,
displayed itself, at a later period, in that peculiar eloquence which the
wild democracy of the Iroquois tended to call forth, and to which the
mountain and the forest, the torrent and the storm, lent their stores of
noble imagery. That to this imaginative vigor was joined mental power of a
different stamp, is witnessed by the caustic irony of Garangula and
Sagoyewatha, and no less by the subtle policy, sagacious as it was
treacherous, which marked the dealings of the Iroquois with surrounding
tribes.[15]
With all this mental superiority, the arts of life among them had not
emerged from their primitive rudeness; and their coarse pottery, their
spear and arrow heads of stone, were in no way superior to those of many
other tribes. Their agriculture deserves a higher praise. In 1696, the
invading army of Count Frontenac found the maize fields extending a league
and a half or two leagues from their villages; and, in 1779, the troops of
General Sullivan were filled with amazement at their abundant stores of
corn, beans, and squashes, and at the old apple orchards which grew around
their settlements.
Their dwellings and works of defence were far from contemptible, either in
their dimensions or in their structure; and though by the several attacks
of the French, and especially by the invasion of De Nonville, in 1687,
and of Frontenac, nine years later, their fortified towns were levelled to
the earth, never again to reappear; yet, in the works of Champlain and
other early writers we find abundant evidence of their pristine condition.
Along the banks of the Mohawk, among the hills and hollows of Onondaga, in
the forests of Oneida and Cayuga, on the romantic shores of Seneca Lake
and the rich borders of the Genesee, surrounded by waving maize fields,
and encircled from afar by the green margin of the forest, stood the
ancient strongholds of the confederacy. The clustering dwellings were
encompassed by palisades, in single, double, or triple rows, pierced with
loopholes, furnished with platforms within, for the convenience of the
defenders, with magazines of stones to hurl upon the heads of the enemy,
and with water conductors to extinguish any fire which might be kindled
from without.[16]
The area which these defences enclosed was often several acres in extent,
and the dwellings, ranged in order within, were sometimes more than a
hundred feet in length. Posts, firmly driven into the ground, with an
intervening framework of poles, formed the basis of the structure; and its
sides and arched roof were closely covered with layers of elm bark. Each
of the larger dwellings contained several distinct families, whose
separate fires were built along the central space, while compartments on
each side, like the stalls of a stable, afforded some degree of privacy.
Here, rude couches were prepared, and bear and deer skins spread; while
above, the ripened ears of maize, suspended in rows, formed a golden
tapestry.[17]
In the long evenings of midwinter, when in the wilderness without the
trees cracked with biting cold, and the forest paths were clogged with
snow, then, around the lodge-fires of the Iroquois, warriors, squaws, and
restless naked children were clustered in social groups, each dark face
brightening in the fickle fire-light, while, with jest and laugh, the pipe
passed round from hand to hand. Perhaps some shrivelled old warrior, the
story-teller of the tribe, recounted to attentive ears the deeds of
ancient heroism, legends of spirits and monsters, or tales of witches and
vampires--superstitions not less rife among this all-believing race, than
among the nations of the transatlantic world.
