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SMITHSONIAN
SCIENTIFIC SERIES,

Editor-in-chief
CHARLES GREELEY ABBOT, D.Sc.

Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution

Published by

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION SERIES, Inc.
NEW YORK

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Sioux Indian warrior in full war costume, National Museum

THE NORTH AMERICAN
INDIANS

AN ACCOUNT OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS
NORTH OF MEXICO, COMPILED FROM THE
ORIGINAL SOURCES

By
Rose A. PALMER

“a =e = at,
Tiwecihe 7
7 THON

JUN 23 1988

VOLUME FOUR

OF THE

SMITHSONIAN SCIENTIFIC SERIES
1929

[Printed in the United States of America]
All rights reserved

Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention
of the Pan-American Republics and the
United States, August 11, 1910

CONTENTS

Tue Rep Men DiscovER THE NEw WorLD .

Tue SToneE AGE OF NortH AMERICA .
In Arctic Snows: THE EskKIMo

A LeacueE oF Five Nations: THE IROQUOIS.
CiirF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS:

THE PuEBLOsS
INDIANS OF THE PLAINS .
West Coast TRIBES .
Mytus AND LEGENDS.
Tue I[np1ans 1N History

APPENDIX: INDIAN STOCKS AND TRIBES .

INDEX

106
144
175
216
250
296

301

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ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF PLATES

Sioux Indian Warrior
Eskimo and Salish types
Yakima and Wasco types .

“Savages of Several Nations,” by de Batz
Yankton Sioux and Iroquois types
Types of Pueblo Indians
Ancient Pueblo water jars .
Western Indians communicating by signs
Facsimile of pages from the Eliot Bible
The Cherokee alphabet invented by Sequoya
Series showing the shaping of a stone arrowhead
Cahokia mound near St. Louis .
Ancient ornaments of Pueblo Indians .
Pottery from Indian mounds in Arkansas

Cane baskets of the Chetimacha Indians, Tauisiand:

Sand painting of Navaho Indians .
Eskimo method of building a snow house
Eskimo waiting for seal at blowhole

An Eskimo sealing party on Smith Sound
Ivory pipestems of the Bering Straits Eskimo
Ornaments of the Bering Straits Eskimo .
Eskimo kayaks . .
Model of an Eskimo umiak .

Malemut Eskimo family

Eskimo graveyard at Rasbinsky :
Ancient Eskimo implements of nephrite .
Types of Chippewa habitations

Birch-bark lodge of Passamaquoddy Indians, Maine .

“Fishynge in Virginia,” by John White
Model of Iroquois long-house_ .

Chippewa Indians in birch-bark canoe
Portrait of Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)

Frontispiece

Wampum belts of the eastern Indians
Casa Blanca, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona .

Ancient cave dwellings of the Rio Grande, New Mexico .

Foot trail to Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico

Horse trail to Acoma Bechiot New Mexico
Water jars from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
Pueblo of Zufii, New Mexico :
Ceremony of Zufii Sword Swallowers .

Zufil matron carrying water jar

Ceremony of Zufii Corn Maidens .

Family group of Hopi Indians, Arizona

Hopi pueblo of Walpi, Arizona.

Hopi pueblo of Oraibi, Arizona

The Hopi Snake Dance .

Casa Grande, Arizona

Navaho hogan or earth lodge, Atizona :
Navaho family spinning and weaving blankets
Family group of Sioux Indians. . . . .
“The Buffalo Hunt,” by Stanley

Skin tipis of the Shoshani

Pawnee village, Platte River, Nebraska

Wichita grass lodge, Kansas

Winnebago war clubs oars

Scaffold burial of Crow Indians

Cheyenne tree burial, Oklahoma

Cheyenne family, with travois.

Bull-boat of the Hidatsa pee North Dakota
Paiute village, Utah .

Mohave Indian chief
Sitting cradle of Wintun Tndians, California :
Elk-antler spoons of Yurok Indians, California .
Karok plank house and Yurok boat

Karok center of the world ..

Family group of Hupa Indians, California
Ceremonial of Kwakiutl Indians, British Columbia .
Family group of Chilkat Indians, Alaska

Kwakiutl medicine-man’s wand and Haida sheep -horn dish .

Haida man and woman. .

Totem poles of the Haida and Tlingit ‘Tndiane
Group of the Western Eskimo .

Ceremonial insignia of the Zufii Indians .
Pottery bowls from Sikyatki Pueblo, Arizona
Kiowa children at play .

Shoshoni women and child .

169
172
173

188
189

200
201
204
Biri:
213
220
228
239
236
240

ree eee ON ae teat oe

Baskets of the California Indians .

Powhatan’s mantle . :

Pocahontas, from the Booton Hall portrait ‘

Indian spear heads and arrowheads . .

Portraits of Chief Joseph and Pushmataha

Portraits of Geronimo and Black Hawk

Portraits of Sequoya and Osceola .
“Saturioua, King of Florida” by Le Moyne ;

Creek Indian Wereleqen Tee a0

Public granary and fortified town of Florida Indians

LIST OF TEXT FIGURES

Diagrams of an Eskimo snow house
Eskimo soapstone lamp .

Eskimo dog with harness

Eskimo mask representing blowing al
Eskimo doll from the Lower Yukon
Eskimo toy woodpecker .

Etched ivory tool for creasing leather .
Carved ivory cord handle

Carved ivory cord attacher . : :
Picture writing on Mah-to-toh-pa’s Tobe ;
Map of Virginia showing Powhatan in state .

244
252

260
264
268
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288

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THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

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THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

CHAPTER I

THE RED MEN DISCOVER THE
NEW WORLD

When our fathers and mothers studied geography in the
little red school house of old, they were taught that there
are Five Races of men—the White, the Yellow, the Red,
the Brown, and the Black—all derived from one primeval
stock (presumably neutral in tint) by passing through the
magic prism of “local variation.” ‘Today we dare not
apply so simple a scheme of classification to the complex
science of ethnology; anthropologists, like other scientists,
have learned to proceed more cautiously from fact to
theory than did their predecessors, whose imaginations
were less hampered by exact knowledge.

Nevertheless, though discussed under many learned
names and divided and recombined according to every
conceivable plan—linguistic, geographical, cultural, his-
torical—the several distinct types of mankind persist and
still challenge us to reverse the prism and reconstruct
the mother race. Gropingly ethnologists are feeling
their way, through patient archeological and biological
researches, back through the ages to the approximate time
and place of the birth of the human species.

When we thus try to pierce the mists of prehistoric
time and trace the origin of the Red race of America, we
are led, by certain similarities of color and anatomy, to
associate them with the peoples of eastern Asia. Noting
the narrow sea which separates North America from

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Siberia, we find it not hard to imagine the possibility of
migrations across so slight a barrier. Indeed, if we had
no other evidence to guide us, it would be difficult to say
whether the Asiatic races gave birth to the American as
an offshoot, or whether a primeval American race colon-
ized northeastern Asia.

The vocabularies of the languages spoken by the
American Indians, however, are now so utterly unlike
those of Asiatic tongues that it is necessary to set the
period of the migrations very far back in terms of cen-
turies—certainly to a time more than 10,000 years ago.
On the other hand, the human remains of western Europe
represent a much earlier epoch than do those found thus
far in America, which seems to be a comparatively
recent home of human life, counting time in geological
ages. From such considerations anthropologists are in-
clined to believe that the Indians are descended from the
same ancestors as the reddish races of eastern Asia, and
that they migrated from Asia to America, probably in
several waves, many thousands, perhaps even tens of
thousands, of years ago.

This theory gains added weight from the researches of
Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, who has found in different parts of
Asia living remnants of the older yellow-brown stock from
which our Indians were probably derived. Particularly
in the southern slopes of the Himalayas, among the
Tibetan tribes, are types so closely resembling the Ameri-
can Indians that if they were transplanted into America
nobody could possibly take them for anything but Indians
“in physique, in behavior, in dress, and even in the intona-
tions of their language.” Despite their Asiatic origin,
however, the red men have inhabited America for so long a
time that they may justly be regarded as native to its soil.

Most people think of the aborigines of North America,
excepting the Eskimo, as just “Indians,” but the study
of their languages shows that they represent more than
fifty different families, whose vocabularies are often as

[2]

THE RED MEN DISCOVER THE NEW WORLD

distinct from one another as are ours from theirs. Doubt-
less, however, resemblances may in future be brought
out which will diminish somewhat the number of Indian
stocks now thought to be unrelated. It is the presence
of these distinct types among the American Indians which
points to the probability of their having reached the New
World in several separate waves of migration. In this
connection Doctor Hrdlicka says:

The newcomers, though all belonging to the same main race, were
evidently not strictly homogeneous, but represented several distinct
sub-types of the yellow-brown people, with differences in culture and
language.

The first of these sub-types to come over was, according to many
indications, the dolichocephalic Indian [#.e., those having relatively
narrow heads] represented in North America today by the great Algon-
quian, Iroquoian, Siouan, and Shoshonean stocks, farther south by the
Piman-Aztec tribes, and in South America by many branches extending
over large parts of that continent from Venezuela and the coast of
Brazil to Tierra del Fuego.

Next came, it seems, what Morton called the “Toltec’” type, quite
as Indian as the other, but marked by brachycephaly [i.e., with rela-
tively broad heads]. This type settled along the northwest coast, in
the central and eastern mound region, in the Gulf states, the Antilles,
Mexico (including Yucatan), over much of Central America, reaching
finally the coast of Peru and other parts of northern South America.

Still later, and when America was already well peopled, there came,
according to all indications, the Eskimo and the Athapascan Indians.
The former, finding resistance in the south which he could not over-
come, remained in and spread over the far-north land, developing
various environmental physical modifications that have removed him,
on the whole, farther from the Indians than is the case with any other
branch of the yellow-brown people. The Athapascans, a virile brachy-
cephalic type, on the one side closely allied physically to the prevailing
Mongolian type of northeastern Asia and on the other to the earlier
American brachycephals, may have reached the continent before the
Eskimo. However this may be, their progress south was evidently
also blocked, compelling the body of the enlarging tribe to remain in
Alaska and northwestern Canada; but along the western coast some
contingents succeeded in penetrating as far as California, where they
left the Hupa, and to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of north-
ern Mexico, where we know them to this day as the Lipan and the
Apache.

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THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Of the more than fifty distinct families composing the
American Indians at the time of the coming of the white
men, nine predominated over great areas of North
America. Farthest north, on the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts and along the shores which fringe the Arctic Ocean,
lived then, as now, the tribes of the Esquimauan family,
who may be regarded as Indians only in the broadest
meaning of the word. In the interior of Alaska and the
great northwest of Canada were the Athapascans, whose
offshoots were widely scattered throughout the West.
Two smaller families disputed part of this territory with
the Athapascans: the Salishan of British Columbia, and
the northwestern United States; and the Siouan, whose
chief habitat was the northwest, centering in Dakota, but
who had a strong offshoot in the eastern Carolinas, and
were also represented on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

The East was divided chiefly between two mighty families:
the Algonquian, who occupied most of eastern Canada and
extended in the United States from Maine to the Mississippi
River and as far south as North Carolina; and the Iro-
quoian, who held the valley of the St. Lawrence, most of
New York, and Pennsylvania, with offshoots in eastern
North Carolina and the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Of the three remaining great families, the Shoshonean
occupied the Great Plateau and extended into California,
and were represented on the Plains by one tribe, the
Comanche; the Caddoans were found chiefly in Louisiana,
Texas, and Nebraska; while the Muskhogeans held the
eastern Gulf States. |

In addition to these there were over forty smaller but
distinct families, mostly fringing the Pacific Ocean from
Alaska to Mexico. Each family included one or more
tribes or confederations of tribes, the names of some of
which, as the Iroquois, Powhatan, and Apache, have be-
come household words through traditions of the Colonial
and later Indian wars.

While not nomads in the ordinary sense of the word, all

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THE RED MEN DISCOVER THE NEW WORLD

the tribes were forced into seasonal migrations in search
of food. These movements were greatest with the hunting
tribes of the colder regions of the north and with those of
the arid Western plains and plateaus, where agriculture
was impracticable and game animals and edible plants
were thinly distributed. The corn-raising tribes of the
South supported themselves at home by their crops during
a greater part of the year, but even they were forced to
go long distances for their supplies of meat. The fishing
tribes of the coasts possessed a fairly constant food sup-
ply, but they too shifted from point to point, following
the runs of different species of fish, and in winter they
usually went into the interior to hunt.

The lack of domestic animals prevented the population
in the North and West from becoming as large and as
dangerous to its neighbors as the pastoral tribes of the Old
World; but for the same reason the corn-raising peoples
had to move about more, partly to obtain meat and
partly because they had no fertilizer with which to main-
tain the fertility of their fields. These conditions tended
to keep down the increase of population in that part of
North America now occupied by the United States and
Canada. In southern Mexico and Central America a
more favorable climate and a more abundant food supply
gave rise to a denser population which culminated still
farther south in the Andean section of South America;
but nowhere was anything approaching the swarming
populations of the warmer parts of Europe and Asia.

The question of the number of the native population
of America at the coming of the white man has been the
subject of much speculation. Extremists on the one
hand have imagined a population of millions, while on
the other hand the claim has been made, and persistently
repeated, that there has been no decrease, but that on
the contrary the Indians have thriven under misfortune
and are more numerous today than at any former period.

The first error is due in part to the tendency to magnify

[5]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

the glory of a vanished past and in part to the mistaken
idea that the numerous ancient remains scattered over
the country were built or occupied at practically the
same period. The contrary error—that the Indian has
increased—is due to several causes, chief of which is the
mistake of starting the calculation at too recent a period,
usually at the establishment of treaty relations. Prior to
that time, however, the natives had been subjected to
nearly three centuries of destructive influences which
had wiped out many tribes entirely and reduced others
to mere remnants. Moreover, the Indian of the dis-
covery period was a full-blood; the Indian of today is
very often a mongrel, with not enough of aboriginal
blood to be distinguishable in the features; yet, excepting
in a few tribes, no official distinction is made.

Among the chief causes of decrease since the coming of
the white man may be mentioned smallpox and other
epidemics; tuberculosis; sexual diseases; whiskey and
attendant dissipation; removals, starvation, and sub-
jection to unaccustomed conditions; low vitality due to
mental depression under misfortune; and wars.

The destruction by disease and dissipation has been
greatest along the Pacific Coast, where also the original
population was. most numerous. In California, the
enormous decrease from about a quarter of a million to
less than 20,000, is due chiefly to the cruelties and whole-
sale massacres perpetrated by the miners and early
settlers. The almost complete extermination of the
Aleut of the Northwest is attributable to the same causes
during the early Russian period. Confinement in mission
establishments has also been fatal to the Indian, in spite
of increased comfort in living conditions. Wars in most
cases have not greatly diminished the number of Indians.
The tribes were in chronic warfare among themselves,
so that the balance was nearly even until, as in the notable
case of the Iroquois, the acquisition of firearms gave one
body an immense superiority over its neighbors.

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—_

THE RED MEN DISCOVER THE NEW WORLD

A careful study of the whole territory north of Mexico,
taking each geographic section separately, indicates a
total population, at the time of the coming of the white
man, of nearly 1,150,000 Indians, which is believed to be
within ten per cent of the actual number. Of this total
846,000 were within the limits of the United States
proper, 220,000 in British America, 72,000 in Alaska, and
10,000 in Greenland. The number of Indians in the
United States is now less than 400,000, but is gradually
increasing.

