The People of the Wilderness—Men without Rights—Killing by
Alcohol—Change in the Character of the Native—Growth of the War
Spirit—Classification by Language—Dwellers in Tents and Builders
of Houses—Farmers and Hunters—Irrigation Works—The Coming of the
Horse.
Of more than equal interest with the magnificent wilderness and its
animal occupants was the human dweller within its broad limits, the
Amerind,[18] commonly called the Indian. Still another name for him was
Red Man, yet he was neither an Indian nor was he red, except when he
painted himself with ochre and vermilion. His real colour was various
shades of brown or bronze, rather yellowish than red where protected
from the sun. We are not surprised that roses of different hue grow in a
garden, but there has always been unwarranted amazement that different
shades of men should be found in the garden of the universe. There
appears to be no reason why men should not vary in colour as well as
all other animals and plants. But though races of mankind may vary in
colour they never, so far as now determined, have varied in any other
essential; or at least only slightly in fundamental characteristics.
In general physical composition all men to-day are identical, and there
is no certain evidence that they have ever differed more than they now
do.[19] Man is everywhere the same as far back in the ages as he can be
traced. Some may be stronger, or larger, or shorter, than others, with
brains more or less developed, but they are all practically alike, even
to their emotions.
[Illustration: A Village of the Plains.
This form of tipi was readily taken down and as readily set up again.
Photograph by U. S. Government.]
Races, as a whole, differ from each other, in their ability to make
machines, in their ability to secure comfort, in language, and in their
social regulations; differences of degree. These qualities are begun
and fostered more by stimulating circumstances than by particular
superiority of race. For example, the Europeans forged ahead mainly
because they were possessed of animals easily domesticated that would
supply their needs. The Amerind had no such animals in North America
except the bison and the dog. The latter he utilised to the full as a
draught and pack animal, as a wool producer, and as a supply of animal
food. Why he did not domesticate the bison is a problem. Perhaps it
was because there were too many of them. The store of animal food was
usually over-abundant with all Amerinds living in the range of the
buffalo, so there was no spur to economy. We may imagine that if the
buffalo from time to time had appeared in comparatively small numbers
in the thickly populated country of the Aztecs where animal food was so
scarce that an elaborate system of human sacrifices developed to supply
this deficiency, the latter eventually would have been abandoned and
captive buffalo substituted for captive man. Domestication, to guard
the supply, would then have been an easy step. But the buffalo was
permitted to roam at will, and the dog remained the sole domestic animal
in possession of the people of North America before the arrival of the
white race.[20]
The Amerind was not a savage. He was a barbarian with a rather well
ordered society. He possessed a high quality of intellect, and he
differed from his white antagonist more in external complexion than in
any other particular except his social organisation, which was one the
white man had passed through and left behind in centuries far past. But
the Amerind had the same emotions. He loved his home, his family,—as
constituted by his social regulations,—and his children. As to honesty
and dishonesty, the balance was certainly not far from even, average
for average; if anything, the Amerind had more respect for the ideals
of his race than was the case with the white man with reference to his.
Of course he had abundant vices like all the rest of humanity. He was
often horribly cruel to his enemies. But on the whole he was not worse
than the European who brought him degradation; who frequently soaked him
with cheap rum and alcohol, in order more easily to exchange nothing for
valuable furs: who engrafted upon him more and worse vices, who shot him
needlessly, and who reviled him as he sank helpless under the heavy tide
of imposition. Love of home and defence of country are ever extolled as
of the highest merit in the white race; in the American native they were
crimes. From the beginning of the contact the Amerind began to change
for the worse.
[Illustration: A Pai Ute Family at Home.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.]
[Illustration: A Ute Mountain Home.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
The white man blamed all Amerinds for every crime and the Amerind blamed
the white man similarly. Each visited retribution on the other without
discrimination. The antagonism grew and grew. Tribes which at first
received the whites most kindly and were continually cheated were apt
to become bitterest enemies. On the Missouri in 1810 Wilson Price Hunt
asked some Amerinds why they killed white men, to which they answered,
"because they kill us—that man—" pointing to Carson—"killed one of our
brothers last summer." This statement was true. Carson while with the
Arikara had shot, probably for amusement, across the river at a war
party of Sioux. The latter then retaliated by killing three whites.
