The Indian by Himself
LOOK far enough, and we see him, a wanderer with his little family,
starting from the heart of Asia, hunting and fishing as they go, camping
for a few years or a century in one place, moving on when their number
increases and food is not enough for all, or when some other tribe comes
up behind and drives them on,—moving on, and on, and on,—a few
families at a time or hundreds together. They belong, as all the
American “Indians” do, to one great human stock that spread out east and
west along the northern lands of Asia and Europe, where their closest
kin to-day are found among the tribes of North Siberia and the Lapps of
Russia and Norway. Another branch of the same ancestral stock settled in
China, where it made many new inventions and slowly built up a
civilization of its own, with high achievements in literature and art.
But our “Indians” must have broken away long before that, for they had
none of these inventions to bring with them,—not even that of the
wheel, either for vehicles, for spinning, or for pottery; though the
wheel was in common use among the Chinese and other old-world races
thousands of years ago.
Let us watch these first men coming, now, and see what they are like.
They are a shaggy-looking folk, with bear-skins thrown over their
shoulders and tied round their waists. Their hair hangs long and black.
Their skin is dark.
They have little baggage. They bring nothing with them except spears,
bows and arrows, and furs. For a spear they have fixed a pointed bone or
horn or sharp broken stone to the end of a pole. Their arrows are just
little spears. The furs are the skins of bear, walrus, seal and caribou.
When we ourselves start on a journey, we know where we are going; we are
bound for some particular place with a name. But these first wanderers
from Asia don’t know where they are going, and don’t much care. They are
not looking for a place to settle down in, land of their own to farm, to
build a house on. So long as they find plenty of wild beasts, berries
and roots to eat, they are satisfied. They know how to make fire, by
twirling a stick between their hands till its lower end, by friction
against another piece of dry wood, kindles a spark which they catch on
dry bark or moss and blow into flame. They have neither pottery nor
baskets, but carry small articles in a big bowl-shaped receptacle of
rawhide. Their only animal is the dog, the half-tamed descendant of
foxes, wolves or jackals.
These first comers have “discovered America,” without knowing it. They
have no idea that they are the first to set foot in a “new world.” It
looks just like the “old-world” to them. They have been living on the
sea-shore, over there at the tip of Asia. Their number has increased,
and other tribes have come up behind them, so they have simply crossed
over to the land they have often seen at a distance, where they can have
the hunting all to themselves. They just go on living as they have been
used to living.
Some of them wander along the north coast, where they still wander,—we
call them Eskimo.
Most of the newcomers, however, turn to the right, and follow the coast
to the south. One family follows another, family after family, band
after band,—not close on each other’s heels, or many at a time, but in
driblets, for hundreds or thousands of years. When the coast of Alaska
is dotted with encampments, the next comers pass on and pitch their skin
tents on the empty shores of British Columbia. There they are astonished
to find a mighty forest. They make rough shelters of bark and branches,
instead of skin tents. After a time some clever fellow says,—“This is a
good place to live; we don’t need to wander about all the time, for the
salmon and deer are plenty. Let us cut down trees and build houses.” So
they do, though they have never seen such a thing as a house before.
They learn to be carpenters, and finally wood carvers. They have no
teachers, they just learn by trying. With axes of big chipped stone they
cut down trees, and build houses with thick posts which they carve and
color in rough imitation of men. They make boats, each of one tree,
hollowed out like Robinson Crusoe’s.
More little bands follow, and settle all along the shore of the
Continent. Some of them strike inland, perhaps chased off the coast by
others, perhaps finding the food supply too poor where they have landed.
One party comes at last to what we now call Mexico.
One day, while the men are off hunting, the children find here and there
a plant of wild maize, and bite the juicy grains off the cob. The men
come back at night, empty-handed; game is getting scarce. They are glad
to eat the corn their children have found. It is good. Later on, when
the corn is ripe and hard to chew, some one has a bright idea. I think
it must have been a woman, a mother with little children whose teeth
cannot chew the hard grains. She spreads a handful of the grains on a
flat stone, breaks them up with a stone hammer, and mixes the meal with
water, so the little ones have mush to eat. Some of the mush she roasts
in lumps. She is the first baker in the new world. Next year another
woman, or perhaps it is the same, takes some of the big grains left
over, makes a scratch in the earth, and drops them in, so that she can
have food close at hand without wandering about to pick the wild ears.
She is the first gardener.
