English on this continent, with native tribes respectively for their
foes or allies, the conditions of the conflict, as before hinted,
were in general but slightly affected by the alternative of peace or
war as existing at any time between their sovereigns and people in
Europe. Some of the fiercest episodes of the struggle on this soil
took place during the intervals of truce, armistice, and temporary
treaty settlements between the leading powers in the old world. When,
in the treaties closing a series of campaigns, the settlement in the
articles of peace included a restoration of the territory which had
been obtained by either party by conquest, no permanent result was
really secured. These restitutions were always subject to reclamation.
Valuable and strategic points of territory merely changed hands for
the time being; Acadia, for example, being seven times tossed as a
shuttlecock between the parties to the settlement. The trial had to
be renewed and repeated till the decision was of such a sort as to
give promise of finality. The prize contended for here was really the
mastery of the whole continent, though the largeness of the stake was
not appreciated till the closing years of the struggle. Indeed, the
breadth and compass of the field were then unknown quantities. Those
closing years of stratagem and carnage in our forests correspond to
what is known in history as the “Seven Years’ War” in Europe, in which
France, as a contestant, was worsted in the other quarters of the
globe, as in this. Clive broke her power in India, as the generals of
Britain discomfited her here. The French, in 1758, held a profitable
mercantile settlement on five hundred miles of coast in Africa,
between Cape Blanco and the river Gambia. It is one of the curious
contrarieties in the workings of the same avowed principles under
different conditions, that just at the time that the pacific policy of
the Pennsylvania Quakers forbade their offering aid to their countrymen
under the bloody work going on upon their frontiers, an eminent English
Quaker merchant, Thomas Cumming, framed the successful scheme of
conquest over this French settlement in Africa.[1350]
The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, seemed to promise a
breathing-time in the strife between the French and English here.
In fact, however, so far from there being even a smouldering of the
embers on our soil, that date marks the kindling of the conflagration
which, continuing to blaze for fifteen years onward, comprehended
all the decisive campaigns. The earliest of these were ominous and
disheartening to the English, but they closed with the fullness of
triumph. We must trace with conciseness the more prominent acts and
incidents in which the natives, with the French and English, protracted
and closed the strife.
When Europeans entered upon the region now known as Pennsylvania,
though its well-watered and fertile territory and its abounding game
would seem to have well adapted it to the uses of savage life, it does
not appear that it was populously occupied. The Delawares, which had
held it at an earlier period, had, previously to the coming of the
whites, been subjugated by the more warlike tribes of the Five Nations,
or Iroquois. Some of the vanquished had passed to the south or west, to
be merged in other bands of the natives. Such of them as remained in
their old haunts were humiliated by their masters, despised as “women,”
and denied the privileges of warriors. While the Five Nations were thus
potent in the upper portion of Pennsylvania, around the sources of the
Susquehanna, its southern region was held by the Shawanees. The first
purchase near the upper region made by Europeans of the natives was by
a colony of Swedes, under Governor John Printz, in 1643. This colony
was subdued, though allowed to remain on its lands, by the Dutch, in
1655. In 1664, the English took possession of all Pennsylvania, and of
everything that had been held by the Dutch. Penn founded his province
in 1682, by grant from Charles II., and in the next year made his
much-lauded treaty of peace and purchase with the Indians for lands
west and north of his city. The attractions of the province, and the
easy opening of its privileges to others than the Friends, drew to it a
rapid and enterprising immigration. In 1729 there came in, principally
from the north of Ireland, 6,207 settlers. In 1750 there arrived 4,317
Germans and 1,000 English. The population of the province in 1769 was
estimated at 250,000. The Irish settlers were mostly Presbyterians,
the Germans largely Moravians. It soon appeared, especially when the
ravages of the Indians on the frontiers were most exasperating and
disastrous, that there were elements of bitter discord between these
secondary parties in the province and the Friends who represented the
proprietary right. And this suggests a brief reference to the fact
that, as a very effective agent entering into the imbittered conflicts
of the time and scene, we are to take into the account some strong
religious animosities. The entailed passions and hates of the peoples
of the old world, as Catholics and Protestants, and even of sects among
the latter, were transferred here to inflame the rage of combatants in
wilderness warfare.[1351] The zeal and heroic fidelity of the French
priests in making a Christian from a baptized and untamed savage had
realized, under rude yet easy conditions, a degree of success. In and
near the mission stations, groups of the natives had been trained to
gather around the cross, and to engage with more or less response in
the holy rites. Some of them could repeat, after a fashion, the Pater
Noster, the Ave Maria, and the Creed. Some had substituted a crucifix
or a consecrated medal for their old pagan charm, to be worn on the
breast. When about to go forth on the war-path, their priests would
give them shrift and benediction. But, as has been said, it was no
part or purpose of this work of christianizing savages to impair their
qualities as warriors, to dull their knives or tomahawks, to quench
their thirst for blood, or to restrain the fiercest atrocities and
barbarities of the fight or the victory. On the well-known experience
that fresh converts are always the most ardent haters of heresy, these
savage neophytes were initiated into some of the mysteries of the
doctrinal strife between the creed of their priests and the abominated
infidelity and impiety of the English Protestants. Some of the savages
were by no means slow to learn the lesson. Mr. Parkman’s brilliant
and graphic pages afford us abounding illustrations of the part which
priestly instructions and influence had in adding to savage ferocity
the simulation of religious hate for heresy. With whatever degree of
understanding or appreciation of the duty as it quickened the courage
or the ferocity of the savage, there were many scenes and occasions in
which the warrior added the charge of heretic to that of enemy, when he
dealt his blow.[1352]
Almost as violent and exasperating were the animosities engendered
between the disciples of different Protestant fellowships. The Quakers,
backed by proprietary rights, by the prestige of an original peace
policy and friendly negotiations with the Indians, and for the most
part secure and unharmed in the centralized homes of Philadelphia and
its neighborhood, imagined that they might refuse all participation
in the bloody work enacting on their frontiers. The adventurous
settlers on the borders were largely Presbyterians. The course of
non-interference by the Quakers, who controlled the legislature, seemed
to those who were bearing the brunt of savage warfare monstrously
selfish and inhuman. There was a fatuity in this course which had to be
abandoned. When a mob of survivors from the ravaged fields and cabins
of the frontiers, bringing in cartloads of the bones gathered from the
ashes of their burned dwellings, thus enforced their remonstrances
against the peace policy of the legislature, the Quakers were compelled
to yield, and to furnish the supplies of war.[1353] But sectarian
hatred hardly ever reached an intenser glow than that exhibited between
the Pennsylvania Quakers and Presbyterians. Meanwhile, the mild and
kindly missionary efforts of the Moravians, in the same neighborhood,
were cruelly baffled. Their aim was exactly the opposite of that which
guided the Jesuit priests. They sought first to make their converts
human beings, planters of the soil, taught in various handicrafts, and
weaned from the taste of war and blood.
