[Illustration: Cover]
[Frontispiece: Sîñ takes the Form of a Woodpecker [_Page_ 316]]
THE MYTHS OF THE
NORTH AMERICAN
INDIANS
BY
LEWIS SPENCE F.R.A.I.
AUTHOR OF "THE MYTHS OF MEXICO AND PERU" "THE
CIVILIZATION OF ANCIENT MEXICO" "A DICTIONARY
OF MYTHOLOGY" ETC. ETC.
WITH THIRTY-TWO PLATES IN COLOUR BY
JAMES JACK AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY
2 & 3 PORTSMOUTH STREET KINGSWAY W.C.
MCMXIV
PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS LONDON ENGLAND
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
_The illustrations, which are a feature of this series, are reproduced
for the most part from the finest works of past and living artists_
The Myths of Greece and Rome
By H. A. GUERBER. With 64 Full-page Illustrations. A classic volume.
At once a fascinating story-book and a valuable work of reference.
Myths of the Norsemen
From the Eddas and Sagas. By H. A. GUERBER. With 64 Full-page
Illustrations.
Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages
By H. A. GUERBER. With 64 Full-page Illustrations.
Hero Myths and Legends of the British Race
By M. I. EBBUTT, M.A. With 64 Original Full-page Illustrations.
Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race
By T. W. ROLLESTON. With 64 Original Full-page Illustrations.
The Myths and Legends of Japan
By F. HADLAND DAVIS. With 32 Plates in Colour by EVELYN PAUL.
The Myths of Mexico and Peru
By LEWIS SPENCE, F.R.A.I. With 60 Full-page Plates and other
Illustrations.
{v}
PREFACE
The North American Indian has so long been an object of the deepest
interest that the neglect of his picturesque and original mythologies
and the tales to which they have given rise is difficult of
comprehension. In boyhood we are wont to regard him as an instrument
specially designed for the execution of tumultuous incident, wherewith
heart-stirring fiction may be manufactured. In manhood we are too apt
to consider him as only fit to be put aside with the matter of Faery
and such evanescent stuff and relegated to the limbo of imagination.
Satiated with his constant recurrence in the tales of our youth, we are
perhaps but too ready to hearken credulously to accounts which picture
him as a disreputable vagabond, getting a precarious living by petty
theft or the manufacture of bead ornaments.
It is, indeed, surprising how vague a picture the North American Indian
presents to the minds of most people in Europe when all that recent
anthropological research has done on the subject is taken into account.
As a matter of fact, few books have been published in England which
furnish more than the scantiest details concerning the Red Race, and
these are in general scarce, and, when obtained, of doubtful scientific
value.
The primary object of this volume is to furnish the reader with a
general view of the mythologies of the Red Man of North America,
accompanied by such historical and ethnological information as will
assist him in gauging the real conditions under which this most
interesting section of humanity existed. The basic difference between
the Indian and European mental outlook is insisted upon, because it is
felt that no proper comprehension of American Indian myth or {vi}
conditions of life can be attained when such a distinction is not
recognized and allowed for. The difference between the view-point,
mundane and spiritual, of the Red Man and that of the European is as
vast as that which separates the conceptions and philosophies of the
East and West. Nevertheless we shall find in the North American
mythologies much that enters into the composition of the immortal tales
of the older religions of the Eastern Hemisphere. All myth, Asiatic,
European, or American, springs from similar natural conceptions, and if
we discover in American mythology peculiarities which we do not observe
in the systems of Greece, Rome, or Egypt, we may be certain that these
arise from circumstances of environment and racial habit as modified by
climate and kindred conditions alone.
In the last thirty years much has been accomplished in placing the
study of the American aborigines on a sounder basis. The older school
of ethnologists were for the most part obsessed with the wildest ideas
concerning the origin of the Indians, and many of them believed the Red
Man to be the degenerate descendant of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel or
of early Phoenician adventurers. But these 'antiquaries' had perforce
to give way to a new school of students well equipped with scientific
knowledge, whose labours, under the admirable direction of the United
States Bureau of Ethnology, have borne rich fruit. Many treatises of
the utmost value on the ethnology, mythology, and tribal customs of the
North American Indians have been issued by this conscientious and
enterprising State department. These are written by men who possess
first-hand knowledge of Indian life and languages, many of whom have
faced great privations and hardships in order to collect the material
they have published. The series is, indeed, a monument to that nobler
type of heroism which science {vii} can kindle in the breast of the
student, and the direct, unembellished verbiage of these volumes
conceals many a life-story which for quiet, unassuming bravery and
contempt for danger will match anything in the records of research and
human endurance.
LEWIS SPENCE
EDINBURGH: _March_ 1914
{ix}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Divisions, Customs, and History of the Race
II. The Mythologies of the North American Indians
III. Algonquian Myths and Legends
IV. Iroquois Myths and Legends
V. Sioux Myths and Legends
VI. Myths and Legends of the Pawnees
VII. Myths And Legends of the Northern and North-western Indians
Bibliography
Glossary and Index
{xi}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Sîñ takes the Form of a Woodpecker . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
On the Lakes
An Elderly Omaha Beau
An Earth-lodge
Omaha Woman's Costume
Adventure with a Totem
Indian Picture-writing: A Petroglyph in Nebraska
The Lenâpé come to the Place of Caves
"Glooskap brought all his magical resources to his aid"
"He descried a great _tepee_"
Algon carries the Captured Maiden Home to his Lodge
Moowis has melted in the Sun
"He rode down the wind"
"'Will you carry us over the river?' she asked"
"He poised his spear and struck the girdle"
"Gazing downward, she saw the camp of the Blackfeet"
The Pursuing Head
"He suddenly assumed the shape of a gigantic porcupine"
"'I see thee! I see thee! Thou shalt die'"
"He lit the pipe and placed it in the mouth of the skeleton"
"'Grow larger, my kettle!'"
"She sang a strange, sweet song"
"Soon the dancing commenced"
"He jumped so high that every bone in his body was shaken"
The War-chief kills the Monster Rattlesnake
"He leaned his shoulder against the rock"
"With one great step he reached the distant headland"
{xii}
"They arrived at the abode of the Water-god"
"He emerged in his own country"
"Everything happened as the Man of Wood had predicted"
"Once more the Rabbit entered, disguised as a man"
"He seized hold of the hair"
A Fishing Expedition in Shadowland
"The mists came down, and with them the Supernatural People"
MAP SHOWING THE LINGUISTIC STOCKS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
{1}
CHAPTER I: DIVISIONS, CUSTOMS, AND HISTORY OF THE RACE
The First Indians in Europe
Almost immediately upon the discovery of the New World its inhabitants
became a source of the greatest interest to all ranks and classes among
the people of Europe. That this should have been so is not a little
surprising when we remember the ignorance which prevailed regarding the
discovery of the new hemisphere, and that in the popular imagination
the people of the new-found lands were considered to be inhabitants of
those eastern countries which European navigation had striven so long
and so fruitlessly to reach. The very name 'Indian' bestowed upon the
men from the islands of the far western ocean proves the ill-founded
nature and falsity of the new conditions which through the discovery of
Columbus were imposed upon the science of geography. Why all this
intense and vivid interest in the strange beings whom the Genoese
commander carried back with him as specimens of the population of the
new-found isles? The Spaniards were accustomed to the presence and
sight of Orientals. They had for centuries dwelt side by side with a
nation of Eastern speech and origin, and the things of the East held
little of novelty for them. Is it not possible that the people, by
reason of some natural motive difficult of comprehension, did not
credit in their hearts the scientific conclusions of the day?
Something deeper and more primitive than science was at work in their
minds, and some profound human instinct told them that the dusky and
befeathered folk they beheld in the triumphal procession of the
Discoverer were not the inhabitants of an Orient with which they were
more or less familiar, but {2} erstwhile dwellers in a mystic continent
which had been isolated from the rest of mankind for countless
centuries.