None the less is the modern Indian a representative of
a vanishing race. Vanishing as are the buffalo, the deer,
and the other native wild creatures of America, because of
the resistless march of the white man’s civilization. It
is this inevitable evanishment of the Indians as a distinct
race which gives such importance and significance to the
work of the Bureau of American Ethnology. The case
was eloquently stated in an editorial in the Washington
Evening Star of August 14, 1928:

There is a general assumption that when Europeans first came to the
Americas they found a nomadic population of naked savages with
turkey feathers in their hair. That, in fact, was what many of the
white pioneers themselves, as well as their present-day descendants,
assumed that they had found. They set about cheerfully, with
flintlocks and scriptural tracts, to civilize the poor, bronze-skinned
wretches.

The assumption, of course, was not altogether valid. What the
white men actually found, even if they didn’t know it at the time,
was a people with a culture little inferior to their own. But to the
Europeans it was a strange, incomprehensible culture expressed in
symbols foreign to their minds.

The American Indian, in fact, had advanced a long way from sav-
agery. He had developed an agriculture, a textile art, religions,
literatures, and political organizations of his own from which the new-
comers had much to learn. But these had been developed indepen-
dently of European influences. Europeans did not feel at home in
such a culture. Consequently they assumed that it either did not
exist or was worthless.

The Indian was offered his choice, for all practical purposes, be-
tween extinction and adapting himself to a culture which was as foreign

leva

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

to his processes of thinking as his own civilization was to the minds of
the newcomers.

Certain definite things which the Europeans brought with them
were new to the Americas. The Indian had no gunpowder. He had
no printing press. He had no facile system of writing. He was not
familiar with those two fundamental inventions of the Old World, the
wheel and the arch. He had domesticated few animals. Outside of
these the white man had very little to give the red man.

From the culture of the “naked savages” the invaders took immedi-
ately a few things that have had a very important effect on the history
of the world, notably corn and potatoes. They had much more to learn,
but deferred the lessons until they had killed off their prospective
teachers.

It was not until the middle of the last century that the white man,
so far as he was represented by the United States Government, set
about to find out what was to be learned from the Indians. Already
it was almost too late. Much of the native culture was dead and for-
gotten. Much of the remainder was dying and half forgotten. The
mind of the red man was changing into the mind of a white man. He
himself was turning his back on the civilization of his ancestors for
the more material civilization of his conquerors.

At the very time when Indian tribes were making their last stands
for independence the Bureau of American Ethnology was organized
as a Government institution, under the direction of the Smithsonian
Institution. Its object was to preserve at least a record of the native
cultures, to collect the inventions, the laws, the faiths and the songs of
the vanishing peoples.

Few Government bureaus have operated with less public atten-
tion. The staff consists of a small group of scholars who are working
for the future. They are trying to preserve, until such time as it will
be appreciated, one of the world’s great cultures. It is a priestly task.

It is a task which has a threefold aspect—linguistic,
archeological, and anthropologic. The first two of these
may be regarded as important in proportion as they
have supplied the tools for the anthropological work.
Therefore we will briefly sketch the more striking pecu-
liarities of the languages and the chief characteristics of
the material culture, together with certain fundamental
beliefs and customs, before proceeding to an account of
some of the typical Indian tribes.

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THE RED MEN DISCOVER THE NEW WORLD
REFERENCES

Brinton, Danie, G. The American race. New York,
18gI.

Homes, Wituram H. On tthe race history and facial
characteristics of the aboriginal Americans. Smith-
sonian Inst. Ann. Rep., 1919, pp. 427-432. Wash-
ington, 1921.

Hrouréxa, Ates. The genesis of the American Indian.
Proc. 1gth Cong. Americanists, 1915, pp. 5$59-568.
Washington, 1917.

— The origin and antiquity of the American Indian.
Smithsonian Inst. Ann. Rep. 1923, pp. 481-494.

Washington, 1925.

—— The peopling of the earth. Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc.
Vol. 65, pp. 150-156, 1926.

Mason, Oris T. Migration and the food quest: a study
in the peopling of America. Smithsonian Inst. Ann.
Rep. 1894, pp. 523-539. Washington, 1896.

Mooney, James. The aboriginal population of America
north of Mexico. Smithsonian Misc. Collect. Vol. 80,
No. 7. Washington, 1928.

CHAPTER II

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

In a population of about a million people speaking more
than two hundred distinct languages it was necessary to
have some means of communication other than words.
It is not surprising, therefore, that sign languages were
gradually evolved by means of which it became possible
for members of different tribes, notably among the Plains
Indians, to converse with surprising ease. This was
partly due to the innate dramatic instinct of the Indians
and their customary use of effective gestures even in ordi-
nary speech. While many of the signs which constituted
such wordless languages crystallized into convenient
symbols, still more were devised at need as a sort of panto-
mime by which a narrative was acted out instead of
spoken.

Certain individuals were, of course, more expert than
others in the use and interpretation of signs. Their ser-
vices were always in demand on those rare occasions
when a tribe might be visited by “foreign” Indians and
this occasionally resulted in a very roundabout method
of communication, as is well illustrated in Ivan Petroff’s

ccount of a “Sign Dialogue Between Alaskan Indians”

In the month of September, 1866, there arrived on the Lower Kinnik
River, a stream emptying its waters into Cook’s Inlet, two Indians
from a distant region, who did not speak the Kenaitze language. The
people of the settlement at which the strangers made their first ap-
pearance were at a loss to understand the visitors. At last a chief of
great age, bearing the name of Chatidoolts (mentioned by Vancouver

as a youth), was found to be able to interpret some of the signs made
by the strangers, and after a little practice he entered into conversa-

[10]

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

tion with them in a rather roundabout way, being himself blind. He
informed me that it was the second or third time within his recollection
that strangers like those then present had come to Kinnik from the
northeast, but that in his youth he had frequently “talked with his
hands” to visitors from the west and east. He also told me that he
had acquired this art from his father, who, as the old man expressed
himself, had “seen every country, and spoken to all the tribes of the
earth.” The conversation was carried on with the help of the old
man’s sons, who described to their blind parent the gestures of the
strangers, and were instructed in turn by him with what gestures to
reply.

The two Indians wore the pointed hunting shirt of tanned moose-
skin, ornamented with beads and fringes, which is still common to the
Kutchin tribes. They were not tattooed, but their ears and noses
were encumbered with pendants of dentalium and a small red glass
bead. Their feet were clothed in moccasins. One of them had a rifle
of English manufacture, and his companion carried two huge knives,
one of them of copper evidently of native manufacture.

Kenaitze—Left hand raised to height of eye, palm outward, moved
several times from right to left rapidly; fingers extended and closed;
pointing to strangers with left hand. Right hand describes a curve
from north to east—Which of the northeastern tribes is yours ?

Tennanah.—Right hand, hollowed, lifted to mouth, then extended
and describing waving line gradually descending from right to left.
Left hand describing mountainous outline, apparently one peak rising
above the other, said by Chatidoolts to mean—Tenan-tnu-kohtana,
Mountatn-river-men.

Kenaitze-—Left hand raised to height of eye, palm outward, moved
from right to left, fingers extended. Left index finger describes
curve from east to west. Outline of mountain and river as in pre-
ceding sign—How many days from Mountain-river?

Tennanah.—Right hand raised toward sky, index finger and thumb
forming first crescent and then ring. This repeated three times—
Moon, new and full three times. Continuing his narrative:

Right hand raised, palm to front, index finger raised and lowered at
regular intervals—Wa/ked.

Both hands imitating paddling of canoe, alternately right and left
—Traveled three months on foot and by cance.

Both arms crossed over breast, simulating shivering—Cold, winter.
Right index finger pointing toward speaker—J. Left hand pointing
to the west—Traveled westward.

Right hand lifted cup-shaped to mouth—Water. Right hand de-
scribing waving line from right to left gradually descending, pointing
to the west—River running westward.

[11]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Right hand gradually pushed forward, palm upward from height
of breast. Left hand shading eyes; looking at great distance—
Very wide.

Left and right hands out together in shape of sloping shelter—
Lodge, camp.

Both hands lifted, height of eye, palm inward, fingers spread—Many
times.

Both hands closed, palm outward, height of hips—Surprised.

Index finger pointing from eye forward—See.

Right hand held up, height of shoulder, three fingers extended,
left hand pointing to me—Three white men.

Left hand upholding one finger, right pointing to me—One white man.

Right hand held horizontally, palm downward, about four feet from
ground—Small.

Forming rings before eyes with index finger and thumb—Eye-glasses.

Right hand clinched, palm upward, in front of chest, thumb point-
ing inward—Gazve one.

Forming cup with right hand, simulating drinking—Drink.

Right hand grasping chest repeatedly, fingers curved and spread—
Strong.

Both hands pressed to temple and head moved from side to side—
Drunk, headache.

By means of such simple but expressive pantomime,
described to the blind interpreter and recounted in detail
in Petroff’s account, the traveler managed to relate a
narrative which may be freely rendered in words as
follows:

For three months I journeyed westward from the Mountain-river
country, on foot and by canoe, through the cold of winter, until I
reached a great river flowing westward. There to my surprise, I
found the camp of three white men. One of these, a small man wearing
eyeglasses, gave me a drink of strong liquor which made me drunk.
Another, a Russian, had shot a moose. For two days I stayed with
them, feasting gratefully on the good moose meat. Then we parted
company, the three white men going westward and I eastward, on
snow shoes over the deep snow, in the bitter cold. Cutting down a
birch tree I peeled the bark and fashioned a canoe in which I poled
upstream for one month, until I came to the high mountains where I
camped for a month on the shore of a great lake. An old man lived
there, with two women. One day a great tree fell on the head of the
old man and killed him. Then the women built a lodge, cut off their

[12]

PLATE 6

Ancient Pueblo water jars, New Mexico. In National Museum

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

hair, blackened their faces, and began to weep and mourn. I shot a
moose and gave part of it to the women, who received it gratefully.
This man with me came to me in a canoe from the northeast. Together

we paddled to this place.

Anyone who has tried to make himself understood in a
foreign land without the aid of words will appreciate the
value of this wordless Indian Esperanto.

Sometimes, of course, an Indian might acquire the
language of a tribe other than his own, particularly if
he was made a captive and “adopted” by the foreigners.
But when the white men came to the Indians’ land they
found the native languages puzzling in the extreme and as
difficult to master as the higher mathematics. Moreover,
Indian tongues differ from one another almost as much
as they do from ours and to us they are no less strange
than are the many dialects of China. Yet from these
sometimes harsh and apparently meaningless syllables
linguists have worked out, little by little, through long
and patient study, the vocabularies and grammatical
structure of hundreds of different languages and dialects,
distributed among the more than fifty linguistic families
that are seemingly unrelated to one another.

Despite this diversity however, there are certain char-
acteristics which serve to distinguish the Indian languages
from the languages of other races. In this connection
Dr. Truman Michelson has said:

I do not know of a single feature that may be said to be character-
istic of all American Indian languages. Even so, a combination of
certain features is quite sufficient to determine whether any given
language is an American Indian language or not. It is this which
enables us to say without any hesitation that Chuckchee, Koryak,
and Yukaghir (which are spoken in northeastern Asia) are Americanoid

languages. If they were spoken in America we would call them
American Indian languages.

In order to appreciate better the difficulties of the
pioneer students of the Indian tongues, we must remember
that, before these scholars began their work, our Indians
had no written language. Moreover, a number of inter-

[13]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

tribal jargons had sprung up and spread rapidly among
both the Indians and the first white settlers, increasing
the complexities of the task a hundredfold.

In studying any new language, the two fundamental
elements to consider, aside from its phonetics, are the
lexic, relating to the words themselves; and the gram-
matic, dealing with the manner in rich words are com-
bined or changed in the building up of sentences.

While some Indian words seem melodious to our ear
because the vowel sounds predominate, others contain
many consonant sounds to which we are unaccustomed
and which give them a harsh character. Particularly
frequent are sounds similar to the Scotch ch in loch, and a
number of explosive /’s. Harshness is characteristic of
the languages of the northwest coast; sonorous languages
are found in a large part of the Mississippi basin and in
California.

peculiarly picturesque quality is given to many
words through the Indian custom of naming a thing
from its most striking characteristic. The Chinook may
say, He runs into the water, meaning the mink. The Hupa
may say, They have been laid together, meaning a fire (of
sticks). The Kwakiutl call a steamboat fire on its back
moving on the water. Such descriptive phrases were a
favorite means of providing terms for new objects.

Contrary to the prevalent notion, the vocabularies are
rich and highly inflected. Owing to the wealth of deriva-
tives it is difficult to estimate the number of words in any
Indian language; but it is certain that in every one there
are at least two thousand stem words, and, when deriva-
tives are counted, many thousands of words as that
term is defined in English dictionaries.

There is considerable variety in grammatical structure,
but as already pointed out, a few common traits seem to be
characteristic of most Indian languages. The complexity
of grammar is often great because of the number of ideas
expressed by grammatical processes alone. The Eskimo,

[14]

PLATE 7

aM
Pe

—-
! Ih} Wins ,

json a

Western Indians communicating by the sign language
8 DY g guag

oe, The Logick Primer, ds

PLATE 8

a | , [ ghettres soe

| . , A
eee = FP le eS
= Logick yi rimer. = :

; S24 oka . eS renee face et
a A Eke - LD the INDIANS ‘in, tho, brow. Bes!

jo
aaa ledge at the Rule cf Keatea ; ; oy
“S 4nd-to know how to. male et
Oe ie thereoi. are Bye
Ke Efpecially for che fudidien of ae
feeh. as aré™ Teachers > ae {

; = * among thes. 7“)
& Compofed by 7-F. forthe
se sufe of the. Prayizg I roast

he ufe of this Iron Key ts to Be
cpen the rich Treafury 7of rt
g: the holy Scvipturcs. Sees
; Us C4. ee fabsalty. ta thes
plage Apes young mal know, %
he and d Heretiqn. ats?

Catlett Sdisbcsrernk ae

Y tea
ey

4 ate eae a
F sweca a.
Freagiibs An F 167bace sy

> The Logick Primer.

be : ¥ e mt
In beginning created : Spirit move
1, Weske kucchifflikayum God 4- Nafhauanit popomfhau wot
beaven earth This affirmative) KpoR waters. aoe) Affirmative Fe
kefuk ka ohke, Ne noowaeX¢che nippekontu, Ne oe
4 general Propofition.

gencval — "Propofstion.

wameyeue pakodcittumooonk, 4 wamey eue pakodticcumanonk,

All firgle- N tions aye

Earth was not formed
2; Ohke mo mattakuhkenauings “Wate Syeumoe wahi:tumoo-
= nothing init. | Pairs th ie Ui
neunkquttinno, & monteagwun afh nequcayitzumooafh nifh wee
Peis.’ . Negative pecial lighten eack atber, th m oacly.

inno, Ne quenoowae hanafiycues quohtoadtumoosfh, & nith webe,

canipamd 2 vapofi' ion.
neefepiskue pakoduttumdéonk, Fenty Notional
D irkne(s ufior deep Neefneechagquottafh wahicrum-
3. Pohkenum woskeche moondi. Pairs, h
Ne Affirmative general Pre- $ me nequtayittumaoath ka
# noowde Wameyeue pakodtic-' two _ parts
pojition, 1 neefe chippiffuath,
: aunboene, :
babes Fit 4, Nafhauanit xe Nae

Pages from John BIOs “Logick Primer” printed in 1672 1n the
Algonquian language of the Massachusetts Indians. Elhot, a

Age

missionary, was the first to translate the Bible into an Indian
language

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

for instance, by combining other elements with the stem
to see, may express, He only orders him to go and see; a
Chimmesyan combination with the verb fo go is, He went
with him upstairs in the dark and came against an obstacle.