The life of the Iroquois, though void of those multiplying phases which
vary the routine of civilized existence, was one of sharp excitement and
sudden contrast. The chase, the warpath, the dance, the festival, the game
of hazard, the race of political ambition, all had their votaries. When
the assembled sachems had resolved on war against some foreign tribe, and
when, from their great council-house of bark, in the Valley of Onondaga,
their messengers had gone forth to invite the warriors to arms, then from
east to west, through the farthest bounds of the confederacy, a thousand
warlike hearts caught up the summons. With fasting and praying, and
consulting dreams and omens, with invoking the war-god, and dancing the
war-dance, the warriors sought to insure the triumph of their arms, and
then, their rites concluded, they began their stealthy progress through
the devious pathways of the forest. For days and weeks, in anxious
expectation, the villagers awaited the result. And now, as evening closed,
a shrill, wild cry, pealing from afar, over the darkening forest,
proclaimed the return of the victorious warriors. The village was alive
with sudden commotion, and snatching sticks and stones, knives and
hatchets, men, women, and children, yelling like fiends let loose, swarmed
out of the narrow portal, to visit upon the captives a foretaste of the
deadlier torments in store for them. The black arches of the forest glowed
with the fires of death, and with brandished torch and firebrand the
frenzied multitude closed around their victim. The pen shrinks to write,
the heart sickens to conceive, the fierceness of his agony, yet still,
amid the din of his tormentors, rose his clear voice of scorn and
defiance. The work was done, the blackened trunk was flung to the dogs,
and, with clamorous shouts and hootings, the murderers sought to drive
away the spirit of their victim.[18]
The Iroquois reckoned these barbarities among their most exquisite
enjoyments, and yet they had other sources of pleasure, which made up in
frequency and in innocence what they lacked in intensity. Each passing
season had its feasts and dances, often mingling religion with social
pastime. The young had their frolics and merry-makings, and the old had
their no less frequent councils, where conversation and laughter
alternated with grave deliberations for the public weal. There were also
stated periods marked by the recurrence of momentous ceremonies, in which
the whole community took part--the mystic sacrifice of the dogs, the
orgies of the dream feast, and the loathsome festival of the exhumation of
the dead. Yet in the intervals of war and hunting, these resources would
often fail; and, while the women were toiling in the cornfields, the lazy
warriors beguiled the hours with smoking or sleeping, with gambling or
gallantry.[19]
If we seek for a single trait preeminently characteristic of the Iroquois,
we shall find it in that boundless pride which impelled them to style
themselves, not inaptly as regards their own race, "the men surpassing all
others."[20] "Must I," exclaimed one of their great warriors, as he fell
wounded among a crowd of Algonquins,--"must I, who have made the whole
earth tremble, now die by the hands of children?" Their power kept pace
with their pride. Their war-parties roamed over half America, and their
name was a terror from the Atlantic to the Mississippi; but, when we ask
the numerical strength of the dreaded confederacy, when we discover that,
in the days of their greatest triumphs, their united cantons could not
have mustered four thousand warriors, we stand amazed at the folly and
dissension which left so vast a region the prey of a handful of bold
marauders. Of the cities and villages now so thickly scattered over the
lost domain of the Iroquois, a single one might boast a more numerous
population than all the five united tribes.[21]
From this remarkable people, who with all the ferocity of their race
blended heroic virtues and marked endowments of intellect, I pass to other
members of the same great family, whose different fortunes may perhaps be
ascribed rather to the force of circumstance, than to any intrinsic
inferiority.
The peninsula between the Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario was occupied by
two distinct peoples, speaking dialects of the Iroquois tongue. The Hurons
or Wyandots, including the tribe called by the French the Dionondadies, or
Tobacco Nation,[22] dwelt among the forests which bordered the eastern
shores of the fresh-water sea, to which they have left their name; while
the Neutral Nation, so called from their neutrality in the war between the
Hurons and the Five Nations, inhabited the northern shores of Lake Erie,
and even extended their eastern flank across the strait of Niagara.
The population of the Hurons has been variously stated at from ten
thousand to thirty thousand souls, but probably did not exceed the former
estimate. The Franciscans and the Jesuits were early among them, and from
their descriptions it is apparent that, in legends and superstitions,
manners and habits, religious observances and social customs, they were
closely assimilated to their brethren of the Five Nations. Their capacious
dwellings of bark, and their palisaded forts, seemed copied after the same
model.[23] Like the Five Nations, they were divided into tribes, and
cross-divided into totemic clans; and, as with them, the office of sachem
descended in the female line. The same crude materials of a political
fabric were to be found in both; but, unlike the Iroquois, the Wyandots
had not as yet wrought them into a system, and woven them into a
harmonious whole.
Like the Five Nations, the Wyandots were in some measure an agricultural
people; they bartered the surplus products of their maize fields to
surrounding tribes, usually receiving fish in exchange; and this traffic
was so considerable, that the Jesuits styled their country the Granary of
the Algonquins.[24]
Their prosperity was rudely broken by the hostilities of the Five Nations;
for though the conflicting parties were not ill matched in point of
numbers, yet the united counsels and ferocious energies of the confederacy
swept all before them. In the year 1649, in the depth of winter, their
warriors invaded the country of the Wyandots, stormed their largest
villages, and involved all within in indiscriminate slaughter.[25] The
survivors fled in panic terror, and the whole nation was broken and
dispersed.