There are not wanting circumstances which go far to prove that
instinct, brushing aside the conclusions of science, felt that it had
rightly come upon the truth. The motto on the arms granted to Columbus
is eloquent of the popular feeling when it states,
To Castile and Leon
Columbus gave a new world,
and the news was greeted in London with the pronouncement that it
seemed "a thing more divine than human"--a conclusion which could
scarcely have been arrived at if it was considered that the reaching of
the farthest Orient point alone had been achieved.
The primitive and barbarous appearance of the Indians in the train of
Columbus deeply impressed the people of Spain. The savage had before
this event been merely "a legendary and heraldic animal like the
griffin and the phoenix." In the person of the Indian he was presented
for the first time to the astonished gaze of a European people, who
were quick to distinguish the differences in feature and general
appearance between the Red Man and the civilized Oriental--although his
resemblance to the Tartar race was insisted upon by some early writers.
Popular interest, instead of abating, grew greater, and with each
American discovery the 'Indian' became the subject of renewed
controversy. Works on the origin and customs of the American
aborigines, of ponderous erudition but doubtful conclusions, were
eagerly perused and discussed. These were not any more extravagant,
however, than, many theories propounded at a much later date. In the
early nineteenth century a school of enthusiastic antiquaries, perhaps
the most {3} distinguished of whom was Lord Kingsborough, determined
upon proving the identity of the American aborigines with the lost Ten
Tribes of Israel, and brought to bear upon the subject a perfect
battery of erudition of the most extraordinary kind. His lordship's
great work on the subject, _The Antiquities of Mexico_, absorbed a
fortune of some fifty thousand pounds by its publication. The most
absurd philological conclusions were arrived at in the course of these
researches, examples of which it would but weary the reader to peruse.
Only a shade less ridiculous were the deductions drawn from Indian
customs where these bore a certain surface resemblance to Hebrew rite
or priestly usage.
Indians as Jews
As an example of this species of argument it will be sufficient to
quote the following passage from a work published in 1879:[1]
[1] _The Migration from Shinar_, by Captain G. Palmer (London).
"The Indian high-priest wears a breastplate made of a white
conch-shell, and around his head either a wreath of swan feathers, or a
long piece of swan skin doubled, so as to show only the snowy feathers
on each side. These remind us of the breastplate and mitre of the
Jewish high-priest. They have also a magic stone which is transparent,
and which the medicine-men consult; it is most jealously guarded, even
from their own people, and Adair could never procure one. Is this an
imitation of the Urim and Thummim? Again, they have a feast of
first-fruits, which they celebrate with songs and dances, repeating
'Halelu-Halelu-Haleluiah' with great earnestness and fervour. They
dance in three circles round the fire that cooks these fruits on a kind
of altar, shouting the praises of {4} Yo-He-Wah (Jehovah?). These
words are only used in their religious festivals."
To what tribe the writer alludes is not manifest from the context.
Welsh-Speaking Indians
An ethnological connexion has been traced for the Red Man of North
America, with equal parade of erudition, to Phoenicians, Hittites, and
South Sea Islanders. But one of the most amusing of these theories is
that which attempts to substantiate his blood-relationship with the
inhabitants of Wales! The argument in favour of this theory is so
quaint, and is such a capital example of the kind of learning under
which American ethnology has groaned for generations, that it may be
briefly examined. In the author's _Myths of Mexico and Peru_ (p. 5) a
short account is given of the legend of Madoc, son of Owen Gwyneth, a
Welsh prince, who quitted his country in disgust at the manner in which
his brothers had partitioned their father's territories. Sailing due
west with several vessels, he arrived, says Sir Thomas Herbert in his
_Travels_ (1634), at the Gulf of Mexico, "not far from Florida," in the
year 1170. After settling there he returned to Wales for
reinforcements, and once more fared toward the dim West, never to be
heard of more. But, says the chronicler, "though the Cambrian issue in
the new found world may seeme extinct, the Language to this day used
among these Canibals, together with their adoring the crosse, using
Beades, Reliques of holy men and some other, noted in them of Acusano
and other places, ... points at our Madoc's former being there." The
Cambrians, continued Sir Thomas, left in their American colony many
names of "Birds, Rivers, Rocks, Beasts and the like, {5} some of which
words are these: _Gwrando_, signifying in the Cambrian speech to give
eare unto or hearken. _Pen-gwyn_, with us a white head, refered by the
Mexicans to a Bird so-called, and Rockes complying with that Idiom.
Some promontories had like denominations, called so by the people to
this day, tho' estranged and concealed by the Spaniard. Such are the
Isles _Corroeso_. The Cape of _Brutaine_ or _Brittaine_. The floud
_Gwyndowr_ or white water, _Bara_ bread, _Mam_ mother, _Tate_ father,
_Dowr_ water, _Bryd_ time, _Bu_ or _Buch_ a Cow, _Clugar_ a Heathcocke,
_Llwynog_ a Fox, _Wy_ an Egge, _Calaf_ a Quill, _Trwyn_ a Nose, _Nef_
Heaven; and the like then used; by which, in my conceit, none save
detracting Opinionatists can justly oppose such worthy testimonies and
proofes of what I wish were generally allowed of."
Antiquity of Man in America
To turn to more substantial conclusions concerning the racial
affinities of the Red Man, we find that it is only within very recent
times that anything like a reasoned scientific argument has been
arrived at. Founding upon recently acquired geological,
anthropological, and linguistic knowledge, inquirers into the deeper
realms of American ethnology have solved the question of how the
Western Hemisphere was peopled, and the arguments they adduce are so
convincing in their nature as to leave no doubt in the minds of
unbiased persons.
It is now admitted that the presence of man in the Old World dates from
an epoch so far distant as to be calculated only by reference to
geological periods of which we know the succession but not the
duration, and research has proved that the same holds good of the
Western Hemisphere. Although man undoubtedly found his way from the
Old World to the {6} New, the period at which he did so is so remote
that for all practical purposes he may be said to have peopled both
hemispheres simultaneously. Indeed, "his relative antiquity in each
has no bearing on the history of his advancement."
It is known that the American continent offers no example of the highly
organized primates--for example, the larger apes--in which the Old
World abounds, save man himself, and this circumstance is sufficient to
prove that the human species must have reached America as strangers.
Had man been native to the New World there would have been found side
by side with him either existing or fossil representatives of the
greater apes and other anthropoid animals which illustrate his pedigree
in the Old World.
The Great Miocene Bridge
Again, many careful observers have noticed the striking resemblance
between the natives of America and Northern Asia. At Bering Strait the
Old World and the New are separated by a narrow sea-passage only, and
an elevation of the sea-bed of less than two hundred feet would provide
a 'land-bridge' at least thirty miles in breadth between the two
continents. It is a geological fact that Bering Strait has been formed
since the Tertiary period, and that such a 'land-bridge' once existed,
to which American geologists have given the name of 'the Miocene
bridge.' By this 'bridge,' it is believed, man crossed from Asia to
America, and its subsequent disappearance confined him to the Western
Hemisphere.
American Man in Glacial Times
That this migration occurred before the Glacial period is proved by the
circumstance that chipped {7} flints and other implements have been
discovered in ice-drift at points in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota, to
which it is known that the southern margin of the ice-sheet extended.
This proves that man was driven southward by the advancing ice, as were
several Old World animal species which had migrated to America.
However, it is difficult in many cases to accept what may seem to be
evidence of the presence of prehistoric man in North America with any
degree of confidence, and it will be well to confine ourselves to the
most authentic instances. In the loess of the Mississippi at Natchez
Dr. Dickson found side by side with the remains of the mylodon and
megalonyx human bones blackened by time. But Sir Charles Lyell pointed
out that these remains might have been carried by the action of water
from the numerous Indian places of burial in the neighbourhood. In New
Orleans, while trenches were being dug for gas-pipes, a skeleton was
discovered sixteen feet from the surface, the skull of which was
embedded beneath a gigantic cypress-tree. But the deposit in which the
remains were found was subsequently stated to be of recent origin. A
reed mat was discovered at Petit Anse, Louisiana, at a depth of from
fifteen to twenty feet, among a deposit of salt near the tusks or bones
of an elephant. In the bottom-lands of the Bourbeuse River, in
Missouri, Dr. Koch discovered the remains of a mastodon. It had sunk
in the mud of the marshes, and, borne down by its own ponderous bulk,
had been unable to right itself. Espied by the hunters of that dim
era, it had been attacked by them, and the signs of their onset--flint
arrow-heads and pieces of rock--were found mingled with its bones.