Indian languages thus tend to express ideas with much
graphic detail. For example, a Ponca Indian, in saying
that a man killed a rabbit, would have to say: “The man,
he, one, animate, standing, in the nominative case, pur-
posely killed by shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, one,
animate, sitting, in the objective case.” All these shades
of meaning would be included in the form of the verb,
which changes, by inflection and incorporated particles,
to denote the person, number, and case of both its subject
and its object, together with ‘their ‘ ‘gender,” by which is
meant not merely feminine, masculine, and neuter forms,
as in European tongues, but also forms indicating posi-
tion, size, shape, and many other “corroborative details.”
Moreover the form of the verb in the example just given
would have to express whether the killing was done acci-
dentally or purposely, and whether it was by shooting or
some other process, and if by shooting, whether by bow
and arrow, or with a gun.

Indian languages are, therefore, not so well adapted to
generalized statements as to lively description. The
power to form abstract ideas is nevertheless not lacking,
and the development of abstract thoughts would find in
every one of the languages a ready means of expression.
Yet, since the Indian is not given to purely abstract
speculation, such ideas always appear in close connec-
tion with concrete thought. On the other hand, concrete
objects are sometimes indicated by their qualities. For
instance, the Chinook will say, The man’s badness killed
the child’s poverty, meaning that the bad man killed the
poor child. The lack of differentiation between verb and
noun, too, may lead to such a roundabout expression as
it was the man it the coming for so simple a thought as
the man came.

este

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

There is a great difference in the number of dialects
found in the various languages, some comprising only
one dialect, while others embrace many that are mutually
unintelligible. While the Eskimo, for example, have re-
tained their language in all its minor features for cen-
turies, that of the Salish, who are confined to a small
area in the north Pacific region, is split up into more
than thirty dialects. There is, however, no historical proof
that any Indian language has changed as much since the
time of the discovery as the language of England changed
in the three centuries following the Norman conquest.

The North American Indians made up for their lack
of a written language by an ingenious use of certain con-
ventional symbols and pictures which sometimes ap-
proached the nature of hieroglyphics, as in the wampum
belts used by the Iroquois and other Indians of the East.
Stones and other objects were also employed for com-
municating ideas. In regard to such devices, Gregg says
of the Plains tribes:

When traveling, they will also pile heaps of stones upon mounds or
conspicuous points so arranged as to be understood by their passing
comrades; and sometimes they set up the bleached buffalo heads
which are everywhere scattered over those plains, to indicate the

direction of their march and many other facts which may be com-
municated by those simple signs.

A more ingenious but still arbitrary mode of giving
information is practiced by the Abnaki. When they are
in the woods, to say “I am going to the east” a stick
is stuck in the ground pointing to that direction; “Am not
gone far,” another stick is stuck across the former, close
to the ground; ‘“‘Gone far” is the reverse. The number
of days of proposed absence is shown by the number of
sticks across the first. Cutting the bark from a tree on
one, two, or three sides near the butt means “‘Have had
poor, poorer, poorest luck.” Cutting it off all around the
tree means “I am starving.” Smoking a piece of birch
bark and hanging it on a tree means “I am sick.”

[16]

READE 9

Cherokee Alphabet .

Sounds represented by Vowels.

ZS AM biter er shortasamirmveal O,U8 UW tt lan aside usc Mil
—— < in
C,dS aM hile, shirt as eu wel “as 00 1 Fadl. we shitl cts tte pull

COS Cit pigiae.ar short as 0 iu pt “as 1 tt bttt, rasalicd

Consonant Sounds

BS COTW: 8 tit Anylis/t bit “pporoathigy te Aid neil asi hing lst bil UpYstuuncliHhg

40. ° F ’ . . 3, fa 5
(hfe LU1i.41 Gf WOME OS te Anylih. Sables beginning with y evi Shave sanrliaies Wee

SOUT OA RASO a1 sbunetini ds sonuded tate t1 nnuel Silliultey uitltir uilt A ewcigtl li

samelines vir fell

The Cherokee alphabet invented by Sequoya

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

A nearer approach to writing is to be found in the
pictographs or petroglyphs, which were rude etchings or
paintings on rocks, stones, and bark; on various weapons
and implements; and sometimes on clothing. The use of
pictographic signs reached its highest development with
the Kiowa and the Dakota tribes in their so-called calen-
dars, which were painted on deer, antelope, and buffalo
hides, and constituted a chronology of past years. Our
present knowledge of Indian pictographs, however, does
not justify the belief that they record events of great
importance, and there seems to be no basis for the wide-
spread belief that a mine of information respecting the
customs, origin, and migrations of ancient peoples is
locked up in these generally undecipherable symbols.

In “Hiawatha” Longfellow has given us a very useful
key to the meaning of some of the more common picto-

graphic symbols:

From his pouch he took his colors,

Took his paints of different colors,

On the smooth bark of the birch-tree

Painted many shapes and figures,

Wonderful and mystic figures.

And each figure had a meaning,

Each some word or thought suggested.
Gitche Manito the Mighty,

He, the Master of Life, was painted

As an egg, with points projecting

To the four winds of the heavens.

Everywhere is the Great Spirit,

Was the meaning of this symbol.
Mitche Manito the Mighty,

He the dreadful Spirit of Evil,

As a serpent was depicted,

As Kenabeek, the great serpent.

Very crafty, very cunning,

Is the creeping Spirit of Evil,

Was the meaning of this symbol.
Life and Death he drew as circles,

Life was white, but Death was darkened;

Sun and moon and stars he painted,

eral

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Man and beast and fish and reptile,

Forests, mountains, lakes and rivers.
For the earth he drew a straight line,

For the sky a bow above it;

White the space between for daytime,

Filled with little stars for night-time;

On the left a point for sunrise,

On the right a point for sunset,

On the top a point for noontide,

And for rain and cloudy weather

Waving lines descending from it.

Such symbolic drawings were the only writings the
Indians north of Mexico possessed until after the coming
of the white men. With the early missionaries, who
sought to Christianize the natives, the chief motive for
reducing their languages to writing was the desire to trans-
late the Scriptures into the Indian tongues. The most
famous example of this kind is the Rev. John Eliot’s trans-
lation of the Bible, dated 1663, into the language of the
Algonquian Indians of Massachusetts.

Very celebrated, too, was the invention of the “Cherokee
Alphabet” about the year 1821 by Sequoya, an uneducated
Cherokee half-breed. Mooney says of this:

The invention of the alphabet had an immediate and wonderful effect
on Cherokee development. On account of the remarkable adaptation
of the syllabary to the language, it was only necessary to learn the
characters to be able to read at once. No school-houses were built,
and no teachers hired, but the whole nation became an academy for
the study of the system, until in the course of a few months, without
schools or expense of time or money, the Cherokee were able to read
and write in their own language.

Similar astonishing results came from the Cree syllabary
invented about 1841 by Rev. James Evans, a Methodist
missionary. It is said that an Indian of average intelli-
gence can learn the whole in a day, and within less than a
week can read fluently any book written on this plan.

At the time of the discovery, however, the Indians of
the section we are considering, after being in possession of
the land for thousands of years were still without a native

[18]

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

alphabet. Traditions were handed down from generation
to generation by word of mouth alone. That being the
case, it is little wonder that their civilization had not
progressed beyond the stage characteristic of the so-called
“Stone Age.”

To say that a race existed in the Stone Age, however,
is to assert merely that such a people had not yet learned
the art of smelting and casting metals, which was a com-
paratively recent discovery in the history of the human
race and seems to have had little relation to its progress
in other and far more important matters. Accordingly
we find almost as much difference between two represen-
tative Indian tribes, such as the Kwakiutl of the North-
west coast and the Zufi of the Southwest, as one might
observe between the Norman conquerors of England and
the present inhabitants of France, were they separated
from each other by fifteen degrees of latitude instead of
some eight centuries of time.

But although so diverse in manners and customs, the
tribes north of Mexico were on much the same plane as
regards material culture. Their raw materials and what
they chose to fashion from them might differ, but the
instruments and processes they employed were funda-
mentally the same.

Stone was the substance from which the Indians made
most of their implements. Of the processes employed
Wissler says:

In the main, the stone industry of every social group comprises the
following different methods: chipping, or flaking; abrading or pecking;
grinding and polishing; sawing and drilling.

The process used is dependent upon the materials. Thus any stone
like flint, which has the property of conchoidal fracture, is flaked.
While the precise manipulations seem to differ according to locality,
the essential procedure is everywhere the same. A pebble is first
brought to a generalized or blank form, by striking with a hammer-
stone. From this the desired implement is worked out, the fine chip-
ping being by hand pressure with an antler or bone blunt-pointed
tool. Holmes, our leading experimental archeologist, has worked out

[19]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

in his laboratory many of the necessary processes, which, in the main,
agree with those observed among living peoples.

For pecking, our best data are from the Nootka of Vancouver Island,
who occasionally resorted to it as late as twenty-five years ago. ...
Parallel grooves were battered in the pebble to be shaped, then the
intervening ridges pecked away and so on. The battering tool was a
long, oval pebble of tough, hard stone. When the approximate shape
of the desired implement had been attained, it was finished by grinding
on suitable stones.

This seems to have been the method employed wherever polished
tools of similar materials have been found. But nephrite, the fine,
green, jade-like stone found on the North Pacific Coast and in Central
America, cannot be worked in this way. It can only be cut and ground.
Again, our best data are from Canada and Alaska. The Eskimo
successfully sawed off pieces of the required shape by the use of thongs
and sand and water; in short, the same principle as is employed in
modern stone cutting. From unfinished pieces in collections and the
fine examples unearthed by Smith, it appears that the final separation
of the block was by fracture produced by wedging.

As to drilling and perforating, our data are less complete. Soft
stones, like slate, were drilled with stone points. By experimental
methods Rau has reconstructed the process of drilling with a hollow
reed and sand, which accounts for the unfinished borings with attached
cores we sometimes find in museums. Again, the Nootka made large
perforations by pecking. First, a pit was formed in the stone to be
perforated, into which a hard pebble was laid and pounded upon
until the hole reached the middle; then the stone was inverted and the
process repeated.

The fine sculptures of the Maya were executed with stone tools. We
can safely assume, therefore, that all the stone work of the New World
belongs strictly to a stone age and was such as could, and in the main
was, accomplished without the use of metal tools.

For grinding and polishing the Indians used any rough
surface, whether of rock, or of dogfish skin, or of some
smooth material coated with sand. Of all shapes and
sizes were these primitive grindstones and rasps, from
small fragments to exposed rock surfaces which are often
found covered with grooves made by the grinding work.

By means of such simple tools, employed with sur-
prising skill, the Americans of the Stone Age fashioned
the bows and arrows, the lances, spears, tomahawks, and
harpoons with which they met their enemies in warfare

[20]

29r19e

PLATE 10

Series showing evolution from rough stone to arrowhead

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THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

or pursued the animals so essential to their existence.
The flesh of fishes, birds, and beasts formed an important
item of the Indian’s daily food; the skins of animals large
and small supplied the material for his clothing, his
tent, and even his boat; their fat was his fuel; their sinews
his thread; their bones, horns, and tusks furnished many
useful tools; their feathers and fur were greatly prized
as ornaments and as symbols of wealth and power. Since
in most cases, an Indian’s resourcefulness and skill as a
hunter were his chief means of livelihood, while his
bravery and cunning in overcoming his foes were his sole
guarantees of safety, it is small wonder that war and
the chase were usually the only activities considered
worthy of a man and most other occupations left to
the women.

In order to supply the material for the necessary im-
plements of peace and war, great quarries of flint and other
rocks were worked, the remains of which are still found in
many parts of the United States. Besides flint and
obsidian, soapstone or steatite was much used, especially
for cooking vessels and for tobacco pipes. Mica was
quarried in many places in Virginia and North Carolina,
and used for mirrors and for ornaments. Turquoise was
extensively mined at Los Cerrillos, near Santa Fe, New
Mexico, and at Turquoise Mountain, Arizona. Silliman
speaks of finding many stone hammers in the mines at
Los Cerrillos. With these rude tools, and without iron
or steel, using fire in place of explosives, the patient
workers of old managed to break down and remove the
incredible masses of rock which form the mounds still to
be seen at the ancient sites.

Although the use of stone was so very extensive, metals
were by no means unknown to the Indians, even before
the coming of the white man. Gold, silver, and copper
were used by many of the more progressive American
tribes before the discovery; but copper was the only metal
extensively used north of Mexico. The smelting of ores

[21]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

was probably imperfectly understood, even by the most
advanced tribes, and was not practiced at all north of
Mexico; and iron, except in meteoric form or in the ore,
was unknown. The mining operations consisted in re-
moving the superficial earth and dééris and in breaking
up the rock with stone sledges, heating it, and then throw-
ing cold water upon it, thus freeing the masses of metal,
some of which were of large size.

These metals—copper, gold, silver, and meteoric iron—
were worked into shape mainly by cold-hammering and
grinding, but heat was sometimes used in the hammering
process and in annealing. It can hardly be doubted that
copper, gold, and silver were sometimes melted and that
bits of native copper were freed from the matrix of rock
by this means. Casting processes, however, seem to have
been totally unknown. It is a remarkable fact that up
to the present time no prehistoric crucible, mold, pattern,
or metal-working tool of any kind whatsoever has been
identified.

The implements used in cultivating the ground are de-
scribed as “wooden howes” and “spades made of hard
wood.” In some localities, shells, in others shoulder-
blades of large animals were used as hoes. However,
certain stone implements have been found in vast num-
bers which are believed to have been used in breaking
the soil. Of these the most characteristic are the hoes
and spades of the middle Mississippi valley. It was a
general custom to burn over the ground before planting
in order to free it from weeds and rubbish. In the forest
regions patches were cleared by first girdling the trees,
thus causing them to die, and afterwards burning them
down.

This, however, was a very wasteful process to forest
dwellers who were acquainted with the many uses to
which the bark of living trees might be put. Bark could
be wrought into yarn, twine, rope, wallets, baskets, mats,
and canoes, as well as cooking pots for hot stones, dishes

[22]

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

for serving, vessels for storing, and many other utensils
connected with the preparation and serving of food.
Among some tribes, indeed, bark was itself eaten during
the spring, the season of greatest need. Clothing was
made from bark; houses were roofed and sometimes
wholly covered with it; cradles and coffins were fashioned
of it. The hunter made all sorts of apparatus from bark,
even his bow string. The fisher wrought implements
out of it and poisoned fishes with its juices, which were
also used for medicines and dyes. The beginnings of
writing in some localities were favored by bark, and car-
tography, winter counts, medical formulas, and tribal
history were inscribed thereon. Finally it comes into the
service of ceremony and religion. Masks and dance
regalia such as Boas and others found among the Kwakiutl
illustrate how obligingly bark lends itself to such occa-
sions. There were also rites connected with gathering
and working bark.

Other materials besides bark, such as feathers, goat’s
hair, and skins, were woven into blankets and garments,
while cotton cloth was used by the cotton-growing tribes
of the Southwest. The arts of basketry and pottery were
also well known and extensively practiced. Beadwork
was especially characteristic, as was also shellwork, both
beads and shells being much prized for ornamentation.
Porcupine quills, often dyed with various brilliant tints,
were used by many tribes as embroidery on leather gar-
ments. In the eastern part of North America it was
common for a tribe to have its peculiar cut and decoration
of the moccasin, so that a man’s tribe was proclaimed
by his footgear.

Paint—white, black, blue, and red—was used on the
face, hair, and body, often with symbolic meanings, as:
red for war; black for mourning; white or blue with reli-
gious significance; or a combination of two or more colors
forming various symbolic patterns; or merely for adorn-
ment. The war shirt was frequently painted to repre-

(23)]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

sent the wearer’s prayer, having a design on the back for
protection and one on the breast for victory. The shirt
was occasionally decorated with a fringe of human hair,
locks being generally contributed by female relatives.

