THE RED MEN.
When America was first discovered by the whites, all the country along
the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida was peopled by a dark-skinned
people different from any known to Europeans. They were tall, with black
or hazel eyes, and straight, black hair. Some of them were mild and
friendly toward the whites, but others were very warlike and hated the
white men for coming to live in their own woodland homes. They never
lived very long in one place, but roamed about here and there, living by
hunting, fishing, and sometimes planting corn, beans, pumpkins, etc.
Their houses, or wigwams, as they called them, were made of bark, or
skins, or matting, stretched on poles driven in the ground, and an
Indian village was simply a great many tents in one spot, in the largest
of which the chief always lived. These little villages were nothing
like those which you would see now, scattered up and down the Atlantic
coast, where all kinds of people live together; but each village was the
home of one particular family or tribe of Indians, and it was very much
as if you and all your brothers and sisters, your uncles, aunts,
cousins, nephews, nieces, grandmothers, grandfathers,
great-grandmothers, great-grandfathers, and everybody else who was the
least bit in the world relation to you, lived altogether in one little
town by yourselves. Each tribe took some animal for its symbol, or
_totem_, as they called it, such as the turtle, bear, or wolf, and they
believed that the spirit of the animal chosen watched over them and
protected them. Like the ancient Egyptians, they believed that the soul
of man passed at his death into the body of some other man or of some
animal, and they drew signs from the flight of the birds and the shapes
of the clouds. They worshipped the sun, which they said was the symbol
of the Great Spirit, and they believed that the moon could weave charms.
They believed also that the wind and the stars, the streams and the
lakes, the great trees and the beautiful flowers, all had spirits. And
little Indian boys and girls never went to school as you do, to learn
about history and geography, but their school was out in the shady woods
at their mother's feet, where they sat and listened to the beautiful
stories of Hiawatha, the son of the West Wind, who had been sent among
them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach
them the arts of peace; of his wife, Minnehaha, Laughing Water, who sat
by the doorway of her wigwam, plaiting mats of flags and rushes when
Hiawatha came to woo her; of Minnehaha's father, the old arrow-maker,
who made arrow-heads of jasper and chalcedony, and of the brave,
beautiful, and gentle Chibiabos, the best of all musicians, who sang so
sweetly that all the warriors and women and children crept at his feet
to listen, and who made from hollow reeds flutes so mellow and musical
that at the sound the brook ceased to murmur in the woodland, the birds
stopped singing, the squirrel ceased chattering, and the rabbit sat up
to listen. And the bluebird and robin and whippoorwill begged Chibiabos
that he would teach them to sing as sweetly, but he could not, for he
sang of the things they could not understand, of peace and love and
freedom and undying life in the Islands of the Blessed.
[Illustration: THE TEACHING OF AN INDIAN CHILD].
And then, too, the Indian mothers would tell their children the story of
Wabun, the East Wind, who brought the morning to the earth, and chased
away the darkness with his silver arrows, whose cheeks were crimson with
the sunrise, and whose voice awoke the deer and the hunter; and yet,
although the birds sang to him, and the flowers sent up their perfume to
greet him, and "though the forests and rivers sang and shouted at his
coming," still he was not happy, for he was alone in heaven. But one
morning while the villages were still sleeping, and the fog lay on the
rivers, Wabun, looking downward, saw a beautiful maiden walking all
alone in a meadow, gathering water-flags and rushes. And each day after
that the first thing he saw was the maiden's eyes, which looked like two
blue lakes among the rushes, and he loved the beautiful maiden and
wooed her with the sunshine of his smile, and whispered to her in the
gentle breezes which sang through the trees, and at last he drew her to
him and changed her to a star, and then he was no longer sad, but happy,
for he was no longer alone in heaven, but with him was his bride, the
beautiful Wabun-Annung, the Morning Star.
And then the story of Kabibonokka, the North Wind, who dwelt among the
icebergs and snow-drifts in the land of the White Rabbit; the North
Wind, who in autumn "painted all the trees with scarlet and stained the
leaves with red and yellow," and who drove the birds down to the land of
the South Wind, ere he froze the rivers and lakes and ponds and sent the
snow-flakes through the forest.
And the story of Shawondassee, the South Wind, who dwelt in the land of
summer, who sent the bluebirds and the robins and the swallows; and the
smoke from his pipe
"Filled the sky with haze and vapor,
Filled the air with dreamy softness,
Gave a twinkle to the water,
Touched the rugged hills with smoothness,
Brought the tender Indian Summer
To the melancholy north-land."
And the South Wind had also his trouble, for he loved a maiden whom he
saw one day standing on the prairies, clothed in bright green garments,
and with hair like sunshine; but he did not try to woo the maiden, but
only sighed and sighed, until one morning behold he saw that her yellow
hair had grown white, and the air seemed full of snow-flakes which rose
from the earth and were wafted away by the wind; for, after all, it was
not a maiden that the South Wind had loved, but only a prairie
dandelion, whose petals had turned to down and floated away. Do you not
think these Indian children learned pleasant things in their school?
There was one story which they liked very much, and which you may also
hear. It was the Legend of the Red Swan, and it told of an Indian
warrior, who with his three brothers went out to shoot, and each one
said that he would kill no other animal except the kind he was used to
killing. The warrior had not gone far before he saw a bear, which he
shot, although he should not have done so, as he was not in the habit of
killing bears. But as he was skinning the dead bear, the air all around
him turned red, and he heard a strange noise in the distance; he
followed the noise and found it came from a beautiful red swan, which
was sitting far out in a lake, and whose plumage glittered in the sun
like rubies, and although the Indian warrior tried very hard to shoot
the swan with his magic arrows, still he could not kill it, for it rose
and flapped its wings and flew slowly away toward the setting sun.
