NORTH WESTERN FRONTIER.

Having finished my travels in the “Far West” for awhile, and being

detained a little time, sans occupation, in my nineteenth or twentieth

transit of what, in common parlance is denominated the Frontier; I

have seated myself down to give some further account of it, and of the

doings and habits of people, both red and white, who live upon it.

The Frontier may properly be denominated the fleeting and unsettled

line extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Lake of the Woods,

a distance of three thousand miles; which indefinitely separates

civilized from Indian population—a moving barrier, where the

unrestrained and natural propensities of two people are concentrated,

in an atmosphere of lawless iniquity, that offends Heaven, and holds in

mutual ignorance of each other, the honourable and virtuous portions of

two people, which seem destined never to meet.

From what has been said in the foregoing epistles, the reader will

agree that I have pretty closely adhered to my promise made in the

commencement of them; that I should confine my remarks chiefly to

people I have visited, and customs that I have _seen_, rather than

by taking up his time with matter that might be gleaned from books.

He will also agree, that I have principally devoted my pages, as I

promised, to an account of the condition and customs of those Indians

whom I have found entirely beyond the Frontier, acting and living

as Nature taught them to live and act, without the examples, and

consequently without the taints of civilized encroachments.

He will, I flatter myself, also yield me some credit for devoting

the time and space I have occupied in my first appeal to the world,

entirely to the condition and actions of the _living_, rather than

fatiguing him with _theories_ of the living or the dead. I have

theories enough of my own, and have as closely examined the condition

and customs of these people on the Frontier, as of those living beyond

it—and also their past and present, and prospective history; but the

reader will have learned, that my chief object in these Letters, has

been not only to describe what I have _seen_, but of _those_ things,

such as I deemed the most novel and least understood; which has of

course confined my remarks heretofore, mostly to the character and

condition of those tribes living entirely in a state of nature.

And as I have now a little leisure, and no particular tribes before

me to speak of, the reader will allow me to glance my eye over the

whole Indian country for awhile, both along the Frontier and beyond

it; taking a hasty and brief survey of them, and their prospects in

the aggregate; and by not _seeing_ quite as distinctly as I have been

in the habit of doing heretofore, taking pains to tell a little more

emphatically what I _think_, and what I have _thought_ of those things

that I have seen, and yet have told but in part.

I have seen a vast many of these wild people in my travels, it will be

admitted by all. And I have had toils and difficulties, and dangers to

encounter in paying them my visits; yet I have had my pleasures as I

went along, in shaking their friendly hands, that never had felt the

contaminating touch of _money_, or the withering embrace of pockets;

I have shared the comforts of their hospitable wigwams, and always

have been preserved unharmed in their country. And if I have spoken,

or am to speak of them, with a seeming bias, the reader will know what

allowance to make for me, who am standing as the champion of a people,

who have treated me kindly, of whom I feel bound to speak well; and who

have no means of speaking for themselves.

Of the dead, to speak kindly, and to their character to render justice,

is always a praiseworthy act; but it is yet far more charitable to

extend the hand of liberality, or to hold the scale of justice, to the

_living_ who are able to feel the benefit of it. Justice to the dead is

generally a charity, inasmuch as it is a kindness to living friends;

but to the poor Indian dead, if it is meted out at all, which is seldom

the case, it is thrown to the grave with him, where he has generally

gone without friends left behind him to inherit the little fame that

is reluctantly allowed him while living, and much less likely to be

awarded to him when dead. Of the thousands and millions, therefore, of

these poor fellows who are dead, and whom we have thrown into their

graves, there is nothing that I could now say, that would do them any

good, or that would not answer the world as well at a future time as at

the present; while there is a debt that we are owing to those of them

who are yet living, which I think justly demands our attention, and all

our sympathies at this moment.

The peculiar condition in which we are obliged to contemplate these

most unfortunate people at this time—hastening to destruction and

extinction, as they evidently are, lays an uncompromising claim upon

the sympathies of the civilized world, and gives a deep interest and

value to such records as are truly made—setting up, and perpetuating

from the life, their true native character and customs.

If the great family of North American Indians were all dying by a

scourge or epidemic of the country, it would be natural, and a virtue,

to weep for them; but merely to sympathize with them (and but partially

to do that) when they are dying at our hands, and rendering their glebe

to our possession, would be to subvert the simplest law of Nature, and

turn civilized man, with all his boasted virtues, back to worse than

savage barbarism.

Justice to a nation who are dying, need never be expected from

the hands of their destroyers; and where injustice and injury are

visited upon the weak and defenceless, from ten thousand hands—from

Governments—monopolies and individuals—the offence is lost in the

inseverable iniquity in which all join, and for which nobody is

answerable, unless it be for their respective amounts, at a final day

of retribution.

Long and cruel experience has well proved that it is impossible for

enlightened Governments or money-making individuals to deal with these

credulous and unsophisticated people, without the sin of injustice;

but the humble biographer or historian, who goes amongst them from a

different motive, _may_ come out of their country with his hands and

his conscience clean, and himself an anomaly, a white man dealing with

Indians, and meting out justice to them; which I hope it may be my good

province to do with my pen and my brush, with which, at least, I will

have the singular and valuable satisfaction of having done them no harm.

With this view, and a desire to render justice to my readers also, I

have much yet to say of the general appearance and character of the

Indians—of their condition and treatment; and far more, I fear, than

I can allot to the little space I have designed for the completion of

these epistles.

Of the _general appearance_ of the North American Indians, much might

be yet said, that would be new and instructive. In _stature_, as I have

already said, there are some of the tribes that are considerably above

the ordinary height of man, and others that are evidently below it;

allowing their average to be about equal to that of their fellow-men

in the civilized world. In girth they are less, and lighter in their

limbs, and almost entirely free from corpulency or useless flesh. Their

bones are lighter, their skulls are thinner, and their muscles less

hard than those of their civilized neighbours, excepting in the legs

and feet, where they are brought into more continual action by their

violent exercise on foot and on horseback, which swells the muscles

and gives them great strength in those limbs, which is often quite

as conspicuous as the extraordinary development of muscles in the

shoulders and arms of our labouring men.

Although the Indians are generally narrow in the shoulders, and less

powerful with the arms, yet it does not always happen by any means,

that they are so effeminate as they look, and so widely inferior in

brachial strength, as the spectator is apt to believe, from the smooth

and rounded appearance of their limbs. The contrast between one of our

labouring men when he denudes his limbs, and the figure of a naked

Indian is to be sure very striking, and entirely too much so, for the

actual difference in the power of the two persons. There are several

reasons for this which account for so disproportionate a contrast, and

should be named.

The labouring man, who is using his limbs the greater part of his life

in lifting heavy weights, &c. sweats them with the weight of clothes

which he has on him, which softens the integuments and the flesh,

leaving the muscles to stand out in more conspicuous relief when they

are exposed; whilst the Indian, who exercises his limbs for the most

of his life, denuded and exposed to the air, gets over his muscles a

thicker and more compact layer of integuments which hide them from the

view, leaving the casual spectator, who sees them only at rest, to

suppose them too decidedly inferior to those which are found amongst

people of his own colour. Of muscular strength in the legs, I have met

many of the most extraordinary instances in the Indian country, that

ever I have seen in my life; and I have watched and studied such for

hours together, with utter surprise and admiration, in the violent

exertions of their dances, where they leap and jump with every nerve

strung, and every muscle swelled, till their legs will often look like

a bundle of ropes, rather than a mass of human flesh. And from all that

I have seen, I am inclined to say, that whatever differences there may

be between the North American Indians and their civilized neighbours

in the above respects, they are decidedly the results of different

habits of life and modes of education rather than of any difference in

constitution. And I would also venture the assertion, that he who would

see the Indian in a condition to judge of his muscles, must see him

in motion; and he who would get a perfect study for an Hercules or an

Atlas, should take a stone-mason for the upper part of his figure, and

a Camanchee or a Blackfoot Indian from the waist downwards to the feet.

There is a general and striking character in the facial outline of the

North American Indians, which is bold and free, and would seem at once

to stamp them as distinct from natives of other parts of the world.

Their noses are generally prominent and aquiline—and the whole face, if

divested of paint and of copper-colour, would seem to approach to the

bold and European character. Many travellers have thought that their

eyes were smaller than those of Europeans; and there is good cause for

one to believe so, if he judges from first impressions, without taking

pains to inquire into the truth and causes of things. I have been

struck, as most travellers, no doubt have, with the want of expansion

and apparent smallness of the Indians’ eyes, which I have found upon

examination, to be principally the effect of continual exposure to the

rays of the sun and the wind, without the shields that are used by the

civilized world; and also when in-doors, and free from those causes,

subjected generally to one more distressing, and calculated to produce

similar results, the smoke that almost continually hangs about their

wigwams, which necessarily contracts the lids of the eyes, forbidding

that full flame and expansion of the eye, that the cool and clear

shades of our civilized domicils are calculated to promote.

The teeth of the Indians are generally regular and sound, and

wonderfully preserved to old age, owing, no doubt, to the fact that

they live without the spices of life—without saccharine and without

salt, which are equally destructive to teeth, in civilized communities.

Their teeth, though sound, are not white, having a yellowish cast; but

for the same reason that a negro’s teeth are “like ivory,” they look

white—set as they are in bronze, as any one with a _tolerable_ set of

teeth can easily test, by painting his face the colour of an Indian,

and grinning for a moment in his looking-glass.

_Beards_ they generally have not—esteeming them great vulgarities,

and using every possible means to eradicate them whenever they are so

unfortunate as to be annoyed with them. Different writers have been

very much at variance on this subject ever since the first accounts

given of these people; and there seems still an unsatisfied curiosity

on the subject, which I would be glad to say that I could put entirely

at rest.

From the best information that I could obtain amongst forty-eight

tribes that I have visited, I feel authorized to say, that, amongst

the wild tribes, where they have made no efforts to imitate white men,

at least, the proportion of eighteen out of twenty, by nature are

entirely without the appearance of a beard; and of the very few who

have them by nature, nineteen out of twenty eradicate it by plucking it

out several times in succession, precisely at the age of puberty, when

its growth is successfully arrested; and occasionally one may be seen,

who has omitted to destroy it at that time, and subjects his chin to

the repeated pains of its extractions, which he is performing with a

pair of clamshells or other tweezers, nearly every day of his life—and

occasionally again, but still more rarely, one is found, who from

carelessness or inclination has omitted both of these, and is allowing

it to grow to the length of an inch or two on his chin, in which case

it is generally very soft, and exceedingly sparse. Wherever there is a

cross of the blood with the European or African, which is frequently

the case along the Frontier, a proportionate beard is the result; and

it is allowed to grow, or is plucked out with much toil, and with great

pain.

