THE RED MEN, HOW THEY LIVED AND WERE TREATED
NOW that you have been told about the settlement of the colonies, it is
well to recall how many of them there were. Let us see. There were the
Pilgrim and Puritan settlements of New England, Roger Williams's
settlement in Rhode Island, the Dutch settlement in New York, the Quaker
one in Pennsylvania, the Catholic settlement in Maryland, the Cavalier
ones in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Debtor settlement in
Georgia. Then there were some smaller ones, making about a dozen in all.
These stretched all along the coast, from Canada, the French country in
the north, to Florida, the Spanish country in the south. The British
were a long time in settling these places, for nearly 250 years passed
after the time of Columbus before General Oglethorpe came to Georgia.
While all this was going on, what was becoming of the native people of
the country, the Indians? I am afraid they were having a very hard time
of it. The Spaniards made slaves of them, and forced them to work so
terribly hard in the mines and the fields that they died by thousands.
The French and the English fought with them and drove them away from
their old homes, killing many of them.
And this has gone on and on ever since, until the red men, who once
spread over all this country, are now kept in a very small part of it.
Some people say there are as many of them as there ever were. If that is
so, they can live on much less land than they once occupied.
What do you know about these Indians? Have you ever seen one of them?
Your fathers or grandfathers have, I am sure, for once they were
everywhere in this country, and people saw more of them than they liked;
but now we see them only in the Wild West shows or the Indian schools,
except we happen to go where they live. Do you not want to know
something about these oldest Americans? I have been busy so far talking
about the white men and what they did, and have had no chance to tell
you about the people they found on this continent and how they treated
them. I think I must make this chapter an Indian one.
Well, then, when the Spanish came to the south, and the French to the
north, and the Dutch and the Swedes and the British to the middle
country, they found everywhere a kind of people they had never seen
before. Their skin was not white, like that of the people of Europe,
nor black like that of the Africans, but of a reddish color, like that
of copper, so that they called them red men. They had black eyes and
hair, and high cheek-bones, and were not handsome according to our
ideas; but they were tall and strong, and many of them very proud and
dignified.
These people lived in a very wild fashion. They spent much of their time
in hunting, fishing, and fighting. They raised some Indian corn and
beans, and were fond of tobacco, but most of their food was got from
wild animals killed in the woods. They were as fond of fighting as they
were of hunting. They were divided into tribes, some of which were
nearly always at war with other tribes. They had no weapons but stone
hatchets and bows and arrows, but they were able with these to kill many
of their enemies. People say that they were badly treated by the whites,
but they treated one another worse than the whites ever did.
The Indians were very cruel. The warriors shaved off all their hair
except one lock, which was called the scalp lock. When one of them was
killed in battle this lock was used to pull off his scalp, or the skin
of his head. They were very proud of these scalps, for they showed how
many men they had killed.
When they took a prisoner, they would tie him to a tree and build a
fire round him and burn him to death. And while he was burning they
would torture him all they could. We cannot feel so much pity for the
Indians when we think of all this. No doubt the white men have treated
them very unjustly, but they have stopped all these terrible cruelties,
and that is something to be thankful for. In this country, where once
there was constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and burning of
prisoners, now there is peace and kindness and happiness. So if evil has
been done, good has come of it.
At the time I am speaking of, forests covered much of this great
continent. They spread everywhere, and the Indians lived under their
shade, and had wonderful skill in following animals or enemies through
their shady depths. They read the ground much as we read the pages of a
book. A broken twig, a bit of torn moss, a footprint which we could not
see, were full of meaning to them, and they would follow a trail for
miles through the woods where we would not have been able to follow it a
yard. Their eyes were trained to this kind of work, but in time some of
the white men became as expert as the Indians, and could follow a trail
as well.
The red men lived mostly in little huts covered with skins or bark,
which they called wigwams. Some of the tribes lived in villages, where
there were large bark houses. But they did not stay much in their
houses, for they liked better to be in the open air. Now they were
hunting deer in the woods, now fishing or paddling their bark canoes in
the streams, now smoking their pipes in front of their huts, now dancing
their war dances or getting ready to fight.
The men did nothing except hunting and fighting. The women had to do all
other work, such as cooking, planting and gathering corn, building
wigwams, and the like. They did some weaving of cloth, but most of their
clothes were made of the skins of wild animals.
In war times the warriors tried to make themselves as ugly as they
could, painting their faces in a horrid fashion and sticking feathers in
their hair. They seemed to think they could scare their enemies by ugly
faces.
I have spoken of the tribes of the Indians. Some of these tribes were
quite large, and were made up of a great number of men and women who
lived together and spoke the same language. Each tribe was divided up
into clans, or small family-like groups, and each clan had its sachem,
or peace-chief. There were war-chiefs, also, who led them to battle. The
sachems and chiefs governed the tribes and made such laws as they had.
Every clan had some animal which it called its totem, such as the wolf,
bear, or fox. They were proud of their totems, and the form of the
animal was tattooed on their breast; that is, it was picked into the
skin with needles. All the Indians were fond of dancing, and their war
dances were as fierce and wild as they could make them.
The tribes in the south were not as savage as those in the north. They
did more farming, and had large and well-built villages. Some of them
had temples and priests, and looked upon the sun as a god. They kept a
fire always burning in the temple, and seemed to think this fire was a
part of their sun-god. They had a great chief who ruled over the tribe,
and also a head war-chief, a high-priest, and other rulers.