Year after year more corn is planted, till there are fields of it. The
men still hunt, and leave the farming to their wives, but they are glad
to have so much food without hunting. The band does not need to move
every time the game is scarce. The people settle down and make a
permanent home for themselves. More bands come, and quarrel and fight as
savages do,—we all have a good deal of the savage in us even yet,—but
the foolishness of it strikes them presently, so a number of bands join
to make a tribe. One tribe fights another, but at last several tribes
join to make a nation. As food is plentiful, the men have time to think
and plan and invent. They mould clay into pottery, and bake it. They
twist fibres and spin cotton, though they never happen to think of a
spinning wheel. They make looms, and learn weaving. They have no iron,
but with stone and copper tools they cut rock and build pyramids, and
temples decorated with sculpture. They become expert goldsmiths and
silversmiths. They invent a kind of writing, something like that of
ancient Egypt.
Passing Mexico by, other bands thread their way along the isthmus of
Panama, or skirt the coast till they come to South America, and there
they settle and grow into a nation, high up among the mountains of Peru.
Here also the people build cities, and roads, and aqueducts, and temples
adorned with sheets of dazzling gold. They farm, and spin, and weave.
They tame the wild llama, and make it their beast of burden; its cousin,
the wild alpaca, too, they raise in flocks for its wool.
Wild tribes of men continue streaming down from the north. Some of them
conquer the Mexicans, and settle down among them and learn their arts.
Some hover on the outskirts of the new civilization for a while, and
learn how to spin and weave and raise corn, but then wander on to the
east along the Gulf of Mexico, or north up the Mississippi. A group of
these tribes, finding their way at last into the St. Lawrence Valley,
settle down there and join forces in the great Iroquois alliance of the
“Six Nations.” Their women grow corn, melons, beans and pumpkins, but
the favorite occupation of the men is fighting, as the first white
Canadians will discover to their cost in the seventeenth century.
Between fights, they play a magnificent game of their own invention,
which we call lacrosse. The goals are the two villages in which the
teams live.
[Illustration: _Lacrosse—Before the White Man Played It_]
There was one tribe that never went south at all. When they landed in
Alaska these folk struck inland and wandered away to the east, past
Hudson Bay, some of them spreading then through Labrador, others
crossing the St. Lawrence and never stopping till the Atlantic rolled at
their feet in Nova Scotia, where a remnant of them may be seen to-day.
Some of them had fallen out at various points along the way, finding
hunting grounds that suited them, and others turned back to the west, so
that the early white fur traders found them scattered all through the
forest lands from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the west of Hudson Bay.
The Crees, a western branch of this Algonquin stock, were still a
woodland folk, although, as they depended mostly for food and shelter on
the caribou, they followed the herd in its yearly migrations out of the
wood and across the treeless country towards the Bay.
Our fertile prairie was still an unpeopled wilderness, long after a
multitude of tribes had spread over the rest of the continent.
What sort of country was this vast empty space, “the granary of the
British Empire” to-day?
It is not hard to imagine, for white men are still alive among us who
remember it pretty much as it was when the “Indians” first came, a
thousand years ago. A great grassy plain dotted with pale anemones in
spring, pink roses and white strawberry blossoms in summer; mighty herds
of buffalo grazing over it, and wallowing in little pools; parts of it
flat, but most of it rolling, up and down, like a sea of earth suddenly
stilled after a storm. Poplar bluffs rise here and there, but for
hundreds of miles not a tree is to be seen. Two great rivers, the North
and South Saskatchewan, have carved deep valleys across from west to
east; their water, and that of many smaller rivers, pours into the
Manitoban lakes, and out again to lose itself in Hudson Bay. Those
lakes, great as they seem, are but the remnants of one vast lake which
covered nearly all Manitoba long after the ice-cap had retreated.
Beyond the prairie northward stretches the forest, poplar and willow and
birch, tamarack, pine and spruce. North-east the forest dwindles and
fades away into the “barren lands,” which are not really barren, for
countless caribou and musk ox pasture there. North-west, great rivers
pour through the forest and away to the Arctic Sea; north-east, more
rivers drain out to the Bay.
The plains rise gently for a thousand miles from east to west; so gently
that we do not notice the change, till we see the foothills swelling up
and the sharp-edged mountains towering high beyond in a heavenly rampart
of white and grey. Beyond the prairie, mountains on mountains, range
after range, with roaring torrents in deep ravines; wider valleys, and
placid lakes reflecting stately trees; the country smoothing down to the
north, in a thick cloak of poplar and pine, and sinking in the
south-west to a level plain, dark under thronging regiments of giant
firs and cedars, along the coast of the western sea.
No voice of man is heard upon the untilled plains; but the land is not
silent. The coyote screams and howls. High overhead the wild-goose
honks. The air is musical with songs of little birds and gay with their
colors. No hand of man is raised to kill; but hunters are busy killing.