Unable to dispatch it with their comparatively puny weapons, they had
built great fires round it, the cinder-heaps of which remain to the {8}
height of six feet, and by this means they had presumably succeeded in
suffocating it.
In Iowa and Nebraska Dr. Aughey found many evidences of the presence of
early man in stone weapons mingled with the bones of the mastodon. In
California, Colorado, and Wyoming scores of stone mortars, arrow-heads,
and lance-points have been discovered in deposits which show no sign of
displacement. Traces of ancient mining operations are also met with in
California and the Lake Superior district, the skeletons of the
primitive miners being found, stone hammer in hand, beneath the masses
of rock which buried them in their fall. As the object of these
searchers was evidently metal of some description, it may reasonably be
inferred that the remains are of comparatively late date.
The Calaveras Skull
In 1866 Professor J. D. Whitney discovered the famous 'Calaveras' skull
at a depth of about a hundred and thirty feet in a bed of auriferous
gravel on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, California. The
skull rested on a bed of lava, and was covered by several layers of
lava and volcanic deposit. Many other remains were found in similar
geological positions, and this was thought to prove that the Calaveras
skull was not an isolated instance of the presence of man in America in
Tertiary times. The skull resembles the Eskimo type, and chemical
analysis discovered the presence of organic matter. These
circumstances led to the conclusion that the great age claimed by
Whitney for the relic was by no means proved, and this view was
strengthened by the knowledge that displacements of the deposits in
which it had been discovered had frequently been caused by volcanic
agency.
{9}
More Recent Finds
More recent finds have been summarized by an eminent authority
connected with the United States Bureau of Ethnology as follows: "In a
post-Glacial terrace on the south shore of Lake Ontario the remains of
a hearth were discovered at a depth of twenty-two feet by Mr. Tomlinson
in digging a well, apparently indicating early aboriginal occupancy of
the St. Lawrence basin. From the Glacial or immediately post-Glacial
deposits of Ohio a number of articles of human workmanship have been
reported: a grooved axe from a well twenty-two feet beneath the
surface, near New London; a chipped object of waster type at
Newcomerstown, at a depth of sixteen feet in Glacial gravel; chipped
stones in gravels, one at Madisonville at a depth of eight feet, and
another at Loveland at a depth of thirty feet. At Little Falls, Minn.,
flood-plain, deposits of sand and gravel are found to contain many
artificial objects of quartz. This flood-plain is believed by some to
have been finally abandoned by the Mississippi well back toward the
close of the Glacial period in the valley, but that these finds warrant
definite conclusions as to time is seriously questioned by Chamberlain.
In a Missouri river-beach near Lansing, Kansas, portions of a human
skeleton were recently found at a depth of twenty feet, but geologists
are not agreed as to the age of the formation. At Clayton, Mo., in a
deposit believed to belong to the loess, at a depth of fourteen feet, a
well-finished grooved axe was found. In the Basin Range region,
between the Rocky Mountains and the sierras, two discoveries that seem
to bear on the antiquity of human occupancy have been reported: in a
silt deposit in Walker River Valley, Nevada, believed to be {10} of
Glacial age, an obsidian implement was obtained at a depth of
twenty-five feet; at Nampa, Idaho, a clay image is reported to have
been brought up by a sand-pump from a depth of three hundred and twenty
feet in alternating beds of clay and quicksand underlying a lava flow
of late Tertiary or early Glacial age. Questions are raised by a
number of geologists respecting the value of these finds."
Later Man in America
Whatever doubt attaches to the presence of man in America during the
Tertiary period--a doubt which is not shared by most American
archæologists--there is none regarding his occupation of the entire
continent in times less remote, yet far distant from the dawn of the
earliest historical records of Asia or Europe. In caves and
'kitchen-middens' or rubbish-heaps over the entire length and breadth
of the American continent numerous evidences of the presence of
populous centres have been discovered. Mingled with the shells of
molluscs and the bones of extinct animals human remains, weapons, and
implements are to be found, with traces of fire, which prove that the
men of those early days had risen above the merely animal existence led
by the first-comers to American soil.
Affinities with Siberian Peoples
As has already been indicated, careful observers have repeatedly
remarked upon the strong likeness between the American races and those
of North-eastern Asia. This likeness is not only physical, but extends
to custom, and to some extent to religious belief.
"The war-dances and medicine customs of the Ostiaks resemble those of
the Kolusches even to the {11} smallest details, and the myth of a
heaven-climber, who ascends the sky from a lofty tree, lowering himself
again to earth by a strip of leather, a rope of grass, a plait of hair,
or the curling wreath of smoke from a hut, occurs not only among the
Ugrian tribes, but among the Dogrib Indians. Such myths, it is
contended, though insufficient to prove common descent, point to early
communications between these distant stocks. Superstitious usages, on
the other hand, it is argued, are scarcely likely to have been adopted
in consequence of mere intercourse, and indicate a common origin.
Thus, among the Itelmians of Kamchatka it is forbidden to carry a
burning brand otherwise than in the fingers; it must on no account be
pierced for that purpose with the point of a knife. A similar
superstition is cherished by the Dakota. Again, when the tribes of
Hudson Bay slay a bear they daub the head with gay colours, and sing
around it hymns having a religious character; it is understood to
symbolize the spirit of the deceased animal. A similar practice, it is
said, prevails throughout Siberia, and is met with among the Gilyaks of
the Amur, and the Ainu. The Ostiaks hang the skin of a bear on a tree,
pay it the profoundest respect, and address it while imploring pardon
of the spirit of the animal for having put it to death; their usual
oath, moreover, is 'by the bear,' as the polished Athenians habitually
swore 'by the dog.' Earthen vessels, it is further urged, were
manufactured not only by the Itelmians, but by the Aleutians and the
Kolusches of the New World; whereas the Assiniboins, settled farther to
the southward, cooked their flesh in kettles of hide, into which
red-hot stones were cast to heat the water."[2]
[2] Payne, _History of the New World_, ii. 87-88, summarizing the
investigations of Peschel and Tylor.
{12}
The Evidence of American Languages
The structure of the aboriginal languages of America corroborates the
conclusion that the American race proceeded from one instead of several
sources, and that it is an ethnological extension of North-eastern
Asia. Not only does the 'machinery' of American speech closely
resemble that of the neighbouring Asiatic races in the possession of a
common basis of phonesis and strenuity, but the rejection of labial
explodents, which extends from Northern Asia through the speech of the
Aleutian Islands to North-western America, is good evidence of affinity.
Evidences of Asiatic Intercourse
Evidences of Asiatic intercourse with America in recent and historical
times are not wanting. It is a well-authenticated fact that the
Russians had learned from the native Siberians of the whereabouts of
America long before the discovery of the contiguity of the continents
by Bering. Charlevoix, in his work on the origin of the Indians,
states that Père Grellon, one of the French Jesuit Fathers, encountered
a Huron woman on the plains of Tartary who had been sold from tribe to
tribe until she had passed from Bering Strait into Central Asia.
Slight though such incidents seem, it is by means of them that
important truths may be gleaned. If one individual was exchanged in
this manner, there were probably many similar cases.