In this way the mutual antagonism multiplied as the years passed,
just as a snowball increases when it rolls down hill. The native soon
discovered that he must apply himself to his protection, and from
being comparatively peaceful he became intensely warlike, emulating
the example of the Iroquois and Apache. Had he possessed the power of
organising, the story of white encroachment on his domain would have
read differently. As it is, it may be considered a great loss to history
that we have so little of the story from his point of view.
[Illustration: Village of the Puebloan Type. View in the Moki Town of
Mishongnavi, Arizona.
Photograph by U. S. Bu. Eth.]
Before the nineteenth century was half over, the country east of the
Mississippi was entirely appropriated by the whites. The various tribes
that had lived there were absorbed, exterminated, or crowded out; the
same process was to be repeated in the Wilderness. The Iroquois held
their ground in New York and succeeded in exchanging their former
holdings for small reservations; and here was another story of the
white man's perfidy. The Seminole, the Creek, and the Sac-and-Fox
tribes were finally crushed and their remnants removed, with others,
beyond the Mississippi. The general government as a rule tried to deal
justly by the Amerind, yet it has been much censured. Its task was an
impossibility as long as so many white men who came in contact with
the natives were willing to set aside every principle of fair dealing
and treat them with no more consideration than they did the beaver and
the buffalo. They wanted their furs and anything else of commercial
value that they possessed, and no subterfuge was too dishonourable to
practise on them. The matter for surprise is not that the Amerind was
occasionally on the war-path, but that he was not always there. He
received daily lessons in cupidity, cruelty, and dishonour.
Thus far the most exact basis for the classification of these
interesting people has been language. It was some time after the early
intercourse with the natives of the East before the wide divergence in
language was appreciated and all attempts to classify them fell into
confusion. Finally, in 1836, Albert Gallatin began an arrangement by
language which, reorganised by Powell, in 1885-86, has been generally
adopted by ethnologists, and to-day, while not entirely approved, it is
the only method that is satisfactory.
By this system all tribes whose language roots are the same are classed
together no matter how widely separated geographically they might have
been. Notwithstanding the remarkable homogeneity of all the aboriginal
inhabitants of the continent in customs, habits, and organisation,
yet more than sixty separate stock languages were discovered in North
America. Each one of these is taken to represent a "stock" group to
which is given a title derived from Gallatin's first designation or from
the leading tribe in that particular stock, with the addition of "an"
or "ian," and all tribes having similar language roots are classed with
this group or stock. Thus in the Siouan stock, the title is taken from
the leading tribe, the Sioux, and all affiliated languages are brought
under the same heading, as Dakota, Crow, Hidatsa, Iowa, Mandan, etc.,
and in the Athapascan the title is taken from the Athapascas of the far
north, while the Apaches and Navajos of the south are classed under the
same heading, as they speak related languages.[21]
[Illustration: Umatilla Tipi of Rush Mats on Columbia River.
From _Lewis & Clark_ by O. D. Wheeler.]
[Illustration: Amerind Linguistic Map.
After _Bu. of Eth. Seventh An. Rep._]
It so happened that the Wilderness possessed a greater variety of these
stock groups than any other part of the continent, one portion, that
lying west of the Sierra Nevada, containing an astonishing number of
small groups living contiguously, yet each speaking a totally distinct
language. It was therefore often difficult for the early invaders to
make themselves understood, as well as to understand. Among the Amerinds
themselves a "sign" language existed which was of remote origin and
which was convenient and expressive for intercourse between tribes
speaking radically different tongues. Sometimes a third language served
to convey ideas between tribes or between them and white men, this
third language being one belonging to some widely diffused stock of the
region. Still another language was one which grew up spontaneously,
composed of words from two or more languages as well as of a lot of
words which in one way or another originated themselves, a mongrel
language perfectly understandable but made up of flotsam and jetsam. Of
this class the most widely used and best known was that called Chinook
jargon, originating in the Columbia river region and composed of words
from many different languages, including those of the white man, as well
as words that never existed anywhere else.