In the woods, the rabbit squeals as the weasel catches him by the
throat. On the prairie, the hovering hawk drops swiftly to seize a
gopher. On the lake, the skimming gull darts down and snatches out a
fish. In the mountains, the eagle swoops and carries off a marmot; the
prowling bear claws at a rotting stump and gobbles down grubs by the
mouthful.
Far away in the south, the prairie is invaded by man. Not suddenly, or
by a great armed host. Don’t imagine that the buffalo-hunting tribes
known to our fathers came riding out on to the plains one day in a
picturesque and mighty horde, as the invading Tartar host swarmed out
over Europe. The first hunter of the plains had never heard of a horse.
This is more likely what happened.
The Indians who settled in the Mississippi Valley were far from
“civilized,” but they were no longer mere wandering hunters. They hunted
deer and beaver and other animals, but they also cultivated the soil,
growing corn and beans and squash. They made real homes beside their
fields. They stayed there long enough to build great mounds, which are
still to be seen, grown over with grass and trees. Some of these mounds
are very curiously shaped, like serpents, turtles and other animals,
which the people superstitiously reverenced as their protectors. Some of
the mounds, however, are like fortifications, high dykes or ridges
enclosing great squares of land, large enough to protect whole villages.
These needed all the protection they could get, and often more, for the
wilder tribes were constantly raiding the weaker.
* * * * *
One night a war party breaks in upon a village of the grain-growers,
rushing over the dykes and killing the owners of the fields. A few
escape, and scatter in all directions. See! There is one whole family,
stealing away through the woods to the west—a man and woman, with
deerskins thrown over their shoulders and tied with rawhide thongs
around the waist; two naked children trotting behind, and a dog at their
heels. They stop when tired out, snatch a few hours’ sleep, and flee on
again. Day after day they hurry on. Their old hunting ground is left
behind, and they slacken the pace, but still they press on to the west.
The woods get thinner and thinner, till there is only a fringe of trees
in a valley, sheltered from the wind of the plain above. The fugitives
keep close to the rivers, where they can be sure of fish and birds and
berries to eat.
At last they come to a place where two rivers meet. The narrow valley
here spreads out wide; its banks slope more gently, and are covered with
brush; but a mile farther on both valleys are narrow again, and almost
bare. “This place looks good to me,” says the man; “stay here by the
river while I go exploring.” Climbing through the brush and out of the
valley, he stands on the edge of a bare and boundless plain. He shades
his keen eyes to see the end of it,—in vain. The gentle waves of turf
stretch away—surely to the edge of the world!
“If we go farther,” the man says, coming back to his wife, “we shall
find nothing to catch; if we go back, we may be caught ourselves. We
shall camp here.” He takes his bow and arrows to shoot a few rabbits for
supper; his wife with a sharp stone axe cuts down branches for a
shelter,—and that is the first prairie home.
Time passes. More families come straggling up and join them. There is
not enough food for all, and they often go hungry. There are coyotes on
the plain, but they run like the wind; and antelopes, but they run like
the cyclone. One day, the children climb up to the plain with their
little bows and arrows to shoot gophers, but come running down again.
They have seen monstrous animals up there, they say. Their father goes
up with a spear. Sure enough, there is a herd of shaggy brown beasts
grazing on the turf, with huge heads, fierce eyes, short horns and
woolly manes. He has been used to hunting deer and moose in the woods,
where he could creep silently from tree to tree until he got within easy
range. It is quite another matter to attack a herd of fierce-looking
buffalo, out on the bare plain where no shelter is. But the temptation
is greater than the risk, when other game is scarce or small or hard to
catch.
“Let us go boldly out and attack the buffalo in the open,” says the
brave man. He shouts down to his friends in the valley camp. Two other
hunters climb up to where he stands, and together they glide over the
prairie, slower and slower as they near the herd, till you can hardly
tell they are moving. The buffalo stop grazing, lift their heads, and
stare at these two-legged creatures they have never seen before. The men
come close, and fling their spears. One spear goes home, and brings down
a beast; but the rest of the herd wheel round and thunder away over the
sounding turf, carrying two spears with them.
That troubles the hunters, for a good spear-head of sharpened bone or
antler takes long to make. Next time, they use bows and arrows, and
shoot from a distance; but now all the buffalo get away, with arrows
sticking in their tough hides. Many spears and arrows are lost, and
every now and then a hunter is killed, for sometimes the desperate
animals rush at the men who have attacked them, instead of rushing the
other way.
“If we can drive the buffalo off the prairie into the brush,” says a
thoughtful Indian at last, “they can’t run away so fast; and if they run
at us we can get behind trees.” So the hunters do that. Still, most of
the hunted animals get out of the wood again, and escape.