[Illustration: On the Lakes]
Later Migrations
There are theories in existence worthy of respect which would regard
the North American Indians as the last and recent wave of many Asiatic
migrations to {13} American soil. If credence can be extended to the
Norse sagas which describe the visits of tenth-century Scandinavian
voyagers to the eastern coasts of America, the accounts given of the
race encountered by these early discoverers by no means tally with any
possible description of the Red Man. The viking seafarers nicknamed
the American natives _Skrælingr_, or 'Chips,' because of their puny
appearance, and the account which they gave of them would seem to class
them as a folk possessing Eskimo affinities. Many remains discovered
in the eastern States are of the Eskimo type, and when one combines
with this the Indian traditions of a great migration--traditions which
cannot have survived for many generations--it will be seen that the
exact epoch of the entrance of the Red Man into America is by no means
finally settled.
The Norsemen in America
As the visits of the Norsemen to America during the tenth century have
been alluded to, perhaps some further reference to this absorbing
subject may be made, as it is undoubtedly germane to the question of
the identity of the pre-Indian inhabitants of eastern North America.
The Scandinavian colonization of Iceland tempted the intrepid viking
race to extend their voyages into still more northerly waters, and this
resulted in the discovery of Greenland. Once settled upon those dreary
beaches, it was practically inevitable that the hardy seamen would
speedily discover American soil. Biarne Herjulfson, sailing from
Iceland to Greenland without knowledge of the waters he navigated, was
caught in dense fog and shifting wind, so that he knew not in what
direction he sailed. "Witless, methinks, is our forth-faring," laughed
the stout Norseman, "seeing that none of us has beheld {14} the
Greenland sea." Holding doggedly on, however, the adventurers came at
last in sight of land. But this was no country of lofty ice such as
they had been told to expect. A land of gentle undulations covered
with timber met their sea-sad eyes. Bearing away, they came to another
land like the first. The wind fell, and the sailors proposed to
disembark. But Biarne refused. Five days afterward they made
Greenland. Biarne had, of course, got into that Arctic current which
sets southward from the Polar Circle between Iceland and Greenland, and
had been carried to the coasts of New England.[3]
[3] Rafn, _Antiquitates Americana_, xxix. 17-25.
Leif the Lucky
Biarne did not care to pursue his discoveries, but at the court of
Eric, Earl of Norway, to which he paid a visit, his neglect in
following them up was much talked about. All Greenland, too, was agog
with the news. Leif, surnamed 'the Lucky,' son of Eric the Red, the
first colonizer of Greenland, purchased Biarne's ship, and, hiring a
crew of thirty-five men, one of whom was a German named Tyrker (perhaps
Tydsker, the Norse for 'German'), set sail for the land seen by Biarne.
He soon espied it, and cast anchor, but it was a barren place; so they
called it Hellu-land, or 'Land of Flat Stones,' and, leaving it, sailed
southward again. Soon they came to another country, which they called
Markland, or 'Wood-land,' for it was low and flat and well covered with
trees. These shores also they left, and again put to sea.
The Land of Wine
After sailing still farther south they came to a strait lying between
an island and a promontory. Here they {15} landed and built huts. The
air was warm after the sword-like winds of Greenland, and when the day
was shortest the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven in the
morning until half-past four in the afternoon. They divided into two
bands to explore the land. One day Tyrker, the German, was missing.
They searched for him, and found him at no great distance from the
camp, in a state of much excitement. For he had discovered vines with
grapes upon them--a boon to a man coming from a land of vines, who had
beheld none for half a lifetime. They loaded the ship's boat with the
grapes and felled timber to freight the ship, and in the spring sailed
away from the new-found country, which they named 'Wine-land.'
It would seem that the name Hellu-land was applied to Newfoundland or
Labrador, Mark-land to Nova Scotia, and Wine-land to New England, and
that Leif wintered in some part of the state of Rhode Island.
The Skrælingr
In the year 1002 Leif's brother Thorwald sailed to the new land in
Biarne's ship. From the place where Leif had landed, which the
Norsemen named 'Leif's Booths' (or huts), he explored the country
southward and northward. But at a promontory in the neighbourhood of
Boston he was attacked and slain by the Skrælingr who inhabited the
country. These men are described as small and dwarfish in appearance
and as possessing Eskimo characteristics. In 1007 a bold attempt was
made to colonize the country from Greenland. Three ships, with a
hundred and sixty men aboard, sailed to Wine-land, where they wintered,
but the incessant attacks of the Skrælingr rendered colonization
impossible, and the Norsemen took their departure. The extinction of
the Scandinavian colonies {16} in Greenland put an end to all
communication with America. But the last voyage from Greenland to
American shores took place in 1347, only a hundred and forty-five years
before Columbus discovered the West Indian Islands. In 1418 the
Skrælingr of Greenland--the Eskimo--attacked and destroyed the Norse
settlements there, and carried away the colonists into captivity. It
is perhaps the descendants of these Norse folk who dared the world of
ice and the ravening breakers of the Arctic sea who have been
discovered by a recent Arctic explorer![4]
[4] See _Eric Rothens Saga_, in Mueller, _Sagenbibliothek_, p. 214.
The authenticity of the Norse discoveries is not to be questioned. No
less than seventeen ancient Icelandic documents allude to them, and
Adam of Bremen mentions the territory discovered by them as if
referring to a widely known country.
The Dighton Rock
A rock covered with inscriptions, known as the Dighton Writing Rock,
situated on the banks of the Taunton River, in Massachusetts, was long
pointed out as of Norse origin, and Rafn, the Danish antiquary,
pronounced the script which it bore to be runic. With equal
perspicacity Court de Gébelin and Dr. Styles saw in it a Phoenician
inscription. It is, in fact, quite certain that the writing is of
Indian origin, as similar rock-carvings occur over the length and
breadth of the northern sub-continent. Almost as doubtful are the
theories which would make the 'old mill' at Newport a Norse 'biggin.'
However authentic the Norse settlements in America may be, it is
certain that the Norsemen left no traces of their occupation in that
continent, and although the building at Newport distinctly resembles
the remains of Norse architecture in {17} Greenland, the district in
which it is situated is quite out of the sphere of Norse settlement in
North America.
The Mound-Builders
The question of the antiquity of the Red Race in North America is bound
up with an archæological problem which bristles with difficulties, but
is quite as replete with interest. In the Mississippi basin and the
Gulf States, chiefly from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Natchez, Miss., and
in the central and southern districts of Ohio, and in the adjoining
portion of Indiana and South Wisconsin, are found great earthen mounds,
the typical form of which is pyramidal. Some, however, are circular,
and a few pentagonal. Others are terraced, extending outward from one
or two sides, while some have roadways leading up to the level surface
on the summit. These are not mere accumulations of _débris_, but works
constructed on a definite plan, and obviously requiring a considerable
amount of skill and labour for their accomplishment. "The form, except
where worn down by the plough, is usually that of a low, broad,
round-topped cone, varying in size from a scarcely perceptible swell in
the ground to elevations of eighty or even a hundred feet, and from six
to three hundred feet in diameter."[5]
[5] _Bulletin 30_, Bureau of American Ethnology.
Mounds in Animal Form
Many of these structures represent animal forms, probably the totem or
eponymous ancestor of the tribe which reared them. The chief centre
for these singular erections seems to have been Wisconsin, where they
are very numerous. The eagle, wolf, bear, turtle, and fox are
represented, and even the human form has been {18} attempted. There
are birds with outstretched wings, measuring more than thirty-two yards
from tip to tip, and great mammalian forms sixty-five yards long.
Reptilian forms are also numerous. These chiefly represent huge
lizards. At least one mound in the form of a spider, whose body and
legs cover an acre of ground, exists in Minnesota.
According to the classification of Squier, these structures were
employed for burial, sacrifice, and observation, and as temple-sites.
Other structures often found in connexion with them are obviously
enclosures, and were probably used for defence. The conical mounds are
usually built of earth and stones, and are for the most part places of
sepulture. The flat-topped structures were probably employed as sites
for buildings, such as temples, council-houses, and chiefs' dwellings.
Burials were rarely made in the wall-like enclosures or effigy mounds.
Many of the enclosures are of true geometrical figure, circular,
square, or octagonal, and with few exceptions these are found in Ohio
and the adjoining portions of Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia.