Taking language as a basis, we find the Wilderness divided mainly
between two great families, or stocks, which had grown numerous and were
able to spread over a vast extent of country, though each contained a
large number of separate tribes often at war with each other, at least
after the arrival of the whites. These two stocks were the Siouan and
the Shoshonean. Of the first, some leading members were mentioned above;
of the second, the Shoshone, Comanche, Ute, and Moki (or Shinumo) were
representative, in fact comprised almost the entire stock. The Siouan
division, or family, ranged from the banks of the Mississippi westward,
with its lower border stretching diagonally from south-eastern Arkansas
as far as our present Yellowstone Park, north to the upper boundary
of the United States and beyond. They were flanked above by tribes of
another stock, widespread and powerful, north to Hudson Bay and east
of the Mississippi, the Algonquian, represented by the Blackfeet,[22]
Chippewa, Knisteneau (or Cree), and others. South of the Siouan range
came that of the Caddoan, in south-western Arkansas, the eastern half of
Texas, and in Louisiana with a central group in the midst of the Siouan
range, in southern Nebraska, and a northern one also surrounded by the
Siouan people, in North Dakota. The northern was the Arikara (or Ree),
the middle the several sub-tribes of Pawnee, and the southern the Caddo,
Wichita, Kichai, and others. Adjacent to the central Caddoan group,
on the west, was another section of Algonquian stock, the Cheyenne
and Arapaho, and just north of this came the Kiowan, represented
by the tribe from which the stock name comes, the Kiowa. This tribe
was intimately associated with the Comanche, and there was a strong
similarity in language.
[Illustration: A Puebloan Farmhouse.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
[Illustration: Plenty-Horses, a Cheyenne.
Photograph by J. K Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
West of all these ranged the Shoshonean stock from the middle line
of Texas north-westward almost to the State of Washington, west to
the Sierra Nevada, and south-westward like an inverted U around other
stocks in New Mexico and Arizona, sending a slender arm entirely across
California to the sea. This stock occupied a large part of the territory
once claimed by Spain and Mexico, while the Siouan covered the major
part of what was the Louisiana wilderness. Immediately south of the
country of the Shoshonean tribes lay that of some branches of another
numerous people already mentioned, the Athapascan, whose main body was
far to the north, spreading across the whole extreme north-western part
of the continent through Alaska, almost to the coast, which was occupied
by a narrow fringe of Eskimauan people. These southern Athapascans,
known as Apache and Navajo, were thus a long way from any relatives, but
no people on the continent were better able to look out for themselves,
both being warlike from the first, though this tendency was aggravated
by the impositions of the early whites. The Navajo appear to have been
considerably changed by an admixture of other blood, which may be termed
Puebloan,[23] the term in this case being used not to designate people
with similar language, but with similar culture and social organisation.
The Apache, by his swiftness of action, his mobility, and his general
skill as a predatory warrior, kept the more peaceful tribes in a state
of constant turmoil and terror. At the same time he seems originally
to have received the whites fairly well. In some ways he resembled the
Iroquois, yet he had no approach to their masterly organisation.
Below the Athapascan group of the present New Mexico and Arizona was the
Piman, a peaceful agricultural people, whose main range was in Mexico;
and lying between the Piman and the Shoshonean was the northern part
of the Yuman country, their southern range being the peninsula of Lower
California.
Scattered irregularly through the Athapascan district were the villages
of the sedentary Puebloans, a group made up of tribes speaking different
languages but more or less affiliated by their similarity of habit. They
were often at war with each other. They were house-builders, though that
may be stated with regard to many of the tribes of other stocks. Their
houses, however, were erected, with a view to greater permanency than
any others, of adobe clay, or of stone, for their country was deficient
in game and in forest, and they relied largely, chiefly indeed, upon
their crops of maize. These groups are now well known, particularly
the seven villages of the Moki, that of Zuñi, of Taos, and a number of
others along the Rio Grande. The Moki (or Moquis) as stated above are
classed as Shoshonean.[24] The Zuñi are designated Zuñian, and others
fall under Keresan, from Keres (or Queres), and Tañoan. When considered
otherwise than linguistically, the general term, Puebloan (really
villagers) is useful for reasons explained above. The tribes of this
group, remnants of a once far more numerous people, are some of the most
interesting of all the Amerinds within our borders.
