Manners and Customs of the Natives continued.--Their Wars.--Their
Marriages.--Medicine Men.--Funeral Ceremonies.--Religious
Notions.--Language.
The politics of the natives of the Columbia are a simple affair: each
village has its chief, but that chief does not seem to exercise a great
authority over his fellow-citizens. Nevertheless, at his death, they pay
him great honors: they use a kind of mourning, which consists in
painting the face with black, in lieu of gay colors; they chant his
funeral song or oration for a whole month. The chiefs are considered in
proportion to their riches: such a chief has a great many wives, slaves,
and strings of beads--he is accounted a great chief. These barbarians
approach in that respect to certain civilized nations, among whom the
worth of a man is estimated by the quantity of gold he possesses.
As all the villages form so many independent sovereignties, differences
sometimes arise, whether between the chiefs or the tribes. Ordinarily,
these terminate by compensations equivalent to the injury. But when the
latter is of a grave character, like a murder (which is rare), or the
abduction of a woman (which is very common), the parties, having made
sure of a number of young braves to aid them, prepare for war. Before
commencing hostilities, however, they give notice of the day when they
will proceed to attack the hostile village; not following in that
respect the custom of almost all other American Indians, who are wont to
burst upon their enemy unawares, and to massacre or carry off men,
women, and children; these people, on the contrary, embark in their
canoes, which on these occasions are paddled by the women, repair to the
hostile village, enter into parley, and do all they can to terminate the
affair amicably: sometimes a third party becomes mediator between the
first two, and of course observes an exact neutrality. If those who seek
justice do not obtain it to their satisfaction, they retire to some
distance, and the combat begins, and is continued for some time with
fury on both sides; but as soon as one or two men are killed, the party
which has lost these, owns itself beaten and the battle ceases. If it is
the people of the village attacked who are worsted, the others do not
retire without receiving presents. When the conflict is postponed till
the next day (for they never fight but in open daylight, as if to render
nature witness of their exploits), they keep up frightful cries all
night long, and, when they are sufficiently near to understand each
other, defy one another by menaces, railleries, and sarcasms, like the
heroes of Homer and Virgil. The women and children are always removed
from the village before the action.
Their combats are almost all maritime: for they fight ordinarily in
their pirogues, which they take care to careen, so as to present the
broadside to the enemy, and half lying down, avoid the greater part of
the arrows let fly at them.
But the chief reason of the bloodlessness of their combats is the
inefficiency of their offensive weapons, and the excellence of their
defensive armor. Their offensive arms are merely a bow and arrow, and a
kind of double-edged sabre, about two and a half feet long, and six
inches wide in the blade: they rarely come to sufficiently close
quarters to make use of the last. For defensive armor they wear a
cassock or tunic of elk-skin double, descending to the ankles, with
holes for the arms. It is impenetrable by their arrows, which can not
pierce two thicknesses of leather; and as their heads are also covered
with a sort of helmet, the neck is almost the only part in which they
can be wounded. They have another kind of corslet, made like the corsets
of our ladies, of splinters of hard wood interlaced with nettle twine.
The warrior who wears this cuirass does not use the tunic of elk-skin;
he is consequently less protected, but a great deal more free; the said
tunic being very heavy and very stiff.
It is almost useless to observe that, in their military expeditions,
they have their bodies and faces daubed with different paints, often of
the most extravagant designs. I remember to have seen a war-chief, with
one exact half of his face painted white and the other half black.
Their marriages are conducted with a good deal of ceremony. When a young
man seeks a girl in marriage, his parents make the proposals to those of
the intended bride, and when it has been agreed upon what presents the
future bridegroom is to offer to the parents of the bride, all parties
assemble at the house of the latter, whither the neighbors are invited
to witness the contract. The presents, which consist of slaves, strings
of beads, copper bracelets, _haiqua_ shells, &c., are distributed by the
young man, who, on his part receives as many, and sometimes more,
according to the means or the munificence of the parents of his
betrothed. The latter is then led forward by the old matrons and
presented to the young man, who takes her as his wife, and all retire to
their quarters.