Some found refuge among the French of Canada, where, at the village of
Lorette, near Quebec, their descendants still remain; others were
incorporated with their conquerors; while others again fled northward,
beyond Lake Superior, and sought an asylum among the wastes which bordered
on the north-eastern bands of the Dahcotah. Driven back by those fierce
bison-hunters, they next established themselves about the outlet of Lake
Superior, and the shores and islands in the northern parts of Lake Huron.
Thence, about the year 1680, they descended to Detroit, where they formed
a permanent settlement, and where, by their superior valor, capacity, and
address, they soon acquired an ascendency over the surrounding Algonquins.
The ruin of the Neutral Nation followed close on that of the Wyandots, to
whom, according to Jesuit authority, they bore an exact resemblance in
character and manners.[26] The Senecas soon found means to pick a quarrel
with them; they were assailed by all the strength of the insatiable
confederacy, and within a few years their destruction as a nation was
complete.
South of Lake Erie dwelt two members of the Iroquois family. The Andastes
built their fortified villages along the valley of the Lower Susquehanna;
while the Erigas, or Eries, occupied the borders of the lake which still
retains their name. Of these two nations little is known, for the Jesuits
had no missions among them, and few traces of them survive beyond their
names and the record of their destruction. The war with the Wyandots was
scarcely over, when the Five Nations turned their arms against their Erie
brethren.
In the year 1655, using their canoes as scaling ladders, they stormed the
Erie stronghold, leaped down like tigers among the defenders, and
butchered them without mercy.[27] The greater part of the nation was
involved in the massacre, and the remnant was incorporated with the
conquerors, or with other tribes, to which they fled for refuge. The ruin
of the Andastes came next in turn; but this brave people fought for twenty
years against their inexorable assailants, and their destruction was not
consummated until the year 1672, when they shared the fate of the
rest.[28]
Thus, within less than a quarter of a century, four nations, the most
brave and powerful of the North American savages, sank before the arms of
the confederates. Nor did their triumphs end here. Within the same short
space they subdued their southern neighbors the Lenape,[29] the leading
members of the Algonquin family, and expelled the Ottawas, a numerous
people of the same lineage, from the borders of the river which bears
their name. In the north, the west, and the south, their conquests
embraced every adjacent tribe; and meanwhile their war parties were
harassing the French of Canada with reiterated inroads, and yelling the
war-whoop under the walls of Quebec.
They were the worst of conquerors. Inordinate pride, the lust of blood and
dominion, were the mainsprings of their warfare; and their victories were
strained with every excess of savage passion. That their triumphs must
have cost them dear; that, in spite of their cautious tactics, these
multiplied conflicts must have greatly abridged their strength, would
appear inevitable. Their losses were, in fact, considerable; but every
breach was repaired by means of a practice to which they, in common with
other tribes, constantly adhered. When their vengeance was glutted by the
sacrifice of a sufficient number of captives, they spared the lives of the
remainder, and adopted them as members of their confederated tribes,
separating wives from husbands, and children from parents, and
distributing them among different villages, in order that old ties and
associations might be more completely broken up. This policy is said to
have been designated among them by a name which signifies "flesh cut into
pieces and scattered among the tribes."
In the years 1714-15, the confederacy received a great accession of
strength. Southwards, about the headwaters of the rivers Neuse and Tar,
and separated from their kindred tribes by intervening Algonquin
communities, dwelt the Tuscaroras, a warlike people belonging to the
generic stock of the Iroquois. The wrongs inflicted by white settlers, and
their own undistinguishing vengeance, involved them in a war with the
colonists, which resulted in their defeat and expulsion. They emigrated to
the Five Nations, whose allies they had been in former wars with southern
tribes, and who now gladly received them, admitting them as a sixth
nation, into their confederacy.