There has been much speculation, and great variety of opinions, as

to the results of the intercourse between the European and African

population with the Indians on the borders; and I would not undertake

to decide so difficult a question, though I cannot help but express

my opinion, which is made up from the vast many instances that I have

seen, that generally speaking, these half-breed specimens are in both

instances a decided deterioration from the two stocks, from which they

have sprung; which I grant may be the consequence that generally flows

from illicit intercourse, and from the inferior rank in which they are

held by both, (which is mostly confined to the lowest and most degraded

portions of society), rather than from any constitutional objection,

necessarily growing out of the amalgamation.

The finest built and most powerful men that I have ever yet seen, have

been some of the last-mentioned, the negro and the North American

Indian mixed, of equal blood. These instances are rare to be sure, yet

are occasionally to be found amongst the Seminolees and Cherokees,

and also amongst the Camanchees, even, and the Caddoes; and I account

for it in this way: From the slave-holding States to the heart of the

country of a wild tribe of Indians, through almost boundless and

impassable wilds and swamps, for hundreds of miles, it requires a

negro of extraordinary leg and courage and perseverance, to travel;

absconding from his master’s fields, to throw himself into a tribe

of wild and hostile Indians, for the enjoyment of his liberty; of

which there are occasional instances, and when they succeed, they are

admired by the savage; and as they come with a good share of the tricks

and arts of civilization, they are at once looked upon by the tribe,

as extraordinary and important personages; and generally marry the

daughters of chiefs, thus uniting theirs with the best blood in the

nation, which produce these remarkably fine and powerful men that I

have spoken of above.

Although the Indians of North America, where dissipation and disease

have not got amongst them, undoubtedly are a longer lived and healthier

race, and capable of enduring far more bodily privation and pain,

than civilized people can; yet I do not believe that the differences

are constitutional, or anything more than the results of different

circumstances, and a different education. As an evidence in support

of this assertion, I will allude to the hundreds of men whom I have

seen, and travelled with, who have been for several years together in

the Rocky Mountains, in the employment of the Fur Companies; where

they have lived exactly upon the Indian system, continually exposed

to the open air, and the weather, and, to all the disappointments and

privations peculiar to that mode of life; and I am bound to say, that I

never saw a more hardy and healthy race of men in my life, whilst they

remain in the country; nor any who fall to pieces quicker when they get

back to confined and dissipated life, which they easily fall into, when

they return to their own country.

The Indian women who are obliged to lead lives of severe toil and

drudgery, become exceedingly healthy and robust, giving easy birth

and strong constitutions to their children; which, in a measure, may

account for the simplicity and fewness of their diseases, which in

infancy and childhood are very seldom known to destroy life.

If there were anything like an equal proportion of deaths amongst the

Indian children, that is found in the civilized portions of the world,

the Indian country would long since have been depopulated, on account

of the decided disproportion of children they produce. It is a very

rare occurrence for an Indian woman to be “_blessed_” with more than

four or five children during her life; and generally speaking, they

seem contented with two or three; when in civilized communities it

is no uncommon thing for a woman to be the mother of ten or twelve,

and sometimes to bear two or even three at a time; of which I never

recollect to have met an instance during all my extensive travels in

the Indian country, though it is possible that I might occasionally

have passed them.

For so striking a dissimilarity as there evidently is between these

people, and those living according to the more artificial modes of

life, in a subject, seemingly alike natural to both, the reader will

perhaps expect me to furnish some rational and decisive causes. Several

very plausible reasons have been advanced for such a deficiency on the

part of the Indians, by authors who have written on the subject, but

whose opinions I should be very slow to adopt; inasmuch as they have

been based upon the Indian’s inferiority, (as the same authors have

taken great pains to prove in most other respects,) to their pale-faced

neighbours.

I know of but one decided cause for this difference, which I would

venture to advance, and which I confidently believe to be the principal

obstacle to a more rapid increase of their families; which is the very

great length of time that the women submit to lactation, generally

carrying their children at the breast to the age of two, and sometimes

three, and even four years!

The astonishing ease and success with which the Indian women pass

through the most painful and most trying of all human difficulties,

which fall exclusively to the lot of the gentler sex; is quite equal,

I have found from continued enquiry, to the representations that

have often been made to the world by other travellers, who have gone

before me. Many people have thought this a wise provision of Nature,

in framing the constitutions of these people, to suit the exigencies

of their exposed lives, where they are beyond the pale of skilful

surgeons, and the nice little comforts that visit the sick beds in the

enlightened world; but I never have been willing to give to Nature

quite so much credit, for stepping aside of her own rule, which I

believe to be about half way between—from which I am inclined to think

that the refinements of art, and its spices, have led the civilized

world into the pains and perils of one unnatural extreme; whilst the

extraordinary fatigue and exposure, and habits of Indian life, have

greatly released them from natural pains, on the other. With this

view of the case, I fully believe that Nature has dealt everywhere

impartially; and that, if from their childhood, our mothers had, like

the Indian women, carried loads like beasts of burthen—and those over

the longest journeys, and highest mountains—had swam the broadest

rivers—and galloped about for months and even years of their lives,

_astride_ of their horse’s backs; we should have taxed them as lightly

in stepping into the world, as an Indian pappoose does its mother, who

ties her horse under the shade of a tree for half an hour, and before

night, overtakes her travelling companions with her infant in her arms,

which has often been the case.

As to the probable origin of the North American Indians, which is one

of the first questions that suggests itself to the enquiring mind,

and will be perhaps, the last to be settled; I shall have little to

say in this place, for the reason that so abstruse a subject, and

one so barren of positive proof, would require in its discussion too

much circumstantial evidence for my allowed limits; which I am sure

the world will agree will be filled up much more consistently with

the avowed spirit of this work, by treating of that which admits

of an abundance of proof—their actual existence, their customs—and

misfortunes; and the suggestions of modes for the amelioration of their

condition.

For a professed philanthropist, I should deem it cruel and hypocritical

to waste time and space in the discussion of a subject, ever so

interesting, (though unimportant), when the present condition and

prospects of these people are calling so loudly upon the world for

justice, and for mercy; and when their evanescent existence and customs

are turning, as it were, on a wheel before us, but soon to be lost;

whilst the mystery of their origin can as well be fathomed at a future

day as now, and recorded with their exit.

Very many people look upon the savages of this vast country, as an

“_Anomaly in Nature_;” and their existence and origin, and locality,

things that needs must be at once accounted for.

Now, if the world will allow me, (and perhaps they may think me

singular for saying it), I would say, that these things are, in my

opinion, natural and simple; and, like all other works of Nature,

destined to remain a mystery to mortal man; and if man be anywhere

entitled to the name of an anomaly, it is he who has departed the

farthest from the simple walks and actions of his nature.

It seems natural to enquire at once who these people are, and from

whence they came; but this question is natural, only because we are out

of nature. To an Indian, such a question would seem absurd—he would

stand aghast and astounded at the _anomaly_ before _him_—himself upon

his own ground, “where the Great Spirit made him”—hunting in his own

forests; if an exotic, with a “pale face,” and from across the ocean,

should stand before him, to ask him where he came from, and how he got

there!

I would invite this querist, this votary of science, to sit upon a log

with his red acquaintance, and answer the following questions:—

“You white man, where you come from?”

“From England, across the water.”

“How white man come to see England? how you face come to get white, ha?”

I never yet have been made to see the _necessity_ of showing how these

people _came here_, or that they _came here_ at all; which might easily

have been done, by the way of Behring’s Straits from the North of Asia.

I should much rather dispense with such a _necessity_, than undertake

the other necessities that must follow the establishment of this;

those of showing how the savages paddled or drifted in their canoes

from this Continent, after they had got here, or from the Asiatic

Coast, and landed on all the South Sea Islands, which we find to be

inhabited nearly to the South Pole. For myself I am quite satisfied

with the fact, which is a thing certain, and to be relied on, that this

Continent was found peopled in every part, by savages; and so, nearly

every Island in the South Seas, at the distance of several thousand

miles from either Continent; and I am quite willing to surrender the

mystery to abler pens than my own—to theorists who may have the time,

and the means to prove to the world, how those rude people wandered

there in their bark canoes, without water for their subsistence, or

compasses to guide them on their way.

The North American Indians, and all the inhabitants of the South Sea

Islands, speaking some two or three hundred different languages,

entirely dissimilar, may have all sprung from one stock; and the

Almighty, after creating man. for some reason that is unfathomable

to human wisdom, might have left the whole vast universe, with its

severed continents, and its thousand distant isles everywhere teeming

with necessaries and luxuries, spread out for man’s use; and there

to vegetate and rot, for hundreds and even thousands of centuries,

until ultimate, _abstract_ accident should throw him amongst these

infinite mysteries of creation; the least and most insignificant of

which have been created and placed by design. Human reason is weak,

and human ignorance is palpable, when man attempts to approach these

unsearchable mysteries; and I consider human discretion well applied,

when it beckons him back to things that he can comprehend; where his

reason, and all his mental energies can be employed for the advancement

and benefit of his species. With this conviction, I feel disposed to

retreat to the ground that I have before occupied—to the Indians, as

they are, and _where_ they are; recording amongst them living evidences

whilst they live, for the use of abler theorists than myself—who may

labour to establish their origin, which may be as well (and perhaps

better) done, a century hence, than at the present day.

The reader is apprised, that I have nearly filled the limits allotted

to these epistles; and I assure him that a vast deal which I have seen

must remain untold—whilst from the same necessity, I must tell him much

less than I think, and beg to be pardoned if I withhold, till some

future occasion, many of my reasons for, _thinking_.

I believe, with many others, that the North American Indians are a

mixed people—that they have Jewish blood in their veins, though I would

not assert, as some have undertaken to prove, “_that they are Jews_,”

or that they are “_the ten lost tribes of Israel_.” From the character

and conformation of their heads, I am compelled to look upon them as an

amalgam race, but still savages; and from many of their customs, which

seem to me, to be peculiarly Jewish, as well as from the character of

their heads, I am forced to believe that some part of those ancient

tribes, who have been dispersed by Christians in so many ways, and

in so many different eras, have found their way To this country,

where they have entered amongst the native stock, and have lived and

intermarried with the Indians, until their identity has been swallowed

up and lost in the greater numbers of their new acquaintance, save the

bold and decided character which they have bequeathed to the Indian

races; and such of their customs as the Indians were pleased to adopt,

and which they have preserved to the present day.