When the frontier war was at its wildest pitch of havoc and fury, the
Moravian settlements, which had reached a stage giving such promise of
success as to satisfy the gentle and earnest spirit of the missionaries
who had planted them, were made to bear the brunt of the rage of
all the parties engaged in the deadly turmoil. The natives timidly
nestling in their settlements were regarded as an emasculated flock of
nurslings, mean and cowardly, lacking equally the manhood of the savage
and the pride and capacity of the civilized man. Worse than this,
their pretended desire to preserve a neutrality and to have no part
in the broil was made the ground of a suspicion, at once acted upon
as if fully warranted, that they were really spies, offering secret
information and even covert help as guides and prompters in the work
of desolation among the scattered cabins of the whites. So a maddened
spirit of distrust, inflamed by false rumors and direct charges of
complicity, brought upon the Moravian settlers the hate and fury of the
leading parties in the conflict.[1354]
It is noteworthy that the most furious havoc of savage warfare should
have been wreaked on the frontiers of Pennsylvania, the one of all the
English colonies in America whose boast was, and is, that there alone
the entrance of civilized men upon the domains of barbarism was marked
and initiated by the Christian policy of peace and righteousness. Penn
and his representatives claimed that they had twice paid the purchase
price of the lands covered by the proprietary charter to the Indian
occupants of them,—once to the Delawares residing upon them, and
again to the Iroquois who held them by conquest. The famous “Walking
Purchase,” whether a fair or a fraudulent transaction, was intended to
follow the original policy of the founder of the province.[1355]
In the inroads made upon the English settlements by Frontenac and
his red allies, New York and New England furnished the victims. The
middle colonies, so far as then undertaken, escaped the fray. Trouble
began for them in 1716, when the French acted upon their resolve to
occupy the valley of the Ohio. The Ohio Land Company was formed in
1748 to advance settlements beyond the Alleghanies, and surveys were
made as far as Louisville. This enterprise roused anew the Indians and
the French. The latter redoubled their zeal in 1753 and onward, south
of Lake Erie and on the branches of the Ohio. The English found that
their delay and dilatoriness in measures for fortifying the frontiers
had given the French an advantage which was to be recovered only with
increased cost and enterprise. In an earlier movement, had the English
engaged their efforts when it was first proposed to them, they might
have lessened, at least, their subsequent discomfiture. Governor
Spotswood, of Virginia, in 1720 had urged on the British government the
erection of a chain of posts beyond the Alleghanies, from the lakes to
the Mississippi. But his urgency had been ineffectual. The governor
reported that there were then “Seven Tributary Tribes” in Virginia,
being seven hundred in number, with two hundred and fifty fighting-men,
all of whom were peaceful. His only trouble was from the Tuscaroras on
the borders of Carolina.[1356]
The erection of Fort Duquesne may be regarded as opening the decisive
struggle between the French and the English in America, which reached
its height in 1755, and centred around the imperfect chain of stockades
and blockhouses on the line of the frontiers then reached by the
English pioneers.
About the middle of the eighteenth century the number of French
subjects in America, including Acadia, Canada, and Louisiana, was
estimated at about eighty thousand. The subjects of England were
estimated at about twelve hundred thousand. But, as before remarked,
this vast disparity of numbers by no means represented an equal
difference in the effectiveness of the two nationalities in the conduct
of military movements. The French were centralized in command. They
had unity of purpose and in action. In most cases they held actual
defensive positions at points which the English had to reach by
difficult approaches; and more than all, till it became evident that
France was to lose the game, the French received much the larger share
of aid from the Indians. Pennsylvania and Virginia were embarrassed in
any attempt for united defensive operations on the frontiers by their
own rival claims to the Ohio Valley. The English, however, welcomed
the first signs of vacillation in the savages. When Céloron, in 1749,
had sent messengers to the Indians beyond the Alleghanies to prepare
for the measures he was about to take to secure a firm foothold there,
he reported that the natives were “devoted entirely to the English.”
This might have seemed true of the Delawares and Shawanees, though
soon afterwards these were found to be in the interest of the French.
In fact, all the tribes, except the Five Nations, may be regarded as
more or less available for French service up to the final extinction of
their power on the continent. Indeed, as we shall see, the mischievous
enmity of the natives against the English was never more vengeful than
when it was goaded on by secret French agency after France had by
treaty yielded her claims on this soil. Nor could even the presumed
neutrality of the Five Nations be relied upon by the English, as there
were reasons for believing that many among them acted as spies and
conveyed intelligence. Till after the year 1754 so effective had been
the activity of the French in planting their strongholds and winning
over the savages that there was not a single English post west of the
Alleghanies.
At the same critical stage of this European rivalry in military
operations, the greed for the profits of the fur trade was at its
highest pitch. The beavers, as well as the red men, should be regarded
as essential parties to the struggle between the French and the
English. The latter had cut very deep into the trade which had formerly
accrued wholly to the French at Oswego, Toronto, and Niagara.
Up to the year 1720 there had come to be established a mercantile
usage which had proved to be very prejudicial to the English, alike
in their Indian trade and in their influence over the Indians. The
French had been allowed to import goods into New York to be used for
their Indian trade. Of course this proved a very profitable business,
as it facilitated their operations and was constantly extending over
a wider reach their friendly relations with the farther tribes. Trade
with Europe and the West Indies and Canada could be maintained only
by single voyages in a year, through the perilous navigation of the
St. Lawrence. With the English ports on the Atlantic, voyages could
be made twice or thrice a year. A few merchants in New York, having
a monopoly of supplying goods to the French in Canada, with their
principals in England, had found their business very profitable. Goods
of prime value, especially “strouds,” a kind of coarse woollen cloth
highly prized by the Indians, were made in and exported from England
much more cheaply than from France. The mischief of this method of
trade being realized, an act was passed by the Assembly in New York, in
1720, which prohibited the selling of Indian goods to the French under
severe penalties, in order to the encouragement of trade in general,
and to the extension of the influence of the English over the Indians
to counterbalance that of the French. Some merchants in London, just
referred to, petitioned the king against the ratification of this act.
By order in council the king referred the petition to the Lords of
Trade and Plantations. A hearing, with testimonies, followed, in which
those interested in the monopoly made many statements, ignorant or
false, as to the geography of the country, and the method and effects
of the advantage put into the hands of the French. But the remonstrants
failed to prevent the restricting measure. From that time New York
vastly extended its trade and intercourse with the tribes near and
distant, greatly to the injury of the French.[1357]
The first white man’s dwelling in Ohio was that of the Moravian
missionary, Christian Frederic Post.[1358] He was a sagacious and able
man, and had acquired great influence over the Indians, which he used
in conciliatory ways, winning their respect and confidence by the
boldness with which he ventured to trust himself in their villages and
lodges, as if he were under some magical protection. He went on his
first journey to the Ohio in 1758, by request of the government of
Pennsylvania, on a mission to the Delawares, Shawanees, and Mingoes.
These had once been friendly to the English, but having been won over
by the French, the object was to regain their confidence. The tribes
had at this time come to understand, in a thoroughly practical way,
that they were restricted to certain limited conditions so far as they
were parties to the fierce rivalry between the Europeans. The issue was
no longer an open one as to their being able to reclaim their territory
for their own uses by driving off all these pale-faced trespassers.
It was for them merely to choose whether they would henceforward have
the French or the English for neighbors, and, if it must be so, for
masters. Nor were they left with freedom or power to make a deliberate
choice. But Post certainly stretched a point when he told the Indians
that the English did not wish to occupy their lands, but only to drive
off the French.
As Governor Spotswood, in the interest of Virginia, had attempted, in
1716, to break the French line of occupation by promoting settlements
in the west, Governor Keith, of Pennsylvania, followed with a similar
effort in 1719. Both efforts could be only temporarily withstood, and
if baffled at one point were renewed at another. The English always
showed a tenacity in clinging to an advance once made, and were
inclined to change it only for a further advance. Though Fort Duquesne
was blown up when abandoned by the French, with the hope of rendering
it useless to the English, the post was too commanding a one to be
neglected. After it had been taken by General Forbes in November,
1758, and had been strongly reconstructed by General Stanwix, though
it was then two hundred miles distant from the nearest settlement,
the possession of it was to a great extent the deciding fact of the
advancing struggle. Colonel Armstrong had taken the Indian town of
Kittanning in 1756.