It is a remark of Gallatin, that, in their career of conquest, the Five
Nations encountered more stubborn resistance from the tribes of their own
family, than from those of a different lineage. In truth, all the scions
of this warlike stock seem endued with singular vitality and force, and
among them we must seek for the best type of the Indian character. Few
tribes could match them in prowess, constancy, moral energy, or
intellectual vigor. The Jesuits remarked that they were more intelligent,
yet less tractable, than other savages; and Charlevoix observes that,
though the Algonquins were readily converted, they made but fickle
proselytes; while the Hurons, though not easily won over to the church,
were far more faithful in their adherence.[30] Of this tribe, the Hurons
or Wyandots, a candid and experienced observer declares, that of all the
Indians with whom he was conversant, they alone held it disgraceful to
turn from the face of an enemy when the fortunes of the fight were
adverse.[31]
Besides these inherent qualities, the tribes of the Iroquois race derived
great advantages from their superior social organization. They were all,
more or less, tillers of the soil, and were thus enabled to concentrate a
more numerous population than the scattered tribes who live by the chase
alone. In their well-peopled and well-constructed villages, they dwelt
together the greater part of the year; and thence the religious rites and
social and political usages, which elsewhere existed only in the germ,
attained among them a full development. Yet these advantages were not
without alloy, and the Jesuits were not slow to remark that the stationary
and thriving Iroquois were more loose in their observance of social ties,
than the wandering and starving savages of the north.[32]
THE ALGONQUIN FAMILY.
Except the detached nation of the Tuscaroras, and a few smaller tribes
adhering to them, the Iroquois family was confined to the region south of
the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the peninsula east of Lake Huron. They
formed, as it were, an island in the vast expanse of Algonquin population,
extending from Hudson's Bay on the north to the Carolinas on the south;
from the Atlantic on the east to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg on the
west. They were Algonquins who greeted Jacques Cartier, as his ships
ascended the St. Lawrence. The first British colonists found savages of
the same race hunting and fishing along the coasts and inlets of Virginia;
and it was the daughter of an Algonquin chief who interceded with her
father for the life of the adventurous Englishman. They were Algonquins
who, under Sassacus the Pequot, and Philip of Mount Hope, waged war
against the Puritans of New England; who dwelt at Penacook, under the rule
of the great magician, Passaconaway, and trembled before the evil spirits
of the White Hills; and who sang _aves_ and told their beads in the forest
chapel of Father Rasles, by the banks of the Kennebec. They were
Algonquins who, under the great tree at Kensington, made the covenant of
peace with William Penn; and when French Jesuits and fur-traders explored
the Wabash and the Ohio, they found their valleys tenanted by the same
far-extended race. At the present day, the traveller, perchance, may find
them pitching their bark lodges along the beach at Mackinaw, spearing fish
among the rapids of St. Mary's, or skimming the waves of Lake Superior in
their birch canoes.
Of all the members of the Algonquin family, those called by the English
the Delawares, by the French the Loups, and by themselves Lenni Lenape, or
Original Men, hold the first claim to attention; for their traditions
declare them to be the parent stem whence other Algonquin tribes have
sprung. The latter recognized the claim, and, at all solemn councils,
accorded to the ancestral tribe the title of Grandfather.[33]
The first European colonists found the conical lodges of the Lenape
clustered in frequent groups about the waters of the Delaware and its
tributary streams, within the present limits of New Jersey, and Eastern
Pennsylvania. The nation was separated into three divisions, and three
sachems formed a triumvirate, who, with the council of old men, regulated
all its affairs.[34] They were, in some small measure, an agricultural
people; but fishing and the chase were their chief dependence, and through
a great part of the year they were scattered abroad, among forests and
streams, in search of sustenance.
When William Penn held his far-famed council with the sachems of the
Lenape, he extended the hand of brotherhood to a people as unwarlike in
their habits as his own pacific followers. This is by no means to be
ascribed to any inborn love of peace. The Lenape were then in a state of
degrading vassalage to the Five Nations, who, that they might drain to the
dregs the cup of humiliation, had forced them to assume the name of Women,
and forego the use of arms.[35] Dwelling under the shadow of the
tyrannical confederacy, they were long unable to wipe out the blot; but at
length, pushed from their ancient seats by the encroachments of white men,
and removed westward, partially beyond the reach of their conquerors,
their native spirit began to revive, and they assumed a tone of defiance.