I am induced to believe thus from the very many customs which I have

witnessed amongst them, that appear to be decidedly Jewish; and many of

them so peculiarly so, that it would seem almost impossible, or at all

events, exceedingly improbable, that two people in a state of nature

should have hit upon them, and practiced them exactly alike.

The world need not expect me to _decide_ so interesting and difficult

a question; but I am sure they will be disposed to hear simply my

opinion, which I give in this place, quite briefly, and with the utmost

respectful deference to those who think differently. I claim no merit

whatever, for advancing such an opinion, which is not new, having been

in several works advanced to the world by far abler pens than my own,

with volumes of evidence, to the catalogue of which, I feel quite

sure I shall be able to add some new proofs in the proper place. If

I could establish the fact by positive proof, I should claim a great

deal of applause from the world, and should, no doubt, obtain it; but,

like everything relating to the origin and early history of these

unchronicled people, I believe this question is one that will never be

settled, but will remain open for the opinions of the world, which will

be variously given, and that upon circumstantial evidence alone.

I am compelled to believe that the Continent of America, and each

of the other Continents, have had their aboriginal stocks, peculiar

in colour and in character—and that each of these native stocks has

undergone repeated mutations (at periods, of which history has kept no

records), by erratic colonies from abroad, that have been engrafted

upon them—mingling with them, and materially affecting their original

character. By this process, I believe that the North American Indians,

even where we find them in their wildest condition, are several

degrees removed from their original character; and that one of their

principal alloys has been a part of those dispersed people, who have

mingled their blood and their customs with them, and even in their new

disguise, seem destined to be followed up with oppression and endless

persecution.

The first and most striking fact amongst the North American Indians

that refers us to the Jews, is that of their worshipping in all parts,

the Great Spirit, or Jehovah, as the Hebrews were ordered to do by

Divine precept, instead of a plurality of gods, as ancient pagans and

heathens did—and their idols of their own formation. The North American

Indians, are nowhere _idolaters_—they appeal at once to the Great

Spirit, and know of no mediator, either personal or symbolical.

The Indian tribes are everywhere divided into bands, with chiefs,

symbols, badges, &c., and many of their modes of worship I have found

exceedingly like those of the Mosaic institution. The Jews had their

_sanctum sanctorums_, and so may it be said the Indians have, in their

council or medicine-houses, which are always held as sacred places. As

the Jews had, they have their high-priests and their prophets. Amongst

the Indians as amongst the ancient Hebrews, the women are not allowed

to worship with the men—and in all cases also, they eat separately.

The Indians everywhere, like the Jews, believe that they are the

favourite people of the Great Spirit, and they are certainly, like

those ancient people, _persecuted_, as every man’s hand seems raised

against them—and they, like the Jews, destined to be dispersed over the

world, and seemingly scourged by the Almighty, and despised of man.

In their marriages, the Indians, as did the ancient Jews, uniformly

buy their wives by giving presents—and in many tribes, very closely

resemble them in other forms and ceremonies of their marriages.

In their preparations for war, and in peace-making, they are strikingly

similar. In their treatment of the sick, burial of the dead and

mourning, they are also similar.

In their bathing and ablutions, at all seasons of the year, as a part

of their religious observances—having separate places for men and women

to perform these immersions—they resemble again. And the custom amongst

the women, of absenting themselves during the lunar influences, is

exactly consonant to the Mosaic law. This custom of _separation_ is an

uniform one amongst the different tribes, as far as I have seen them in

their primitive state, and be it Jewish, natural or conventional, it is

an indispensable form with these wild people, who are setting to the

civilized world, this and many other examples of decency and propriety,

only to be laughed at by their wiser neighbours, who, rather than award

to the red man any merit for them, have taken exceeding pains to call

them but the results of ignorance and superstition.

So, in nearly every family of a tribe, will be found a small lodge,

large enough to contain one person, which is erected at a little

distance from the family lodge, and occupied by the wife or the

daughter, to whose possession circumstances allot it; where she dwells

alone until she is prepared to move back, and in the meantime the

touch of her hand or her finger to the chief’s lodge, or his gun, or

other article of his household, consigns it to destruction at once;

and in case of non-conformity to this indispensable form, a woman’s

life may, in some tribes, be answerable for misfortunes that happen to

individuals or the tribe, in the interim.

After this season of separation, _purification_ in running water, and

_annointing_, precisely in accordance with the Jewish command, is

requisite before she can enter the family lodge. Such is one of the

extraordinary observances amongst these people in their wild state; but

along the Frontier, where white people have laughed at them for their

forms, they have departed from this, as from nearly everything else

that is native and original about them.

In their _feasts_, _fastings_ and _sacrificing_, they are exceedingly

like those ancient people. Many of them have a feast closely resembling

the annual feast of the Jewish passover; and amongst others, an

occasion much like the Israelitish feast of the tabernacles, which

lasted eight days, (when history tells us they carried bundles of

_willow boughs_, and fasted several days and nights) making sacrifices

of the first fruits and best of everything, closely resembling the

sin-offering and peace-offering of the Hebrews.[41]

These, and many others of their customs would seem to be decidedly

Jewish; yet it is for the world to decide how many of them, or whether

all of them, might be natural to all people, and, therefore, as well

practiced by these people in a state of nature, as to have been

borrowed from a foreign nation.

Amongst the list of their customs however, we meet a number which

had their origin it would seem, in the Jewish Ceremonial code, and

which are so very _peculiar_ in their forms, that it would seem quite

improbable, and almost impossible, that two different people should

ever have hit upon them alike, without some knowledge of each other.

These I consider, go farther than anything else as evidence, and

carry, in my mind, conclusive proof that these people are tinctured

with Jewish blood; even though the Jewish sabbath has been lost,

and circumcision probably rejected; and dog’s flesh, which was an

abomination to the Jews, continued to be eaten at their feasts by all

the tribes of Indians; not because the Jews have been prevailed upon to

use it, but, because they have survived only, as their blood was mixed

with that of the Indians, and the Indians have imposed on that mixed

blood the same rules and regulations that governed the members of the

tribes in general.

Many writers are of opinion, that the natives of America are all

from one stock, and their languages from one root—that that stock is

exotic, and that that language was introduced with it. And the reason

assigned for this theory is, that amongst the various tribes, there

is a reigning similarity in looks—and in their languages a striking

resemblance to each other.

Now, if all the world were to argue in this way, I should reason just

in the other; and pronounce this, though evidence to a certain degree,

to be very far from conclusive, inasmuch as it is far easier and more

natural for distinct tribes, or languages, grouped and used together,

to _assimilate_ than to _dissimilate_; as the pebbles on a sea-shore,

that are washed about and jostled together, lose their angles, and

incline at last to one rounded and uniform shape. So that if there had

been, _ab origine_, a variety of different stocks in America, with

different complexions, with different characters and customs, and of

different statures, and speaking entirely different tongues; where they

have been for a series of centuries living neighbours to each other,

moving about and intermarrying; I think we might reasonably look for

quite as great a similarity in their personal appearance and languages,

as we now find; when, on the other hand, if we are to suppose that

they were all from one foreign stock, with but one language, it is

a difficult thing to conceive how or in what space of time, or for

what purpose, they could have formed so many tongues, and so widely

different, as those that are now spoken on the Continent.

It is evident I think, that if an island or continent had been peopled

with black, white and red; a succession of revolving centuries of

intercourse amongst these different colours would have had a tendency

to bring them to one standard complexion, when no computable space

of time, nor any conceivable circumstances could restore them again;

reproducing all, or either of the distinct colours, from the compound.

That _customs_ should be found similar, or many of them exactly the

same, on the most opposite parts of the Continent, is still less

surprising; for these will travel more rapidly, being more easily

taught at Treaties and festivals between hostile bands, or disseminated

by individuals travelling through neighbouring tribes, whilst languages

and blood require more time for their admixture.

That the languages of the North American Indians, should be found to be

so numerous at this day, and so very many of them radically different,

is a subject of great surprise, and unaccountable, whether these people

are derived from one individual stock, or from one hundred, or one

thousand.

Though languages like colour and like customs, are calculated to

assimilate, under the circumstances above named; yet it is evident

that, (if derived from a variety of sources), they have been

unaccountably kept more distinct than the others; and if from one

root, have still more unaccountably dissimulated and divided into at

least one hundred and fifty, two-thirds of which, I venture to say,

are entirely and radically distinct; whilst amongst the people who

speak them, there is a reigning similarity in looks, in features and

in customs, which would go very far to pronounce them one family, by

nature or by convention.

I do not believe, with some very learned and distinguished writers,

that the languages of the North American Indians can be traced to one

root or to three or four, or any number of distinct idioms; nor do

I believe all, or any one of them, will ever be fairly traced to a

foreign origin.

If the looks and customs of the Jews, are decidedly found and

identified with these people—and also those of the Japanese, and Calmuc

Tartars, I think we have but little, if any need of looking for the

Hebrew language, or either of the others, for the reasons that I have

already given; for the feeble colonies of these, or any other foreign

people that might have fallen by accident upon the shores of this great

Continent, or who might have approached it by Behring’s Straits, have

been too feeble to give a language to fifteen or twenty millions of

people, or in fact to any portion of them; being in all probability,

in great part cut to pieces and destroyed by a natural foe; leaving

enough perhaps, who had intermarried, to innoculate their blood and

their customs; which have run, like a drop in a bucket, and slightly

tinctured the character of tribes who have sternly resisted their

languages, which would naturally, under such circumstances, have made

but very little impression.

Such I consider the condition of the Jews in North America; and perhaps

the Scandanavians, and the followers of Madoc, who by some means, and

some period that I cannot name, have thrown themselves upon the shores

of this country, and amongst the ranks of the savages; where, from

destructive wars with their new neighbours, they have been overpowered,

and perhaps, with the exception of those who had intermarried, they

have been destroyed, yet leaving amongst the savages decided marks of

their character; and many of their peculiar customs, which had pleased,

and been adopted by the savages, while they had sternly resisted

others: and decidedly shut out and discarded their language, and of

course obliterated everything of their history.