Presently another clever Indian thinks of a better plan. “Let us build a
corral in the brush, and drive the beasts into it,” he says. So the men
cut down trees and make a rough stockade of upright logs, leaving a wide
entrance. They manage to drive a herd of buffalo into the corral, and
there the poor beasts are crowded together and rush round and round
while the hunters behind the trees shoot them down by the score.
There is plenty of food now; too much, in fact. So the Indians just cut
out with stone knives the tenderest parts of the meat, the hump and the
tongue, and leave the rest to be eaten by coyotes. Some of the lean meat
is dried and beaten into powder, and mixed with fat and crushed into
bags of skin. This is pemmican, and it keeps a long time, so the tribe
has a store of meat to use without hunting.
The buffalo-hunting tribes increase, and spread out over the southern
plains. Some of them have never been anything but hunters, in the woods;
and whether they have once grown corn or not, they come to despise the
corn-growers. The buffalo is their only crop.
Unknown to these southern plainsmen, after a time the plains were
invaded from the north as well. Bands of the northern Wood Indians,
first perhaps the Blackfeet, long afterwards the Crees, began to creep
out on the prairie. Like the southern Sioux, they could not travel fast
on land; the Indians had no horses. Ages before the first men came there
had been horses here, at first of a dwarfish kind, with three toes. The
horse tribe may have had its beginning here and spread over to Asia when
the sea between Siberia and Alaska was dry land; but nothing was left of
them in all America except their fossil bones.
To be sure, the Indians had dogs; but at first these were only
camp-followers, and their only use was to be killed and eaten when
better meat was scarce. In the far north, the Eskimo learned to hitch
dog teams to a sleigh; and presently the Indians south of them put their
dogs in harness, too.
The Wood Indians, living in a country full of lakes and rivers, in
summer did all their travelling by canoe. In winter they stayed idle in
camp, down in some sheltered valley or forest glade, living in rough
shelters or tents of birch-bark or caribou hide. Presently, when they
came out into the open to follow the buffalo, they had to leave their
canoes behind. They did not like carrying loads on their backs; and one
day an Indian, no lazier than the rest, but with more active brains,
thought of a new way to make the dogs do that work. They had already
been trained to haul toboggans in winter, and sometimes in summer; but
the toboggan is a poor sort of cart except when it has smooth snow for
its flat surface to glide over. To be sure, the travoy was not very much
better, but it was less easily upset, and as the Indian never thought of
inventing wheels let us give him all credit for inventing the travoy.
You have probably seen it in action,—two poles crossed over the dog’s
back, and trailing wide apart behind, with cross-pieces to carry the
load.
To these Indians spreading slowly over the prairie from the north, the
buffalo was everything, as it was to the plainsmen of the south. They
made their tents of its skin. They lived on its meat, though when the
pemmican gave out and no herd was near they ate rabbit, gopher, beaver,
crow, dog, anything and everything they could get. As for vegetable
food, they were content with berries and roots, especially the “pomme
blanche” or prairie turnip, which the women scraped and dried for winter
use. The early explorers found the Mandans of the Missouri growing corn
and tobacco, beans and pumpkins, and sunflower—for the seed,—with a
hoe made of the buffalo’s shoulder-blade and a wooden handle; but the
prairie Indians as a whole despised farming.
They hunted the buffalo in the same wasteful way as the southern
plainsmen, from whom they probably learnt the trick of driving the
beasts into an enclosure. They made some progress in a few of the arts.
Many of them tried their hands at pottery; they also plaited bark and
other fibres into baskets. They decorated articles of hide with
geometrical designs, in paint or porcupine quill; their famous bead-work
only came into fashion when white men gave them glass beads in trade.
The beaten copper with which they fastened the plaits of their long
black hair, they got from tribes who found it on the shore of Lake
Superior. They could not write, but they could draw. They drew maps, of
their land and water trails, on bits of birch-bark. They painted figures
of animals on the outside of their skin tents.
They would hunt a band of other Indians or a herd of buffalo with the
same ingenuity and fierce delight. Having spent all their energy in this
violent collection of human scalps and buffalo meat, they dropped into
idleness. But time did not hang heavy on their hands. They were never
bored by lack of occupation; they enjoyed doing nothing, as a cow enjoys
chewing the cud. They smoked dry willow-bark, when they could not get
tobacco, in carved stone pipes. They used no strong drink, till the
white man brought it to them. They did not lack the pleasures of
imagination; endless and agreeable were the hours they spent telling and
hearing tales of enchantment and mythical legends of the past, many of
which I have borrowed for my “New World Fairy Book.”