In the far west were Indians who built houses that were almost like
towns, for they had hundreds of rooms. A whole tribe could live in one
of these great houses, sometimes as many as three thousand people. Other
tribes lived in holes in the sides of steep rocks, where their enemies
could not easily get at them. These are called Cliff-dwellers. And there
were some who lived on top of high, steep hills, which were very hard to
climb. These Indians raised large crops of corn and other plants.
Do you think, if you had been an Indian, you would have liked to see
white people coming in ships across the waters and settling down in your
country as if they owned it? They did not all pay for the land they
took, like William Penn and General Oglethorpe. The most of them acted
as if the country belonged to them, and it is no wonder the old owners
of the country did not like it, or that there was fierce fighting
between the white and the red men.
Do you remember the story of Canonicus and the snake skin, and that of
Miles Standish and the chiefs? There was not much fighting then, but
there was some soon after in Connecticut, whither a number of settlers
had come from Boston and others from England. Here there was a warlike
tribe called the Pequots, who became very angry on seeing the white men
in their country.
They began to kill the whites whenever they found them alone. Then the
whites began to kill the Indians. Soon there was a deadly war. The
Pequots had made a fort of trunks of trees, set close together in the
ground. They thought they were safe in this fort, but the English made
an attack on it, and got into it, and set fire to the Indian wigwams
inside. The fight went on terribly in the smoke and flame until nearly
all the Pequots were killed. Only two white men lost their lives. This
so scared the Indians that it was forty years before there was another
Indian war in New England.
I have told you about the good chief Massasoit, who was so kind to Roger
Williams. He was a friend to the white men as long as he lived, but
after his death his son Philip became one of their greatest enemies.
Philip's brother was taken sick and died after he had been to Plymouth,
and the Indians thought that the people there had given him poison.
Philip said that they would try to kill him next, and he made up his
mind to fight them and drive them out of the country. The Indians had
guns now, and knew how to use them, and they began to shoot the white
people as they went quietly along the roads.
Next they began to attack the villages of the whites. They would creep
up at night, set the houses on fire, and shoot the men as they came out.
The war went on for a long time in this way, and there were many
terrible fights.
At one place the people, when they saw the Indians coming, all ran to a
strong building called a blockhouse. The Indians came whooping and
yelling around this, and tried to set it on fire by shooting arrows with
blazing rags on their points. Once the roof caught fire, but some of the
men ran up and threw water on the flames.
Then the Indians got a cart and filled it with hay. Setting this on
fire, they pushed it up against the house. It looked as if all the white
men and women and children would be burned alive. The house caught fire
and began to blaze. But just then came a shower of rain that put out the
fire, and the people inside were saved once more. Before the Indians
could do anything further some white soldiers came and the savages all
ran into the woods.
There were other wonderful escapes, but many of the settlers were
killed, and Philip began to think he would be able to drive them out of
the country, as he wished to do. He was called King Philip, though he
had no crown except a string of wampum,--or bits of bored shell strung
together and twined round his head,--and no palace better than a bark
hut, while his finest dress was a red blanket. It took very little to
make an Indian king. The white men knew more about war than the Indians,
and in the end they began to drive them back. One of their forts was
taken, and the wigwams in it were set on fire, like those of the
Pequots. A great many of the poor red men perished in the flames.
The best fighter among the white men was Captain Church. He followed
King Philip and his men to one hiding place after another, killing some
and taking others prisoners. Among the prisoners were the wife and
little son of the Indian king.
"It breaks my heart," said Philip, when he heard of this. "Now I am
ready to die."
He did not live much longer. Captain Church chased him from place to
place, till he came to Mount Hope, in Rhode Island, where Massasoit
lived when Roger Williams came to him through the woods. Here King
Philip was shot, and the war ended. It had lasted more than a year, and
a large number had been killed on both sides. It is known in history as
King Philip's War.
There were wars with the Indians in many other parts of the country. In
Virginia the Indians made a plot to kill all the white people. They
pretended to be very friendly, and brought them meat and fish to sell.
While they were talking quietly the savages drew their tomahawks or
hatchets and began to kill the whites. In that one morning nearly three
hundred and fifty were killed, men, women, and little children.
Hardly any of the settlers were left alive, except those in Jamestown,
who were warned in time. They now attacked the Indians, shooting down
all they could find, and killing a great many of them.
This was after the death of Powhatan, who had been a friend to the
whites. About twenty years later, in 1644, another Indian massacre took
place. After this the Indians were driven far back into the country, and
did not give any more trouble for thirty years. The last war with them
broke out in 1675.
The Dutch in New York also had their troubles with the Indians. They
paid for all the lands they took, but one of their governors was
foolish enough to start a war that went on for two years. A worse
trouble was that in North Carolina, where there was a powerful tribe
called the Tuscaroras. These attacked the settlers and murdered numbers
of them. But in the end they were driven out of the country.
The only colonies in which the Indians kept friendly for a long time
were Pennsylvania and Georgia. We know the reason of this. William Penn
and General Oglethorpe were wise enough to make friends with them at the
start, and continued to treat them with justice and friendliness, so
that the red men came to love these good men.