That there should often be found contiguous to each other, several

tribes speaking dialects of the same language, is a matter of no

surprise at all; and wherever such is the case, there is resemblance

enough also, in looks and customs, to show that they are parts of the

same tribes, which have comparatively recently severed and wandered

apart, as their traditions will generally show; and such resemblances

are often found and traced, nearly across the Continent, and have

been accounted for in some of my former Letters. Several very learned

gentlemen, whose opinions I would treat with the greatest respect,

have supposed that all the native languages of America were traceable

to three or four roots; a position which I will venture to say will be

an exceedingly difficult one for them to maintain, whilst remaining

at home and consulting books, in the way that too many theories are

supported; and one infinitely more difficult to prove if they travel

amongst the different tribes, and collect their own information as

they travel.[42] I am quite certain that I have found in a number of

instances, tribes who have long lived neighbours to each other, and

who, from continued intercourse, had learned mutually, many words of

each others language, and adopted them for common use or mottoes, as

often, or oftener than we introduce the French or Latin phrases in our

conversation; from which the casual visitor to one of these tribes,

might naturally suppose there was a similarity in their languages;

when a closer examiner would find that the idioms and structure of the

several languages were entirely distinct.

I believe that in this way, the world who take but a superficial glance

at them, are, and will be, led into continual error on this interesting

subject; one that invites, and well deserves from those learned

gentlemen, a fair investigation by them, _on the spot_; rather than so

limited and feeble an examination as _I_ have been able to make of it,

or that _they, can_ make, in their parlours, at so great a distance

from them, and through such channels as they are obliged to look to for

their information.

Amongst the tribes that I have visited, I consider that thirty, out

of the forty-eight, are distinct and radically different in their

languages, and eighteen are dialects of some three or four. It is a

very simple thing for the off-hand theorists of the scientific world,

who do not go near these people, to arrange and classify them; and

a very clever thing to _simplify_ the subject, and bring it, like

everything else, under three or four heads, and to solve, and resolve

it, by as many simple rules.

I do not pretend to be able to give to this subject, or to that of the

probable origin of these people, the close investigation that these

interesting subjects require and deserve; yet I have travelled and

observed enough amongst them, and collected enough, to enable me to

form decided opinions of my own; and in my conviction, have acquired

confidence enough to tell them, and at the same time to recommend to

the Government or institutions of my own country, to employ men of

science, such as I have mentioned, and protect them in their _visits

to_ these tribes, where “the truth, and the whole truth” may be got;

and the languages of all the tribes that are yet in existence, (many

of which are just now gasping them out in their last breath,) may be

snatched and preserved from oblivion; as well as their _looks_ and

their _customs_, to the preservation of which _my_ labours have been

principally devoted.

I undertake to say to such gentlemen, who are enthusiastic and

qualified, that here is one of the most interesting subjects that they

could spend the energies of their valuable lives upon, and one the most

sure to secure for them that immortality for which it is natural and

fair for all men to look.

From what has been said in the foregoing Letters, it will have been

seen that there are three divisions under which the North American

Indians may be justly considered; those who are dead—those who are

dying, and those who are yet living and flourishing in their primitive

condition. Of the _dead_, I have little to say at present, and I can

render them no service—of the _living_, there is much to be said, and I

shall regret that the prescribed limits of these epistles, will forbid

me saying all that I desire to say of them and their condition.

The present condition of these once numerous people, contrasted with

what, it was, and what it is soon to be, is a subject of curious

interest, as well as some importance, to the civilized world—a

subject well entitled to the attention, and very justly commanding

the sympathies of, enlightened communities. There are abundant proofs

recorded in the history of this country, and to which I need not at

this time more particularly refer, to shew that this very numerous and

respectable part of the human family, which occupied the different

parts of North America, at the time of its first settlement by the

Anglo-Americans, contained more than fourteen millions, who have

been reduced since that time, and undoubtedly in consequence of that

settlement, to something less than two millions!

This is a startling fact, and one which carries with it, if it be the

truth, other facts and their results, which are equally startling, and

such as every inquiring mind should look into. The first deduction that

the mind draws from such premises, is the rapid declension of these

people, which must at that rate be going on at this day; and sooner or

later, lead to the most melancholy result of their final extinction.

Of this sad termination of their existence, there need not be a doubt

in the minds of any man who will read the history of their former

destruction; contemplating them swept already from two-thirds of the

Continent; and who will then travel as I have done, over the vast

extent of Frontier, and witness the modes by which the poor fellows are

falling, whilst contending for their rights, with acquisitive white

men. Such a reader, and such a traveller, I venture to say, if he has

not the heart of a brute, will shed tears for them; and be ready to

admit that their character and customs, are at _this time_, a subject

of interest and importance, and rendered peculiarly so from the facts

that they are dying _at the hands_ of their Christian neighbours; and,

from all past experience, that there will probably be no effectual plan

instituted, that will save the remainder of them from a similar fate.

As they stand at this day, there may be four or five hundred thousand

in their primitive state; and a million and a half, that may be said to

be semi-civilized, contending with the sophistry of white men, amongst

whom they are timidly and unsuccessfully endeavouring to hold up their

heads, and aping their modes; whilst they are swallowing their poisons,

and yielding their lands and their lives, to the superior tact and

cunning of their merciless cajolers.

In such parts of their community, their customs are uninteresting;

being but poor and ridiculous imitations of those that are _bad

enough_, those practiced by their first teachers—but in their primitive

state, their modes of life and character, before they are changed, are

subjects of curious interest, and all that I have aimed to preserve.

Their personal appearance, their dress, and many of their modes of

life, I have already described.

For their Government, which is purely such as has been dictated to them

by Nature and necessity alone, they are indebted to no foreign, native

or civilized nation. For their religion, which is simply Theism, they

are indebted to the Great Spirit, and not to the Christian world. For

their modes of war, they owe nothing to enlightened nations—using only

those weapons and those modes which are prompted by nature, and within

the means of their rude manufactures.

If, therefore, we do not find in their systems of polity and

jurisprudence, the efficacy and justice that are dispensed in

civilized institutions—if we do not find in their religion the light

and the grace that flow from Christian faith—if in wars they are less

honourable, and wage them upon a system of “_murderous stratagem_,”

it is the duty of the enlightened world, who administer justice in a

better way—who worship in a more acceptable form—and who war on a more

_honourable_ scale, to make great allowance for their ignorance, and

yield to their credit, the fact, that if their systems are less wise,

they are often more free from injustice—from hypocrisy and from carnage.

Their Governments, if they have any (for I am almost disposed to

question the propriety of applying the term), are generally alike;

each tribe having at its head, a chief (and most generally a war and

civil chief), whom it would seem, alternately hold the ascendency,

as the circumstances of peace or war may demand their respective

services. These chiefs, whose titles are generally hereditary, hold

their offices only as long as their ages will enable them to perform

the duties of them by taking the lead in war-parties, &c., after which

they devolve upon the next incumbent, who is the eldest son of the

chief, provided he is decided by the other chiefs to be as worthy of

it as any other young man in the tribe—in default of which, a chief is

elected from amongst the sub-chiefs; so that the office is _hereditary

on condition_, and _elective_ in _emergency_.

The chief has no controul over the life or limbs, or liberty of his

subjects, nor other power whatever, excepting that of _influence_ which

he gains by his virtues, and his exploits in war, and which induces

his warriors and braves to follow him, as he leads them to battle—or

to listen to him when he speaks and advises in council. In fact, he is

no more than a _leader_, whom every young warrior may follow, or turn

about and go back from, as he pleases, if he is willing to meet the

disgrace that awaits him, who deserts his chief in the hour of danger.

It may be a difficult question to decide, whether their Government

savours most of a democracy or an aristocracy; it is in some respects

purely democratic—and in others aristocratic. The influence of names

and families is strictly kept up, and their qualities and relative

distinctions preserved in heraldric family Arms; yet entirely severed,

and free from influences of wealth, which is seldom amassed by any

persons in Indian communities; and most sure to slip from the hands of

chiefs, or others high in office, who are looked upon to be liberal

and charitable; and oftentimes, for the sake of popularity, render

themselves the poorest, and most meanly dressed and equipped of any in

the tribe.

These people have no written laws, nor others, save the penalties

affixed to certain crimes, by long-standing custom, or by the

decisions of the chiefs in council, who form a sort of Court and

Congress too, for the investigation of crimes, and transaction of the

public business. For the sessions of these dignitaries, each tribe

has, in the middle of their village, a Government or council-house,

where the chiefs often try and convict, for capital offences—leaving

the punishment to be inflicted by the nearest of kin, to whom all eyes

of the nation are turned, and who has no means of evading it without

suffering disgrace in his tribe. For this purpose, the custom, which

is the common law of the land, allows him to use any means whatever,

that he may deem necessary to bring the thing effectually about; and he

is allowed to _waylay_ and shoot down the criminal—so that punishment

is _certain_ and _cruel_, and as effective from the hands of a feeble,

as from those of a stout man, and entirely beyond the hope that often

arises from the “glorious uncertainty of the law.”

As I have in a former place said, cruelty is one of the leading traits

of the Indian’s character; and a little familiarity with their modes of

life and government will soon convince the reader, that _certainty_ and

_cruelty_ in punishments are requisite (where individuals undertake to

inflict the penalties of the laws), in order to secure the lives and

property of individuals in society.

In the treatment of their prisoners also, in many tribes, they are

in the habit of inflicting the most appalling tortures, for which

the enlightened world are apt to condemn them as cruel and unfeeling

in the extreme; without stopping to learn that in every one of these

instances, these cruelties are practiced by way of retaliation, by

individuals or families of the tribe, whose relatives have been

previously dealt with in a similar way by their enemies, and whose

_manes_ they deem it their duty to appease by this horrid and cruel

mode of retaliation.

And in justice to the savage, the reader should yet know, that

amongst these tribes that torture their prisoners, these cruelties

are practiced but upon the few whose lives are required to atone for

those who have been similarly dealt with by their enemies, and that the

_remainder are adopted into the tribe_, by marrying the widows whose

husbands have fallen in battle, in which capacity they are received

and respected like others of the tribe, and enjoy equal rights and

immunities. And before we condemn them too far, we should yet pause and

enquire whether in the enlightened world we are not guilty of equal

cruelties—whether in the ravages and carnage of war, and treatment

of prisoners, we practice any virtue superior to this; and whether

the annals of history which are familiar to all, do not furnish

abundant proof of equal cruelty to prisoners of war, as well as in

many instances, to the members of our own respective communities. It

is a remarkable fact and one well recorded in history, as it deserves

to be, to the honour of the savage, that no instance has been known

of violence to their captive females, a virtue yet to be learned in

civilized warfare.