[Illustration: A Pai Ute Modernised.
Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.]
In the middle of Texas was the Tonkawan group, a small remnant, and
at the southern extremity the Karankawan, another small remnant,
and the Coahuiltecan, named from the Mexican state, Coahuila. In
what is now the State of Louisiana were several other remnants, the
Chittimachan, Natchezan, Tonikan, Adaizan, and Attacapan. West of the
Sierra Nevada and extending north to the boundary, was the extraordinary
conglomeration of small stocks, terminating in the wider-spread Salishan
which reached up into British Columbia.
The dwellings of these various tribes had a great deal of variety. It
was popularly supposed for many years that an "Indian" lived only in a
skin tent or a wickiup, or any shiftless kind of a shelter, consequently
when it was discovered that there were some who had lived centuries
ago in rather well constructed houses which were found in ruins, it was
assumed that these people must have been of another race and a superior
one. The fact that tribes were still building and occupying houses
of the same kind, who were only common "Indians," was not for years
permitted to interfere with the romance, but now the "vanished-race"
theories are pretty well abandoned except perhaps by visionary writers
who do not understand the field. The ruins were found in canyons and
valleys where natural-rock _débris_ and a poverty of timber and large
skins almost compel house-building. A vast abundance of gypsiferous clay
furnished another excellent building material, for that climate, and
this was utilised in the South-west where other materials were difficult
to secure. They also rammed this clay mixed with gravel into large
wicker frames which were lifted, after the mass had hardened, to aid
in preparing other blocks on top, so that a sort of clay concrete-block
wall was raised. When the white men first came to the country, a ruin of
one of these large houses called _Casa Grande_ stood in Arizona near the
present town of Florence. No one knows when this structure was erected
or abandoned. It is still standing about as first described by whites.
The government has assumed its care and protection.
[Illustration: Ruin Called Casa Grande, Arizona.
Photograph by Cosmos Mindeleff, U. S. Bu. of Eth.]
The Mandan built a large round earth-covered wigwam which was
substantial and comfortable. The Dakota developed the portable tipi. The
Shoshone lived in skin tents and huts of boughs, as did the Comanche.
The tribes of the North-west built strong houses of slabs, often very
long. The tribes of California built of brush and slabs. Each people
constructed a habitation in accordance with the facilities of the
region they occupied, and while house-building may indicate a certain
superiority of social advancement it is no mark of race differentiation.
Tribes of one stock built good houses and lived in mere brush shelters
at the same time.
Some of the occupied villages became of great importance in the early
days of white intrusion, notably Taos, a pueblo on the headwaters of
the Rio Grande. This figured prominently in the events which broke the
Wilderness from the time of Espejo to the acquisition of the region by
the Americans, and is standing to-day.
For subsistence the tribes relied on different things depending on the
nature of the country. The Siouan and other plains people where the
buffalo roamed, lived almost exclusively upon it. The meat was food; the
skins raiment and shelter; the sinew, thread; the robes, beds, and so
on. The Puebloans having few or no buffalo and little game cultivated
maize. Many other tribes also cultivated this grain, particularly
those living along watercourses. In some districts irrigation had to
be resorted to, and the Amerind was equal to the problem. Where shower
waters were insufficient or could not be turned at once amongst the
corn, elaborate and extensive irrigation canals were constructed,
remains of which have been discovered. One of the largest was found by
modern engineers to be so well placed that they followed its course for
some distance with their canal. The Moki still plant their corn with
a sharpened stick and guide the water from every shower through the
fields.
These people had solved the problem of agriculture in an arid country,
long before the Spaniard, or the Mormon, or any other foreigner planning
irrigation had ever set foot on this continent.
[Illustration: South Portion of the Tewa Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico.
Photograph by U. S. Bu. Eth.]