The most imposing article of the warrior’s regalia was
the bonnet with its crown of golden-eagle feathers. Song
and ceremony accompanied the making of a war bonnet
by warriors of the tribe, and a war honor was recounted
upon each feather before it was placed in position. A
bonnet could not be made without the consent of the
warriors, each of whom contributed his own plumes of
honor; so that the head-dress of a chief might serve as a
record of tribal valor as well as a personal distinction.

As the Indians had not progressed in the arts of civiliza-
tion to the point of domesticating animals for food, they
had to rely for their supply of meats on their skill and good
fortune in hunting and fishing. No purely hunter stage,
however, can be found, if it ever existed, for while the
capture of animals and fish devolved on the men and the
preparation of food on the women, the latter added to the
diet such vegetables and grains as could be most easily
supplied. These were obtained by the gathering of self-
sown fruits, nuts, seeds, and roots, or the raising of cereal
products, consisting chiefly of maize. Besides this grain,
better known to modern Americans as corn, most of the
tribes cultivated beans, squashes, and pumpkins. Wild
rice was also cultivated in the region of the Great Lakes,
where a sort of semi-agriculture was practiced. But no
purely agricultural stage existed, and no domestication
of animals, except in the case of the turkey and the dog,
is found among the Indians north of Mexico. The ab-
sence of cows, with the consequent lack of milk for grow-
ing children, resulted in markedly limiting the increase of
the population.

Contrary to popular belief, the Indians preferred
cooked food. Even the Eskimo ate raw meat only when
they had no fuel, or as a side dish. All the edible portions

[ 24 ]

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Tusayan, a Pueblo area which includes the Hopi

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

of an animal were put to use, and in many cases both
animal and vegetable substances that were stale to the
point of putrefaction were preferred. Thus salmon eggs
were stored in sand by the Alaskans, and the Hurons
soaked corn in water until it became putrid, when soup
was made of it.

The Pueblo Indians were skillful cooks, and most
Indian tribes knew how to prepare savory and nourishing
dishes, some of which have been adopted by civilized
peoples, such as hominy, samp, succotash, etc. The
methods of cooking were broiling, roasting, and “stone
boiling” by means of hot stones dropped into a pot of
water.

Infusions of various herbs were used by the Indians as
medicine, and they had several fermented drinks such as
cider from Manzanita berries, and a beverage made from
cactus fruit. ‘Carolina tea,” or the “black drink,” so
named by British traders from its color, was a decoction
made by parching and then boiling leaves of the J/ex
vomitoria. It was employed by the tribes of the Gulf
States and adjacent region for ceremonial purification.
Among the Creeks the liquid was prepared and drunk
before councils, in order, as they believed, to invigorate
the mind and body and prepare for thought and debate.
It was also used in the great “busk” or annual green-corn
thanksgiving. The action of the drink in strong infusion
is purgative, vomitive, and diuretic. It was long thought
that this was the only effect, but recent investigation
has shown that the plant contains caffeine, the leaves
yielding a beverage with stimulating qualities like tea and
coffee.

The cultivation and use of tobacco is one of the most
important contributions to the world from the American
Indians. The word “‘tobacco” is of Indian origin and has
been introduced, with slight variations, into most foreign
languages. Tobacco was cultivated in most tribes by the
men alone, and was usually smoked by them only, al-

[25]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

though among some of the Carolina tribes the women
are said to have been more inveterate smokers than the
men. To the Indian the tobacco plant had a sacred
character; it was almost invariably used on solemn occa-
sions, accompanied by suitable invocations to their gods.
It was also used to aid in disease or distress, to ward off
danger, to bring good fortune, to generally assist one in
need, and to allay fear.

Tobacco, after the whites had become accustomed to
its use, was one of the few tastes that they and the red
men had in common, many of the practices of the natives
being abhorrent to civilized men. One custom regarded
as particularly obnoxious was the characteristic Indian in-
stitution of the sweat-bath. Personal cleanliness, as
understood by civilized peoples, seems to have been a
luxury almost unknown to the American Indians, although
among some of the tribes a daily bath was taken as a
religious rite. The sweat-bath, however, was probably
in use in every tribe north of Mexico, and the sweat-lodge
is to this day common in most Indian villages and camps.

The type of the ordinary sweat-house, except among
certain California tribes, seems to have been nearly
everywhere the same. Willow rods or other pliant stems
were stuck into the ground and bent and fastened with
withes into a hemispherical or oblong framework, which
generally was large enough to accommodate several per-
sons. A hole was dug conveniently near the door, into
which stones, usually heated outside, were dropped by
means of forked sticks. These were sprinkled with water
to generate steam. A temporary covering of blankets or
skins made the inclosure tight. This was the sweat-house
in its simplest form. In southern California, the heat of
the sweat-house was produced by a wood fire, thus add-
ing the choking fumes of the smoke to the discomfort of
the victim. After a half hour or more spent in the steam-
ing air of the sweat-house, the bather plunged into the
cold water of a stream, when one was near, and thus the

[ 26 ]

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

function was ended. Sweating was also important in
medical practice for the cure of disease.

While there is every reason to-believe that the Indian
race was a comparatively healthy one, nevertheless they
must have been subject to many of the same diseases that
are found among civilized peoples. Although the exact
nature of their special ills is not known, it is certain that
they were sufficiently numerous to account for the ex-
istence of a powerful class of professed healers, who were
honored, feared, and usually well paid. These healers,
some of whom were women, were believed to possess
supernatural powers that enabled them to recognize and
cure disease; and there were others who, without the aid
of such supernatural gifts, were better acquainted with
actual remedies than most men.

As is common among primitive people, the Indian
shamans professing magical powers soon became recog-
nized as priests. “They were regarded as having a special
and intimate knowledge of natural forces and the potent
but unseen agencies of the spiritual realm that made up
the religious aspect of Indian life. The world of the savage
is indeed of small extent, being limited to the few hun-
dreds of miles within which his associations are all con-
fined. Through this region travel for him the sun, moon,
and stars, winds, meteors, and the aurora of the north.
The Iroquois tribes believed that these were free, inde-
pendent man-beings; and that trees and plants, hills,
mountains, and whatsoever is immovably attached to
earth, though once free, had suffered enchantment
through powerful orenda, or magic powers, and so lost
their former freedom.

Most revelations regarded by the Indians as coming
from the supernatural powers were received in dreams or
visions. Through them were bestowed on man magical
abilities and the capacity to foresee future events, to con-
trol disease and to become able to fill the office of priest
or of leader. It was the common belief of the Indians

(a7!

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

that these dreams or visions must be sought through the
observance of some rite involving personal privation.
In some tribes this initiation took place during the fast
which occurred at puberty, and the thing seen at that
time became the medium of supernatural help and knowl-
edge. It was a man’s most sacred object. It had no
reference to his kindred, but was strictly personal in its
efficacy, and he painted it on his person or his belongings
as a prayer for assistance—a call for help in directing his
actions. Any dream of ordinary sleep in which this ob-
ject appeared had meaning for him and its suggestions
were heeded.

The Indians, like other peoples, thought to approach
the supernatural powers by prayer. Some prayers were
ritualistic and of the nature of incantations. Not only
spoken words but suitably placed symbolic objects were
used in the act of praying. Such supplicatory objects
are the feathered prayer sticks of the Pueblo Indians and
others, which may be regarded as a symbolic substitute
for human sacrifice. Prayer sticks, nearly always painted
green or blue, are frequently found with the dead in
ancient Pueblo cemeteries, and great deposits of them
occur in ceremonial caves in southern Arizona.

The ritualistic prayers are very numerous and form
considerable parts of the ceremonial dances which occupy
so conspicuous a part in Indian life. They are addressed
to different supernatural personages, for the Indians are
by no means monotheistic in their religious beliefs. Yet
there is a tendency to ascribe preeminent powers to some
single deity. Thus the Pawnee invoke the father of
powers for help to properly conduct their ceremony; the
Arapahoe invoke the ‘““Man-Above” for this purpose.
While material benefits are naturally the object of prayer
in by far the majority of cases, prayers for an abstract
blessing and for ideal objects are not by any means
absent. The Indians pray not only to those super-
natural powers which are considered the protectors of

[28 ]

PLATE 13

Decorated pottery from ancient Indian mounds in Arkansas. In the
National Museum

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

man—like the personal guardians or the powers of nature
_ —but also to the hostile powers that must be appeased.

Closely associated with prayer is sacrifice. By far the
greater number of sacrifices were offered by individuals,
either male or female, as when bits of food were thrown
into the fire during meals, or articles were laid upon
sacred rocks or upon shrines. The offering of first-fruits
among the Natchez was made by each father of a family;
and on certain occasions, when a live stag was sacrificed by
the Iroquois, it was the oldest man of the hut or village
that gave the death-blow. Among the Muskhogean
tribes a special sacrifice was offered by the war leader and
his religious assistant before starting out upon an ex-
pedition, and in general it may be said that the leaders
of war or hunting parties took the lead also in sacrifices
and all other observances having in view the success of
the enterprise. |

Unless the customary immolation of a number of cap-
tives at the end of a war expedition may be considered
sacrificial, human sacrifices do not seem to have been
particularly common north of Mexico, though there are a
number of instances. Perhaps the best known is that
of the sacrifice of a female captive to the morning star by
the Skidi Pawnee. In 1700 when Iberville was among
the Taensa villages, their temple was struck by a thunder-
bolt and burned, upon which five women threw their in-
fants into the flames as a sacrifice to the offended deity,
and more would have done so had not the French
interposed. On another occasion the Iroquois drove
arrows into the body of a new-born babe, ground up its
bones, and swallowed a little of the resultant powder
before starting out to war; but this may have been a
war-medicine rather than a true sacrifice.

Beliefs relating to the soul’s existence after death are
very uniform among primitive peoples, all over the world.
The Indians believed that the souls live in the land of
the dead in the form that they had in life, and continue

[ 29 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

their former occupations. Often the physical conditions
in the land of the dead of which detailed descriptions are
found among almost all American tribes, are the reverse
of those in our world: when it is night here, it is day
there; when it is summer here, it is winter there. The
Eskimo tribes believe in several worlds of this kind.
Those who suffer violent deaths go to the sky, while
those who die of sickness go to another world. The
Indians of Vancouver Island believe that the villages of
the dead are near their own villages, but invisible; but the
most common notion is that of the world of ghosts lying
in the distant West beyond a river which must be crossed
by canoe. This notion is found on the western plateaus
and on the Plains. Visits to that world by people who
have been in a trance are one of the common elements
of American folklore. They have been reported from al-
most all over the continent.

Among the Siksika every tent contains an altar—a
small excavation in the earth—where sweet gum is burned
daily. Prehistoric fire-altars, consisting of blocks of fire-
hardened clay or, in rare cases, boxes of stone, form the
essential characteristic of many mounds. In religious
rites still regularly held by the Pueblo Indians temporary
altars are used. A characteristic feature of some of these
is the dry-painting traced on sand with powdered minerals
or earths of different colors. The construction of the
altar, the rites performed before it, and its destruction
form interesting features of Hopi ceremonies and date
back to ancient times.

An instrument important in many ceremonies in the
Southwest was the bullroarer. This was a device for
producing rhythmic sound, and consisted of a narrow
slat of wood suspended by a cord which was often attached
to a wooden handle. The bullroarer, which is often
painted with symbolic designs, is whirled rapidly with a
uniform motion about the head, and the pulsation of the
air against the slat gives a characteristic whizzing or

[30]

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

roaring sound. The Hopi, who regard the bullroarer as a
prayer-stick of the thunder and its whizzing noise as
representing the wind that accompanies thunderstorms,
make the tablet portion from a piece of lightning-riven
wood and measure the length of the string from the
heart to the tips of the fingers of the outstretched right
hand. Apache, Hopi, and Zufi bullroarers bear lightning
symbols and in the semi-arid region the implement is
used to invoke clouds, lightning, and rain, and to warn
the uninitiated that rites are being performed. In the
humid area it is used to implore the wind to bring fair
weather.

Another important ceremonial instrument was the
calumet, sometimes called “‘peace-pipe” and “‘war-pipe,”
found among the tribes of the Plains and the Mississippi
Valley. It consisted of either one or two slender, highly
symbolic shafts of reed or wood, varying in length from
eighteen inches to two feet, the one sometimes represent-
ing the male, the other the female shaft. These were
usually perforated for a pathway for the breath or spirit,
painted with diverse symbolic colors, and adorned with
various symbolic objects, and sometimes terminated in a
pipe bowl to contain tobacco for making a sacred offering
of its benevolent smoke to the gods.

In modern usage, the term “calumet”’ usually includes
the pipe. Its coloring and degree of adornment varied
somewhat from tribe to tribe and were largely governed
by the occasion for which the calumet was used. From
the meager descriptions of the calumet and its uses it
would seem that it has a ceremonially symbolic history
independent of that of the pipe; and that when the pipe
became an altar, by its employment for burning sacrificial
tobacco to the gods, convenience and convention united
the already highly symbolic calumet shafts and the
sacrificial tobacco altar, the pipe-bowl; hence it became
one of the most profoundly sacred objects known to the
Indians of northern America.

eae

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

The calumet was employed by ambassadors and travel-
ers as a passport; it was used in ceremonies designed to
conciliate foreign and hostile nations and to conclude
lasting peace; to ratify the alliance of friendly tribes; to
secure favorable weather for journeys; to bring needed
rain; and to attest contracts and treaties which could not
be violated without incurring the wrath of the gods. The
use of the calumet was inculcated by religious precept and
example. A chant and a dance have become known as
the chant and the dance of the calumet; together they
were employed as an invocation to one or more of the
gods. By naming in the chant the souls of those against
whom war must be waged, such persons were doomed to
die at the hands of the person so naming them.

The cross, which in some of its familiar forms is known
as the swastika, was in common use all over America
in pre-Columbian times. North of the Rio Grande it
assumed many forms, some merely ornamental or acci-
dental, but some having deep significance. Primitive
man adjusts himself to his environment, real and im-
aginary, by keeping in mind the cardinal points as he
understands them. When the Indian considers the world
about him he thinks usually of the four directions, and
when he communicates with the mysterious beings and
powers with which his imagination peoples it—the rulers
of the winds and rains—he turns his face to the four
directions in stipulated order and addresses to them his
appeals and his offerings. Thus his worship, his cere-
monies, his games, and even his more ordinary occupa-
tions in many cases are arranged to conform to the cardinal
points, and the various symbolic representations associ-
ated with them assume the form of the cross. This was
and is true of many peoples and is well illustrated in the
wonderful altar paintings of the tribes of the arid region.
Such crosses, although an essential part of symbolism and
religious ceremony, exist only for the purposes of the
occasion and are brushed away when the ceremony is

F321

PLATE 14

‘

iis
Plauen ®

Cane baskets of the Chetimacha Indians, Louisiana.
In the National Museum

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

ended, but nevertheless they pass into permanent form
as decorations of ceremonial objects—pottery, basketry,
and costumes—retaining their significance indefinitely.

In the belief of the Indians, all things are animate and
incarnate—men, beasts, lands, waters, rocks, plants,
trees, stars, winds, clouds, and night—and all possess
volition and immortal life; thus it is that rocks, trees,
roots, “‘stocks and stones,” bones, the limbs and parts of
the body, in short all natural objects, are verily the living
tombs of diverse beings and spirits. Of such is the king-
dom of the fetish, for even the least of these may be chosen.
Moreover, a fetish is an object which may also represent a
vision, a dream, a thought, or an action.

A fetish is acquired by a person, a family, or a people
for the purpose of promoting welfare. In return, the
fetish requires from its owner worship in the form of
prayer, sacrifice, feats, and protection, and from its
votaries it receives ill or good treatment in accordance
with the character of its behavior toward them. Some
fetishes are regarded as more efficacious than others. The
fetish or amulet that loses its repute as a promoter of
welfare gradually becomes useless and may degenerate
into a mere ornament. Then other fetishes are acquired,
to be subjected to the same severe test of efficiency in pro-
moting the well-being of their possessors.