If their punishments are certain and cruel, they have the merit of

being _few_, and those confined chiefly to their enemies.

It is natural to be cruel to enemies; and in this, I do not see

that the improvements of the enlightened and Christian world have

yet elevated them so very much above the savage. To their friends,

there are no people on earth that are more kind; and cruelties and

punishments (except for capital offences) are amongst themselves,

entirely dispensed with. No man in their communities is subject to

any restraints upon his liberty, or to any corporal or degrading

punishment; each one valuing his limbs, and his liberty to use them as

his inviolable right, which no power in the tribe can deprive him of;

whilst each one holds the chief as amenable to him as the most humble

individual in the tribe.

[Illustration: 306]

[Illustration: 307]

[Illustration: 308]

On an occasion when I had interrogated a Sioux chief, on the Upper

Missouri, about their Government—their punishments and tortures of

prisoners, for which I had freely condemned them for the cruelty of the

practice, he took occasion when I had got through, to ask _me_ some

questions relative to modes in the _civilized world_, which, with his

comments upon them, were nearly as follow; and struck me, as I think

they must every one, with great force.

“Among white people, nobody ever take your wife—take your children—take

your mother, cut off nose—cut eyes out—burn to death?” No! “Then _you_

no cut off nose—_you_ no cut out eyes—_you_ no burn to death—very good.”

He also told me he had often heard that white people hung their

criminals by the neck and choked them to death like dogs, and those

their own people; to which I answered, “yes.” He then told me he had

learned that they shut each other up in prisons, where they keep them a

great part of their lives _because they can’t pay money_! I replied in

the affirmative to this, which occasioned great surprise and excessive

laughter, even amongst the women. He told me that he had been to our

Fort, at Council Bluffs, where we had a great many warriors and braves,

and he saw three of them taken out on the prairies and tied to a post

and whipped almost to death, and he had been told that they submit to

all this to get a little money, “yes.” He said he had been told, that

when all the white people were born, their white _medicine-men_ had to

stand by and look on—that in the Indian country the women would not

allow that—they would be ashamed—that he had been along the Frontier,

and a good deal amongst the white people, and he had seen them whip

their little children—a thing that is very cruel—he had heard also,

from several white _medicine-men_, that the Great Spirit of the white

people was the child of a white woman, and that he was at last put to

death by the white people! This seemed to be a thing that he had not

been able to comprehend, and he concluded by saying, “the Indians’

Great Spirit got no mother—the Indians no kill him, he never die.” He

put me a chapter of other questions, as to the trespasses of the white

people on their lands—their continual corruption of the morals of their

women—and digging open the Indians’ graves to get their bones, &c. To

all of which I was compelled to reply in the affirmative, and quite

glad to close my note-book, and quietly to escape from the throng that

had collected around me, and saying (though to myself and silently),

that these and an hundred other vices belong to the civilized world,

and are practiced upon (but certainly, in no instance, reciprocated by)

the “cruel and relentless savage.”

Of their modes of war, of which, a great deal has been written by

other travellers—I could say much, but in the present place, must be

brief. All wars, offensive or defensive, are decided on by the chiefs

and doctors in council, where majority decides all questions. After

their resolve, the chief conducts and leads—his pipe with the reddened

stem is sent through the tribe by his _runners_, and every man who

consents to go to war, draws the smoke once through its stem; he is

then a _volunteer_, like all of their soldiers in war, and bound by

no compulsive power, except that of pride, and dread of the disgrace

of turning back. After the soldiers are enlisted, the war-dance

is performed in presence of the whole tribe; when each warrior in

warrior’s dress, with weapons in hand, dances up separately, and

striking the reddened post, thereby takes the solemn oath not to desert

his party.

The chief leads in full dress to make himself as conspicuous a mark as

possible for his enemy; whilst his men are chiefly denuded, and their

limbs and faces covered with red earth or vermilion, and oftentimes

with charcoal and grease, so as completely to disguise them, even from

the knowledge of many of their intimate friends.

At the close of hostilities, the two parties are often brought together

by a flag of truce, where they sit in Treaty, and solemnize by smoking

through the calumet or pipe of peace, as I have before described; and

after that, their warriors and braves step forward, with the pipe of

peace in the left hand, and the war-club in the right, and dance around

in a circle—going through many curious and exceedingly picturesque

evolutions in the “_pipe of peace dance_.”

To each other I have found these people kind and honourable, and

endowed with every feeling of parental, of filial, and conjugal

affection, that is met in more enlightened communities. I have found

them moral and religious: and I am bound to give them great credit for

their zeal, which is often exhibited in their modes of worship, however

insufficient they may seem to us, or may be in the estimation of the

Great Spirit.

I have heard it said by some very good men, and some who have even

been preaching the Christian religion amongst them, that they have

no religion—that all their zeal in their worship of the Great Spirit

was but the foolish excess of ignorant superstition—that their humble

devotions and supplications to the Sun and the Moon, where many of them

suppose that the Great Spirit resides, were but the absurd rantings of

idolatry. To such opinions as these I never yet gave answer, nor drew

other instant inferences from them, than, that from the bottom of my

heart, I pitied the persons who gave them.

I fearlessly assert to the world, (and I defy contradiction,) that the

North American Indian is everywhere, in his native state, a highly

moral and religious being, endowed by his Maker, with an intuitive

knowledge of some great Author of his being, and the Universe; in dread

of whose displeasure he constantly lives, with the apprehension before

him, of a future state, where he expects to be rewarded or punished

according to the merits he has gained or forfeited in this world.

I have made this a subject of unceasing enquiry during all my travels,

and from every individual Indian with whom I have conversed on the

subject, from the highest to the lowest and most pitiably ignorant,

I have received evidence enough, as well as from their numerous

and humble modes of worship, to convince the mind, and elicit the

confessions of, any man whose gods are not beaver and muskrats’

skins—or whose ambition is not to be deemed an apostle, or himself,

their only redeemer.

Morality and virtue, I venture to say, the civilized world need not

undertake to teach them; and to support me in this, I refer the reader

to the interesting narrative of the Rev. Mr. Parker, amongst the tribes

through and beyond the Rocky Mountains; to the narratives of Captain

Bonneville, through the same regions; and also to the reports of the

Reverend Messrs. Spalding and Lee, who have crossed the Mountains, and

planted their little colony amongst them. And I am also allowed to

refer to the account given by the Rev. Mr. Beaver, of the tribes in the

vicinity of the Columbia and the Pacific Coast.

Of their extraordinary modes and sincerity of worship, I speak with

equal confidence; and although I am compelled to pity them for their

ignorance, I am bound to say that I never saw any other people of any

colour, who spend _so much of their lives_ in humbling themselves

before, and worshipping the Great Spirit, as some of these tribes do,

nor any whom I would not as soon suspect of insincerity and hypocrisy.

Self-denial, which is comparatively a word of no meaning in the

enlightened world; and self-torture and almost self-immolation, are

continual modes of appealing to the Great Spirit for his countenance

and forgiveness; and these, not in studied figures of rhetoric,

resounding in halls and synagogues, to fill and astonish the ears of

the multitude; but humbly cried forth from starved stomachs and parched

throats, from some lone and favourite haunts, where the poor penitents

crawl and lay with their faces in the dirt from day to day, and day to

day, sobbing forth their humble confessions of their sins, and their

earnest implorations for divine forgiveness and mercy.

I have seen man thus prostrating himself before his Maker, and

worshipping as Nature taught him; and I have seen mercenary white man

with his bottle and its associate vices, _unteaching_ them; and after

that, good and benevolent and pious men, devotedly wearing out their

valuable lives, all but in vain, endeavouring to break down confirmed

habits of cultivated vices and dissipation, and to engraft upon them

the blessings of Christianity and civilization. I have visited

most of the stations, and am acquainted with many of the excellent

missionaries, who, with their families falling by the diseases of the

country about them, are zealously labouring to benefit these benighted

people; but I have, with thousands and millions of others, to deplore

the ill success with which their painful and faithful labours have

generally been attended.

This failure I attribute not to the want of capacity on the part of the

savage, nor for lack of zeal and Christian endeavours of those who have

been sent, and to whom the eyes of the sympathizing part of the world

have been anxiously turned, in hopes of a more encouraging account.

The misfortune has been, in my opinion, that these efforts have mostly

been made in the wrong place—along the Frontier, where (though they

have stood most in need of Christian advice and example) they have

been the least ready to hear it or to benefit from its introduction;

where whiskey has been sold for twenty, or thirty, or fifty years, and

every sort of fraud and abuse that could be engendered and visited upon

them, and amongst their families, by ingenious, _money-making_ white

man; rearing up under a burning sense of injustice, the most deadly and

thwarting prejudices, which, and which alone, in my opinion, have stood

in the way of the introduction of Christianity—of agriculture, and

everything which virtuous society has attempted to teach them; which

they meet and suspect, and reject as some new trick or enterprize of

white man, which is to redound to his advantage rather than for their

own benefit.

The pious missionary finds himself here, I would venture to say, in

an indescribable vicinity of mixed vices and stupid ignorance, that

disgust and discourage him; and just at the moment when his new theory,

which has been at first received as a mystery to them, is about to be

successfully revealed and explained, the whiskey bottle is handed again

from the bushes; and the poor Indian (whose perplexed mind is just

ready to catch the brilliant illumination of Christianity), grasps it,

and, like too many people in the enlightened world, quiets his excited

feelings with its soothing draught, embracing most affectionately the

friend that brings him the most sudden relief; and is contented to fall

back, and linger—and die in the moral darkness that is about him.

And notwithstanding the great waste of missionary labours, on many

portions of our vast Frontier, there have been some instances in

which their efforts have been crowned with signal success, (even with

the counteracting obstacles that have stood in their way), of which

instances I have made some mention in former epistles.

I have always been, and still am, an advocate for missionary efforts

amongst these people, but I never have had much faith in the success

of any unless they could be made amongst the tribes in their primitive

state; where, if the strong arm of the Government could be extended

out to protect them, I believe that with the example of good and pious

men, teaching them at the same time, agriculture and the useful arts,

much could be done with these interesting and talented people, for the

successful improvement of their moral and physical condition.