During the Old French War they resumed the use of arms, and while the Five
Nations fought for the English, they espoused the cause of France. At the
opening of the Revolution, they boldly asserted their freedom from the
yoke of their conquerors; and a few years after, the Five Nations
confessed, at a public council, that the Lenape were no longer women, but
men.[36] Ever since that period, they have stood in high repute for
bravery, generosity, and all the savage virtues; and the settlers of the
frontier have often found, to their cost, that the _women_ of the Iroquois
have been transformed into a race of formidable warriors. At the present
day, the small remnant settled beyond the Mississippi are among the
bravest marauders of the west. Their war-parties pierce the farthest wilds
of the Rocky Mountains; and the prairie traveller may sometimes meet the
Delaware warrior returning from a successful foray, a gaudy handkerchief
bound about his brows, his snake locks fluttering in the wind, and his
rifle resting across his saddle-bow, while the tarnished and begrimed
equipments of his half-wild horse bear witness that the rider has waylaid
and plundered some Mexican cavalier.
Adjacent to the Lenape, and associated with them in some of the most
notable passages of their history, dwelt the Shawanoes, the Chaouanons of
the French, a tribe of bold, roving, and adventurous spirit. Their
eccentric wanderings, their sudden appearances and disappearances, perplex
the antiquary, and defy research; but from various scattered notices, we
may gather that at an early period they occupied the valley of the Ohio;
that, becoming embroiled with the Five Nations, they shared the defeat of
the Andastes, and about the year 1672 fled to escape destruction. Some
found an asylum in the country of the Lenape, where they lived tenants at
will of the Five Nations; others sought refuge in the Carolinas and
Florida, where, true to their native instincts, they soon came to blows
with the owners of the soil. Again, turning northwards, they formed new
settlements in the valley of the Ohio, where they were now suffered to
dwell in peace, and where, at a later period, they were joined by such of
their brethren as had found refuge among the Lenape.[37]
Of the tribes which, single and detached, or cohering in loose
confederacies, dwelt within the limits of Lower Canada, Acadia, and New
England, it is needless to speak; for they offered no distinctive traits
demanding notice. Passing the country of the Lenape and the Shawanoes, and
descending the Ohio, the traveller would have found its valley chiefly
occupied by two nations, the Miamis or Twightwees, on the Wabash and its
branches, and the Illinois, who dwelt in the neighborhood of the river to
which they have given their name, while portions of them extended beyond
the Mississippi. Though never subjugated, as were the Lenape, both the
Miamis and the Illinois were reduced to the last extremity by the
repeated attacks of the Five Nations; and the Illinois, in particular,
suffered so much by these and other wars, that the population of ten or
twelve thousand, ascribed to them by the early French writers, had
dwindled, during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, to a few
small villages.[38] According to Marest, they were a people sunk in sloth
and licentiousness; but that priestly father had suffered much at their
hands, and viewed them with a jaundiced eye. Their agriculture was not
contemptible; they had permanent dwellings as well as portable lodges; and
though wandering through many months of the year among their broad
prairies and forests, there were seasons when their whole population was
gathered, with feastings and merry-making, within the limits of their
villages.
Turning his course northward, traversing Lakes Michigan and Superior, and
skirting the western margin of Lake Huron, the voyager would have found
the solitudes of the wild waste around him broken by scattered lodges of
the Ojibwas, Pottawattamies, and Ottawas. About the bays and rivers west
of Lake Michigan, he would have seen the Sacs, the Foxes, and the
Menomonies; and penetrating the frozen wilderness of the north, he would
have been welcomed by the rude hospitality of the wandering Crees or
Knisteneaux.
The Ojibwas, with their kindred, the Pottawattamies, and their friends the
Ottawas,--the latter of whom were fugitives from the eastward, whence they
had fled from the wrath of the Iroquois,--were banded into a sort of
confederacy.[39] They were closely allied in blood, language, manners and
character. The Ojibwas, by far the most numerous of the three, occupied
the basin of Lake Superior, and extensive adjacent regions. In their
boundaries, the career of Iroquois conquest found at length a check. The
fugitive Wyandots sought refuge in the Ojibwa hunting-grounds; and
tradition relates that, at the outlet of Lake Superior, an Iroquois
war-party once encountered a disastrous repulse.