Mooney says, in describing the fetish or charm, that it
may be “a bone, a feather, a carved or painted stick, a
stone arrowhead, a curious fossil or concretion, a tuft of
hair, a necklace of red berries, the stuffed skin of a lizard,
the dried hand of an enemy, a small bag of pounded char-
coal mixed with human blood—anything, in fact, which
the owner’s medicine dream or imagination might suggest,
no matter how uncouth or unaccountable, provided it be
easily portable and attachable.” The fetish might be the
inspiration of a dream or the gift of a medicine-man, or
even a trophy taken from a slain enemy, or a bird, animal,
or reptile; but however insignificant in itself, it had

Lae

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

always, in the owner’s mind at least, some symbolic con-
nection with occult power. It might be fastened to the
scalp-lock as a pendant, attached to some part of the
dress, hung from the bridle bit, concealed between the
covers of a shield, or guarded in a special repository in
the dwelling. Mothers sometimes tied the fetish to the
child’s cradle.

Thus in religion, no less than in material culture, the
Indians are seen to be in the early formative stages. In
no sense masters of their environment, they were like
children groping for help from their great mother, Nature.
Yet one cannot but be impressed by the important part
which the supernatural played in their lives. No occa-
sion was too trivial, no need too pressing, to be referred
to the appropriate deity or guardian spirit for sanction.
In their simple trust in such protection they put to shame
many a professed believer in the tenets of a higher faith.

Thus far we have endeavored to sketch only those
aspects of life which were common to many of the abo-
rigines of North America. Fundamentally akin as they
were, however, they varied among themselves no less
than do the nations of Europe. The Kwakiutl were as
different in every respect from the Hopi as the Scan-
dinavians are from the peoples of Rumania or Greece;
and both Kwakiutl and Hopi were equally distinct from
the Iroquois and the other great families of North America;
while the Eskimo have so many unique characteristics
that they are by some regarded as a distinct race. Most
of these differences were the result of the environing in-
fluences of locality and climate rather than of inherent
racial traits. ‘This fact has given rise to a classification
based on culture rather than on language, it having been
found that the tribes tend to resemble in customs and be-
liefs their neighbors of alien tongues rather than their far-
distant kinsmen.

Wissler recognizes nine culture areas north of Mexico,
each of which exhibits certain characteristic variations in

[34]

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

manners and customs, political organization, and re-
ligious beliefs; these are: (1) the Plains Area, (2) the
Plateau Area, (3) the California Area; (4) the North
Pacific Coast Area, (5) the Eskimo Area, (6) the Macken-
zie Area, (7) the Eastern Woodland Area, (8) the South-
eastern Area, and (g) the Southwestern Area.

While it will not be possible within the limits of this
volume to give an extended account of each of these sep-
arate cultures, some of the representative tribes will be
described in the following chapters.

[35]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
REFERENCES

Boas, Franz. Handbook of American Indian languages.
Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 40, Part 1, 1911; Part 2, 1922.

Crank, JW.(P: ihe {ndian sign language. Philadelphia,
1885.

Girrorp, E. W. ee Papin the Southwest. Univ.
Calif Pub. Amer. Anthrop. Ethnol. Vol. 23, No. 8,
PP; 353-373- aaetkeley, 1928:

HanpBook or AmMEricaN InpIANS Nortu or Mexico.
Edited by Frederick Webb Hodge. In two parts.
Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 30, Part 1, 1907; Part 2, 1gIo.

Houmes, Wituiam H. A quarry workshop of the

flaked-stone instrument makers in the District of

Columbia. Amer. Anthrop. Vol. 3, pp. 1-26, 224-

2205 1890.

Order of development of primal shaping arts. Proc.
AmereAss. Adv. Sci. Vol. .42, pp. 289-3005 iso7
Reprint. Smithsonian Inst. Ann. Rep. Igor, pp.
s01—513. Washington, 1902.

Larirau, J. F. Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains com-
parées aux moeurs des premiers temps. Tomes I-11.
Paris; 1720:

Mattiery, Garrick. Sign language among the North
American Indians compared with that among other
peoples and deaf-mutes. Ist Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol.
Washington, 1881.

—— Pictographs of the North American Indians. 4th
Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. Washington, 1886.

— Picture-writing of the American Indians. roth Ann.
Rep. Bur. Ethnol. Washington, 1893.

Mason, Oris T. Woman’s share in primitive culture.
New York (Appleton), 1894.

—— Aboriginal American basketry: studies in a textile
art without machinery. U. S. Nation. Mus. Ann.
Rep. 1902, pp. 171-548 with pls., text figs. In book

form, 2 vols. London (Heinemann), 1905.

[ 36]

siasuy oy} useMjaq
qno Suruuns purs ayy ‘puvysoy oper st Surmvsp ayy, ‘suvripuy oyvavn Aq Sunuied pus [eruowess y

i
if
ater

THE STONE AGE OF NORTH AMERICA

MicHELson, Truman. Remarks on American Indian
languages: a study in method. J. Washington Acad.
Sci. Yol: 7, pps 2222234, 1917.

Powe tt, Joun W. Introduction to the study of Indian

languages. Smithsonian Inst. Bur. Ethnol. Wash-

ington, 1880.

Indian linguistic “families North of Mexico. 7th
Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Washington, 1891.
WissLer, Crark. The American Indian; an introduction

to the anthropology of the New World. New York
and London (Oxford University Press), 1922.

CHAPTER IH!

IN ARCIIC SNOWSTHE ESKIM®

Or all the North American tribes none achieved a more
perfect adaptation to their environment than the fur-clad
brownies of the Arctic who call themselves Inuit, “people,”
but are known to us by the harsher name Eskimo, “eaters
of raw flesh.”

Long baflled by the severity of the Arctic climate,
only in comparatively recent years have white men
succeeded in invading the homeland of the Eskimo so
insistently as to persuade him to barter his age-old
culture for the incongruous inventions of civilization.
Thus, when Dr. Franz Boas visited the Central Eskimo
some forty years ago, he found them still pursuing the
even tenor of their life, practically untouched by modern
innovations.

Fortunately the report of Boas constitutes a most
scientific, comprehensive, and detailed description of the
life of the primitive Eskimo. Although the researches of
later explorers have amplified and modified it to a certain
extent, and have contributed additional details concern-
ing the manners and customs of other tribes in other
localities, no one is now able to reconstruct for us so
perfect a picture of the fast-disappearing Eskimo of the
Stone Age.

Mr. Diamond Jenness, of the National Museum of
Canada, found much the same conditions as described
by Boas existing among the Eskimo even as late as 1918;
and Mr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson a few years earlier, in

[ 38 ]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

describing an Eskimo tribe hitherto unvisited by any
white man, declared that it was exactly as if he had
stepped back into the Stone Age. There has been a
great change, however, in the short space of little more
than a decade. According to Mr. Jenness in a letter of
tecent date:

If you drop in now to Cumberland Sound, you will find the Eskimos
living not in snow huts, but in twill tents throughout the winter, using
European whale boats instead of skin boats, rifles, shot guns, sewing
machines, gramophones, etc., writing letters to each other in the Cree
syllabary introduced by missionaries, holding regular Sunday services,
etc., etc. There are very few caribou on Baffin Island, no hunting of
whales, (except the white whale), walrus are occasionally shot with a
rifle, and, in summer, seals.

Cumberland Sound and Baffin Island were the chief
centers of the extraordinary culture of the Central Eskimo
as portrayed by Boas. Therefore we will journey back-
ward a short half century in time in order to restore the
picture of these people as they then appeared, turning
to the reports of later explorers only when they shed ad-
ditional light on the ancient customs of this fast vanish-
ing race.!

The land of the Eskimo is as different from the every-
day world of our common experience as can well be
imagined. Theirs is a world where winter reigns the
greater part of the year; where for many weeks the sole
light of day is a dim uncertain twilight and the long
nights are brightened only by the cold light of moon and
stars and the fitful streamers of the aurora borealis; a
world where land, sea, and sky seem often to meet and
mingle in an impenetrable veil of snow and mist.

In this white, frozen universe live the tribes of the
Central Eskimo, scattered over the coasts and islands of
the Arctic Ocean, often, indeed, building their snow
villages on the seven-foot-thick flooring of ice which

1 To give vividness to the story, the present tense is often retained in what follows,
as if the picturesque customs of a brief half-century ago, so appropriate to the Eskimo,
still persisted.

[39]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

covers much of the sea itself. Villages, we call them,
these groups of little hillocks, each tiny settlement
separated from its nearest neighbor by many miles of
trackless snow; half buried in drifts, it seems incredible
that such snow mounds can be inhabited by human
beings. Yet not only are they so inhabited; these people
have made a long journey from their inland summer
camp in order to establish themselves here in comfortable
winter quarters.

Trudging along by their heavily laden sleds, each with
its team of dogs, a little band of Eskimo wanderers has
by slow stages reached the shore of a frozen bay or inlet.
This, they have decided, will be a suitable spot for their
winter settlement, for here they will doubtless find under
the ice an abundance of the seals on which their existence
largely depends. Having selected the site, they next set
about the work of constructing their houses out of the
handiest building material available—the fine, dry, com-
pact Arctic snow.

To build a proper snow house—a much more elaborate
affair than the small shelters erected as camps on the
journey—two men must work together. One cuts from
a snow bank huge slabs of snow, each about half as large
as himself; the other places these building blocks in
position, setting them on edge, end to end in a circle,
slanting them and inclining them inward in a gradually
ascending narrowing spiral, until the top row is reached.
The last blocks must be lifted into position by the first
man, from the outside, while the builder, standing inside
on a bench or mound of snow, supports the converging
slabs with his head until they are finally adjusted and the
key block snugly fitted into the last remaining opening
at the top. In this way, without scaffolding or cement,
a circular dome is constructed from ten to twelve feet
high and from twelve to fifteen feet across. This would
be a fairly large room, but seems close quarters for a whole
family—and more often two families—to say nothing

[ 40]

uossurja3g InwyElyyiA “APY Jo Asaqinoy = omosy Aypuay ey y,, Woy ‘asnoy Mous ay} Surpying

oT ALWId

PLATE: 17

SENAY

Eskimo waiting at blowhole for the return of the seal

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

ASS

ZZ,

ie an
: ‘Yy

Fic.

1. Top, snow house exterior; middle, cross-section of interior
showing stretched sealskin lining, lamps, water containers, and thawing
racks; bottom, cross-section of interior and entrance passage

[41]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

of the numerous guests who are sure to be entertained
there with true Eskimo hospitality.

The entrance to the house—a low archway closed with
a fitted slab of snow for a door—is protected by a burrow-
like passage made of a series of snow vaults. The whole
structure is completed by two additional small vaults
that serve as storage rooms, one for spare clothing and
household utensils, the other for food supplies. One
of these storerooms is connected with the main building
by a tiny archway closed with a snow door; the other is
used as a chest and is opened at the top by a removable
block of snow.

Ventilation for the dwelling is secured by a small hole
in the roof. A larger opening is usually left above the
doorway to serve as a window. This is protected by a
thin membrane made from seal intestines. In the cen-
ter of the membrane there is a lookout hole in which is
set a sheet of transparent fresh-water 1ce—an excellent
substitute for glass. In order to make the snow house
more livable, it should have a lining of skins. These are
suspended from the roof in such a way as to leave an
air chamber which prevents the snow dome from being
melted by the heat of the lamps. The only furniture is
of the built-in variety and consists of three banks or
platforms of snow piled against the sloping walls, one
at the back serving as a bed, the others on either side
forming a combined bench and work table.

The bed is completed by a wooden framework made by
fastening a pole along the edge of the snow platform and
laying across it pieces of wood, oars, paddles, tent poles,
etc. Over this rude bedstead is spread a soft springy
mattress of dried shrubs and grasses. The whole is
covered with numerous heavy deerskins, thus forming a
very comfortable bed which during the daytime serves
as a divan for the family and their guests.

On each of the side benches, in front of the bed plat-
form, a fireplace is arranged—probably the smallest fire-

[42]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

place in the world—being simply a stone lamp, over
which is placed a framework to support the cooking
pots and such articles of clothing as it may be necessary
to dry. The house is now ready for its occupants, who
have not had to wait for it long, as it takes two competent
men only two or three hours to build the entire structure.

Having taken possession of her home, the Eskimo
housewife may now light her lamp and begin house-
keeping. But to strike a light in the Stone Age was an
art in itself, requiring both ingenuity and patience. This
toilsome process may be avoided if the household happens
to possess the priceless treasure of a box of matches, those
magic fire-sticks which may occasionally be obtained from
a white trapper or trader if the family is wealthy enough
to indulge in such a luxury; or it may be that the man
of the house has with him two lumps of iron pyrites which,
when struck together give out sparks, as flint on steel—
a comparatively easy device for producing fire. In the
absence of such conveniences, the housewife must depend
on the age-old method of making fire by the friction of
wood on wood. The apparatus she must use is of Eskimo
invention and consists of a slender rod or drill, the upper
end of which is fitted into a bone or ivory socket held
between the teeth of the operator, thus leaving the hands
free to revolve the shaft by means of a cord and bow or
a simple strap. The lower end of the rod is in this way
made to revolve on a cross-piece or “hearth” of wood
with such speed that the “wood meal’ produced by the
friction is heated to the glowing point. Some dry tinder,
preferably willow catkins, must now be placed upon the
tiny glowing embers and blown upon until it bursts into
flame. The flame being transferred to a piece of punk
or slow match made of soft bark or the matted roots of
moss soaked in oil, the wick of the lamp may at last be
lighted.

The lamp of the Eskimo is a unique contribution to
North American culture, for no other native tribe ever

[ 43 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

invented any device for producing light and heat except a
heap of logs for a fire or a pitch-smeared stick for a
torch. An Eskimo lamp is very primitive, being merely
a shallow dish made usually of a certain kind of soft
soapstone hollowed out, sometimes into a number of
separate chambers, and filled with blubber which feeds a
wick of dried moss.

i ys Without these fragile
a) 7» vessels, howe
ic — ag and their carefully

a tended flames, the
Eskimo as a people

must long ago have

Fic. 2. Soapstone lamp, two feet across, vanished from the
weighing thirty pounds. From Point North, where fuel
Barrow Eskimo other than the pre-

cious blubber of
whale, walrus, and seal, or fat of the polar bear and
caribou, is practically unobtainable.

If two families occupy the same house, each woman
has her own fireplace near which she sits on her snow
bench, Turkish fashion, while engaged in her traditional
duties of cooking and sewing. Since meat for the cooking
pot and material for clothing, as well as oil for the lamp,
must all be obtained during these winter months from
the seal—the little rough seal, not the fur seal of com-
merce—it is not surprising that the pursuit of this animal
should be the chief object of the Eskimo’s existence at
this time of the year.

As soon as the ice begins to form in the autumn, the seals
gnaw or scratch small holes in it to which they come when
It is necessary for them to “blow” and to refill their
lungs with air. These breathing holes become covered
over with snow in winter and are therefore very hard to
detect. The Eskimo and their dogs, however, seem to
possess a special sense which enables them to track down
the seals even through several feet of snow and ice.

[ 44 |

uinasnyyy [PUOTIVAY 9Y} Ul dno ‘punog yyWuUrg uo Aqaed Sul[vas OWLYSY uy

8st ALV Id

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

In order to make the most of the short twilight of an
Arctic winter day, an Eskimo household must arise long
before daybreak. While the woman is busy preparing break-
fast, the man fits up his sledge for hunting. The sledge,
which has perhaps been made of driftwood with a back
formed by deer’s antlers still attached to the skull, has run-
ners that are shod with bone or ivory and must be iced in
order to make them slide more easily over the snow. This
done, the dogs, who during the night have been housed in
the covered passageway, are harnessed to the sledge.