I have ever thought, and still think, that the Indian’s mind is a

beautiful blank, on which anything might be written, if the right mode

were taken to do it.

Could the enlightened and virtuous society of the East, have been

brought in contact with him as his first neighbours, and his eyes been

first opened to improvements and habits worthy of his imitation; and

could religion have been taught him without the interference of the

counteracting vices by which he is surrounded, the best efforts of the

world would not have been thrown away upon him, nor posterity been left

to say, in future ages, when he and his race shall have been swept from

the face of the earth, that he was destined by Heaven to be unconverted

and uncivilized.

The Indian’s calamity is surely far this side of his origin—his

misfortune has been in his education. Ever since our first acquaintance

with these people on the Atlantic shores, have we regularly advanced

upon them; and far a-head of good and moral society have their first

teachers travelled (and are yet travelling), with vices and iniquities

so horrible as to blind their eyes for ever to the light and loveliness

of virtue, when she is presented to them.

It is in the bewildering maze of this moving atmosphere that he, in

his native simplicity, finds himself lost amidst the ingenuity and

sophistry of his new acquaintance. He stands amazed at the arts and

improvements of civilized life—his proud spirit which before was

founded on his ignorance, droops, and he sinks down discouraged, into

melancholy and despair; and at that moment grasps the bottle (which

is ever ready), to soothe his anguished feelings to the grave. It

is in this deplorable condition that the civilized world, in their

approach, have ever found him; and here in his inevitable misery, that

the charity of the world has been lavished upon him, and religion has

exhausted its best efforts almost in vain.

Notwithstanding this destructive ordeal, through which all the border

tribes have had to pass, and of whom I have spoken but in general

terms, there are striking and noble exceptions on the Frontiers, of

individuals, and in some instances, of the remaining remnants of

tribes, who have followed the advice and example of their Christian

teachers; who have entirely discarded their habits of dissipation,

and successfully outlived the dismal wreck of their tribe—having

embraced, and are now preaching, the Christian religion; and proving

by the brightest example, that they are well worthy of the sincere and

well-applied friendship of the enlightened world, rather than their

enmity and persecution.

By nature they are decent and modest, unassuming and inoffensive—and

all history (which I could quote to the end of a volume), proves them

to have been found friendly and hospitable, on the first approach

of white people to their villages on all parts of the American

Continent—and from what I have _seen_, (which I offer as proof, rather

than what I have _read_). I am willing and proud to add, for the ages

who are only to read of these people, my testimony to that which was

given by the immortal Columbus, who wrote back to his Royal Master and

Mistress, from his first position on the new Continent, “I swear to

your Majesties, that there is not a better people in the world than

these; more affectionate, affable, or mild. They love their neighbours

as themselves, and they always speak smilingly.”

They are ingenious and talented, as many of their curious manufactures

will prove, which are seen by thousands in my Collection.

In the _mechanic arts_ they have advanced but little, probably because

they have had but little use for them, and have had no teachers to

bring them out. In the _fine arts_, they are perhaps still more rude,

and their productions are very few. Their materials and implements that

they work with, are exceedingly rare and simple; and their principal

efforts at pictorial effects, are found on their buffalo robes; of

which I have given some account in former Letters, and of which I shall

herein furnish some additional information.

I have been unable to find anything like a _system_ of hieroglyphic

writing amongst them; yet, their _picture writings_ on the rocks, and

on their robes, approach somewhat towards it. Of the former, I have

seen a vast many in the course of my travels; and I have satisfied

myself that they are generally the _totems_ (symbolic names) merely,

of Indians who have visited those places, and from a similar feeling

of vanity that everywhere belongs to man much alike, have been in the

habit of recording their names or symbols, such as birds, beasts, or

reptiles; by which each family, and each individual, is generally

known, as white men are in the habit of recording their names at

watering places, &c.

Many of these have recently been ascribed to the North-men, who

probably discovered this country at an early period, and have been

extinguished by the savage tribes. I might have subscribed to such a

theory, had I not at the Red Pipe Stone Quarry, where there are a vast

number of these inscriptions cut in the solid rock, and at other places

also, seen the Indian at work, recording his totem amongst those of

more ancient dates; which convinced me that they had been progressively

made, at different ages, and without any system that could be called

hieroglyphic writing.

The paintings on their robes are in many cases exceedingly curious, and

generally represent the exploits of their military lives, which they

are proud of recording in this way and exhibiting on their backs as

they walk.

In +plates+ 306 and 307, are _fac-similes_ of the paintings on a Crow

robe, which hangs in my Collection, amongst many others from various

tribes; exhibiting the different tastes, and state of the fine arts,

in the different tribes. All the groups on these two plates, are taken

from one robe; and on the original, are quite picturesque, from the

great variety of vivid colours which they have there given to them. The

reader will recollect the robe Of _Mah-to-toh-pa_, which I described

in the First Volume of this work. And he will find here, something

very similar, the battles of a distinguished war-chief’s life; all

pourtrayed by his own hand, and displayed on his back as he walks,

where all can read, and all of course are challenged to deny.[43]

In +plate+ 308, are _fac-simile_ outlines from about one-half of a

group on a Pawnee robe, also hanging in the exhibition; representing a

procession of doctors or medicine-men, when one of them, the foremost

one, is giving freedom to his favourite horse. This is a very curious

custom, which I found amongst many of the tribes, and is done by his

announcing to all of his fraternity, that on a certain day, he is

going to give liberty to his faithful horse that has longest served

him, and he expects them all to be present; at the time and place

appointed, they all appear on horseback, most fantastically painted,

and dressed, as well as armed and equipped; when the owner of the horse

leads the procession, and drives before him his emancipated horse,

which is curiously painted and branded; which he holds in check with a

long laso. When they have arrived at the proper spot on the prairie,

the ceremony takes place, of turning it loose, and giving it, it

would seem, as a sort of sacrifice to the Great Spirit. This animal

after this, takes his range amongst the bands of wild horses; and if

caught by the laso, as is often the case, is discharged, under the

superstitious belief that it belongs to the Great Spirit, and not with

impunity to be appropriated by them.

Besides this curious custom, there are very many instances where these

magicians, (the avails of whose practice enable them to do it, in order

to enthral the ignorant and superstitious minds of their people, as

well as, perhaps, to quiet their own apprehensions,) sacrifice to the

Great or Evil Spirit, their horses and dogs, by killing them instead of

turning them loose. These sacrifices are generally made _immediately_

to their _medicine-bags_, or to their _family-medicine_, which every

family seems to have attached to their household, in addition to

that which appropriately belongs to individuals. And in making these

sacrifices, and all gifts to the Great Spirit, there is one thing yet

to be told—that whatever gift is made, whether a horse, a dog, or

other article, it is sure to be the _best_ of its kind, that the giver

possesses, otherwise he subjects himself to disgrace in his tribe, and

to the ill-will of the power he is endeavouring to conciliate.[44]

In +plate+ 309, there is a _fac-simile_ copy of the paintings on

another Pawnee robe, the property and the designs of a distinguished

doctor or medicine-man. In the centre he has represented himself in

full dress on his favourite horse; and, at the top and bottom, it

would seem, he has endeavoured to set up his claims to the reputation

of a warrior, with the heads of seven victims which he professes to

have slain in battle. On the sides there are numerous figures, very

curiously denoting his profession, where he is vomiting and purging

his patients, with herbs; where also he has represented his _medicine_

or totem, the Bear. And also the rising of the sun, and the different

phases of the moon, which these magicians look to with great dependence

for the operation of their charms and mysteries in effecting the cure

of their patients.

In +plate+ 310, is a further exemplification of symbolic

representations, as well as of the state of the arts of drawing and

design amongst these rude people. This curious chart is a _fac-simile_

copy of an Indian song, which was drawn on a piece of birch bark, about

twice the size of the plate, and used by the Chippeways preparatory

to a _medicine-hunt_, as they term it. For the bear, the moose, the

beaver, and nearly every animal they hunt for, they have certain

seasons to commence, and previous to which, they “make medicine” for

several days, to conciliate the bear (or other) Spirit, to ensure a

successful season. For this purpose, these doctors, who are the only

persons, generally, who are initiated into these profound secrets,

sing forth, with the beat of the drum, the songs which are written in

characters on these charts, in which all dance and join in the chorus;

although they are generally as ignorant of the translation and meaning

of the song, as a mere passing traveller; and which they have no means

of learning, except by extraordinary claims upon the tribe, for their

services as warriors and hunters; and then by an extraordinary fee to

be given to the mystery-men, who alone can reveal them, and that under

the most profound injunctions of secrecy. I was not initiated far

enough in this tribe, to explain the mysteries that are hidden on this

little chart, though I heard it sung over, and listened, (I am sure) at

least one hour, before they had sung it all.

Of these kinds of _symbolic writings_, and totems, such as are given

in +plate+ 311, recorded on rocks and trees in the country, a volume

might be filled; and from the knowledge which I have been able to

obtain of them, I doubt whether I should be able to give with them

all, much additional information, to that which I have briefly given

in these few simple instances. Their _picture writing_, which is found

on their robes, their wigwams, and different parts of their dress, is

also voluminous and various; and can be best studied by the curious,

on the numerous articles in the Museum, where they have the additional

interest of having been traced by the Indian’s own hand.

In +plate+ 312, is also a _fac-simile_ of a Mandan robe, with a

representation of the sun, most wonderfully painted upon it. This

curious robe, which was a present from an esteemed friend of mine

amongst those unfortunate people, is now in my Collection; where it may

speak for itself, after this brief introduction.

[Illustration: 309]

[Illustration: 310]

[Illustration: 311]

[Illustration: 312]

From these brief hints, which I have too hastily thrown together,

it will be seen that these people are ingenious, and have much in

their modes as well as in their manners, to enlist the attention of

the merely curious, even if they should not be drawn nearer to them

by feelings of sympathy and pity for their existing and approaching

misfortunes.

But he who can travel amongst them, or even sit down in his parlour,

with his map of North America before him, with Halkett’s Notes on

the History of the North American Indians (and several other very

able works that have been written on their character and history),

and fairly and truly contemplate the system of universal abuse, that

is hurrying such a people to utter destruction, will find enough to

enlist all his sympathies, and lead him to cultivate a more general and

intimate acquaintance with their true character.