They enclose an expanse varying from one to a hundred acres.
What the Mounds Contain
In the sepulchral mounds a large number of objects have been found
which throw some light on the habits of the folk who built them.
Copper plates with stamped designs are frequent, and these are
difficult to account for. In one mound were found no less than six
hundred stone hatchet-blades, averaging seven inches long by four wide.
Under another were exhumed two hundred calcined tobacco-pipes, and
copper ornaments with a thin plating of silver; while from others were
taken fragments of pottery, obsidian implements, ivory {19} and bone
needles, and scroll-work cut out of very thin plates of mica. In
several it was observed that cremation had been practised, but in
others the bodies were found extended horizontally or else doubled up.
In some instances the ashes of the dead had been placed carefully in
skulls, perhaps those of the individuals whose bodies had been given to
the flames. Implements, too, are numerous, and axes, awls, and other
tools of copper have frequently been discovered.
The Tomb of the Black Tortoise
A more detailed description of one of these groups of sepulchral mounds
may furnish the reader with a clearer idea of the structures as a
whole. The group in question was discovered in Minnesota, on the
northern bank of St. Peter's River, about sixty miles from its junction
with the Mississippi. It includes twenty-six mounds, placed at regular
distances from each other, and forming together a large rectangle. The
central mound represents a turtle forty feet long by twenty-seven feet
wide and twelve feet high. It is almost entirely constructed of yellow
clay, which is not found in the district, and therefore must have been
brought from a distance. Two mounds of red earth of triangular form
flank it north and south, and each of these is twenty-seven feet long
by about six feet wide at one end, the opposite end tapering off until
it scarcely rises above the level of the soil. At each corner rises a
circular mound twelve feet high by twenty-five feet in diameter. East
and west of the structure stand two elongated mounds sixty feet long,
with a diameter of twelve feet. Two smaller mounds on the right and
left of the turtle-shaped mound are each twelve feet long by four feet
high, and consist of white sand mixed with numerous fragments of mica,
covered with {20} a layer of clay and a second one of vegetable mould.
Lastly, thirteen smaller mounds fill in the intervals in the group.
Conant gives an explanation of the whole group as follows: "The
principal tomb would be the last home of a great chief, the Black
Tortoise. The four mounds which form the corners of the quadrangle
were also erected as a sign of the mourning of the tribe. The
secondary mounds are the tombs of other chiefs, and the little mounds
erected in the north and south corresponded with the number of bodies
which had been deposited in them. The two pointed mounds indicate that
the Black Tortoise was the last of his race, and the two large mounds
the importance of that race and the dignity which had belonged to it.
Lastly, the two mounds to the right and left of the royal tomb mark the
burial-places of the prophets or soothsayers, who even to our own day
play a great part among the Indian tribes. The fragments of mica found
in their tombs would indicate their rank."[6]
[6] _Footprints of Vanished Races_, p. 18.
Who were the Mound-Builders?
It is not probable that the reader will agree with all the conclusions
drawn in the paragraph quoted above, which would claim for these
structures a hieroglyphic as well as a sepulchral significance. But
such speculations cannot destroy the inherent interest of the subject,
however much they may irritate those who desire to arrive at logical
conclusions concerning it. Who then were the folk who raised the
mounds of Ohio and the Mississippi and spread their culture from the
Gulf states region to the Great Lakes? Needless to say, the
'antiquaries' of the last century stoutly maintained that they were
strangers from over the sea, {21} sun- and serpent-worshippers who had
forsaken the cities of Egypt, Persia, and Phoenicia, and had settled in
the West in order to pursue their strange religions undisturbed. But
such a view by no means commends itself to modern science, which sees
in the architects of these mounds and pyramids the ancestors of the
present aborigines of North America. Many of the objects discovered in
the mounds are of European manufacture, or prove contact with
Europeans, which shows that the structures containing them are of
comparatively modern origin. The articles discovered and the character
of the various monuments indicate a culture stage similar to that noted
among the more advanced tribes inhabiting the regions where the mounds
occur at the period of the advent of the whites. Moreover, the
statements of early writers on these regions, such as the members of De
Soto's expedition, prove beyond question that some of the structures
were erected by the Indians in post-Columbian times. "It is known that
some of the tribes inhabiting the Gulf states, when De Soto passed
through their territory in 1540-41, as the Yuchi, Creeks, Chickasaw,
and Natchez, were still using and probably constructing mounds, and
that the Quapaw of Arkansas were also using them. There is also
documentary evidence that the 'Texas' tribe still used mounds at the
end of the seventeenth century, when a chief's house is described as
being built on one. There is also sufficient evidence to justify the
conclusion that the Cherokee and Shawnee were mound-builders....
According to Miss Fletcher, the Winnebago build miniature mounds in the
lodge during certain ceremonies."[7]
[7] _Bulletin 30_, Bureau of American Ethnology.
Nothing has been found in the mounds to indicate {22} great antiquity,
and the present tendency among archæologists is to assign to them a
comparatively recent origin.
The 'Nations' of North America
In order that the reader may be enabled the better to comprehend the
history and customs of the Red Race in North America, it will be well
at this juncture to classify the various ethnic stocks of which it is
composed. Proceeding to do so on a linguistic basis--the only possible
guide in this instance--we find that students of American languages,
despite the diversity of tongues exhibited in North America, have
referred all of these to ten or a dozen primitive stems.[8] Let us
first examine the geographical position of the 'nations' of the
American aborigines in the sixteenth century, at the period of the
advent of the white man, whilst yet they occupied their ancestral
territory.
[8] See the map, p. 361.
The Athapascan stock extended in a broad band across the continent from
the Pacific to Hudson Bay, and almost to the Great Lakes below. Tribes
cognate to it wandered far north to the mouth of the Mackenzie River,
and, southward, skirted the Rockies and the coast of Oregon south of
the estuary of the Columbia River, and spreading over the plains of New
Mexico, as Apaches, Navahos, and Lipans, extended almost to the
tropics. The Athapascan is the most widely distributed of all the
Indian linguistic stocks of North America, and covered a territory of
more than forty degrees of latitude and seventy-five degrees of
longitude. Its northern division was known as the Tinneh or Déné, and
consisted of three groups--eastern, north-western, and south-western,
dwelling near the Rockies, in the interior of Alaska, and in the
mountain fastnesses of British America respectively.
{23} The Pacific division occupied many villages in a strip of
territory about four hundred miles in length from Oregon to Eel River
in California. The southern division occupied a large part of Arizona
and New Mexico, the southern portion of Utah and Colorado, the western
borders of Kansas, and the northern part of Mexico to lat. 25°. The
social conditions and customs as well as the various dialects spoken by
the several branches and offshoots of this great family differed
considerably according to climate and environment. Extremely
adaptable, the Athapascan stock appear to have adopted many of the
customs and ceremonies of such tribes as they were brought into contact
with, and do not seem to have had any impetus to frame a culture of
their own. Their tribes had little cohesion, and were subdivided into
family groups or loose bands, which recognized a sort of patriarchal
government and descent. Their food-supply was for the most part
precarious, as it consisted almost entirely of the proceeds of hunting
expeditions, and the desperate and never-ending search for provender
rendered this people somewhat narrow and material in outlook.