In their mode of life, they were far more rude than the Iroquois, or even
the southern Algonquin tribes. The totemic system is found among them in
its most imperfect state. The original clans have become broken into
fragments, and indefinitely multiplied; and many of the ancient customs of
the institution are but loosely regarded. Agriculture is little known,
and, through summer and winter, they range the wilderness with restless
wandering, now gorged to repletion, and now perishing with want. In the
calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes out his birch canoe upon
the great inland ocean of the north; and, as he gazes down into the
pellucid depths, he seems like one balanced between earth and sky. The
watchful fish-hawk circles above his head; and below, farther than his
line will reach, he sees the trout glide shadowy and silent over the
glimmering pebbles. The little islands on the verge of the horizon seem
now starting into spires, now melting from the sight, now shaping
themselves into a thousand fantastic forms, with the strange mirage of the
waters; and he fancies that the evil spirits of the lake lie basking their
serpent forms on those unhallowed shores. Again, he explores the watery
labyrinths where the stream sweeps among pine-tufted islands, or runs,
black and deep, beneath the shadows of moss-bearded firs; or he drags his
canoe upon the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles on the
grass-plat, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs away the
sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment.
But when winter descends upon the north, sealing up the fountains,
fettering the streams, and turning the green-robed forests to shivering
nakedness, then, bearing their frail dwellings on their backs, the Ojibwa
family wander forth into the wilderness, cheered only on their dreary
track by the whistling of the north wind, and the hungry howl of wolves.
By the banks of some frozen stream, women and children, men and dogs, lie
crouched together around the fire. They spread their benumbed fingers over
the embers, while the wind shrieks through the fir-trees like the gale
through the rigging of a frigate, and the narrow concave of the wigwam
sparkles with the frost-work of their congealed breath. In vain they beat
the magic drum, and call upon their guardian manitoes;--the wary moose
keeps aloof, the bear lies close in his hollow tree, and famine stares
them in the face. And now the hunter can fight no more against the nipping
cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and stark, with haggard cheek and
shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw,
the famished wildcat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his
limbs. Such harsh schooling is thrown away on the incorrigible mind of the
northern Algonquin. He lives in misery, as his fathers lived before him.
Still, in the brief hour of plenty he forgets the season of want; and
still the sleet and the snow descend upon his houseless head.[40]
I have thus passed in brief review the more prominent of the Algonquin
tribes; those whose struggles and sufferings form the theme of the ensuing
History. In speaking of the Iroquois, some of the distinctive
peculiarities of the Algonquins have already been hinted at. It must be
admitted that, in moral stability and intellectual vigor, they are
inferior to the former; though some of the most conspicuous offspring of
the wilderness, Metacom, Tecumseh, and Pontiac himself, owned their blood
and language.
The fireside stories of every primitive people are faithful reflections of
the form and coloring of the national mind; and it is no proof of sound
philosophy to turn with contempt from the study of a fairy tale. The
legendary lore of the Iroquois, black as the midnight forests, awful in
its gloomy strength, is but another manifestation of that spirit of
mastery which uprooted whole tribes from the earth, and deluged the
wilderness with blood. The traditionary tales of the Algonquins wear a
different aspect. The credulous circle around an Ojibwa lodge-fire
listened to wild recitals of necromancy and witchcraft--men transformed to
beasts, and beasts transformed to men, animated trees, and birds who spoke
with human tongue. They heard of malignant sorcerers dwelling among the
lonely islands of spell-bound lakes; of grisly _weendigoes_, and bloodless
_geebi_; of evil _manitoes_ lurking in the dens and fastnesses of the
woods; of pygmy champions, diminutive in stature but mighty in soul, who,
by the potency of charm and talisman, subdued the direst monsters of the
waste; and of heroes, who, not by downright force and open onset, but by
subtle strategy, tricks, or magic art, achieved marvellous triumphs over
the brute force of their assailants. Sometimes the tale will breathe a
different spirit, and tell of orphan children abandoned in the heart of a
hideous wilderness, beset with fiends and cannibals. Some enamored maiden,
scornful of earthly suitors, plights her troth to the graceful manito of
the grove; or bright aerial beings, dwellers of the sky, descend to
tantalize the gaze of mortals with evanescent forms of loveliness.