He who will sit and contemplate that vast Frontier, where, by the past

policy of the Government, one hundred and twenty thousand of these

poor people, (who had just got initiated into the mysteries and modes

of civilized life, surrounded by examples of industry and agriculture

which they were beginning to adopt), have been removed several hundred

miles to the West, to meet a second siege of the whiskey-sellers

and traders in the wilderness, to whose enormous exactions their

semi-civilized habits and appetites have subjected them, will assuredly

pity them. Where they have to quit their acquired luxuries, or pay

ten times their accustomed prices for them—and to scuffle for a few

years upon the plains, with the wild tribes, and with white men also,

for the flesh and the skins of the last of the buffaloes; where their

carnage, but not their _appetites_, must stop in a few years, and

with the ghastliness of hunger and despair, they will find themselves

gazing at each other upon the vacant waste, which will afford them

nothing but the empty air, and the desperate resolve to flee to the

woods and fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains; whilst more lucky white

man will return to his comfortable home, with no misfortune, save that

of _deep remorse_ and a _guilty conscience_. Such a reader will find

enough to claim his pity and engage his whole soul’s indignation, at

the wholesale and retail system of injustice, which has been, from

the very first landing of our forefathers, (and is equally at the

present day, being) visited upon these poor, and naturally unoffending,

untrespassing people.

In alluding to the cruel policy of removing the different tribes to

their new country, West of the Mississippi, I would not do it without

the highest respect to the motives of the Government—and to the

feelings and opinions of those worthy Divines, whose advice and whose

services were instrumental in bringing it about; and who, no doubt

were of opinion that they were effecting a plan that would redound to

the Indian’s benefit. Such was once my own opinion—but when I go, as I

have done, through every one of those tribes removed, who had learned

at home to use the ploughshare, and also contracted a passion, and

a taste for civilized manufactures; and after that, removed twelve

and fourteen hundred miles from their homes, to a district where

their wants are to be supplied by the traders, at eight or ten times

the prices they have been in the habit of paying; where whiskey can

easily be sold to them in a boundless and lawless forest, without the

restraints that can be successfully put upon the sellers of it in their

civilized neighbourhoods; and where also they are allured from the use

of their ploughs, by the herds of buffaloes and other wild animals on

the plains; I am compelled to state, as my irresistible conviction,

that I believe the system one well calculated to benefit the interests

of the voracious land-speculators and Indian Traders; the first of whom

are ready to grasp at their lands, as soon as they are vacated—and

the others, at the _annuities_ of one hundred and twenty thousand

extravagant customers. I believe the system is calculated to aid these,

and perhaps to facilitate the growth and the wealth of the civilized

border; but I believe, like everything else that tends to white man’s

aggrandizement, and the increase of his wealth, it will have as rapid

a tendency to the poverty and destruction of the poor _red men_;

who, unfortunately, _almost_ seem _doomed_, never in any way to be

associated in interest with their pale-faced neighbours.

The system of trade, and the small-pox, have been the great and

wholesale destroyers of these poor people, from the Atlantic Coast to

where they are now found. And no one but God, knows where the voracity

of the one is to stop, short of the acquisition of everything that is

desirable to money-making man in the Indian’s country; or when the

mortal destruction of the other is to be arrested, whilst there is

untried flesh for it to act upon, either within or beyond the Rocky

Mountains.

From the first settlements on the Atlantic Coast, to where it is now

carried on at the base of the Rocky Mountains, there has been but one

system of trade and money-making, by hundreds and thousands of white

men, who are desperately bent upon making their fortunes in this trade,

with the unsophisticated children of the forest; and generally they

have succeeded in the achievement of their object.

The Governments of the United States, and Great Britain, have always

held out every encouragement to the Fur Traders, whose traffic has

uniformly been looked upon as beneficial, and a source of wealth

to nations; though surely, they never could have considered such

intercourse as advantageous to the savage.

Besides the many thousands who are daily and hourly selling whiskey

and rum, and useless gewgaws, to the Indians on the United States, the

Canada, the Texan and Mexican borders, there are, of hardy adventurers,

in the Rocky Mountains and beyond, or near them, and out of all

limits of laws, one thousand armed men in the annual employ of the

United States’ Fur Companies—an equal number in the employment of the

British Factories, and twice that number in the Russian and Mexican

possessions; all of whom pervade the countries of the wildest tribes

they can reach, with guns and gunpowder in their hands, and other

instruments of death, unthought of by the simple savage, calculated

to terrify and coerce him to favourable terms in his trade; and in all

instances they assume the right, (and prove it, if necessary, by the

superiority of their weapons,) of hunting and trapping the streams and

lakes of their countries.

These traders, in addition to the terror, and sometimes death, that

they carry into these remote realms, at the muzzles of their guns, as

well as by whiskey and the small-pox, are continually arming tribe

after tribe with firearms; who are able thereby, to bring their

unsuspecting enemies into unequal combats, where they are slain by

thousands, and who have no way to heal the awful wound but by arming

themselves in turn; and in a similar manner reeking their vengeance

upon _their_ defenceless enemies on the West. In this wholesale way,

and by whiskey and disease, tribe after tribe sink their heads and lose

their better, proudest half, before the next and succeeding waves of

civilization flow on, to see or learn anything definite of them.

Without entering at this time, into any detailed history of this

immense system, or denunciation of any of the men or their motives, who

are engaged in it, I would barely observe, that, from the very nature

of their traffic, where their goods are to be carried several thousands

of miles, on the most rapid and dangerous streams, over mountains and

other almost discouraging obstacles; and that at the continual hazard

to their lives, from accidents and diseases of the countries, the poor

Indians are obliged to pay such enormous prices for their goods, that

the balance of trade is so decidedly against them, as soon to lead

them to poverty; and, unfortunately for them, they mostly contract a

taste for whiskey and rum, which are not only ruinous in their prices,

but in their effects destructive to life—destroying the Indians, much

more rapidly than an equal indulgence will destroy the civilized

constitution.

In the Indian communities, where there is no law of the land or custom

denominating it a vice to drink whiskey, and to get drunk; and where

the poor Indian meets whiskey tendered to him by white men, whom he

considers wiser than himself, and to whom lie naturally looks for

example; he thinks it no harm to drink to excess, and will lie drunk

as long as he can raise the means to pay for it. And after his first

means, in his wild state, are exhausted, he becomes a beggar for

whiskey, and begs until he disgusts, when the honest pioneer becomes

his neighbour; and then, and not before, gets the name of the “poor,

degraded, naked, and drunken Indian,” to whom the epithets are well and

truly applied.

On this great system of carrying the Fur Trade into the Rocky Mountains

and other parts of the wilderness country, where whiskey is sold at

the rate of twenty and thirty dollars per gallon, and most other

articles of trade at a similar rate; I know of no better comment, nor

any more excusable, than the quotation of a few passages from a very

popular work, which is being read with great avidity, from the pen of a

gentleman whose name gives currency to any book, and whose fine taste,

pleasure to all who read. The work I refer to “The Rocky Mountains,

or Adventures in the Far West, by W. Irving,” is a very interesting

one; and its incidents, no doubt, are given with great candour, by

the excellent officer, Captain Bonneville, who spent five years in

the region of the Rocky Mountains, on a furlough; endeavouring, in

competition with others, to add to his fortune, by pushing the Fur

Trade to some of the wildest tribes in those remote regions.

“The worthy Captain (says the Author) started into the country with

110 men; whose very appearance and equipment exhibited a piebald

mixture—half-civilized and half-savage, &c.” And he also preludes

his work by saying, that it was revised by himself from Captain

Bonneville’s own notes, which can, no doubt, be relied on.

This medley group, it seems, traversed the country to the Rocky

Mountains, where, amongst the Nez Percés and Flatheads, he says, “They

were friendly in their dispositions, and honest to the most scrupulous

degree in their intercourse with the white men. And of the same people,

the Captain continues—Simply to call these people religious, would

convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which

pervades the whole of their conduct. Their honesty is immaculate; and

their purity of purpose, and their observance of the rites of their

religion, are most uniform and remarkable. They are, certainly, more

like a nation of saints than a horde of savages.”

Afterwards, of the “_Root-Diggers_,” in the vicinity of the Great

Salt Lake, who are a band of the Snake tribe, (and of whom he speaks

thus:—“In fact, they are a simple, timid, inoffensive race, and scarce

provided with any weapons, except for the chase”); he says that, “one

morning, one of his trappers, of a violent and savage character,

discovering that his traps had been carried off in the night, took

a horrid oath that he would kill the first Indian he should meet,

innocent or guilty. As he was returning with his comrades to camp,

he beheld two unfortunate Root-Diggers seated on the river bank

fishing—advancing upon them, he levelled his rifle, shot one upon the

spot, and flung his bleeding body into the stream.”

A short time afterwards, when his party of trappers “were about to

cross Ogden’s river, a great number of Shoshokies or Root-Diggers

were posted on the opposite bank, when they _imagined_ they were

there with hostile intent; they advanced upon them, levelled their

rifles, and killed twenty-five of them on the spot. The rest fled to

a short distance, then halted and turned about, howling and whining

like wolves, and uttering most piteous wailings. The trappers chased

them in every direction; the poor wretches made no defence, but fled

with terror; neither does it appear from the accounts of the boasted

victors, that a weapon had been wielded, or a weapon launched by the

Indians throughout the affair.”

After this affair, this “piebald” band of trappers wandered off to

Monterey, on the coast of California, and on their return on horseback

through an immense tract of the Root-Diggers’ country, he gives the

further following accounts of their transactions:—

“In the course of their journey through the country of the poor

Root-Diggers, there seems to have been an emulation between them,

which could inflict the greatest outrages upon the natives. The

trappers still considered them in the light of dangerous foes; and the

Mexicans, very probably, charged them with the sin of horse-stealing;

we have no other mode of accounting for the infamous barbarities, of

which, according to their own story, they were guilty—hunting the poor

Indians like wild beasts, and killing them without mercy—chasing their

unfortunate victims at full speed; noosing them around the neck with

their lasos, and then dragging them to death.”

It is due to Captain Bonneville, that the world should know that these

cruel (not “_savage_”) atrocities were committed by his men, when they

were on a Tour to explore the shores of the Great Salt Lake, and many

hundreds of miles from him, and beyond his controul; and that in his

work, both the Captain and the writer of the book have expressed in a

proper way, their abhorrence of such fiendish transactions.

