Mr. Johnston had spent the last fall and winter in the regions beyond
Lake Superior, towards the forks of the Mississippi, where he had been
employed as American agent to arrange the boundary line between the
country of the Chippewas and that of their neighbours and implacable
enemies, the Sioux. His mediation appeared successful for the time, and
he smoked the pipe of peace with both tribes; but during the spring this
ferocious war has again broken out, and he seems to think that nothing
but the annihilation of either one nation or the other will entirely put
an end to their conflicts; "for there is no point at which the Indian
law of retaliation stops, short of the extermination of one of the
parties."
I asked him how it is that in their wars the Indians make no distinction
between the warriors opposed to them and helpless women and
children?--how it could be with a brave and manly people, that the
scalps taken from the weak, the helpless, the unresisting, were as
honourable as those torn from the warrior's skull? And I described to
him the horror which this custom inspired--this, which of all their
customs, most justifies the name of _savage_!
He said it was inseparable from their principles of war and their mode
of warfare; the first consists in inflicting the greatest possible
insult and injury on their foe with the least possible risk to
themselves. This truly savage law of honour we might call cowardly, but
that, being associated with the bravest contempt of danger and pain, it
seems nearer to the natural law. With regard to the mode of warfare,
they have rarely pitched battles, but skirmishes, surprises, ambuscades,
and sudden forays into each other's hunting-grounds and villages. The
usual practice is to creep stealthily on the enemy's village or
hunting-encampment, and wait till just after the dawn; then, at the
moment the sleepers in the lodges are rising, the ambushed warriors
stoop and level their pieces about two feet from the ground, which thus
slaughter indiscriminately. If they find one of the enemy's lodges
undefended they murder its inmates, that when the owner returns he may
find his hearth desolate; for this is exquisite vengeance! But outrage
against the chastity of women is absolutely unknown under any degree
whatever of furious excitement.[40]
This respect for female honour will remind you of the ancient Germans,
as described by Julius Caesar: he contrasts in some surprise their
forbearance with the very opposite conduct of the Romans; and even down
to this present day, if I recollect rightly, the history of our European
wars and sieges will bear out this early and characteristic distinction
between the Latin and the Teutonic nations. Am I right, or am I not?
[Footnote 40: "The whole history of Indian warfare," says Mr.
Schoolcraft, "might be challenged in vain for a solitary instance of
this kind. The Indians believe that to take a dishonourable advantage of
their female prisoners would destroy their luck in hunting; it would be
considered as effeminate and degrading in a warrior, and render him
unfit for, and unworthy of, all manly achievement."]