The Iroquois
The Iroquois--Hurons, Tuscaroras, Susquehannocks, Nottoways, and
others--occupied much of the country from the St. Lawrence River and
Lake Ontario to the Roanoke. Several of their tribes banded themselves
into a confederacy known as the 'Five Nations,' and these comprised the
Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas. The Cherokees,
dwelling in the valleys of East Tennessee, appear to have been one of
the early offshoots of the Iroquois. A race of born warriors, they
pursued their craft with an excess of cruelty which made them the
terror of the white settler. It was with the {24} Iroquois that most
of the early colonial wars were waged, and their name, which they
borrowed from the Algonquins, and which signifies 'Real Adders,' was
probably no misnomer. They possessed chiefs who, strangely enough,
were nominated by the matrons of the tribe, whose decision was
confirmed by the tribal and federal councils. The 'Five Nations' of
the Iroquois made up the Iroquois Confederacy, which was created about
the year 1570, as the last of a series of attempts to unite the tribes
in question. The Mohawks, so conspicuous in colonial history, are one
of their sub-tribes. Many of the Iroquoian tribes "have been settled
by the Canadian Government on a reservation on Grand River, Ontario,
where they still reside.... All the Iroquois [in the United States]
are in reservations in New York, with the exception of the Oneida, who
are settled in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The so-called Seneca, of
Oklahoma, are composed of the remnants of many tribes ... and of
emigrants from all the tribes of the Iroquoian Confederation." In 1689
the Iroquois were estimated to number about twelve thousand, whereas in
1904 they numbered over sixteen thousand.
The Algonquins
The Algonquian[9] family surrounded the Iroquois on every side, and
extended westward toward the Rocky Mountains, where one of their famous
offshoots, the Blackfeet, gained a notoriety which has rendered them
the heroes of many a boyish tale. They were milder than the Iroquois,
and less Spartan in habits. Their {25} western division comprised the
Blackfeet, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, situated near the eastern slope of
the Rocky Mountains; the northern division, situated for the most part
to the north of the St. Lawrence, comprised the Chippeways and Crees;
the north-eastern division embraced the tribes inhabiting Quebec, the
Maritime Provinces, and Maine, including the Montagnais and Micmacs;
the central division, dwelling in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana,
Michigan, and Ohio, included the Foxes, Kickapoos, Menominees, and
others; and the eastern division embraced all the Algonquian tribes
that dwelt along the Atlantic coast, the Abnaki, Narragansets, Nipmucs,
Mohicans (or Mohegans), Shawnees, Delawares, and Powhatans.
[9] This name has been adopted to distinguish the _family_ from the
tribal name, 'Algonquin' or 'Algonkin,' but is not employed when
speaking of individuals. Thus we speak of 'the Algonquian race,' but,
on the other hand, of 'an Algonquin Indian.'
The Algonquins were the first Indians to come into contact with the
white man. As a rule their relations with the French were friendly,
but they were frequently at war with the English settlers. The eastern
branch of the race were quickly defeated and scattered, their remnants
withdrawing to Canada and the Ohio valley. Of the smaller tribes of
New England, Virginia, and other eastern states there are no living
representatives, and even their languages are extinct, save for a few
words and place-names. The Ohio valley tribes, with the Wyandots,
formed themselves into a loose confederacy and attempted to preserve
the Ohio as an Indian boundary; but in 1794 they were finally defeated
and forced to cede their territory. Tecumseh, an Algonquin chief,
carried on a fierce war against the United States for a number of
years, but by his defeat and death at Tippecanoe in 1811 the spirit of
the Indians was broken, and the year 1815 saw the commencement of a
series of Indian migrations westward, and a wholesale cession of Indian
territory which continued over a period of about thirty years.
{26}
A Sedentary People
The Algonquins had been for generations the victims of the Iroquois
Confederacy, and only when the French had guaranteed them immunity from
the attacks of their hereditary enemies did they set their faces to the
east once more, to court repulse a second time at the hands of the
English settlers. Tall and finely proportioned, the Algonquins were
mainly a sedentary and agricultural people, growing maize and wild rice
for their staple foods. Indeed, more than once were the colonists of
New England saved from famine by these industrious folk. In 1792
Wayne's army found a continuous plantation along the entire length of
the Maumee River from Fort Wayne to Lake Erie, and such evidence
entirely shatters the popular fallacy that the Indian race were
altogether lacking in the virtues of industry and domesticity. They
employed fish-shells and ashes as fertilizers, and made use of spades
and hoes. And it was the Algonquins who first instilled in the white
settlers the knowledge of how to prepare those succulent dainties for
which New England is famous--hominy, succotash, maple-sugar, and
johnny-cake. They possessed the art of tanning deerskin to a delicate
softness which rendered it a luxurious and delightful raiment, and,
like the Aztecs, they manufactured mantles of feather-work. They had
also elaborated a system of picture-writing. In short, they were the
most intelligent and advanced of the eastern tribes, and had their
civilization been permitted to proceed unhindered by white aggression
and the recurring inroads of their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois, it
would probably have evolved into something resembling that of the Nahua
of Mexico, without, perhaps, exhibiting the sanguinary fanaticism of
that people. The great weakness of the Algonquian {27} stock was a
lack of solidity of character, which prevented them from achieving a
degree of tribal organization and cohesion sufficient to enable them to
withstand their foes.
The Muskhogean Race
The Muskhogean race included the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and
Seminoles, who occupied territory in the Gulf states east of the
Mississippi, possessing almost all of Mississippi and Alabama, and
portions of Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Many
early notices of this people are extant. They were met by Narvaez in
Florida in 1528, and De Soto passed through their territory in 1540-41.
By 1700 the entire Apalachee tribe had been civilized and
Christianized, and had settled in seven large and well-built towns.
But the tide of white settlement gradually pressed the Muskhogean
tribes backward from the coast region, and though they fought stoutly
to retain their patrimony, few of the race remain in their native area,
the majority having been removed to the tribal reservation in Oklahoma
before 1840. They were an agricultural and sedentary people, occupying
villages of substantially built dwellings. A curious diversity, both
physical and mental, existed among the several tribes of which the race
was composed. They possessed a general council formed of
representatives from each town, who met annually or as occasion
required. Artificial deformation of the skull was practised by nearly
all of the Muskhogean tribes, chiefly by the Choctaws, who were called
by the settlers 'Flatheads.' The Muskhogean population at the period
of its first contact with the whites has been estimated at some fifty
thousand souls. In 1905 they numbered rather more, but this estimate
included about fifteen thousand freedmen of negro blood.
{28}
The Sioux
The Siouan or Dakota stock--Santees, Yanktons, Assiniboins, and
Tetons--inhabited a territory extending from Saskatchewan to Louisiana.
They are the highest type, physically, mentally, and morally, of any or
the western tribes, and their courage is unquestioned. They dwelt in
large bands or groups. "Personal fitness and popularity determined
chieftainship.... The authority of the chief was limited by the band
council, without whose approbation little or nothing could be
accomplished. War parties were recruited by individuals who had
acquired reputation as successful leaders, while the _shamans_
formulated ceremonials and farewells for them. Polygamy was common....
Remains of the dead were usually, though not invariably, placed on
scaffolds."[10]
[10] _Bulletin 30_, Bureau of American Ethnology.
[Illustration: An Elderly Omaha Beau. By permission of the Bureau of
American Ethnology]
Caddoan Family
The Caddoan family comprises three geographic groups, the northern,
represented by the Arikara, the middle, embracing the Pawnee
Confederacy, once dwelling in Nebraska, and the southern group,
including the Caddo, Kichai, and Wichita. Once numerous, this division
of the Red Race is now represented by a few hundreds of individuals
only, who are settled in Oklahoma and North Dakota. The Caddo tribes
were cultivators of the soil as well as hunters, and practised the arts
of pottery-making and tanning. They lacked political ability and were
loosely confederated.
The Shoshoneans
The Shoshoneans or 'Snake' family of Nevada, Utah, and Idaho comprise
the Root-diggers, Comanches, and {29} other tribes of low culture.
These people, it is said, "are probably nearer the brutes than any
other portion of the human race on the face of the globe." "Yet these
debased creatures speak a related dialect and partake in some measure
of the same blood as the famous Aztec race who founded the empire of
Anahuac, and raised architectural monuments rivalling the most famous
structures of the ancient world."[11]
[11] Brinton, _Myths of the New World_.