A part of the same “piebald mixture” of trappers, who were encamped in

the Riccaree country, and trapping the beavers out of their streams,

when, finding that the Riccarees had stolen a number of their horses

one night, in the morning made prisoners of two of the Riccarees, who

loitered into their camp, and probably without knowledge of the offence

committed, when they were bound hand and foot as hostages, until every

one of the horses should be returned.

“The mountaineers declared, that unless the horses were relinquished,

the prisoners should be burned to death. To give force to their threat,

a pyre of logs and faggots was heaped up and kindled into a blaze.

The Riccarees released one horse, and then another; but finding that

nothing but the relinquishment of all their spoils would purchase the

lives of their captives, they abandoned them to their fate, moving off

with many parting words and howlings, when the prisoners were dragged

to the blazing pyre, and burnt to death in sight of their retreating

comrades.

“Such are the savage cruelties that white men learn to practice, who

mingle in savage life; and such are the acts that lead to terrible

recrimination on the part of the Indians. Should we hear of any

atrocities committed by the Riccarees upon captive white men; let this

signal and recent provocation be born in mind. Individual cases of the

kind dwell in the recollections of whole tribes—and it is a point of

honour and conscience to revenge them.”[45]

To quote the author further————“The facts disclosed in the present

work, clearly manifest the policy of establishing military posts, and

a mounted force to protect our Traders in their journeys across the

great Western wilds; and of pushing the outposts into the heart of the

singular wilderness we have laid open, so as to maintain some degree of

sway over the country, and to put an end to the kind of ‘black mail,’

levied on all occasions, by the savage ‘chivalry of the mountains’”!

The appalling cruelties in the above quotations require no comment;

and I hope the author, as well as the Captain, who have my warmest

approbation for having so frankly revealed them, will pardon me for

having quoted them in this place, as one striking proof of the justice

that may be reasonably expected, in _prospect_; and that may fairly

be laid to the _past_ proceedings of these great systems of trading

with, and civilizing the savages; which have been carried on from the

beginning of our settlements on the Atlantic Coast, to the present

day—making first acquaintance with them, and first impressions of

the glorious effects of civilization—and of the sum total of which,

this instance is but a mere point; but with the singular merit which

redounds to the honour of Captain Bonneville, that he has frankly told

the whole truth; which, if as fully revealed of _all other transactions

in these regions_, I am enabled to say, would shake every breast with

ague-chills of abhorrence of _civilized_ barbarities. From the above

facts, as well as from others enumerated in the foregoing epistles,

the discerning reader will easily see how prejudices are raised in

the minds of the savage, and why so many murders of white people

are heard of on the Frontier, which are uniformly attributed to the

wanton cruelty and rapacity of the savage—which we denominate “Indian

murders,” and “ruthless barbarities,” before we can condescend to go to

the poor savage, and ask him for a reason, which there is no doubt he

could generally furnish us.

From these, and hundreds of others that might be named, and equally

barbarous, it can easily be seen, that white men may well feel a dread

at every step they take in Indian realms, after atrocities like these,

that call so loudly and so justly for revenge, in a country where there

are no laws to punish; but where the cruel savage takes vengeance in

his own way—and white men fall, in the Indian’s estimation, not as

_murdered_, but _executed_, under the common law of their land.

Of the hundreds and thousands of such _murders_, as they are

denominated by white men, who are the only ones to tell of them in the

civilized world; it should also be kept in mind by the reader, who

passes his sentence on them, that they are all committed on Indian

ground—that the Indian hunts not, nor traps anywhere on white man’s

soil, nor asks him for his lands—or molests the sacred graves where

they have deposited the bones of their fathers, their wives and their

little children.

I have said that the principal means of the destruction of these

people, were the system of trade, and the introduction of small-pox,

the infallible plague that is consequent, sooner or later, upon the

introduction of trade and whiskey-selling to every tribe. I would

venture the assertion, from books that I have searched, and from other

evidence, that of the numerous tribes which have already disappeared,

and of those that have been traded with, quite to the Rocky Mountains,

each one has had this exotic disease in their turn—and in a few months

have lost one half or more of their numbers; and that from living

evidences, and distinct traditions, this appalling disease has several

times, before our days, run like a wave through the Western tribes,

over the Rocky Mountains, and to the Pacific Ocean—thinning the ranks

of the poor Indians to an extent which no knowledge, save that of the

overlooking eye of the Almighty, can justly comprehend.[46]

I have travelled faithfully and far, and have closely scanned, with

a hope of fairly pourtraying the condition and customs of these

unfortunate people; and if in taking leave of my readers, which I must

soon do, they should censure me for any oversight, or any indiscretion

or error, I will take to myself these consoling reflections, that they

will acquit me of intention to render more or less than justice to

any one; and also, that if in my zeal to render a service and benefit

to the Indian, I should have fallen short of it, I will, at least, be

acquitted of having done him an _injury_. And in endeavouring to render

them that justice, it belongs to me yet to say that the introduction of

the fatal causes of their destruction above-named, has been a subject

of close investigation with me during my travels; and I have watched on

every part of the Frontier their destructive influences, which result

in the overthrow of the savage tribes, which, one succeeding another,

are continually becoming extinct under their baneful influences.

And before I would expatiate upon any system for their successful

improvement and preservation, I would protrude my opinion to the world,

which I regret to do, that so long as the past and present system of

trade and whiskey-selling is tolerated amongst them, there is little

hope for their improvement, nor any chance for more than a temporary

existence. I have closely studied the Indian character in its native

state, and also in its secondary form along our Frontiers; civilized,

as it is often (but incorrectly) called. I have seen it in every phase,

and although there are many noble instances to the contrary, and with

many of whom I am personally acquainted; yet the greater part of those

who have lingered along the Frontiers, and been kicked about like dogs,

by white men, and beaten into a sort of a civilization, are very far

from being what I would be glad to see them, and proud to call them,

civilized by the aids and examples of good and moral people. Of the

Indians in their general capacity of civilized, along our extensive

Frontier, and those tribes that I found in their primitive and

disabused state, I have drawn a Table, which I offer as an estimate of

their comparative character, which I trust will be found to be near the

truth, generally, though like all general rules or estimates, with its

exceptions. (Vide Appendix C.)

Such are the results to which the present system of civilization brings

that small part of these poor unfortunate people, who outlive the

first calamities of their country; and in this degraded and pitiable

condition, the most of them end their days in poverty and wretchedness,

without the power of rising above it. Standing on the soil which

they have occupied from their childhood, and inherited from their

fathers; with the dread of “pale faces,” and the deadly prejudices that

have been reared in their breasts against them, for the destructive

influences which they have introduced into their country, which have

thrown the greater part of their friends and connexions into the grave,

and are now promising the remainder of them no better prospect than

the dreary one of living a few years longer, and then to sink into the

ground themselves; surrendering their lands and their fair hunting

grounds to the enjoyment of their enemies, and their bones to be dug up

and strewed about the fields, or to be labelled in our Museums.

For the Christian and philanthropist, in any part of the world, there

is enough, I am sure, in the character, condition, and history of

these unfortunate people, to engage his sympathies—for the Nation,

there is an unrequited account of sin and injustice that sooner or

later will call for _national retribution_—and for the American

citizens, who live, every where proud of their growing wealth and their

luxuries, over the bones of these poor fellows, who have surrendered

their hunting-grounds and their lives, to the enjoyment of their

cruel dispossessors, there is a lingering terror yet, I fear, for the

reflecting minds, whose mortal bodies must soon take their humble

places with their red, but injured brethren, under the same glebe; to

appear and stand, at last, with guilt’s shivering conviction, amidst

the myriad ranks of accusing spirits, that are to rise in their own

fields, at the final day of resurrection!

[41] See the four days’ religious ceremonies of the Mandans, and

use of the willow boughs, and sacrifices of fingers, &c. in Vol. I.

pp. 159. 170; and also the custom of war-chiefs wearing horns on

their head-dresses, like the Israelitish chiefs of great renown,

Vol. I. p. 104.

[42] For the satisfaction of the reader, I have introduced in

the Appendix to this Volume, Letter B, a brief vocabulary of the

languages of several adjoining tribes in the North West, from

which, by turning to it, they can easily draw their own inferences.

These words have all been written down by myself, from the Indian’s

mouths, as they have been correctly translated to me; and I think

it will at once he decided, that there is very little affinity or

resemblance, if any, between them. I have therein given a sample

of the Blackfoot language, yet, of that immense tribe who all

class under the name of Blackfoot, there are the Cotonnés and the

Grosventres des Prairies—whose languages are entirely distinct

from this—and also from each other—and in the same region, and

neighbours to them, are also the Chayennes—the Knisteneaux, the

Crows, the Shoshonees, and Pawnees; all of whose languages are as

distinct, and as widely different, as those that I have given.

These facts, I think, without my going further, will fully show the

entire dissimilarity between these languages, and support me to a

certain extent, at all events, in the opinion I have advanced above.

[43] The reader will bear it in mind, that these drawings, as well

as all those of the kind that have heretofore been given, and those

that are to follow, have been correctly traced with a _Camera_,

from the robes and other works of the Indians belonging to my

Indian Museum.

[44] Lewis and Clarke, in their Tour across the Rocky Mountains,

have given an account of a Mandan chief, who had sacrificed

seventeen horses to his _medicine-bag_—to conciliate the good will

of the Great Spirit. And I have met many instances, where, while

boasting to me of their exploits and their liberality, they have

claimed to have given several of their horses to the Great Spirit,

and as many to white men!

[45] During the summer of this transaction I was on the Upper

Missouri river, and had to pass the Riccaree village in my bark

canoe, with only two men, which the leader will say justly accounts

for the advice of Mr. M‘Kenzie, to pass the Riccaree village in the

night, which I did, as I have before described, by which means it

is possible I preserved my life, as they had just killed the last

Fur Trader in their village, and as I have learned since, were

“_dancing his scalp_” when I came by them.

[46] The Reverend Mr. Parker in his Tour across the Rocky Mountains

says, that amongst the Indians below the Falls of the Columbia

at least seven-eighths, if not nine-tenths, as Dr. M‘Laughlin

believes, have been swept away by disease between the years 1829,

and the time that he visited that place in 1836. “So many and so

sudden were the deaths which occurred, that the shores were strewed

with the unburied dead, whole and large villages were depopulated,

and some entire tribes have disappeared.” This mortality he says

“extended not only from the Cascades to the Pacific, but from very

far North to the coast of California.” These facts, with hundreds

of others, shew how rapidly the Indian population is destroyed,

long before we become acquainted with them.