Breakfast is ready by this time and is served in two
courses. First comes seal meat which has been boiled
in the soapstone pot over the lamp. Each person is handed
his portion, which he grasps with his left hand. He then
takes a mouthful—as large a one as possible—between
his teeth, and cuts it off with his knife which he wields
in his right hand much as a violinist uses his bow. After
the meat has been devoured—the second course is served.
This consists of “blood soup,” made by mixing blood
with the water in which the meat was boiled. The soup
is drunk from cups usually made of whalebone or horn.
Sometimes one large cup is passed around to each in turn.
Having finished his breakfast with a few choice morsels
of frozen raw seal meat, the hunter now feels able to face
the bitter wind of the Arctic at a temperature of perhaps
thirty degrees (F.) below zero.

After loading his sledge with the articles necessary for
the day’s work, the hunter mounts to his seat in front,
takes up his whip, and starts for the hunting grounds.
Today he is traveling light and it is easy going. When
the sledge has a heavy load the driver must walk beside
it, helping to push or pull it over rough places, sometimes
lashing his dogs, sometimes encouraging them with such
phrases as “Ai! Do you see the seal! Ai! A house!
A small house! Now we are going home!’ If the sledge
stops despite their best endeavors to pull it, the dogs
will literally lie down on the job.

[45 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Traveling with a light sledge and strong dogs is avery
different matter. Now the driver may sit up in front
and let his whip trail behind him. If any dog 1s lazy his
name is called out and he is struck with the long curling
lash. But let the driver beware lest, calling out the name
of one dog, be bring down his whip on the back of an-

SN)
=—\ Wy

Fic. 3. Dog harness of sealskin or deerskin with sealskin tugs.
Central Eskimo

other. Instantly the second dog will turn on the one
whose name has been called; goaded by an outraged
sense of justice, he seeks to be avenged on the culprit.
But now the leader intervenes; he has been trained to
discipline the others by biting each of the fighting dogs
and so bringing both to terms. In harness, however,
this often proves disastrous, for the other dogs take up
the quarrel and the whole pack soon becomes one howling,
biting mass. No amount of lashing or beating will avail

[ 46 ]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

to separate them; the only thing to do is to stop the sledge
and wait for them to settle their quarrel. Faithful and
intelligent as they are, these temperamental creatures
require great tact in their management. For instance,
if two people are traveling on the same sledge, it 1s said
that they must be careful not to talk to each other, for
if the dogs hear them they are apt to stop, sit down,
turn around, and listen to the conversation. Indeed so
temperamental are the native dogs of the Eskimo that
some Arctic explorers prefer to use other varieties when
traveling by sledge. In “The Friendly Arctic,” Stefans-
son Says:

Just as with men, the excellence of dogs is largely a matter of tem-
perament. Here, next to his [small] size, lies our grievance against the
Eskimo dog. When he is fat and well cared for he works with a great
deal of spirit, a sort of boyish exuberance. But as the boy has not the
stamina of the man and wants to rest when he gets tired, so the Eskimo
dog stops pulling when he feels like it... . I have seldom seen an
Eskimo dog that will pull well the second day without food, but I
have seen half-breed St. Bernards [part Eskimo] who would pull, per-
haps not with the same strength, for that would be impossible, but
with the same willingness day after day while their strength lasted.

It is of course conceivable that the Eskimo driver, with
his encouraging words and familiar voice, can get better
results from the native dogs than a white man could.
Moreover, he is not reluctant to use the whip, and the
dogs are doubtless accustomed to such discipline. A
driver of dogs, having no reins with which to control his
team, must rely wholly upon his whip and voice.

On reaching the hunting grounds, the driver stops his
team and takes his hunting outfit from the sledge, which
he turns upside down with the points of the runners and
antlers pressed into the snow to keep the dogs from run-
ning away. With one of the dogs to guide him, he then
sets out to locate the breathing hole of a seal, which may
be detected by the tiny mound of snow above it. Hav-
ing successfully located one of these little mounds, the
dog is led back to the sledge, where he is tethered with

[47]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

his companions, and the hunter returns to take up his
position at the hole.

After satisfying himself by careful inspection that the
hole is still open and has not been abandoned by the seal,
the hunter prepares to wait patiently for the animal’s
return. As a protection against the piercing wind,
he builds a semicircular wall of snow, within which he
seats himself on a snow mound, his feet on a small piece
of fur and his legs bound together by a thong which may
be quickly undone and which yet serves to keep him
still. At his right hand his knife is stuck into the snow,
while to the left his harpoon rests on two pegs, the coil
of the line lying in his lap.

Thus, like patience on a monument of snow, the hunter
waits, sometimes until after nightfall, for the seal’s
return to the hole. When he hears its breathing he
cautiously releases the thong that binds his legs together
and gets to his feet. Holding his harpoon in his right hand
and the coil of the line in his left, he strikes through the
hole with all his might at the invisible seal below. Gen-
erally it is struck on the head and immediately dives, car-
rying the detachable head of the harpoon with it, like a
hook in a fish. And like a fisherman, the Eskimo hunter
pays out his line until the seal is exhausted by its struggles
or is compelled to come again to the hole to breathe.
Then the hunter, who has meantime enlarged the breath-
ing hole by cutting away the snow and ice, is able to
haul the seal up and dispatch it with his knife.

Occasionally a hunter will discover that he has brought
in a bearded seal, a variety which is greatly prized, being
about four times the size of the common seal. In sucha
case it is his duty to share his prize equally with the
other families in the settlement. Such a piece of good
fortune is a cause for general rejoicing and the hunter is
held in high esteem, both for his prowess and as a public
benefactor. This custom of sharing the bearded seal is
one of those laws which are peculiarly binding on such a

[ 48 |

OUNYSY SIRIIS suliog Aq apryy “seuss Joapulas

puv ‘syviey pue syviun wos juny sniyem Suoidap ‘sjmoq pve] puv 9u0js YIM ‘suraysadid AroAqT

6 ALVId

PLATE 20

2.7 ‘

we.

£26e,

( “dete ‘ 0
Ny ; 8 7 dicts

pat
Mbps:

i :
e ©.

nee

1 ivory ornaments of Bering Straits Eskimo

Bead earrings anc

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

people as the Eskimo, who are under no compulsion to
obey any law, except the compelling force of public
opinion. Stefansson tells of once meeting an old blind
Eskimo man who believed that his blindness had been
sent upon him as a punish-
ment for having broken
this very law. In _ his
youth he had committed
the crime of trying to keep
the bearded seal for him-
self instead of sharing it
with his fellows. A year
later his sight began to
fail and within another
year he was totally blind.
He was a most miserable
man—an “ancient mari-
ner” of the Eskimo—op-
pressed with a sense of
guilt and driven by his
conscience to tell his story
as a warning to all who
would listen to it.

The size of the seal at
this time of the year is of
great importance, as it is Fic. 4: Miniature mask rep-
seldom that a hunter can _‘"eseting head of small fur seal

ee ean coneainia, with air bubbles rising to sur-
face of water. Lower Yukon

Gaye) After’ being cap- Bie

tured, the seal is lashed to

the sledge together with the hunting implements, the hun-
ter once more mounts to his seat in front, and the eager
dogs start for home, needing neither lash nor voice to urge
them on after their long wait in the cold. They may
safely be trusted to find their way, even in a blinding
snow storm. Doubtless many an Eskimo dog team, like
the famous Balto and his comrades, have brought home

[49 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

without guidance a sledge bearing its precious burden of
necessary supplies and an exhausted driver.

While the men are away the women busy themselves
with various household tasks—making and mending
clothing and cooking the meat—all the while incessantly
humming their favorite tunes, which are possibly the
oldest music in the world. On account of the extreme cold,
the necessity for good food and suitable clothing is a
vital one, so that the work of the women is quite as im-
portant as that of the men. Eskimo women are mar-
velously skillful in fashioning skins and furs into all
sorts of garments—boots, slippers, stockings, trousers,
jackets, and mittens. They do their sewing with thread
made from the sinews of the deer or whale. Needles
were originally of ivory, bone, or copper, though the women
now use steel needles obtained from white traders, which
they count among their dearest possessions. For needle
cases they had little tubes usually of ivory but sometimes
made from the hollow bone of a bird’s wing. An Eskimo
thimble consisted of a piece of the dressed skin of a seal
and had a rim cut out around one side by which it was
drawn over the finger and kept in place. All these im-
plements might be contained in a fur “housewife,” beauti-
fully made and ornamented. For cutting out the various
garments, the “women’s knife,” or w/o, was employed.
This is shaped like a crescent, with the handle in the
middle. Before the introduction of iron and steel by the
whites, the blade was of slate or stone; the handle is of
wood, bone, or ivory. Such primitive tools, together
with skin scrapers and softeners, made up the whole
equipment of the Eskimo woman for the important
business of sewing, tailoring, and bootmaking.

Outer garments for winter are made of deerskin with the
hair outside; inner garments usually of the skins of young
deer or seals, with the hair inside. Special attention is
paid to the footgear, which consists of deerskin stockings
and sometimes two pairs of slippers, the inner ones of

[ 50]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

bird skin with the feathers inside, the outer ones of seal-
skin with the hair outside. A pair of carefully made boots,
reaching to just below the knee, completes the footgear.
It being most important that the feet should be kept dry
as well as warm, in order to avoid frostbite, the soles of the
boots are usually stuffed with dried grass or moss, which
helps to absorb any moisture.

Men, women, and children look much alike in their
boots, trousers, and jackets with hoods, the women being
distinguished by the long
tails to their jackets and
by their larger hoods.
Everyone, when outdoors,
wears enormous fur mit-
tens reaching nearly to
the elbow. All these gar-
ments are well cut, neatly
sewed, and usually
trimmed with fur of a
contrasting color. The
white fur of the baby seal
is used for the clothing of
very small children, while
the dress boots of the men
are) made of a’ finely
dressed white leather re-
sembling parchment. Or-
dinary boots are made of
deerskin with the hair on Fic. 5. Eskimo doll from the
and have soles of the [Lower Yukon. Head of bone;
tanned skin of the bearded deerskin costume
seal; the leather lacings
are sometimes finished with tassels made of strips of
leather dyed a brilliant red. The jackets, or frocks, are
slipped on over the head and are often belted around the
waist in the fashion of a Russian blouse. For spring and
summer wear the heavy deerskin frocks are replaced by

5a]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

others of seal and sometimes of bird skin. Even the
heavy winter frocks are often trimmed with bands of white
caribou skin, and hoods are sometimes ornamented with
a fringe of long white caribou hair around the face. Mit-
tens are also trimmed with bands of white fur. In short,
the Eskimo design their clothing with an eye to beauty
as well as to utility.

It would seem that in order to outfit a whole family,
besides keeping all the garments in repair and preparing
the skins of which they are made, the women must work
incessantly. Yet they find time during the day to visit

Fic. 6. Toy woodpecker of wood from St. Michael.
Bird pecks when child pulls the cord

each other, usually taking a piece of work with them,
and to play games and amuse the children. To the
women likewise falls the task of rearing the dogs until
they are ready to take their places in the team. The
broad divan at the back of the house makes a safe romping
place for both babies and puppies. About noon the
women and children have their dinner, while the men
out hunting may lunch on raw liver and meat cut from a
newly caught seal. At home, the men’s dinner is cooked
and ready to be heated up over the lamp as soon as the
sledge is heard approaching.

On reaching home, the hunter must first attend to un-
harnessing the dogs and putting away the traces in the
store-room. , Having unloaded the sledge, which is then
turned upside down and cleared of ice, he is ready to

Loo

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

enter the house, dragging in the spoils with the assistance
of the women. Indoors, he takes off his outer jacket,
which is carefully cleaned of snow and ice and put into
the storeroom outside. Dinner is now served to the
men and consists of boiled seal or walrus meat-and the
inevitable “blood soup.”’ The food is not always salted,
but sometimes it is cooked in melted sea-water ice which
contains a sufficient quantity of salt. Liver is generally
eaten raw and is considered a tidbit. The Eskimo drink
great quantities of water, obtained by melting snow over
the lamp. After the men have eaten their fill, the women
take their meal, and then all regale themselves with pieces
of frozen raw meat by way of dessert. In this manner an
enormous quantity of meat is devoured every night.

After dinner the seals, which have been placed behind
the lamp to thaw, are thrown upon the floor and cut up,
and the spare meat and skins taken to the storeroom. If,
however, there are any needy families in the village, each
receives a share of the meat and blubber. This sort of
communism is the result of the Eskimo’s marvelous
adaptation to the severe conditions of his life. It is most
important that none should be allowed to go cold or
hungry in a climate where existence itself depends on
having one’s bodily wants liberally supplied. Nor are
the hunter’s dogs forgotten; they receive some of the
blubber and the heads, entrails, bones, and waste pieces
of the skins of seals. But nothing satisfies their voracious
appetite. They will eat any kind of leather, particularly
boots and harnesses, whenever they can get at it. Hence
the hunter’s care to put such things safely away in the
storeroom. When feeding the dogs, it is necessary to keep
them off with a whip until the frozen mass of food is
broken up, when they all rush at it and in less than half a
minute have swallowed their meal.

Having completed their tasks, the men now have
leisure to dress for the evening, which means putting on
dry stockings and boots in order that those they have

[53]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

been wearing during the day may be dried and mended.
These northern people seem to get along quite com-
fortably without the aid of soap and water. While the
women occupy themselves with drying and mending the
discarded garments, the men visit one another and spend
most of the night in talking, singing, gambling, and telling
stories. Some busy themselves in cutting new ivory
implements and seal lines, or in carving. Wooden and
ivory implements of all sorts are lavishly carved, some-
times in the forms of seals or walrus, sometimes with
grotesque designs. Nothing is too small to be carved or

Fic. 7. Ivory instrument for creasing soles of sealskin boots
around toe and heel, from Nushagak

etched; belt buckles, buttons, needle cases, fastenings for
splicing lines—all receive their share of ornamentation.
Even the straight pieces of ivory used in creasing and
shaping the soles of boots are etched with minute de-
signs. With some Eskimo tribes such drawings sometimes
take the form of picture writing, in which a man will
record the number of deer or seals he has captured. The
picture writing and etching may have been borrowed
from some of the Athapascan tribes to the south, to
whose haunts the Eskimo penetrate during the summer
camping trips. But for the most part their carvings are
original in method and design.

The long winter evenings are made the occasion for
much jollity and merrymaking, without the aid of the
white man’s stimulants which have been forbidden in the
Canadian Arctic since about 1890, so that they are prac-
tically unknown to the present generation of Eskimo.
Forever menaced by the twin terrors of starvation and
death by freezing, the Eskimo seem to have developed

[54]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

a sort of Epicurean philosophy which enables them to
“eat (meat and blubber), drink (cold water), and be
merry” while they may. Without this social tempera-
ment, life throughout the long dark winter would be
well-nigh insupportable. Everyone is welcome in the
snow house and refreshments are supplied in the shape
of jars of melted snow which stand near the lamps, and
lumps of frozen meat from which all are at liberty to
cut portions as they like. The first comers sit on the
snow platforms—honored guests on the divan among the
warm fur rugs—while those who arrive late must stand
or squat in the passage. When anyone addresses the
whole assembly, he always turns his face to the wall and
avoids facing the listeners. The stories told are well-
known legends, and must be repeated in the traditional
words familiar to all. Comic songs and dances are much
applauded, especially if the fun is directed at someone
present.