The treaty negotiations between English and French diplomates at
a foreign court, in 1763, which covenanted for the surrender of all
territory east of the Mississippi and of all the fortified posts on
lake and river to Great Britain, was but a contract on paper, which
was very long in finding its full ratification among the parties alone
interested in the result here. There were still three of these parties:
the Indians; the French, who were in possession of the strongholds in
the north and west; and the English colonists, supported by what was
left of the British military forces, skeleton regiments and invalided
soldiers, who were to avail themselves of their acquired domain. During
the bloody and direful war which had thus been closed, the Indians had
come to regard themselves as holding the balance of power between the
French and the English. Often did the abler savage warriors express
alike their wonder and their rage that those foreign intruders should
choose these wild regions for the trial of their fighting powers. “Why
do you not settle your fierce quarrels in your own land, or at least
upon the sea, instead of involving us and our forests in your rivalry?”
was the question to the officers and the file of the European forces.
Though the natives soon came to realize that they would be the losers,
whichever of the two foreign parties should prevail, their preferences
were doubtless on the side of the French; and by force of circumstances
easily explicable, after the English power, imperial and provincial,
had obtained the mastery of the territory, the sympathies and aid of
the natives went with the British during the rebellion of the colonies.
But before this result was reached England won its ascendency at a
heavy sacrifice of men and money, in a series of campaigns under many
different generals. The general peace between England, France, and
Spain, secured by the treaty of 1763, and involving the cession of
all American territory east of the Mississippi by France to Britain,
was naturally expected to bring a close to savage warfare against the
colonists. The result was quite the contrary, inasmuch as the sharpest
and most desolating havoc was wrought by that foe after the English
were nominally left alone to meet the encounter. The explanation of
this fact was that the French, though by covenant withdrawn from the
field, were, hardly even with a pretence of secrecy, perpetuating
and even extending their influence over their former wild allies in
embarrassing and thwarting all the schemes of the English for turning
their conquests to account. General Amherst was left in command here
with only enfeebled fragments of regiments and with slender ranks of
provincials. The military duty of the hour was for the conquerors
to take formal possession of all the outposts still held by French
garrisons, announcing to those in command the absolute conditions
of the treaty, and to substitute the English for the French colors,
henceforward to wave over them. This humiliating necessity was in
itself grievous enough, as it forced upon the commanders of posts which
had not then been reached by the war in Canada, a condition against
which no remonstrance would avail. But beyond that, it furnished the
occasion for the most formidable savage conspiracy ever formed on
this continent, looking to the complete extinction of the English
settlements here. The French in those extreme western posts had been
most successful in securing the attachment of the neighboring Indian
tribes, and found strong sympathizers among them in their discomfiture.
At the same time those tribes had the most bitter hostility towards the
English with whom they had come in contact. They complained that the
English treated them with contempt and haughtiness, being niggard of
their presents and sharp in their trade. They regarded each advanced
English settlement on their lands, if only that of a solitary trader,
as the germ of a permanent colony. Under these circumstances, the
French still holding the posts, waiting only the exasperating summons
to yield them up, found the temptation strong and easy of indulgence to
inflame their recent allies, and now their sympathizing friends, among
the tribes, with an imbittered rage against their new masters. Artifice
and deception were availed of to reinforce the passions of savage
breasts. The French sought to relieve the astounded consternation of
their red friends on finding that they were compelled to yield the
field to the subjects of the English monarch, by beguiling them with
the fancy that the concession was but a temporary one, very soon to be
set aside by a new turn in the wheel of fortune. Their French father
had only fallen asleep while his English enemies had been impudently
trespassing upon the lands of his red children. He would soon rouse
himself to avenge the insult, and would reclaim what he had thus
lost. Indeed, on the principle that the size and ornamentings of a
lie involved no additional wrong in the telling it, the Indians were
informed that a French army was even then preparing to ascend the
Mississippi with full force, before which the English would be crushed.
There was then in the tribe of Ottawas, settled near Detroit, a master
spirit, who, as a man and as a chief, was the most sagacious, eloquent,
bold, and every way gifted of his race that has ever risen before the
white man on this continent to contest in the hopeless struggle of
barbarism with civilization. That Pontiac was crafty, unscrupulous,
relentless, finding a revel in havoc and carnage, might disqualify him
for the noblest epithets which the white man bestows on the virtues
of a military hero. But he had the virtues of a savage, all of them,
and in their highest range of nature and of faculty. He was a stern
philosopher and moralist also, of the type engendered by free forest
life, unsophisticated and trained in the school of the wilderness. He
knew well the attractions of civilization. He weighed and compared
them, as they presented themselves before his eyes in full contrast
with savagery, in the European and in the Indian, and in those dubious
specimens of humanity in which the line of distinction was blurred by
the Indianized white man, the “Christian” convert, and the half-breed.
Deliberately and, we may say, intelligently, he preferred for his own
people the state of savagery. Intelligently, because he gave grounds
for his preference, which, from his point of view and experience,
had weight in themselves, and cannot be denied something more than
plausibility even in the judgment of civilized men, for idealists
like Rousseau and the Abbé Raynal have pleaded for them. Pontiac was
older in native sagacity and shrewdness than in years. He had evidence
enough that his race had suffered only harm from intercourse with
the whites. The manners and temptations of civilization had affected
them only by demoralizing influences. All the elements of life in the
white man struck at what was noblest in the nature of the Indian,—his
virility, his self-respect, his proud and sufficing independence,
his content with his former surroundings and range of life. With an
earnest eloquence Pontiac, in the lodges and at the council fires of
his people, whether of his own immediate tribe or of representative
warriors of other tribes, set before them the demonstration that
security and happiness, if not peace, depended for them on their
renouncing all reliance upon the white man’s ways and goods, and
reverting with a stern stoicism to the former conditions of their lot.
He told his responsive listeners that the Great Spirit, in pouring
the wide salt waters between the two races of his children, meant to
divide them and to keep them forever apart, giving to each of them a
country which was their own, where they were free to live after their
own method. The different tinting of their skin indicated a variance
which testified to a rooted divergence of nature. For his red children
the Great Spirit had provided the forest, the meadow, the lake, and
the river, with fish and game for food and clothing. The canoe, the
moccasin, the snow-shoe, the stone axe, the hide or bark covered lodge,
the fields of golden maize, the root crops, the vines and berries,
the waters of the cold crystal spring, made the inventory of their
possessions. They belonged to nature, and were of kin to all its other
creatures, which they put freely to their use, holding everything in
common. The changing moons brought round the seasons for planting
and hunting, for game, festivity, and religious rite. Their old men
preserved the sacred traditions of their race. Their braves wore the
scars and trophies of a noble manhood, and their young men were in
training to be the warriors of their tribes in defence or conquest.
These, argued Pontiac, were the heritage which the Great Spirit had
assigned to his red children. The spoiler had come among them from
across the salt sea, and woe and ruin for the Indian had come with him.
The white man could scorn the children of the forest, but could not be
their friend or helper. Let the Indian be content and proud to remain
an Indian. Let him at once renounce all use of the white man’s goods
and implements and his fire-water, and fall back upon the independence
of nature, fed on the flesh and clothed with the skins secured by bow
and arrow and his skill of woodcraft.