Early Wars with the Whites
Numerous minor wars between the Indians and the colonists followed upon
the settlement of Virginia, but on the whole the relations between them
were peaceable until the general massacre of white women and children
on March 22, 1622, while the men of the colony were working in the
fields. Three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children were
slain in a single day. This holocaust was the signal for an Indian war
which continued intermittently for many years and cost the colonists
untold loss in blood and treasure. Inability to comprehend each
other's point of view was of course a fertile source of irritation
between the races, and even colonists who had ample opportunities for
observing and studying the Indians during a long course of years appear
to have been incapable of understanding their outlook and true
character. The dishonesty of white traders, on the other hand, aroused
the Indian to a frenzy of childish indignation. It was a native saying
that "One pays for another," and when an Indian was slain his nearest
blood-relation considered that he had consummated a righteous revenge
by murdering the first white man whom he met or waylaid. Each race
accused the other of treachery and unfairness. Probably the colonists,
despite their {30} veneer of civilization, were only a little less
ignorant than, and as vindictively cruel as, the barbarians with whom
they strove. The Indian regarded the colonist as an interloper who had
come to despoil him of the land of his fathers, while the Virginian
Puritan considered himself the salt of the earth and the Indian as a
heathen or 'Ishmaelite' sent by the Powers of Darkness for his
discomfiture, whom it was an act of both religion and policy to
destroy. Vengeful ferocity was exhibited on both sides. Another
horrible massacre of five hundred whites in 1644 was followed by the
defeat of the Indians who had butchered the colonists. Shortly before
that event the Pequot tribe in Connecticut had a feud with the English
traders, and tortured such of them as they could lay hands on. The men
of Connecticut, headed by John Mason, a military veteran, marched into
the Pequot country, surrounded the village of Sassacus, the Pequot
chief, gave it to the flames, and slaughtered six hundred of its
inhabitants. The tribe was broken up, and the example of their fate so
terrified the other Indian peoples that New England enjoyed peace for
many years after.
King Philip's War
The Dutch of New York were at one period almost overwhelmed by the
Indians in their neighbourhood, and in 1656 the Virginians suffered a
severe defeat in a battle with the aborigines at the spot where
Richmond now stands. In 1675 there broke out in New England the great
Indian war known as King Philip's War. Philip, an Indian chief,
complained bitterly that those of his subjects who had been converted
to Christianity were withdrawn from his control, and he made vigorous
war on the settlers, laying many of their towns in {31} ashes. But
victory was with the colonists at the battle called the 'Swamp Fight,'
and Philip and his men were scattered.
Captain Benjamin Church it was who first taught the colonists to fight
the Indians in their own manner. He moved as stealthily as the savages
themselves, and, to avoid an alarm, never allowed an Indian to be shot
who could be reached with the hatchet. The Indians who were captured
were sold into slavery in the West India Islands, where the hard labour
and change of climate were usually instrumental in speedily putting an
end to their servitude.
Step by step the Red Man was driven westward until he vanished from the
vicinity of the earlier settlements altogether. From that period the
history of his conflicts with the whites is bound up with the records
of their western extension.
The Reservations
The necessity of bringing the Indian tribes under the complete control
of the United States Government and confining them to definite limits
for the better preservation of order was responsible for the policy of
placing them on tracts of territory of their own called 'reservations.'
This step led the natives to realize the benefits of a settled
existence and to depend on their own industry for a livelihood rather
than upon the more precarious products of the chase. An Act of
Congress was passed in 1887 which put a period to the existence of the
Indian tribes as separate communities, and permitted all tribal lands
and reservations to be so divided that each individual member of a
tribe might possess a separate holding. Many of these holdings are of
considerable value, and the possessors are by no means poorly endowed
with this world's {32} goods. On the whole the policy of the United
States toward the Indians has been dictated by justice and humanity,
but instances have not been wanting in which arid lands have been
foisted upon the Indians, and the pressure of white settlers has
frequently forced the Government to dispossess the Red Man of the land
that had originally been granted to him.
The Story of Pocahontas
Many romantic stories are told concerning the relations of the early
white settlers with the Indians. Among the most interesting is that of
Pocahontas, the daughter of the renowned Indian chief Powhatan, the
erstwhile implacable enemy of the whites. Pocahontas, who as a child
had often played with the young colonists, was visiting a certain chief
named Japazaws, when an English captain named Argall bribed him with a
copper kettle to betray her into his hands. Argall took her a captive
to Jamestown. Here a white man by the name of John Rolfe married her,
after she had received Christian baptism. This marriage brought about
a peace between Powhatan and the English settlers in Virginia.
When Dale went back to England in 1616 he took with him some of the
Indians. Pocahontas, who was now called 'the Lady Rebecca,' and her
husband accompanied the party. Pocahontas was called a princess in
England, and received much attention. But when about to return to the
colony she died, leaving a little son.
The quaint version of Captain Nathaniel Powell, which retains all the
known facts of Pocahontas' story, states that "During this time, the
Lady Rebecca, _alias_ Pocahontas, daughter to Powhatan, by the diligent
care of Master John Rolfe her husband, and his friends, was taught to
speak such English as might well be {33} understood, well instructed in
Christianity, and was become very formal and civil after our English
manner; she had also by him a child which she loved most dearly, and
the Treasurer and Company took order both for the maintenance of her
and it, besides there were divers persons of great rank and quality had
been kind to her; and before she arrived at London, Captain Smith, to
deserve her former courtesies, made her qualities known to the Queen's
most excellent Majesty and her Court, and wrote a little book to this
effect to the Queen: An abstract whereof follows:
"'_To the Most High and Virtuous Princess, Queen
Anne of Great Britain_
"'MOST ADMIRED QUEEN,
"'The love I bear my God, my King and Country, hath so oft emboldened
me in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honesty doth constrain me
to presume thus far beyond myself, to present your Majesty this short
discourse: if ingratitude be a deadly poison to all honest virtues, I
must be guilty of that crime if I should omit any means to be thankful.
"'So it is,
"'That some ten years ago being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the
power of Powhatan their chief King, I received from this great savage
exceeding great courtesy, especially from his son Nantaquaus, the most
manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit I ever saw in a savage, and his
sister Pocahontas, the King's most dear and well-beloved daughter,
being but a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, whose
compassionate pitiful heart, of my desperate estate, gave me much cause
to respect her; I being the first Christian this proud King and his
grim attendants ever saw: and thus enthralled in their barbarous power,
I cannot say I felt the {34} least occasion of want that was in the
power of these my mortal foes to prevent, notwithstanding all their
threats. After some six weeks fatting among these savage courtiers, at
the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own
brains to save mine; and not only that, but so prevailed with her
father, that I was safely conveyed to Jamestown: where I found about
eight and thirty miserable poor and sick creatures, to keep possession
of all those large territories of Virginia; such was the weakness of
this poor Commonwealth, as had the savages not fed us, we directly had
starved. And this relief, most gracious Queen, was commonly brought us
by this Lady Pocahontas.
"'Notwithstanding all these passages, when inconstant Fortune turned
our peace to war, this tender virgin would still not spare to dare to
visit us, and by her our jars have been oft appeased, and our wants
still supplied. Were it the policy of her father thus to employ her,
or the ordinance of God thus to make her His instrument, or her
extraordinary affection to our nation, I know not; but of this I am
sure: when her father, with the utmost of his policy and power, sought
to surprise me, having but eighteen with me, the dark night could not
affright her from coming through the irksome woods, and with watered
eyes gave me intelligence, with her best advice to escape his fury;
which had he known, he had surely slain her.
"'Jamestown with her wild train she as freely frequented as her
father's habitation; and during the time of two or three years [1608-9]
she, next under God, was still the instrument to preserve this Colony
from death, famine and utter confusion; which if in those times it had
once been dissolved, Virginia might have lain as it was at our first
arrival to this day.
"'Since then, this business having been turned and {35} varied by many
accidents from that I left it at: it is most certain, after a long and
troublesome war after my departure, betwixt her father and our Colony,
all which time she was not heard of;
"'About two years after she herself was taken prisoner, being so
detained near two years longer, the Colony by that means was relieved,
peace concluded; and at last rejecting her barbarous condition, she was
married to an English gentleman, with whom at this present she is in
England; the first Christian ever of that nation, the first Virginian
ever spoke English, or had a child in marriage by an Englishman: a
matter surely, if my meaning be truly considered and well understood,
worthy a prince's understanding.