The men are not very scrupulous in their choice, and take small pains to
inform themselves what conduct a young girl has observed before her
nuptials; and it must be owned that few marriages would take place, if
the youth would only espouse maidens without reproach on the score of
chastity; for the unmarried girls are by no means scrupulous in that
particular, and their parents give them, on that head, full liberty. But
once the marriage is contracted, the spouses observe toward each other
an inviolable fidelity; adultery is almost unknown among them, and the
woman who should be guilty of it would be punished with death. At the
same time, the husband may repudiate his wife, and the latter may then
unite herself in marriage to another man. Polygamy is permitted, indeed
is customary; there are some who have as many as four or five wives; and
although it often happens that the husband loves one better than the
rest, they never show any jealousy, but live, together in the most
perfect concord.[X]
[Footnote X: This appears improbable, and is, no doubt, overstated; but
so far as it is true, only shows the degradation of these women, and the
absence of moral love on both sides. The indifference to virgin chastity
described by Mr. F., is a characteristic of barbarous nations in
general, and is explained by the principle stated in the next note
below; the savage state being essentially one in which the supernatural
bond of human fellowship is snapped: it is (as it has been called) the
state of _nature_, in which continence is practically impossible; and
what men can not have, that they soon cease to prize. The same utter
indifference to the past conduct of the girls they marry is mentioned by
MAYHEW as existing among the costermongers and street population of
London, whom he well likens to the barbarous tribes lying on the
outskirts of more ancient nations.--ED.]
There are charlatans everywhere, but they are more numerous among
savages than anywhere else, because among these ignorant and
superstitious people the trade is at once more profitable and less
dangerous. As soon as a native of the Columbia is indisposed, no matter
what the malady, they send for the medicine man, who treats the patient
in the absurd manner usually adopted by these impostors, and with such
violence of manipulation, that often a sick man, whom a timely bleeding
or purgative would have saved, is carried off by a sudden death.
They deposite their dead in canoes, on rocks sufficiently elevated not
to be overflowed by the spring freshets. By the side of the dead are
laid his bow, his arrows, and some of his fishing implements; if it is
a woman, her beads and bracelets: the wives, the relatives and the
slaves of the defunct cut their hair in sign of grief, and for several
days, at the rising and setting of the sun, go to some distance from the
village to chant a funeral song.
These people have not, properly speaking, a public worship.[Y] I could
never perceive, during my residence among them, that they worshipped any
idol. They had, nevertheless, some small sculptured figures; but they
appeared to hold them in light esteem, offering to barter them for
trifles.
[Footnote Y: It is Coleridge who observes that _every tribe is
barbarous_ which has no recognised public worship or cult, and no
regular priesthood as opposed to self-constituted conjurors. It is, in
fact, by public worship alone that human society is organized and
vivified; and it is impossible to maintain such worship without a
sacerdotal order, however it be constituted. _No culture without a
cult_, is the result of the study of the races of mankind. Hence those
who would destroy religion are the enemies of civilization.--ED.]
Having travelled with one of the sons of the chief of the Chinooks
(Comcomly), an intelligent and communicative young man, I put to him
several questions touching their religious belief, and the following
is, in substance, what he told me respecting it: Men, according to their
ideas, were created by a divinity whom they name _Etalapass_; but they
were imperfect, having a mouth that was not opened, eyes that were fast
closed, hands and feet that were not moveable; in a word, they were
rather statues of flesh, than living men. A second divinity, whom they
call _Ecannum_, less powerful, but more benign than the former, having
seen men in their state of imperfection, took a sharp stone and laid
open their mouths and eyes; he gave agility, also, to their feet, and
motion to their hands. This compassionate divinity was not content with
conferring these first benefits; he taught men to make canoes, paddles,
nets, and, in a word, all the tools and instruments they use. He did
still more: he threw great rocks into the river, to obstruct the ascent
of the salmon, in order that they might take as many as they wanted.
