To the south of the tribes already mentioned, are the large family of
the Dakotahs, who number among them the Sioux, Assiniboines, and
Blackfeet, and are the hereditary enemies of the Chippeways, especially
of their nearer neighbours, the Crees and Ojibbeways. These Dakotahs
occupy the open prairie country to the south of the Saskatchewan, and
are the most northern of the Prairie Indians. In summer, they wear
little or no clothing; and possessing numerous horses, hunt the
buffaloes, or rather bisons, on horseback, armed with spears and bows
and arrows. They are fiercer and more warlike than their northern
neighbours, and have long set the whites at defiance. The buffalo
supplies them with their chief support. The flesh of the animal dried
in the sun, or pounded with its fat into pemmican, is their chief
article of food; while its skin serves as a covering for their tents, a
couch at night, or for clothing by day, and is manufactured into bags
for carrying their provisions, and numerous other articles. Physically,
they are superior to the Wood Indians. They are both hunters and
warriors; and though they may occasionally exchange the buffalo robes--
as the skins are called--for firearms; they seldom employ themselves as
trappers, or attend to the cultivation of the ground.
The greater number of the tribes further to the south possess horses,
and hunt the buffalo and deer. Some are even more savage than the
Dakotahs, while others, again, have made slight progress towards
civilisation, and live in settled villages, while they rudely cultivate
the ground, and possess herds of cattle.
Although the Indian languages differ greatly from each other, a great
similarity in grammatical structure and form has been found to exist
among them, denoting a common, though remote origin. They differ,
however, so greatly from any known language of the Old World, as to
afford conclusive proof that their ancestors must have left its shores
at an early period of the world's history.
The governments also differed. In some tribes it approached an absolute
monarchy, the will of the sachem or chief being the supreme law; while
in others it was almost entirely republican, the chief being elected for
his personal qualities, though frequently the leadership was preserved
in the female line of particular families.
When describing the customs of the Indians, we are compelled often to
speak of the past, as the tribes, from being pressed together by the
advancement of civilisation, have become amalgamated, and many of their
customs have passed away. Most of the nations were divided into three
or more clans or tribes, each distinguished by the name of an animal.
Thus the Huron Indians were divided into three tribes--those of the
Bear, the Wolf, and the Turtle. The Chippeways, especially, were
divided into a considerable number of tribes.