Such was the pleading of the most gifted chieftain and the wisest
patriot, the native product of the American wilderness. There was a
nobleness in him, even a grandeur and prescience of soul, which take a
place now on the list of protests that have poured from human breasts
against the decrees of fate. Pontiac followed up his bold scheme by all
the arts and appliances of forest diplomacy. He formed his cabinet, and
sent out his ambassadors with their credentials in the reddened hatchet
and the war-belt. They visited some of even the remoter tribes, with
appeals conciliatory of all minor feuds and quarrels. Their success
was qualified only by the inveteracy of existing enmities among some
of these tribes. It would be difficult to estimate, even if only
approximately, the number of the savages who were more or less directly
engaged in the conspiracy of Pontiac. A noted French trader, who had
resided many years among the Indians, and who had had an extended
intercourse with the tribes, stayed at Detroit during the siege, having
taken the oath of allegiance to the king of Great Britain. Largely
from his own personal knowledge, he drew up an elaborate list of the
tribes, with the number of warriors in each. The summing up of these is
56,500. In the usual way of allowing one to five of a whole population
for able-bodied men, this would represent the number of the savages as
about 283,000, which slightly exceeds the number of Indians now in our
national domain.[1359]
The lake and river posts which had been yielded up by the French,
on the summons, were occupied by slender and poorly supplied English
garrisons, unwarned of the impending concentration. The scheme
of Pontiac involved two leading acts in the drama: one was the
beleaguerment of all the fortified lake and river garrisons; the other
was an extermination by fire and carnage of all the isolated frontier
settlements at harvest time, so as to cause general starvation. The
plan was that all these assaults, respectively assigned to bodies of
the allies, should be made at the same time, fixed by a phase of the
moon. Scattered through the wilderness were many English traders, in
their cabins and with their packh-orses and goods. These were plundered
and massacred.[1360] The assailed posts were slightly reinforced by
the few surviving settlers and traders who escaped the open field
slaughter. The conspiracy was so far effective as to paralyze with
dismay the occupants of the whole region which it threatened. But
pluck and endurance proved equal to the appalling conflict. Nearly all
the posts, after various alternations of experience, succumbed to the
savage foe. Such was the fate of Venango, Le Bœuf, Presqu’ Isle, La
Bay, St. Joseph, Miamis, Ouachtanon, Sandusky, and Michilimackinac.
Detroit alone held out. The fort at Niagara, being very strong, was
not attacked. The Shawanees and Delawares were active agents in this
conspiracy. The English used all their efforts and appliances to keep
the Six Nations neutral. The French near the Mississippi were active
in plying and helping the tribes within their reach. The last French
flag that came down on our territory was at Fort Chartres on the
Mississippi.[1361]
* * * * *
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.[1362]
_By Dr. Ellis and the Editor._
ON some few historical subjects we have volumes so felicitously
constructed as to combine all that is most desirable in original
materials with a judicious digest of them. Of such a character is
Francis Parkman’s _France and England in North America, A Series of
Historical Narratives_. So abundant, authentic, and intelligently
gathered are his citations from and references to the journals,
letters, official reports, and documents, often in the very words of
the actors, that, through the writer’s luminous pages, we are, for all
substantial purposes, made to read and listen to their own narrations.
Indeed, we are even more favored than that. So comprehensive have
been his researches, and so full and many-sided are the materials
which he has digested for us, that we have all the benefit of an
attendance on a trial in a court or a debate in the forum, where by
testimony and cross-examination different witnesses are made to verify
or rectify their separate assertions. The official representatives of
France, military and civil, on this continent, like their superiors
and patrons at home, were by no means all of one mind. They had their
conflicting interests to serve. They made their reports to those to
whom they were responsible or sought to influence, and so colored
them by their selfishness or rivalry. These communications, gathered
from widely scattered repositories, are for the first time brought
together and made to confront each other in Mr. Parkman’s pages.
Allowing for a gap covering the first half of the eighteenth century,
which is yet to be filled, Mr. Parkman’s series of volumes deals with
the whole period of the enterprise of France in the new world to its
cession of all territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain.
His marvellously faithful and skilful reproduction of the scenic
features of the continent, in its wild state, bears a fit relation
to his elaborate study of its red denizens. His wide and arduous
exploration in the tracks of the first pioneers, and his easy social
relations with the modern representatives of the aboriginal stock, put
him back into the scenes and companionship of those whose schemes and
achievements he was to trace historically. After identifying localities
and lines of exploration here, he followed up in foreign archives the
missives written in these forests, and the official and confidential
communications of the military and civic functionaries of France,
revealing the joint or conflicting schemes and jealousies of intrigue
or selfishness of priests, traders, monopolists, and adventurers. The
panorama that is unrolled and spread before us is full and complete,
lacking nothing of reality in nature or humanity, in color, variety,
or action. The volumes rehearse in a continuous narrative the course
of French enterprise here, the motives, immediate and ultimate, which
were had in view, the progress in realizing them, the obstacles and
resistance encountered, and the tragic failure.[1363]
The references in Parkman show that he depends more upon French than
upon English sources, and indeed he seems to give the chief credit for
his drawing of the early Indian life and character to the _Relations_
of the French and Italian Jesuits,[1364] during their missionary work
in New France.
We must class with these records of the Jesuits, though not
equalling them in value, the volumes of Champlain, Sagard, Creuxius,
Boucher,[1365] and the later Lafitau and Charlevoix. Parkman[1366]
tells us that no other of these early books is so satisfactory as
Lafitau’s _Mœurs des Sauvages_ (1724); and Charlevoix gave similar
testimony regarding his predecessor.[1367] For original material on
the French side we have nothing to surpass in interest the _Mémoires
et documents_, published by Pierre Margry, of which an account has
been given elsewhere,[1368] as well as of the efforts of Parkman and
others in advancing their publication.[1369] There is but little matter
in these volumes relating to the military operations which make the
subject of this chapter, though jealousy and rivalry of the schemes
of the English, and the necessity of efforts to thwart them in their
attempts to gain influence and to open trade with the Indians, are
constantly recognized. In the diplomatic and military movements which
opened on this continent the Seven Years’ War, the English, who had
substantially secured the alliance of the Iroquois, or the Six Nations,
insisted that they had obtained by treaties with them the territory
between the Alleghanies and the Ohio, which the Six Nations on their
part claimed to have gained by conquest and cession of the tribes that
had previously occupied it. But when the English vindicated their
entrance on the territory on the basis of these treaties with the Six
Nations, the Shawanees and the Delawares, having recuperated their
courage and vigor, denied this right by conquest. The French could
not claim a right either by conquest or by cession. Their assumed
occupancy and tenure through mission stations and strongholds were
maintained simply and wholly on grounds of discovery and exploration.