The mighty giant, the God of the Thunder, who made his home among the
caverns, beneath the cataract of Niagara, was a characteristic conception
of Iroquois imagination. The Algonquins held a simpler faith, and
maintained that the thunder was a bird who built his nest on the pinnacle
of towering mountains. Two daring boys once scaled the height, and thrust
sticks into the eyes of the portentous nestlings; which hereupon flashed
forth such wrathful scintillations, that the sticks were shivered to
atoms.[41]
The religious belief of the Algonquins--and the remark holds good, not of
the Algonquins only, but of all the hunting tribes of America--is a cloudy
bewilderment, where we seek in vain for system or coherency. Among a
primitive and savage people, there were no poets to vivify its images, and
no priests to give distinctness and harmony to its rites and symbols. To
the Indian mind, all nature was instinct with deity. A spirit was embodied
in every mountain, lake, and cataract; every bird, beast, or reptile,
every tree, shrub, or grass-blade, was endued with mystic influence; yet
this untutored pantheism did not exclude the conception of certain
divinities, of incongruous and ever shifting attributes. The sun, too, was
a god, and the moon was a goddess. Conflicting powers of good and evil
divided the universe: but if, before the arrival of Europeans, the Indian
recognized the existence of one, almighty, self-existent Being, the Great
Spirit, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, the belief was so vague and dubious
as scarcely to deserve the name. His perceptions of moral good and evil
were perplexed and shadowy; and the belief in a state of future reward and
punishment was by no means universal.[42]
Of the Indian character, much has been written foolishly, and credulously
believed. By the rhapsodies of poets, the cant of sentimentalists, and the
extravagance of some who should have known better, a counterfeit image has
been tricked out, which might seek in vain for its likeness through every
corner of the habitable earth; an image bearing no more resemblance to its
original, than the monarch of the tragedy and the hero of the epic poem
bear to their living prototypes in the palace and the camp. The shadows of
his wilderness home, and the darker mantle of his own inscrutable reserve,
have made the Indian warrior a wonder and a mystery. Yet to the eye of
rational observation there is nothing unintelligible in him. He is full,
it is true, of contradiction. He deems himself the centre of greatness and
renown; his pride is proof against the fiercest torments of fire and
steel; and yet the same man would beg for a dram of whiskey, or pick up a
crust of bread thrown to him like a dog, from the tent door of the
traveller. At one moment, he is wary and cautious to the verge of
cowardice; at the next, he abandons himself to a very insanity of
recklessness; and the habitual self-restraint which throws an impenetrable
veil over emotion is joined to the unbridled passions of a madman or a
beast.
Such inconsistencies, strange as they seem in our eyes, when viewed under
a novel aspect, are but the ordinary incidents of humanity. The qualities
of the mind are not uniform in their action through all the relations of
life. With different men, and different races of men, pride, valor,
prudence, have different forms of manifestation, and where in one instance
they lie dormant, in another they are keenly awake. The conjunction of
greatness and littleness, meanness and pride, is older than the days of
the patriarchs; and such antiquated phenomena, displayed under a new form
in the unreflecting, undisciplined mind of a savage, call for no special
wonder, but should rather be classed with the other enigmas of the
fathomless human heart. The dissecting knife of a Rochefoucault might lay
bare matters of no less curious observation in the breast of every man.
Nature has stamped the Indian with a hard and stern physiognomy. Ambition,
revenge, envy, jealousy, are his ruling passions; and his cold temperament
is little exposed to those effeminate vices which are the bane of milder
races. With him revenge is an overpowering instinct; nay, more, it is a
point of honor and a duty. His pride sets all language at defiance. He
loathes the thought of coercion; and few of his race have ever stooped to
discharge a menial office. A wild love of liberty, an utter intolerance of
control, lie at the basis of his character, and fire his whole existence.