Their manufactures covered a considerable range. They made clothing and
blankets, of wool, skins, and cotton. They were unsurpassed in basketry;
they made excellent pottery. They originally used as weapons the bow
and arrow, the lance, and various kinds of war clubs. Their beverage was
mainly water, though some knew how to concoct intoxicating drink. Where
the maple tree grew, its sap and syrup were utilised, and they also made
sugar from it. Salt they obtained from briny lakes. Of mining they had
no knowledge whatever, nor did they have metals, excepting, near the
Missouri, an occasional fragment of copper.
Cooking was done in pits previously heated by large fires, or in wicker
jugs by means of hot stones put inside; or it was done in earthenware
pots. Bread, when made of corn, or of grass-seed meal, was baked on
hot stones. Their musical instruments were drums, rattles, flutes, and
whistles. Of ceremonials they had a great many. Sometimes these were
sickening ordeals, like the now famous Sun Dance of the Omaha; or the
Moki Snake Dance, where live rattlesnakes form part of the ritual and
are carried about by the Snake priests, even in their mouths.
Notwithstanding an intermittent and desultory sort of warfare kept
up between tribes of the same stock, as well as of different stocks,
comparatively few were killed in this way before the European came.
Night attacks were seldom made and in day attacks not many at one time
were injured. The ordinary routine was one of peace. It is probable that
in the American Civil War alone more men were killed than ever at one
time in aboriginal days occupied the same area. Almost four thousand
were destroyed at the battle of Shiloh, and in the battles of the
Wilderness fully fifteen thousand. Even proportionately the wars of the
"savages" were mere child's play compared to this. But when the white
man crossed the Mississippi and began to encroach from the east and then
from the west and one tribe was forced back upon another as the wind
beats the combing waves upon a lee shore, matters began to change. A
large infusion of inferior white blood aided this change. Then came the
horse! It was a deficiency suddenly and completely supplied. The warrior
on horseback was quite a different being from the one on foot. The
boundless Plains were circumscribed. And the gun! Another void by this
was so admirably filled that horse and gun and Amerind instantly merged
into one; an indissoluble trio. Henceforth he supplied himself with
an abundance of horses and with the best guns and ammunition he could
get, till at the fearful moment on the Little Big Horn, he was better
armed than the white soldiers sent to overpower him. It is exceedingly
difficult always to view things dispassionately from our antagonist's
standpoint, but when we succeed in doing so we invariably discover that
he has some of the justice and virtue on his side. The Amerind seen in
this way was not half as bad as he has been painted by his conqueror,
who was prone to gloss over and forget his own shortcomings.
[Illustration: South-western Baskets—Apache, Pima, etc. Navajo
Blankets behind.
Photograph by J. B. Lippincott, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[18] A substitute word, compounded of the first two syllables of
American and the first syllable of Indian, adopted by some leading
ethnologists.
[19] I am not now taking theories into account. The theory that
man has evolved from a lower organism seems to be correct. Here
reference is made only to absolute facts.
[20] The domestication of the buffalo by some tribe referred
to by Gomara is not sufficiently definite to be accepted, and,
furthermore, if true, could have been only a limited case. In
Arizona there is some indication that an animal like the vicuna
was used, but it is very vague.
[21] For a list of stocks and sub-stocks, and of tribes, classified
according to language, see _The North Americans of Yesterday_, by
F. S. Dellenbaugh, Appendix, p. 461. By means of these lists the
proper places of the majority of tribes can be readily found.
[22] There was also a Dakota sub-tribe called Blackfeet. In their
own language they were Sihasapa—a branch of the Tetons.
[23] Throughout the South-west, in the Colorado and Rio Grande
River basins, certain tribes of similar culture and village habits
once lived. These seem to have been of different stocks, exactly
as the village building tribes of to-day are. Some were probably
Shoshonean, some Piman, others were allied to the Tañoan and
Keresan, while still others were of stocks now extinct. For all
these the term Puebloan is convenient.
[24] North of the Colorado River are innumerable house ruins
ascribed by the present Pai Utes (Shoshonean) to the _Shinumo_.
They also call the Mokis, _Shinumo_, hence Powell applied this term
to the whole group. The probability is that the Shinumo were all
Shoshonean.
[Illustration]