"'Thus, most gracious Lady, I have related to your Majesty, what at
your best leisure our approved Histories will account you at large, and
done in the time of your Majesty's life; and however this might be
presented you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a more honest
heart, as yet I never begged anything of the state, or any: and it is
my want of ability and her exceeding desert; your birth, means and
authority; her birth, virtue, want and simplicity, doth make me thus
bold, humbly to beseech your Majesty to take this knowledge of her,
though it be from one so unworthy to be the reporter, as myself, her
husband's estate not being able to make her fit to attend your Majesty.
The most and least I can do is to tell you this, because none so oft
has tried it as myself, and the rather being of so great a spirit,
however her stature: if she should not be well received, seeing this
kingdom may rightly have a kingdom by her means; her present love to us
and Christianity might turn to such scorn and fury, as to divert all
this good to the worst of evil: whereas finding so great a Queen should
do her some honour {36} more than she can imagine, for being so kind to
your servants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endear
her dearest blood to effect that, your Majesty and all the King's
honest subjects most earnestly desire.
Captain Powell continues:
"The small time I staid in London, divers courtiers and others, my
acquaintances, have gone with me to see her, that generally concluded,
they did think God had had a great hand in her conversion, and they
have seen many English Ladies worse favoured, proportioned, and
behavioured; and as since I have heard, it pleased both the King and
Queen's Majesty honourably to esteem her, accompanied with that
honourable Lady the Lady de la Ware, and that honourable Lord her
husband, and divers other persons of good qualities, both publicly at
the masques and otherwise, to her great satisfaction and content, which
doubtless she would have deserved, had she lived to arrive in Virginia.
"The Treasurer, Council and Company, having well furnished Captain
Samuel Argall, the Lady Pocahontas alias Rebecca, with her husband and
others, in the good ship called the _George_; it pleased God at
Gravesend to take this young Lady to His mercy, where she made not more
sorrow for her unexpected death, than joy to the beholders to hear and
see her make so religious and godly an end. Her little child Thomas
Rolfe, therefore, was left at Plymouth with Sir Lewis Stukly, that
desired the keeping of it."
Indian Kidnapping
Many are the tales of how Indians raiding a white settlement have
kidnapped and adopted into their families the children of the slain
whites, but none is {37} more enthralling than that of Frances Slocum,
who was carried away from home by a party of Delawares when but five
years of age, and who lived with them until her death in 1847. When
discovered by the whites she was an old woman of over seventy years of
age. The story is told by the writer of a local history as follows:
"The Slocums came from Warwick, Rhode Island, and Jonathan Slocum, the
father of the far-famed captive girl, emigrated, in 1777, with a wife
and nine children. They located near one of the forts, upon a spot of
ground which is at present covered by the city of Wilkes-Barre.
"The early training of the family had been on principles averse to war,
and Jonathan was loath to mix with the tumult of the valley. A son by
the name of Giles, of a fiery spirit, could not brook the evident
intentions of the Torys and British, and consequently he shouldered his
musket, and was one to take part in the battle of July 3, 1778.
"The prowling clans of savages and bushwhacking Torys which continued
to harass the valley occasioned much mischief in different parts, and
in the month of November following the battle it was the misfortune of
the Slocum family to be visited by a party of these Delawares, who
approached the cabin, in front of which two Kingsley boys were engaged
at a grindstone sharpening a knife. The elder had on a Continental
coat, which aroused the ire of the savages, and he was shot down
without warning and scalped by the very knife which he had put edge to.
"The report roused the inmates of the house, and Mrs. Slocum had
reached the door in time sufficient to see the boy of her neighbour
scalped.
"An elder daughter seized a young child two years old, and flew with
terror to the woods. It is said that {38} her impetuosity in escaping
caused the Indians to roar with laughter. They were about to take away
a boy when Mrs. Slocum pointed to a lame foot, exclaiming: 'The child
is lame; he can do thee no good.' They dropped the boy and discovered
little Frances hidden away under the staircase. It was but the act of
a moment to secure her, and when they bore her away the tender child
could but look over the Indian's shoulder and scream 'Mamma!'
"The alarm soon spread, but the elasticity of a Delaware's step had
carried the party away into the mountains.
"Mr. Slocum was absent at the time of the capture, and upon returning
at night learned the sad news.
"The family's trials did not end here. Miner, who is ever in sympathy
with the early annals of Wyoming, thus depicts the scenes which
occurred afterwards:
"'The cup of vengeance was not yet full. December 16th, Mr. Slocum and
Isaac Tripp, his father-in-law, an aged man, with William Slocum, a
youth of nineteen or twenty, were feeding cattle from a stack in the
meadow, in sight of the fort, when they were fired upon by Indians.
Mr. Slocum was shot dead; Mr. Tripp wounded, speared, and tomahawked;
both were scalped. William, wounded by a spent ball in the heel,
escaped and gave the alarm, but the alert and wily foe had retreated to
his hiding-place in the mountain. This deed, bold as it was cruel, was
perpetrated within the town plot, in the centre of which the fortress
was located. Thus, in little more than a month, Mrs. Slocum had lost a
beloved child, carried into captivity; the doorway had been drenched in
blood by the murder of a member of the family; two others of the
household had been taken away prisoners; and now her husband and father
were both stricken down to the {39} grave, murdered and mangled by the
merciless Indians. Verily, the annals of Indian atrocities, written in
blood, record few instances of desolation and woe equal to this.'"
"In 1784, after peace had settled upon the country, two of the Slocum
brothers visited Niagara, in hopes of learning something of the
whereabouts of the lost sister, but to no purpose. Large rewards were
offered, but money will not extract a confession from an Indian.
"Little Frances all this time was widely known by many tribes of
Indians, but she had become one of them, hence the mystery which
shrouded her fate.
"The efforts of the family were untiring. Several trips were made
westward, and each resulted in vain. A large number of Indians of
different tribes were convened, in 1789, at Tioga Point, to effect a
treaty with Colonel Proctor. This opportunity seemed to be the fitting
one, for one visit could reach several tribes, but Mrs. Slocum, after
spending weeks of inquiry among them, was again obliged to return home
in sorrow, and almost despair.
"The brothers took a journey in 1797, occupying nearly the whole
summer, in traversing the wilderness and Indian settlements of the
west, but to no purpose. Once, indeed, a ray of hope seemed to glimmer
upon the domestic darkness, for a female captive responded to the many
and urgent inquiries, but Mrs. Slocum discovered at once that it was
not her Frances. The mother of the lost child went down to the grave,
having never heard from her daughter since she was carried away captive.
"In 1826, Mr. Joseph Slocum, hearing of a prominent Wyandot chief who
had a white woman for a wife, repaired to Sandusky, but was
disappointed when he beheld the woman, who he knew to a certainty could
{40} not be Frances. Hope had become almost abandoned, and the family
was allowing the memory of the lost girl to sink into forgetfulness,
when one of those strange freaks of circumstances which seem so
mysterious to humanity, but which are the ordinary actions of Infinity,
brought to light the history and the person of the captive girl of
Wyoming.
"Colonel Ewing, who was connected with Indian service, had occasion to
rest with a tribe on the Wabash, when he discovered a woman whose
outlines and texture convinced him that she must be a white woman,
though her face was as red as any squaw's could be. He made inquiries,
and she admitted that she had been taken from her parents when she was
young, that her name was Slocum, and that she was now so old that she
had no objections to having her relations know of her whereabouts.
"The Colonel knew full well how anxious many eastern hearts were to
hear of the lost one of earlier days, and thinking that he would do a
charitable service, he addressed the following letter to the
Post-master of Lancaster, Pennsylvania:
"'LOGANSPORT, INDIANA: _January_ 20, 1835
"'DEAR SIR,--