Yet, in spite of this haughty independence, he is a devout
hero-worshipper; and high achievement in war or policy touches a chord to
which his nature never fails to respond. He looks up with admiring
reverence to the sages and heroes of his tribe; and it is this principle,
joined to the respect for age springing from the patriarchal element in
his social system, which, beyond all others, contributes union and harmony
to the erratic members of an Indian community. With him the love of glory
kindles into a burning passion; and to allay its cravings, he will dare
cold and famine, fire, tempest, torture, and death itself.
These generous traits are overcast by much that is dark, cold, and
sinister, by sleepless distrust, and rankling jealousy. Treacherous
himself, he is always suspicious of treachery in others. Brave as he
is,--and few of mankind are braver,--he will vent his passion by a secret
stab rather than an open blow. His warfare is full of ambuscade and
stratagem; and he never rushes into battle with that joyous
self-abandonment, with which the warriors of the Gothic races flung
themselves into the ranks of their enemies. In his feasts and his
drinking bouts we find none of that robust and full-toned mirth, which
reigned at the rude carousals of our barbaric ancestry. He is never jovial
in his cups, and maudlin sorrow or maniacal rage is the sole result of his
potations.
Over all emotion he throws the veil of an iron self-control, originating
in a peculiar form of pride, and fostered by rigorous discipline from
childhood upward. He is trained to conceal passion, and not to subdue it.
The inscrutable warrior is aptly imaged by the hackneyed figure of a
volcano covered with snow; and no man can say when or where the wildfire
will burst forth. This shallow self-mastery serves to give dignity to
public deliberation, and harmony to social life. Wrangling and quarrel are
strangers to an Indian dwelling; and while an assembly of the ancient
Gauls was garrulous as a convocation of magpies, a Roman senate might have
taken a lesson from the grave solemnity of an Indian council. In the midst
of his family and friends, he hides affections, by nature none of the most
tender, under a mask of icy coldness; and in the torturing fires of his
enemy, the haughty sufferer maintains to the last his look of grim
defiance.
His intellect is as peculiar as his moral organization. Among all savages,
the powers of perception preponderate over those of reason and analysis;
but this is more especially the case with the Indian. An acute judge of
character, at least of such parts of it as his experience enables him to
comprehend; keen to a proverb in all exercises of war and the chase, he
seldom traces effects to their causes, or follows out actions to their
remote results. Though a close observer of external nature, he no sooner
attempts to account for her phenomena than he involves himself in the most
ridiculous absurdities; and quite content with these puerilities, he has
not the least desire to push his inquiries further. His curiosity,
abundantly active within its own narrow circle, is dead to all things
else; and to attempt rousing it from its torpor is but a bootless task. He
seldom takes cognizance of general or abstract ideas; and his language has
scarcely the power to express them, except through the medium of figures
drawn from the external world, and often highly picturesque and forcible.
The absence of reflection makes him grossly improvident, and unfits him
for pursuing any complicated scheme of war or policy.
Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft and melting, at once plastic
and feeble. Some races, like some metals, combine the greatest flexibility
with the greatest strength. But the Indian is hewn out of a rock. You can
rarely change the form without destruction of the substance. Races of
inferior energy have possessed a power of expansion and assimilation to
which he is a stranger; and it is this fixed and rigid quality which has
proved his ruin. He will not learn the arts of civilization, and he and
his forest must perish together. The stern, unchanging features of his
mind excite our admiration from their very immutability; and we look with
deep interest on the fate of this irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the
child who will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged mother. And our
interest increases when we discern in the unhappy wanderer the germs of
heroic virtues mingled among his vices,--a hand bountiful to bestow as it
is rapacious to seize, and even in extremest famine, imparting its last
morsel to a fellow-sufferer; a heart which, strong in friendship as in
hate, thinks it not too much to lay down life for its chosen comrade; a
soul true to its own idea of honor, and burning with an unquenchable
thirst for greatness and renown.
The imprisoned lion in the showman's cage differs not more widely from the
lord of the desert, than the beggarly frequenter of frontier garrisons and
dramshops differs from the proud denizen of the woods. It is in his native
wilds alone that the Indian must be seen and studied. Thus to depict him
is the aim of the ensuing History; and if, from the shades of rock and
forest, the savage features should look too grimly forth, it is because
the clouds of a tempestuous war have cast upon the picture their murky
shadows and lurid fires.