Margry’s volumes furnish the abundant and all-sufficient evidence of
the priority of the French in this enterprise. The official documents
interchanged with the authorities at home are all engaged with advice
and promptings and measures for making good the claim to dominion
founded on discovery. These volumes also are of the highest value
as presenting to us from the first explorers, every way intelligent
and competent as observers and reporters, the scenes and tenants
of the interior of the continent. Here we have the wilderness, its
primeval forests, its sea-like lakes, its threading rivers, shrunken
or swollen, its cataracts and its confluent streams, its marshy
expanses, bluffs, and plains, and its resources, abundant or scant,
for sustaining life of beasts or men, all touched in feature or full
portrayal by the charming skill of those to whom the sight was novel
and bewildering.[1370] These French explorers will henceforth serve for
all time as primary authorities on the features and resources of the
interior of this continent just before it became the prize in contest
between rival European nationalities. That contest undoubtedly had
more to do in deciding the fate of the savage tribes from that time
to our own. There are many reasons for believing that if the French
had been able to hold alone an undisputed dominion in the interior of
the continent, their relations with the Indian tribes, if not wholly
pacific, would have been far more amicable than those which followed
upon the hot rivalry with the English for the possession of their
territories. The French were the wiser, the more tolerant and friendly
of the two, in their intercourse with and treatment of the savages,
with whom they found it so easy to affiliate. Under other circumstances
the Indians might have come to hold the relation of _wards_ to the
French in a sense far more applicable than that in which the term has
been used by the government of the United States.
Of the early English material there is no dearth, but it hardly has
the same stamp of authority. The story of the Moravian and other
missions on the Protestant and English side has less of such invariable
devotedness and success than is recorded in the general summaries of
the Jesuit and Recollet missions, like Shea’s _History of the Catholic
Missions_, 1529-1854 (N. Y., 1855).[1371] The _Indian Nations_ of
Heckewelder,[1372] the service of the United Brethren, and the labors
instituted by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,[1373]
are records not without significance; but they yield to the superior
efficacy of the French.[1374] Among the English administrative
officers, the lead must doubtless be given to Sir William Johnson,
for his personal influence over the Indian mind, winning their
full confidence by fair and generous treatment of them, by a free
hospitality, by assimilating with their habits even in his array,
and by mastering their language. His deputy, Col. George Croghan, as
interpreter and messenger, was kept busily employed in constant tramps
through the woods, and in fearless errands to parties of vacillating
or hostile tribes, to hold or win them to the English interest. The
principal and the deputy, in this hazardous diplomacy, were specially
qualified for their office by having mastered the gift and qualities of
Indian oratory, by a familiarity with Indian character in its strength
and weakness, and by endeavoring to keep faith with them, and to
imitate the adroit methods of the French rather than the contemptuous
hauteur of most of the English in intercourse with them.[1375]
The reader will naturally go to the biographies of Johnson, Washington,
and the other military leaders of their time, to those of a few
civilians, like Franklin, and to the general histories of the French
and Indian wars and of their separate campaigns, for much light upon
the Indian in war; and these materials have been sufficiently explored
in another volume of the present History.[1376] These more general
accounts are easily supplemented in the narratives of adventures and
sufferings by a large class of persons who fell captive to the Indians,
and lived to tell their tales.[1377]
The earlier travellers, like P. E. Radisson,[1378] Richard
Falconer,[1379] Le Beau,[1380] and Jonathan Carver,[1381] not to name
others; the later ones, like Prinz Maximilian;[1382] the experiences of
various army officers on the frontiers, like Randolph B. Marcy[1383]
and J. B. Fry,[1384]—all such books fill in the picture in some of its
details.
The early life in the Ohio Valley was particularly conducive to
such auxiliary helps in this study, and we owe more of this kind of
illustration to Joseph Doddridge[1385] than to any other. He was a
physician and a missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in
both his professions a man highly esteemed. He was born in Maryland
in 1769, and in his fourth year removed with his family to the
western border of the line between Pennsylvania and Virginia. With
abundant opportunities in his youth of familiarity with the rudest
experiences of frontier life near hostile Indians, he was a keen
observer, a skilful narrator, and a diligent gatherer-up of historical
and traditional lore from the hardy and well-scarred pioneers. He had
received a good academic and medical education, and was a keen student
of nature as well as of humanity. His pages give us most vivid pictures
of life under the stern and perilous conditions; not, however, without
their fascinations, of forest haunts, of rude and scattered cabins, of
domestic and social relations, of the resources of the heroic whites,
and of the qualities of Indian warfare in the desperate struggle with
the invaders.[1386]
Another early writer in this field was Dr. S. P. Hildreth of Ohio, who
published his _Pioneer History_ (Cincinnati, 1848) while some of the
pioneers of the Northwest were still living, and the papers of some
of them, like Col. George Morgan, could be put to service.[1387] Dr.
Hildreth, in his _Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the early
Pioneer Settlers of Ohio_ (Cincinnati, 1852), included a Memoir of
Isaac Williams, who at the age of eighteen began a course of service
and adventure in the Indian country, which was continued till its
close at the age of eighty-four. When eighteen years of age he was
employed by the government of Pennsylvania, being already a trained
hunter, as a spy and ranger among the Indians. He served in this
capacity in Braddock’s campaign, and was a guard for the first convoy
of provisions, on pack-horses, to Fort Duquesne, after its surrender
to General Forbes in 1758. He was one of the first settlers on the
Muskingum, after the peace made there with the Indians, in 1765, by
Bouquet. His subsequent life was one of daring and heroic adventure on
the frontiers.[1388]
* * * * *
Passing to the more general works, the earliest treatment of the North
American Indians, of more than local scope, was the work of James
Adair, first published in 1775, a section of whose map, showing the
position of the Indian tribes within the present United States at that
time, is given elsewhere.[1389] This _History of the American Indians_
was later included by Kingsborough in _Antiquities of Mexico_ (vol.
viii. London, 1848).[1390] At just about the same time (1777), Dr.
Robertson, in his _America_ (book iv.), gave a general survey, which
probably represents the level of the best European knowledge at that
time.
It was not till well into the present century that much effort was made
to summarize the scattered knowledge of explorers like Lewis and Clarke
and of venturesome travellers. In 1819, we find where we might not
expect it about as good an attempt to make a survey of the subject as
was then attainable, in Ezekiel Sanford’s _History of the United States
before the Revolution_,—a book, however, which was pretty roundly
condemned for its general inaccuracy by Nathan Hale in the _North
American Review_. The next year the Rev. Jedediah Morse made _A report
to the secretary of war, on Indian affairs, comprising a narrative of
a tour in 1820, for ascertaining the actual state of the Indian tribes
in our country_ (New Haven, 1822), which is about the beginning of
systematized knowledge, though the subject in its scientific aspects
was too new for well-studied proportions. The _Report_, however,
attracted attention and instigated other students. De Tocqueville, in
1835, took the Indian problem within his range.[1391] Albert Gallatin
printed, the next year, in the second volume of the _Archæologia
Americana_ (Cambridge, 1836), his _Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within
the United States east of the Rocky Mountains_; and though his main
purpose was to explain the linguistic differences, his introduction is
still a valuable summary of the knowledge then existing.