The women sit by their lamps, in their usual Turkish
fashion, working continually either at their sewing, or in
drying the wet footgear and mittens and softening the
leather by chewing and rubbing. Chewing leather is one
of the chief occupations of Eskimo women, begun in early
childhood and continued until old age, when the teeth are
found worn down to the gums. Yet, strange to say, the
Eskimo, since they have come in contact with white
traders from whom they may obtain many of the luxuries
of civilization, like nothing better than American chewing
gum! They are also fond of chewing tobacco whenever
they can get it, and Eskimo men are inveterate
smokers.

The Eskimo have many games of skill and chance which
they play for stakes in the shape of articles contributed by
each player for that purpose; for unlike many of the more
southern tribes, they use neither shells nor beads as a
medium of exchange. Since they pay with the pelts of
animals for all articles bought from outsiders, their

[55]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

standard of value is the skin of a seal and the worth of
any object is estimated as so many “skins.”

If there has been any great success in hunting, such as
the capture of a bearded seal or a whale, it is usually
celebrated by a big feast in which all the people of the
village share. For this purpose the men unite in building
a large snow dome called a gaggi or “singing house.”” The
qaggi may be as much as fifteen feet high and twenty
feet across. It is unfurnished except for a snow pillar in
the center, about five feet high, on which the lamps are
placed. When the people assemble here for singing and
dancing, they are distributed in a very definite manner.
The married women stand in a circle nearest the wall,
the next row is made up of unmarried women, while the
men are seated in the innermost circle. The children
stand in two groups, one on each side of the door. All
are in gala dress. The women have their hair arranged in
enormous pigtails which project horizontally on each side
of the face. They wear their finest and newest clothes
and are adorned with earrings and other ornaments of
ivory. Their faces are usually permanently decorated
with tattooing. The favorite ornament of the men of
some districts is the labret—a plug of ivory worn in the
cheek or lip, which is pierced for that purpose.

The audience being assembled, a performer takes his
position in the open space nearest the door. His dancing
is a rhythmic stamping and swaying performed prac-
tically in one spot. His song, composed extemporane-
ously, often takes the form of a humorous satire on the
foibles of the village people. The Eskimo are clever
mimics and enjoy nothing better than an opportunity to
make fun of their friends. As an accompaniment to his
song and dance the performer beats a drum, or tambou-
rine, called a ki/aut, the only musical instrument of the
Eskimo. It consists of a hoop of whalebone or wood over
which the skin of the deer or seal has been stretched and
fastened taut by means of a braided cord of sinew passed

[ 56]

PLATE 21

Eskimo kayaks from King’s Island, Norton Sound, and Nunivak
Island. Made of sealskin stretched over frames of driftwood

ad 4} qvur ssvis aariumid ayi jo st [ies sy, *poom
“YUP JO YIOMIUILAY BIDAO Pay Jas SLAPIY sNATVM JO UTYSTVAg "aVYSIPAY “IG WoI, YLIUIM OWUTYSY JO [Ppoy]

c¢ ALVId

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

around a groove on the outside. This instrument the
performer holds aloft in one hand and strikes at intervals
with a wooden drumstick called a kentum, all the while
keeping up his grotesque dance and comic song. While
engaged in this strenuous vaudeville performance, the
dancer wears only his trousers and boots. The women
take no part in the dancing, but join in the chorus when-
ever the singer comes to the refrain, “amna aya,’ which
closes every verse of his song.

Later on, the women prepare food in their usual fashion,
and there is great feasting and merrymaking throughout
the night. On such occasions the never very fast bonds
of matrimony are loosened, and there is a general though
temporary exchange of wives. Marriage among the
Eskimo is a wholly companionate arrangement, to be
terminated temporarily or completely at the discretion of
either party. Aman selects a wife chiefly for her domestic
accomplishments, for without her assistance it would be
a difficult matter for him to obtain clothing and boiled
meat. A woman, on the other hand, desires a husband
and a home of her own in order that she may have her
own fireside and someone to supply the materials for
food, clothing, and fuel. Families are as a rule small,
and it is chiefly their affection for the children, aside
from practical considerations, which holds husband and
wife together. Orphans and unattached grown people
are always “adopted”’ by a family. In times of great
plenty a man may even be able to afford more than one
wife.

The Eskimo, although so unmoral, are a kindly, peace-
loving, carefree people. So improvident are they that
even with unlimited facilities for cold storage on every
hand they never have much food stored up; consequently
if the winter proves unusually stormy, or if for any other
reason the hunters fail to bring in their daily seals, it
does not take long for the dread specter of famine to
make its appearance in the land. Then the lamps are

[57]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

allowed to burn lower and lower till finally they go out
and everyone sits in silence within the dark, cold houses.
It may even become necessary to kill and eat the faithful
dogs; and in times of great distress parents have been
known to eat their own children. But the Eskimo are
not cannibals at heart, and always refer to such occur-
rences with the greatest horror.

It is in times of such distress that the people are most
apt to turn for help to their holy men, the angakut. From
them they learn that their chief goddess, whom the
Central Eskimo call Sedna, is abroad in the land, with
her terrible father, looking for victims to carry off with
them to their kingdom of the dead. From the severed
joints of Sedna’s fingers, according to the myth, sprang
all the animals which inhabit the ocean, especially the
seal, the walrus, and the whale. It is because Sedna is
offended that she keeps the seals imprisoned at the
bottom of the sea and will not let them come to their
breathing holes and be caught. So Sedna must be propiti-
ated. In order to do this, the angakog goes into a trance
during which he visits the dread abode of Sedna and
learns her pleasure. Or perhaps the soul of the angakoq
may pay a visit to the man in the moon and learn from
him what must be done in order to rid the land
of famine.

The angakut control also the lesser spirits, called tornait,
who are often responsible for much mischief. In invoking a
tornaq, the angakut use a sacred, archaic language not
understood by the common people. It is a favorite
trick of theirs to have their hands tied together and to be
trussed up by a thong passed around their knees and neck.
Then the angakogq begins his invocation, and all of a sud-
den his body lies motionless while his soul flies off to any
place he may wish to visit—any part of the earth, or the
moon, or the underworld where Sedna reigns. After
the soul has returned to the body, the thongs which
bound it are found to be untied though they had been

[58]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

fastened by firm knots, and the angakoq, awaking from
his trance, is able to relate to devout believers all the
wonderful adventures his soul has just passed through.

Many of the angakut undoubtedly believe that they
have really had the marvelous experiences they relate
on awakening from their trance. Certain it is that to the
Eskimo spirits are no less real than are the earthly ob-
jects they control and animate. Such spirits are not
believed to be in themselves good or evil, but to be used
for either good or evil purposes by the angakoq who
controls them. The most powerful angakoq is he who
has the greatest number of spirits under his control. If
he be a bad man, then so much the greater need to con-
ciliate him.

The firm belief of the Copper Eskimo in the magic powers
of their angakut 1s amusingly illustrated in Stefansson’s ac-
count of their reactions when first shown the wonders of
certain modern inventions. When they saw a distant
caribou killed by a shot from the gun of the explorer,
they said, “Very good, but can you shoot a caribou on
the other side of that great mountain, as our magicians
can with their magic bows and arrows?” On seeing,
through a pair of powerful field glasses, a herd of caribou
indistinguishable to the unaided eye, they asked, “Can
you show us the caribou that will be here tomorrow, as
our magicians can?” And even when told how a modern
surgeon can put a man to sleep, cut him open, and then
sew him up again so that when he awakes he will know
nothing about it except for the stitches in the wound,
they had a reply which effectually silenced the boastful
white man: Could our surgeons do what one of their
medicine men had done? When a certain man had had a
terrible backache, this magician had put him to sleep and
had then taken out his backbone and put in a new one,
without leaving the tiniest scar! Could white medicine
men do that? Then they were not equal to the Eskimo.
And as for the long tubes through which the wise white

[59]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

men examine the moon—that is nothing to the Eskimo,
whose magicians can fly to the moon whenever they wish
and tell them all about it afterwards.

So if a terrible famine is broken by the heroic efforts of
the hunters in braving the storms and the cold and
darkness, most of the credit—as well as a large part of
the catch—is given to the angakut who have propitiated
Sedna so that she has permitted the seals to return to
the surface of the sea. A great feast is then held/im
Sedna’s honor, and good fortune again comes to the settle-
ment.”

The magic powers of the angakut are also called upon in
case of sickness, which may be cured either by the help
of the spirits or by inquiring of the sick man what
taboos he may have broken. “Did he work when it
was forbidden? Did he eat something he was not
allowed to eat?”? And so on. ‘There are so many of
these taboos that no one can possibly know them all,
and he is considered the wisest man who knows the
greatest number.

The laws prohibiting contact between the meat of
deer and that of sea animals are particularly strict. Ac-
cording to the Eskimo, Sedna dislikes the deer and there-
fore it must not be brought in contact with her favorites;
the meat of the whale, seal, or walrus must not be eaten
on the same day with venison. Moreover, as Sedna is
the special patroness of sea animals, a hunter must make
atonement for every one that he kills. When a seal is
brought into the house, the women must stop working
until it has been cut up. Such taboos of course are well
known and strictly observed. Many others, however,
that are known to few except the angakut, are equally
binding, and ignorance of them is no protection against
the evil effects of transgression. Hence the importance
of finding out, in the case of any misfortune, whether a

2 Such were the rites of olden times. Today Christian missionaries are to be found
in all parts of the Arctic.

[ 60]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

taboo may have been broken in ignorance. This is
where the great power of the angakut lies. Theirs is, in
fact, the only authority recognized by the Eskimo, who
have neither chiefs nor tribal organization. Since the
introduction of Christianity among the Eskimo, all these
old customs and beliefs are rapidly dying out, and with
them the power of the angakut.

Politically, the Eskimo are the freest people on earth,
living without the aid of any formal government.
where are a certain
number of customs and
laws handed down from
one’ generation to the
next; but no means of
enforcing these regula-
tions, except through
the power of public fy¢.8. Cord handle of ivory rep-
opinion. Nor is there resenting head of polar bear with a
any punishment for small seal in its mouth
transgressors except the
blood vengeance. A man who is offended by another
will sometimes take revenge by killing the offender.
It is then the right and duty of the nearest relative
of the victim to kill the murderer. This gives rise to
a feud which often lasts for a long time and may
even be handed down to the next generation. An old
custom which still survives in Greenland is a song con-
test known as the “nith song,” from the Norwegian word
nith, meaning “calumny.” The offended person challenges
the offender, and they meet before an audience, when
they take turns in singing songs, each in ridicule of his
enemy. The contest of wit continues until one of the
contestants succeeds in getting the last word through
the failure of his opponent to reply. The winner is then
determined by the votes of the audience.

The social order of the Eskimo is founded on the family
and ties of relationship between families. As has been

[61]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

said, the marriage relation is not particularly binding
unless there are children. Marriage between relatives is
forbidden, but a man may marry two sisters. While
polygamy is allowed, very few men have more than one
wife. Before the introduction of various modern “‘neces-
sities” by the white traders, all that a newly married
couple needed in order to set up housekeeping was a
hunting outfit for the man, which included a dog team,
sledge, harpoon, knife, and spear; and for the woman
a knife, scraper, lamp, and cooking pot. Besides the
temporary exchange of wives already noted, a man may
lend his wife to a friend for a whole season or longer, or
two men may exchange wives as a sign of friendship.
The husband is not allowed to maltreat or punish his
wife; if he does so she may leave him at any time, and the
wife’s mother can always command a divorce. The
slightest pretext is sufficient for a separation, and both
may remarry as soon as they like.

Children are treated very kindly and are not whipped
or punished. This fact has been noted by all Arctic
travelers and explained in various ways. Stefansson
attributes it, in the case of the Mackenzie River Eskimo,
to their belief that every child is taken under special
guardianship by the spirit of some grown person whose
death has occurred at about the same time as the birth
of the child. Until his own soul is sufficiently strong
and wise to guide him, the child is the mouthpiece of
this guardian spirit, who must be treated respectfully and
conciliated in every way, else it may become offended
and abandon the child entirely. So strong is the con-
viction that the child is for the time the reincarnation of
the older person, that parents and relatives do not hesitate
to address him as though he were in fact that person.
Since the guardian spirit may be of the opposite sex, this
frequently leads to strange complications. It is not
unusual to hear a boy addressed by his father as “‘step-
mother” and by his mother as “‘aunt,” that having been

[62]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

the relationship existing between the parents and the
present guardian spirit of the child.

When the child is about twelve years old, his own soul
is considered sufficiently experienced to guide him, so
the guardian spirit is withdrawn and his education be-
gins in earnest. The girls are instructed by their mother
in the domestic arts, while the father takes the boys out
with him on hunting expeditions and teaches them the

Fic. 9. Cord attacher of ivory carved to represent a hair seal with
inlaid blue beads for eyes. From Unalaklit

ways of the seal and how it may best be captured; they
are also allowed to help with the dog team, and learn
how to harness, drive, and care for the dogs.

In spring, when the sun has returned and the snow is
beginning to melt, the boys will be taught another way
of hunting. At this season the seals break down the
snow roofs of their breathing holes, which they enlarge
sufficiently to be able to clamber up through them and
lie basking and dozing in the warm sunshine for hours
at a time. They must now be approached more warily
by the hunters, and speared as they sleep, before they
have a chance to dive into the water. In order to get
near enough to spear a seal, the Eskimo hunter, who in
his closely fitting sealskin costume looks not unlike one
of the animals himself, creeps up on all fours, stopping
at intervals when the seal is awake, and creeping on
when it has dropped asleep again. If the animal has
seen the hunter, however, it will not do for him to lie
perfectly still, for that would arouse its suspicions; he
must lift himself up on his elbows and look about him
seal-fashion, or roll over and play with his hands and feet

[63]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

as a seal does with its flippers. In this way he “plays
seal” until the suspicions of the animal are allayed and
it again drops off to sleep, oblivious of danger. If struck
by the harpoon head, the line prevents the seal from es-
caping. In this way an expert hunter may kill from ten
to fifteen seals in a day.

The natives are now freed from the fear of famine,
but the snow houses in which they have lived so snugly
all winter are soon made uninhabitable by the warm rays
of the sun, which melt the roofs, causing much discom-
fort to the occupants. This condition is remedied tem-
porarily by moving into new houses of which the lower
half only is built of snow, with a roof of skins. In
former days many Eskimo lived in houses of stone, the
ruins of which are still found in some places. While the
building of such houses seems today to be a lost art, the
natives have been known to make use of the old ruins
by covering them with roofs which in the winter were
made of snow and in the summer of skins.

When the increasing warmth of the sun’s rays melts
down even the lower half of the snow houses, the Eskimo
betake themselves to tents of skin, put up on a frame-
work of poles which are frequently made of many pieces
of wood ingeniously lashed together. At this season,
when the ice has broken, seals, whales, and walrus were
pursued in boats. For this purpose the Eskimo used the
kayak, a sort of skin-covered canoe decked over in such
a way as to leave only a small circular opening, where
the hunter sat. By lashing his outer jacket securely
around the rim of the cockpit, the boatman could make
the kayak practically water-tight. With a double pad-
dle he was able to propel his graceful little boat through
the water with great speed. The harpoon used in strik-
ing the seal from the kayak was provided with floats made
of whole sealskins. These floats, by their bouyancy,
prevented the seal from diving, and it was then killed with
a spear. The walrus being a more dangerous foe, es-

[ 64 ]

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t ULV Id

punois 24} aAoqu
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eae !
FLAN

iy
hi
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tc ALVId

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

pecially if it should turn upon the hunter in his light
kayak, was harpooned from a great distance and was never
attacked at close quarters until 1t was exhausted by drag-
ging the float and by loss of blood. Whales were pursued
by a number of kayaks together, every boatman en-
deavoring to drive his harpoon into the animal, which,
by loss of blood and the resistance of the floats, was tired
out and then killed with lances.