All these stories and many others, of war and hunting and bravery, did
these dusky children of the Western World listen to eagerly. And when an
Indian boy wished to excel his friends and become their leader, he did
not take his books and study algebra or geometry or Latin, for they had
no such books; he did not even try to be best in a game of cricket or
ball, or to be a good oarsman, but he would train his eye so he could
shoot a bird on the wing so far up in the sky that one could scarcely
see it; he would train his muscle so that he could fight hand to hand
with bears and wild-cats if need be; he would learn to find the trail of
an enemy through the deep forest, guided only by the bent twigs or
broken leaves, and he would be able to send his arrow straight through
the heart of the deer which bounded over the precipices and mountains.
And the little Indian girls would learn of their mothers how to prepare
skins of animals and make moccasins and garments out of them; how to
ornament belts and leggings with shells and beads and feathers; how to
plant corn and cook the food. And do you want to know how the Indian
babies were taken care of? They were fastened so tightly in their queer
little cradles that they could not move. The cradles were made in such a
manner that they could be carried on the mother's back, or hung in a
tree, or placed on the ground. If the Indian babies grew tired of being
left all alone in this way, no one minded them; they might cry and cry,
but no one paid any attention, for their mothers believed in teaching
them patience in this way.
The Indians were very fond of games; they used to play ball and have
famous ball matches on the ground in summer and on the ice in winter;
and then they had races and liked shooting at targets, just as you do
now. The game of lacrosse, which is played so much in Canada, is an
Indian game, as is also tobogganing and snow-shoeing.
In the winter the Indians travelled from place to place on their
snow-shoes; these were made of maple-wood and deer's hide, and fastened
on the feet by pieces of deer's hide, and upon these curious shoes the
Indians could travel very fast, sometimes forty miles a day, when
hunting the deer and moose. Each tribe of Indians had its own peculiar
kind of snow-shoe, and one Indian meeting another in the forest could
tell by the totem tattooed on the breast and by the pattern of the
snow-shoe to what tribe he belonged, and whether he were friend or foe.
They used to travel by water in their graceful birch-bark canoes; these
were made by stripping off the bark from a birch tree and fastening it
whole around the frame of cedar. Some of the canoes were very long and
could carry ten or twelve men. Every little Indian boy and girl could
manage his canoe with the greatest ease, either sitting or standing, and
long hours they spent in them, paddling on the lakes and fishing in the
shadow of the mountains.
The Red Men were a very poetical people, and the names which they gave
to their mountains and lakes and rivers were often very fanciful. Many
of these we have kept, as Mississippi, the Father of Waters; Minnehaha,
Laughing Water; Canadarauga, The Smile of the Great Spirit; Housatonic,
Winding Waters; Horicon (the Indian name for Lake George), Silver Water;
Ohio, Fair to Look Upon, etc.
The names of the months were also very poetical and pretty; the Indians
did not divide the years into months, but moons, and instead of saying
last month, or next month, they would say at the time of the last moon,
or the next moon, and their weeks were called from the changes in the
moon, when it was new or quarter or full. April was the Moon of Bright
Nights; May, the Moon of Leaves; June, the Moon of Strawberries;
September, the Moon of Falling Leaves; November, the Moon of Snow-shoes,
etc.
And besides they had their own names for all the wonderful and curious
things in the heavens; thus the Milky Way was the Pathway of Ghosts; the
Northern Lights, the Death Dance of the Spirits; the Rainbow was the
Heaven of the Flowers, where they all blossomed again after fading on
the earth, and the shadows on the moon were the body of an old woman who
had been thrown there by her grandson.
Their picture-writing was very curious and interesting. The legend
relates that Hiawatha taught the Indians this art, so that they might be
able to remember their history better, and also be able to send messages
to one another. In this picture-writing the Great Spirit, Gitche Manito,
was painted as an egg, with four points, extending north, south, east,
and west, which meant that the Great Spirit was everywhere. Mitche
Manito, the Evil Spirit, was represented as a great serpent; Life was
shown by a light circle, Death by a black circle; a straight line meant
the Earth, and a bow above it the Sky; foot-prints going toward a wigwam
meant an invitation, but uplifted red hands were a sign of war.
The Indians also knew, or thought they did, what all the cries of the
different animals meant, and they believed that these animals could
understand them if they spoke to them. The bear was the favorite animal
among the Indians and was used most frequently as a totem, and they had
a belief that there was a very large bear living somewhere in the woods,
naked all over except a spot of white hair on its back, which was more
ferocious than any common bear, and they used to frighten their children
by saying, "Hush, the naked bear will hear you, be upon you, and devour
you." And the little Indian boys and girls were just as afraid of this
naked bear as you are afraid of ghosts and hobgoblins and witches. It is
true they never actually saw the naked bear, but then neither have you
ever seen a ghost.
The Indians were a very warlike people, the different tribes were almost
always at war, and sometimes for years at a time. In preparing for
battle they used to paint their bodies in very bright colors, called
war-paint, and dress their heads with feathers; then all the warriors of
the tribe would assemble for a feast, which was followed by a war-dance.
A painted post would be driven into the ground, and the Indians would
dance in a circle around it, brandishing their hatchets and screaming
and shouting in a hideous manner. The night would be spent in this way,
and then the Indians would take off their finery and go silently through
the woods to the place where they knew the enemy to be. They did not
fear death, as they believed that a brave warrior went as soon as he
died to the Happy Hunting Grounds, where he would live forever, and they
always buried the dead man's weapons with him, as it was supposed he
would need them there.