There were at this time two well-directed efforts in progress to catch
the features and life of the Indians as preserving their aboriginal
traits. Between 1838 and 1844 Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall
published at Philadelphia, in three volumes folio, their _History of
the Indian tribes of North America, with biographical sketches of
the principal chiefs. With 120 portrs. from the Indian gallery of
the Department of war, at Washington_;[1392] and in 1841 the public
first got the fruits of George Catlin’s wanderings among the Indians
of the Northwest, in his _Letters and notes on the manners, customs
and condition of the North American Indians, written during eight
years’ travel among the wildest tribes of Indians in North America, in
1832-39_ (N. Y., 1841), in two volumes. The book went through various
editions in this country and in London.[1393] It was but the forerunner
of various other books illustrative of his experience among the tribes;
but it remains the most important.[1394] The sufficient summary of
all that Catlin did to elucidate the Indian character and life will
be found in Thomas Donaldson’s _George Catlin’s Indian Gallery in the
U. S. Nat. Museum, with memoirs and statistics_, being part v. of the
_Smithsonian Report_ for 1885.[1395]
The great work of Schoolcraft has been elsewhere described in the
present volume.[1396]
The agencies for acquiring and disseminating knowledge respecting the
condition, past and present, of the red race have been and are much the
same as those which improve the study of the archæological aspects of
their history: such publications as the _Transactions of the American
Ethnological Society_ (1845-1848); the _Reports_ of the governmental
geological surveys, and those upon trans-continental railway routes;
those upon national boundaries; those of the Smithsonian Institution,
with its larger _Contribution_s, and of late years the _Reports of the
Bureau of Ethnology_; the reports of such institutions as the Peabody
Museum of Archæology; and those of the Indian agents of the Federal
government, of chief importance among which is Miss Alice C. Fletcher’s
_Indian Education and Civilization_, published by the Bureau of
Education (Washington, 1888). To these must be added the great mass of
current periodical literature reached through _Poole’s Index_, and the
action and papers of the government, not always easily discoverable,
through Poore’s _Descriptive Catalogue_.
The maps of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are, in addition
to the reports of traders, missionaries, and adventurers, the means
which we have of placing the territories of the many Indian tribes
which, since the contact of Europeans, have been found in North
America; but the abiding-places of the tribes have been far from
permanent. Many of these early maps are given in other volumes of the
present History.[1397] Geographers like Hutchins and military men
like Bouquet found it incumbent on them to study this question.[1398]
Benjamin Smith Barton surveyed the field in 1797; but the earliest of
special map seems to have been that compiled by Albert Gallatin, who
endeavored to place the tribes of the Atlantic slope as they were in
1600, and those beyond the Alleghanies as they were in 1800. The map in
the _American Gazetteer_ (London, 1762) gives some information,[1399]
and that of Adair in 1775 is reproduced elsewhere.[1400] In 1833,
Catlin endeavored to give a geographical position to all the tribes
in the United States on a map, given in his great work and reproduced
in the _Smithsonian Report_, part v. (1885). In 1840 compiled maps
were given on a small scale in George Bancroft’s third volume of his
_United States_, and another in Marryat’s _Travels_, vol. ii. The
government has from time to time published maps showing the Indian
occupation of territory, and the present reservations are shown on maps
in Donaldson’s _Public Domain_ and in the _Smithsonian Report_, part v.
(1885).[1401]
The migrations and characteristics of the Eskimos have already been
discussed,[1402] and the journals of the Arctic explorers will yield
light upon their later conditions. We find those of the Hudson Bay
region depicted in all the books relating to the life of the Company’s
factors.[1403] The Beothuks of Newfoundland, which are thought to
have become extinct in 1828,[1404] are described in Hatton and
Harvey’s _Newfoundland_; by T. G. B. Lloyd in the _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_ (London), 1874, p. 21; 1875, p. 222; by A.
S. Gatschet in the _American Philosophical Society’s Transactions_
(Philad., 1885-86, vols. xxii. xxiii.); and in the _Nineteenth
Century_, Dec., 1888. Leclercq in his _Nouvelle Relation de la
Gaspésie_ (Paris, 1691) gives us an account of the natives on the
western side of the gulf.[1405]
The Micmacs of Nova Scotia are considered in Lescarbot and the later
histories and in the documentary collections of that colony; and as
they played a part in the French wars, the range of that military
history covers some material concerning them.[1406]
For the aborigines of Canada, we easily revert to the older writers,
like Champlain, Sagard, Creuxius, Boucher, Leclercq, Lafitau; the
_Voyage curieux et nouveau parmi les sauvages_ of Le Beau (Amsterdam,
1738); the _Nouvelle France_ of Charlevoix; the _Histoire de l’Amérique
Septentrionale_ (Paris, 1753) of Bacqueville de la Potherie;[1407] and
to the later historians, like Fernald (ch. 7, 8), Garneau (2d book),
and Warburton’s _Conquest of Canada_ (ch. 6, 7, 8). The Abenaki, which
lay between the northeastern settlements of the English and the French,
are specially treated by Bacqueville (vol. iv.), in the _Maine Hist.
Soc. Collection_s, vol. vi., and in Maurault’s _Histoire des Abenakis_
(1866).[1408]
The rich descriptive literature of the early days of New England gives
us much help in understanding the aboriginal life. We begin with John
Smith, and come down through a long series of writers like Governor
Bradford and Edward Winslow for Plymouth; Gorges, Morton, Winthrop,
Higginson, Dudley, Johnson, Wood, Lechford, and Roger Williams for
other parts. These are all characterized in another place.[1409]
The authorities on the early wars with the Pequots and with Philip,
the accounts of Daniel Gookin, who knew them so well,[1410] and
chance visits like those of Rawson and Danforth,[1411] furnish the
concomitants needful to the recital. The story of the labors of
Eliot, Mayhew, and others in urging the conversion of the natives
is based upon another large range of material, in which much that
is merely exhortative does not wholly conceal the material for the
historian.[1412] Here too the chief actors in this work help us in
their records. We have letters of Eliot, and we have the tracts which
he was instrumental in publishing.[1413] There is also a letter of
Increase Mather to Leusden on the Indian missions (1688).[1414] Gookin
tells us of the sufferings of the Christian Indians during the war of
1675,[1415] and he gives also reports of the speeches of the Indian
converts.[1416] The Mayhews of Martha’s Vineyard, Thomas, Matthew, and
Experience, have left us records equally useful.[1417]
The principal student of the literature, mainly religious, produced
in the tongue of the natives, has been Dr. James Hammond Trumbull, of
Hartford, and he has given us the leading accounts of its creation and
influence.[1418] It was this propagandist movement that led Eleazer
Wheelock into establishing (1754) an Indian Charity School at Lebanon,
Connecticut, which finally removed to Hanover, in New Hampshire, and
became (1769) Dartmouth College.[1419]
The New England tribes have produced a considerable local illustrative
literature. The Kennebecs and Penobscots in Maine are noticed in the
histories of that State, and in many of the local monographs.[1420] For
New Hampshire, beside the state histories,[1421] the Pemigewassets are
described in Wm. Little’s _Warren_ (Concord, 1854), and the Pemicooks
in the _N. H. Hist. Collections_, i.; Bouton’s _Concord_, Moore’s
_Concord_, and Potter’s _Manchester_.