The natives of the Columbia further believe, that the men who have been
good citizens, good fathers, good husbands, and good fishermen, who
have not committed murder, &c., will be perfectly happy after their
death, and will go to a country where they will find fish, fruit, &c.,
in abundance; and that, on the contrary, those who have lived wickedly,
will inhabit a country of fasting and want, where they will eat nothing
but bitter roots, and have nothing to drink but salt water.
If these notions in regard to the origin and future destiny of man are
not exactly conformed to sound reason or to divine revelation, it will
be allowed that they do not offer the absurdities with which the
mythologies of many ancient nations abound.[Z] The article which makes
skill in fishing a virtue worthy of being compensated in the other
world, does not disfigure the salutary and consoling dogma of the
immortality of the soul, and that of future rewards and punishments, so
much as one is at first tempted to think; for if we reflect a little, we
shall discover that the skilful fisherman, in laboring for himself,
labors also for society; he is a useful citizen, who contributes, as
much as lies in his power, to avert from his fellow-men the scourge of
famine; he is a religious man, who honors the divinity by making use of
his benefits. Surely a great deal of the theology of a future life
prevalent among civilized men, does not excel this in profundity.
[Footnote Z: It seems clear that this Indian mythology is a form of the
primitive tradition obscured by symbol. The creation of man by the
Supreme Divinity, but in an imperfect state ("his eyes not yet opened"),
his deliverance from that condition by an inferior but more beneficent
deity (the Satan of the Bible), and the progress of the emancipated and
enlightened being, in the arts of industry, are clearly set forth. Thus
the devil has his cosmogony as well as the Almighty, and his tradition
in opposition to the divine.--ED.]
It is not to be expected that men perfectly ignorant, like these
Indians, should be free from superstitions: one of the most ridiculous
they have, regards the method of preparing and eating fish. In the month
of July, 1811, the natives brought us at first a very scanty supply of
the fresh salmon, from the fear that we would cut the fish crosswise
instead of lengthwise; being persuaded that if we did so, the river
would be obstructed, and the fishing ruined. Having reproached the chief
on that account, they brought us a greater quantity, but all cooked, and
which, not to displease them, it was necessary to eat before sunset.
Re-assured at last by our solemn promises not to cut the fish crosswise,
they supplied us abundantly during the remainder of the season.
In spite of the vices that may be laid to the charge of the natives of
the Columbia, I regard them as nearer to a state of civilization than
any of the tribes who dwell east of the Rocky mountains. They did not
appear to me so attached to their customs that they could not easily
adopt those of civilized nations: they would dress themselves willingly
in the European mode, if they had the means. To encourage this taste, we
lent pantaloons to the chiefs who visited us, when they wished to enter
our houses, never allowing them to do it in a state of nudity. They
possess, in an eminent degree, the qualities opposed to indolence,
improvidence, and stupidity: the chiefs, above all, are distinguished
for their good sense and intelligence. Generally speaking, they have a
ready intellect and a tenacious memory. Thus old Comcomly recognised the
mate of the _Albatross_ as having visited the country sixteen years
before, and recalled to the latter the name of the captain under whom he
had sailed at that period.
The _Chinook_ language is spoken by all the nations from the mouth of
the Columbia to the falls. It is hard and difficult to pronounce, for
strangers; being full of gutturals, like the Gaelic. The combinations
_thl_, or _tl_, and _lt_, are as frequent in the Chinook as in the
Mexican.[AA]
[Footnote AA: There can not be a doubt that the existing tribes on the
N.W. coast, have reached that country from the _South_, and not from the
North. They are the _debris_ of the civilization of Central America,
expelled by a defecating process that is going on in all human
societies, and so have sunk into barbarism.--ED.]