The Archives of Massachusetts yield a large amount of material
respecting the relations of the tribes to the government, particularly
at the eastward, while Maine was a part of the colony;[1422] and the
large mass of its local histories, as well as those of the State,[1423]
supply even better than the other New England States material for the
historian.[1424]
The Indians of Rhode Island are noted by Arnold in his _Rhode Island_
(ch. 3), and some special treatment is given to the Narragansetts
and the Nyantics.[1425] Those of Connecticut have a monographic
record in De Forest’s _Indians of Connecticut_, as well as treatment
otherwise.[1426]
Palfrey (_Hist. New England_, i. ch. 1, 2), in his general survey
of the Indians of New England, delineates their character with much
plainness and discrimination, and it is perhaps as true a piece of
characterization as any we have.[1427]
The Iroquois of New York have probably been the subject of a more
sustained historical treatment than any other tribes. We have the
advantage, in studying them, of the observations of the Dutch,[1428]
as well as of the French and English. The French priests give us the
earliest accounts, particularly the relations of Jogues and Milet.[1429]
The story of the French missions in New York is told elsewhere;[1430]
those of the Protestant English yield us less.[1431]
We have another source in the local histories of New York.[1432]
The earliest of the general histories of the Iroquois is that of
Cadwallader Colden, and the best edition is _The history of the five
Indian nations depending on the province of New-York. Reprinted
exactly from Bradford’s New York edition, 1727; with an introduction
and notes by J. G. Shea_ (New York, 1866).[1433] The London reprints
of 1747, and later, unfortunately added to the title _Five Indian
Nations_ [_of Canada_] the words in brackets. This was the very point
denied by the English, who claimed that the French had no territorial
rights south of the lakes. Otherwise his title conveys two significant
facts: first, that the English had come to regard the Five Nations as
their “dependants”; and second, that these Indians actually were a
barrier between them and the French. There was something farcical in
the formula used by Sir Wm. Johnson in a letter to the ministry: “The
combined tribes have taken arms against his Britannic Majesty.” The
Mohawks had been induced to ask that the Duke of York’s arms should be
attached to their castles. This had been assented to, and allowed as a
security against the inroads of the French—a sort of talismanic charm
which might be respected by European usage. But those ducal bearings
did not have their full meaning to the Iroquois as binding their own
allegiance, nor were the Six Nations ever the gainers by being thus
constructively protected.
Colden was born in Scotland in 1688, and died on Long Island in 1776.
He was a physician, botanist, scholar, and literary man, able and
well qualified in each pursuit. The greater part of his long life was
spent in this country. As councillor, lieutenant-governor, and acting
governor, he was in the administration of New York from 1720 till near
his death. He was a most inquisitive and intelligent investigator
and observer of Indian history and character. In dedicating his work
to General Oglethorpe, he claims to have been prompted to it by his
interest in the welfare of the Five Nations. He is frank and positive
in expressing his judgment that they had been degraded and demoralized
by their intercourse with the whites. He says that he wrote the former
part of his history in New York, in 1727, to thwart the manœuvres of
the French in their efforts to monopolize the western fur trade. They
had been allowed to import woollen goods for the Indian traffic through
New York. Governor Burnet advised that a stop be put to this abuse. The
New York legislature furthered his advice, and built a fort at Oswego
for three hundred traders. When the Duke of York was represented here
by Governor Dongan, and “Popish interests” were allowed sway,—there
being at the time a mean pretence of amity between England and
France,—the interests of the former were sacrificed to those of the
latter. This, of course, had a bad influence on the Five Nations, as
leading them to regard the French as masters. The whole of the first
part of Colden’s History deals with the Iroquois as merely the centre
of the rivalry between the French and the English with their respective
savage allies. The English had the advantage at the start, because from
the earliest period when Champlain made a hostile incursion into the
country of the Iroquois, attended by their Huron enemies, the relations
of enmity were decided upon, and afterwards were constantly imbittered
by a series of invasions. The French sought to undo their own influence
of this sort when it became necessary for them to try to win over the
Iroquois to their own interest in the fur traffic. The Confederacy
which existed among the Five, and afterwards the Six, Nations was
roughly tried when there was so sharp a bidding for alliances between
one or another of the tribes by their European tempters. An incidental
and very embarrassing element came in to complicate the relations of
the parties, English, French, and Indians, on the grounds of the claim
advanced by the English to hold the region beyond the Alleghanies
by cession from the Iroquois in a council in 1726. The question was
whether the Iroquois had previous to that time obtained tenable
possession of the Ohio region, by conquest of the former occupants.
It would appear that after that conquest that region was for a time
well-nigh deserted. When it was to some extent reoccupied, the
subsequent hunters and tenants of it denied the sovereignty of the
Iroquois and the rights of the English intruders who relied upon the
old treaty of cession.
The rival French history while Colden was in vogue was the third
volume of Bacqueville de la Potherie’s _Hist. de l’Amérique
Septentrionale_ (Paris, 1753); and another contemporary English
view appeared in Wm. Smith’s _Hist. of the Province of New York_
(1757).[1434] Nothing appeared after this of much moment as a general
account of the Six Nations till Henry R. Schoolcraft made his _Report_
to the New York authorities in 1845, which was published in a more
popular form in his _Notes on the Iroquois, or Contributions to
American history, antiquities, and general ethnology_ (Albany, 1847), a
book not valued overmuch.[1435]
Better work was done by J. V. H. Clark in what is in effect a good
history of the Confederacy, in his _Onondaga_ (Syracuse, 1849).
The series of biographies by W. L. Stone, of Sir William Johnson,
Brant, and Red Jacket, form a continuous history for a century
(1735-1838).[1436] The most carefully studied work of all has been that
of Lewis H. Morgan in his _League of the Iroquois_ (1851), a book of
which Parkman says (_Jesuits_, p. liv) that it commands a place far
in advance of all others, and he adds, “Though often differing widely
from Mr. Morgan’s conclusions, I cannot bear too emphatic testimony
to the value of his researches.”[1437] The latest scholarly treatment
of the Iroquois history is by Horatio Hale in the introduction to
_The Iroquois Book of Rites_ (Philad., 1883), which gives the forms
of commemoration on the death of a chief and upon the choice of a
successor.[1438]
Moving south, the material grows somewhat scant. There is little
distinctive about the New Jersey tribes.[1439] For the Delawares and
the Lenni Lenape, the main source is the native bark record, which as
Walam-Olum was given by Squier in his _Historical and Mythological
Traditions of the Algonquins_,[1440] as translated by Rafinesque,[1441]
while a new translation is given in D. G. Brinton’s _Lenâpé and their
legends; with the complete text and symbols of the Walam Olum, a new
translation, and an inquiry into its authenticity_ (Philadelphia,
1885), making a volume of his _Library of aboriginal American
literature_; and the book is in effect a series of ethnological studies
on the Indians of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland.[1442]
In addition to some of the early tracts[1443] on Maryland[1444] and
Virginia and the general histories, like those of Beverly, and Stith
for Virginia, and particularly Bozman for Maryland, with Henning’s
_Statutes_, and some of the local histories,[1445] we have little for
these central coast regions.[1446] In Carolina we must revert to such
early books as Lawson and Brickell; to Carroll’s _Hist. Collections of
South Carolina_, and to occasional periodic papers.[1447]
Farther south, we get help from the early Spanish and French,—Herrera,
Barcia, the chroniclers of Florida, Davilla Padilla, Laudonnière, the
memorials of De Soto’s march, the documents in the collections of
Ternaux, Buckingham Smith, and B. F. French, all of which have been
characterized elsewhere.[1448]
The later French documents in Margry and the works of Dumont and Du
Pratz give us additional help.[1449] On the English side we find
something in Coxe’s _Carolana_, in Timberlake, in Lawson,[1450] in the
Wormsloe quartos on Georgia and South Carolina,[1451] and in later
books like Filson’s _Kentucke_, John Haywood’s _Nat. and Aborig. Hist.
Tennessee_ (down to 1768), Benjamin Hawkins’s _Sketch of the Creek
Country_ (1799), and Jeffreys’ _French Dominion in America_. Brinton,
in _The National Legend of the Chata-Mus-ko-kee tribes_ (in the _Hist.
Mag._, Feb., 1870), printed a translation of “What Chekilli the head
chief of the upper and lower Creeks said in a talk held at Savannah
in 1735,” which he derived from a German version preserved in _Herrn
Philipp Georg Friederichs von Reck Diarium von seiner Reise nach
Georgien im Jahr 1735_ (Halle, 1741).[1452] This legend is taken by
Albert S. Gatschet, in his _Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, with
a linguistic, historic, and ethnographic introduction_ (Philad., 1884),
as a centre round which to group the ethnography of the whole gulf
water-shed of the Southern States, wherein he has carefully analyzed
the legend and its language, and in this way there is formed what is
perhaps the best survey we have of the southern Indians.
This we may supplement by Pickett’s _Alabama_. Col. C. C. Jones, Jr.,
has given us a sketch (1868) of Tomo-chi-chi, the chief who welcomed
Oglethorpe.[1453]
C. C. Royce has given us glimpses of the relations of the Cherokees and
the whites in the _Fifth Report, Bureau of Ethnology_. A recent book
is G. E. Foster’s _Se-Quo-Yah, the American Cadmus and modern Moses. A
biography of the greatest of redmen, around whose life has been woven
the manners, customs and beliefs of the early Cherokees, with a recital
of their wrongs and progress toward civilization_ (Philadelphia, etc.,
1885.)[1454] Gatschet cites the _Mémoire_ of Milfort, a war chief of
the Creeks.[1455] The Chippewas are commemorated in a paper in Beach’s
_Indian Miscellany_.[1456] The Seminole war produced a literature[1457]
bearing on the Florida tribes. Bernard Romans’ _Florida_ (1775) gave
the comments of an early English observer of the natives of the
southeastern parts of the United States. Dr. Brinton’s _Floridian
Peninsula_ and the paper of Clay Maccauley on the Seminoles in the
_Fifth Rept. Bureau of Ethnology_ help out the study. The Natchez have
been considered as allied with the races of middle America,[1458] and
we may go back to Garcilasso de la Vega and the later Du Pratz for some
of the speculations about them, to be aided by the accounts we get from
the French concerning their campaigns against them.[1459]
The placing of the tribes in the Ohio Valley is embarrassed by
their periodic migrations.[1460] Brinton follows the migrations
of the Shawanees,[1461] and C. C. Royce seeks to identify them in
their wanderings.[1462] O. H. Marshall tracks other tribes along the
Great Lakes.[1463] Hiram W. Beckwith places those in Illinois and
Indiana.[1464] The Wyandots[1465] have been treated, as affording
a type for a short study of tribal society, by Major Powell in
the _Bureau of Ethnology, First Report_.[1466] G. Gale’s _Upper
Mississippi_ (Chicago, 1867) gives us a condensed summary of the tribes
of that region, and Miss Fletcher’s _Report_ will help us for all this
territory. Use can be also made of Caleb Atwater’s _Indians of the
Northwest, or a Tour to Prairie du Chien_ (Columbus, 1850). Dr. John G.
Shea and others have used the _Collections of the Wisconsin Historical
Society_ to make known their studies of the tribes of that State.[1467]
One of the most readable studies of the Indians in the neighborhood of
Lake Superior is John G. Kohl’s _Kitchi-Gami_ (1860). The authorities
on the Black Hawk war throw light on the Sac and Fox tribes.[1468]
Pilling’s _Bibliography of the Siouan Languages_ (1887) affords the
readiest key to the mass of books about the Sioux or Dacotah stocks
from the time of Hennepin and the early adventurers in the Missouri
Valley. The travellers Carver and Catlin are of importance here. Mrs.
Eastman’s _Dacotah, or life and legends of the Sioux_ (1849) is an
excellent book that has not yet lost its value; and the same can be
said of Francis Parkman’s _California and the Oregon Trail_ (N. Y.,
1849), which shows that historian’s earliest experience of the wild
camp life. Miss Alice C. Fletcher is the latest investigator of their
present life.[1469] Of the Crows we have some occasional accounts like
Mrs. Margaret J. Carrington’s _Absaraka_.[1470] On the Modocs we have
J. Miller’s _Life among the Modocs_ (London, 1873). J. O. Dorsey has
given us a paper on the Omaha sociology in the _Third Rept. Bureau
of Ethnology_ (p. 205); and we may add to this some account in the
_Transactions_ (vol. i.) of the Nebraska State Hist. Society, and a
tract by Miss Fletcher on the _Omaha tribe of Indians in Nebraska_
(Washington, 1885). The Pawnees have been described by J. B. Dunbar in
the _Mag. Amer. Hist._ (vols. iv., v., viii., ix.) The Ojibways have
had two native historians,—Geo. Copway’s _Traditional Hist. of the
Ojibway Nation_ (London, 1850), and Peter Jones’ _Hist. of the Ojibway
Indians, with special reference to their conversion to Christianity_
(London, 1861). The _Minnesota Hist. Soc. Collections_ (vol. v.)
contain other historical accounts by Wm. W. Warren and by Edw. D.
Neill,—the latter touching their connection with the fur-traders. Miss
Fletcher’s _Report_ (1888) will supplement all these accounts of the
aborigines of this region.
Our best knowledge of the southwestern Indians, the Apaches, Navajos,
Utes, Comanches, and the rest, comes from such government observers
as Emory in his _Military Reconnaissance_; Marcy’s _Exploration of
the Red River in 1852_; J. H. Simpson in his _Expedition into the
Navajo Country_ (1856); and E. H. Ruffner’s _Reconnoissance in the Ute
Country_ (1874). The fullest references are given in Bancroft’s _Native
Races_,[1471] with a map.
We may still find in Bancroft’s _Native Races_ (i. ch. 2, 3) the best
summarized statement with references on the tribes of the upper Pacific
coast, and follow the development of our knowledge in the narratives
of the early explorers of that coast by water, in the account of Lewis
and Clark and other overland travels, and in such tales of adventures
as the _Journal kept at Nootka Sound by John R. Jewitt_, which has had
various forms.[1472]
The earliest of the better studied accounts of these northwestern
tribes was that of Horatio Hale in the volume (vi.) on ethnography,
of the Wilkes’ _United States Exploring Expedition_ (Philad., 1846),
and the same philologist’s paper in the _Amer. Ethnological Society’s
Transactions_ (vol. ii.). Recent scientific results are found in _The
North-West Coast of America, being Results of Recent Ethnological
Researches, from the Collections of the Royal Museums at Berlin,
published by the Directors of the Ethnological Department, by Herr E.
Krause, and partly by Dr. Grunwedel, translated from the German, the
Historical and Descriptive Text by Dr. Reiss_ (New York, 1886), and
in the first volume of the _Contributions to North Amer. Ethnology_
(Powell’s Survey), in papers by George Gibbs on the tribes of
Washington and Oregon, and by W. H. Dall on those of Alaska.[1473]
For the tribes of California, Bancroft’s first volume is still the
useful general account; but the Federal government have published
several contributions of scientific importance: that of Stephen Powers
in the _Contributions to No. Amer. Ethnology_ (vol. iii., 1877);[1474]
the ethnological volume (vii.) of _Wheeler’s Survey_, edited by
Putnam; and papers in the _Smithsonian Reports_, 1863-64, and in Miss
Fletcher’s _Report_, 1888.[1475]
This survey would not be complete without some indication of the
topical variety in the consideration of the native peoples, but we have
space only to mention the kinds of special treatment, shown in accounts
of their government and society, their intellectual character, and of
some of their customs and amusements.[1476] Their industries, their
linguistics, and their myths have been considered with wider relations
in the appendixes of the present volume.
[Illustration: Signatures]