More often whales were pursued in the women’s boats,
or umiaks. ‘These are large, flat-bottomed, skin-covered
boats, usually provided with oars and sometimes having
a square sail made of seal intestines carefully sewed to-
gether. When pursuing a whale the umiak’s crew was
made up of men, who used paddles instead of oars; a
skillful boatman steered the boat and the harpooner
stood in the bow watching his opportunity to strike
the whale. The harpoon he carried was much larger and
heavier than those used for seals and walrus. Not only
were larger animals pursued in boats. Geese, ducks, and
waterfowl were hunted in the same manner, being killed
with specially designed bird spears which were hurled
with great speed and force by means of “throwing boards,”
another ingenious invention of the Eskimo.

When the time came for the southern migration, the
umiak was used for traveling by water. During the
journey the boat’s crew consisted of the women, two of
whom usually worked each of the large oars. These long
journeys were undertaken for two purposes: to secure wood
for making sledges and various household utensils, and
to hunt the caribou. On the shores of the Arctic the
Eskimo must depend for their supply of wood upon the
ocean currents which bring to their coasts such logs as
have drifted down the rivers from the forested region
in the south. On some shores this wood has been accu-
mulating for centuries, protected from decay by the
bacteria-free air of the north. This is especially true
of the region bordering on Bering Sea, where the natives

[65]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

build houses of drift-logs, covered with earth and entered
by underground passageways.

These tribes of western Alaska, who were in closer
touch than were the Eastern and Central Eskimo with
other natives of the northwest coast, resembled their
more southern neighbors in many customs and beliefs.
Here we find large community houses, called kashims,
occupied by the men and used for holding religious
feasts and other celebrations. There was a regular suc-
cession of such festivals through the winter, including
the Asking Festival, the Festival to the Dead, the Blad-
der Feast, and the Great Feast to the Dead. The West-
ern Eskimo know the art of weaving grasses into tex-
tiles for various purposes, and they share with other
Indians a belief in the familiar practices of the medicine
men, or shamans, and in the efficacy of the sweat-bath
for curing disease as well as for purposes of cleanliness.
They differ from the Central Eskimo, too, in the possession
of nets of various sizes with which they capture not only
the larger kinds of fish, but seals also, as well as all sorts
of waterfowl and even small land birds. Nevertheless,
they were of old thoroughly Eskimo in their manner of
hunting sea animals in boats, especially in their kayaks.
To protect themselves from snow and rain they wore over
their fur garments waterproofs made of seal intestines.
These waterproofs were carefully sewed and not only had
drawstrings in the hood and sleeves by which they could
be snugly secured around face and wrists, but the edge
of the frock also was provided with a similar string by
which it might be securely fastened around the rim of the
kayak’s cockpit, thus making both man and boat im-
pervious to rain and waves.

Truly Eskimo were these people likewise in the roving
habit which took them from their houses in the late
summer to lead the life of gypsies when great herds of
migrating caribou used to roam the land. In these wood-
land camps, indeed, individuals from almost all the

[ 66 |

PLATE 25

Ancient knife sharpener and dagger of nephrite; handle of ivory bound
with rawhide to provide a grip; wooden sheath. From Norton Sound

Eskimo

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO

Eskimo tribes would meet in a great intratribal com-
munity, where they might exchange commodities with
one another as well as with the neighboring Indian tribes.
Here they would hunt the caribou which formed their
principal food at this season. They slept in tents made
of the skins of these animals, and cooked their meals,
gypsy fashion, over a fire of sticks in the open air. Several
families would usually combine in this simple house-
keeping, the women taking turns in the preparation of
the food. Besides storing up dried venison for the return
journey, and deer skins which would later be made into
winter garments, the Eskimo busied themselves through
the summer in making sledges, snowshovels, bows, spear
handles, and other articles of wood.

The Arctic summer, though short, is decidedly hot.
Stefansson gives the following vivid picture of his suffer-
ings at this season:

July was intolerably hot. We had no thermometer, but I feel sure
that many a day the temperature must have been over one hundred
degrees in the sun, and sometimes for weeks on end there was not a
cloud in the sky. At midnight the sun was what we would call an
hour high, so that it beat down on us without rest the twenty-four
hours through. The hottest period of the day was about eight o’clock
in the evening, and the coolest perhaps four or five in the morning.
The mosquitoes were so bad that several of our dogs went completely
blind for the time, through the swelling closed of their eyes, and all
of them were lame from running sores caused by the mosquito stings
on the line where the hair meets the pad of the foot. It is true that on
our entire expedition we had no experience that more nearly deserved
the name of suffering than this of the combined heat and mosquitoes
of our Coppermine River summer.

Such is the testimony of one who has lived as an
Eskimo among the Eskimo both winter and summer
for a number of years. However, there is a fairer side
to the picture. Many an Arctic voyager has commented
on the singular transformation which even the most
northern coasts undergo during the brief but intense
summer. Then the great open plains, or tundras, are

[ 67 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

converted into rich pastures on which the caribou
feed. The willows, which here in the Far North are
creeping shrubs, are covered first with soft catkins and
then with a green mist of tiny leaves. Each sheltered
cove has its meadow, where all sorts of flowers seem in
haste to bud and blossom. It is said that flowering
plants, though stunted, produce blooms quite as large
and even more brilliant in color than the corresponding
plants farther south. Among Arctic flowers are found
the poppy, heather, wild geranium, a white buttercup
called the “reindeer flower,” the moss campion or cushion
pink, and the northern dwarf cornel.

Stefansson, however, has no fault to find with the keen
autumn weather in the North. Of this season he says:

Traveling at this time of year is particularly pleasant, for while the
days are still warm, the placid nights are cool and the power of the
mosquito has been broken. There are few things in one’s experience
in the North that are so pleasant to remember as these autumn hunts,
when the camp is pitched among a clump of spruce trees at the bottom
of some ravine, and when at the end of a day’s hunt you can gather
around the crakling fire in the enveloping darkness, for the four-
months’ summer day is just over. The occasional howl of a wolf in
the near shadow lends an additional romance, especially if, as not
seldom happens, the wolves are so numerous and so near that the
dogs become frightened and gather in a close circle around the fire.
Few meals can be more satisfying, either, at the end of a hard day’s
work, than a caribou head that has been rotated continuously before
the fire until it is roasted through, even to the base of the tongue
and the center of the brain. The dreams of boyhood seldom come
true, but I am not sure that there is not sometimes as much romance
about the reality of such evenings as there is about the dreams of
Crusoe-like adventures on desert islands.

A month later, by the end of September, the mists
and fogs have become almost as continuous as the sun-
shine had been. When the first snow falls, the seal
hunters hitch their dogs to the new sleds they have made
during the summer, load their provisions upon them, and
move north or west toward the coasts where they will
again establish their winter quarters.

[68 ]

IN ARCTIC SNOWS: THE ESKIMO
REFERENCES

Boas, Franz. The Central Eskimo. 6th Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethnol. Washington, 1888.

Brown, R. N. R. The polar regions: a physical and
economic geography of the Arctic and Antarctic.
London, 1927.

Horrman, WattTeER J. The graphic art of the Eskimos,
based upon collections in the National Museum.
ays: Nation.’ Mus. Ann. Rep. 1894, pp. 739-968:
Washington, 1897.

Hovcu, Watrer. The lamp of the Eskimo. U. S.
Nation: /) Mus: Ann.) Rep:.” 1896, “pp. 1025-1057.
Washington, 1898.

Jenness, Diamonp. ‘The life of the Copper Eskimos.
Rep. Canadian Arctic Exp. 1913-18, Vol. 12, Ottawa,
O22.

— The people of the twilight. New York (Macmillan),
1928.

Murpocu, Joun. Ethnological results of the Point
Barrow Expedition. gth Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol.
Washington, 1892.

NAaNSEN, Friptyor. Eskimo life. Translated by William

Archer. London, 1893.

In Northern mists: Arctic explorations in early

times. New York (Stokes), 1911.

Netson, Epwarp W. The Eskimo about Bering Strait.
18th Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Washington,
1900.

Peary, Rosert E. Northward over the “Great Ice.”
Vol. 1-1. New York, 1898.

Rasmussen, Knup. The people of the polar North.
Philadelphia (Lippincott), 1908.

STEFANSSON, VILHJALMUR. My life with the Eskimo.
New York (Macmillan), 1913.

— The friendly Arctic. New York (Macmillan), 1921.

[69]

CHAPTER, Ly;

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS:
THE IROQUOIS

Tue Athapascan tribes who roamed the great pine forests
of Canada formed a connecting link between the Eskimo
to the north and the Algonquians to the east and south.
The Tinneh, or Dinné, as the most northern branch of
this widespread family was called, had adopted many of
the practices of their Arctic neighbors, and at the same
time displayed traits common to most forest dwellers. In
the regions where the birch tree grew they used its bark,
as did the other tribes, for their lodges and canoes; while
in the looseness of their tribal organization and moral code,
and in their dependence on animal food—particularly
the caribou—they most resembled the Eskimo. The
hunter’s existence was indeed forced upon the Tinneh,
since the climate of their country was too cold and the
soil too poor for agriculture.

Along the shores of the Great Lakes, however, and
throughout the fertile valley of the St. Lawrence where
lived the Algonkin and the Hurons (the latter an Iroquoian
tribe), the first French settlers found great fields of growing
corn, for these tribes dwelt in permanent villages and tilled
the soil. Among the most interesting of the early chroni-
cles of this region are the Jesuit Relations, written by those
heroic missionaries who came over from France at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, fired by zeal to
Christianize the Savages. Joining the colony already es-
tablished on the banks of the St. Lawrence, they began

[70]

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

their labors among the Algonkin and the Hurons, who,
already disposed to be friendly toward the French settlers,
were soon quite won over by the ministrations of the
priests—the “‘black robes,” as the Indians called them.

As the French adventurers pursued their exploration
of the new continent, the Jesuit fathers followed close
upon their trail, coming down Lake Champlain and pen-
etrating into the wilderness which was later to become the
State of New York. It is fascinating to read the Rela-
tions—reports sent by these priests to the Superior of
their order—with their many extraordinary descriptions
of the strange country which had been named New France.
In the Relation for 1657, for instance, we read:

Besides grapes, plums, and many other fruits,—which it hasin
common with the fine Province of Europe,—it has a number of others
which excel ours in beauty, fragrance, and taste. . . . Stoneless
cherries [cranberries] are found there. Fruits grow there which are
of the color and size of an apricot [probably the May-apple], whose
blossom is like that of the white lily, and which smell and taste like the
citron. There are apples as large as a goose’s egg [fruits of the pawpaw].
. . . But the most common and the most wonderful plant in these
countries is that which we call the universal plant [sassafras?]; be-
cause its leaves, when pounded, heal in a short time wounds of all
kinds; these leaves, which are as broad as one’s hand, have the shape
of a lily as depicted in heraldry, and its roots have the smell of the
laurel. The most vivid scarlet, the brightest green, the most natural
yellow and orange of Europe pale before the various colors that our
Savages procure from roots. I say nothing of trees as tall as oaks,
whose leaves are as open as cabbages [?]; or of many other plants,
peculiar to this country, because as yet we are ignorant of their prop-
erties.

Inhabiting this strange land, the Fathers found five
warlike Iroquoian tribes—the Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca,
Onondaga, and Cayuga—who had formed among them-
selves a powerful confederation, called by the French
the “Iroquois,” and later on, by their English friends and
allies, the ‘League of the Five Nations.”

These fierce warriors, whose enmity the French had in-
curred by making unprovoked attacks upon them, were

ar]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

destined to play an important part in the long struggle
between the English and the French for dominion over
the new continent. The picture of them given in the
Relations is one of terrible vividness, describing not only
the hideous practices of the Iroquois toward their pris-
oners of war, but also the great heroism of those priests
who endured martyrdom at their hands. Most of the
details are too horrible to quote here, but the following
passage will give some idea of Iroquois methods of war-
fare:

These poor Algonquins were in their own country, living in huts in
the depths of the great forests, in a place where, in all probability, no
Hiroquois had ever been. That is why they thought of nothing but
their hunting, and not of defending themselves against those Bar-
barians. When the latter came upon the tracks of the hunters, they
crept upon them stealthily, to massacre them in their first sleep. . . .
Those tigers entered their cabin, with arms in their hands, and seized
them, some by the hair and others about the body. Some who were
awakened by the noise, and who tried to defend themselves, were at
once slaughtered. The fight was soon over, and the Hiroquois, finding
the poor people already overcome by sleep and fright, bound them
with strong cords—men, women, and children; and, in less than an
hour, were masters of their lives, of their little wealth, and of their
cabins. Seeing themselves victorious, they prepared their supper
in the house of the vanquished. Some brought wood and others went
for water. Great kettles were placed over the fire. The shambles
were not far away. They dismembered those whom they had just
slaughtered, cut them in pieces, and threw the feet, legs, arms, and
heads into the pot, which they set to boil with joy as great as the
sorrow felt by the poor captives who remained alive, when they saw
their countrymen serving as the quarry of these Werewolves. The
women and children wept bitterly; and those half Demons took pleas-
ure in hearing their doleful chants. When the supper was cooked,
these wolves devoured their prey. . . . They ate the flesh of men
with as much appetite as, and with more pleasure than, hunters eat
that of the Boar or of a Stag.

Terrible as were the Iroquois when on the warpath,
in their own homes and among their own kindred they
appear in a very different light. They were a semi-agri-
cultural people, living in permanent, fortified villages

eres)

yarq *Vyst ‘Sun eu aq ‘vyOsoUUTT ‘suoleyiqey vmaddiyy jo sadAq OMT

9¢ ALV Id

aulvyy Jo suvipuy Apponbewesseg Aq sjapour [eqizy pjo Heyy wo payonaysuos aspoy YAeq-ystq VY

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

in the depths of the great forests, and changing the loca-
tion of their homes only when forced to do so through
having exhausted the fertility of the soil or the supply of
firewood in their immediate vicinity. Their houses, repre-
senting one of the highest types of architecture reached
by the northern tribes, were long, rectangular communal
lodges built of wooden poles and covered with bark.
These houses were from fifty to eighty, and sometimes
more than one hundred feet long.

The interior of the “long-house” was divided by parti-
tions at intervals of six or eight—in some cases twenty
or more—feet, leaving each chamber entirely open, like
a stall, upon the passageway, which passed through the
center of the house from end to end. At each end was
a doorway covered with a curtain of skins or a door
of bark. At intervals along the passageway were fire-pits,
each shared by four of the apartments, two on a side.
An opening in the roof above each fire-pit allowed the
smoke to escape. A house with five fires would thus
contain twenty apartments, and would accommodate
twenty families, unless some apartments were reserved
for storage. Raised bunks around the three sides of each
apartment served as beds or benches. From the roof-
poles were suspended strings of corn in the ear, braided
together by the husks; also strings of dried pumpkins
and squashes—a word derived from the Algonquian
askutasquash.

Each long-house in an Iroquois village was the property
of the women who inhabited it, while the men, although
husbands of the women and fathers of the children, were
regarded as belonging to the households of their mothers.
As long as a man did his share in providing game for the
household and made himself otherwise acceptable, he
might lodge with his wife and children and be treated as
their honored guest, but if any cause for dissension arose,
he would be obliged to leave. It was the women who,
for the most part, built the houses and who tilled the soil;

[73]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

and the corn, tobacco, and vegetables they raised were
their common property.

Maize, or Indian corn, was the favorite food of the
Iroquois, who hulled the grain by boiling it in ashes and
water, and ground it into a coarse flour between stones
or by means of a wooden mortar and pestle. After
passing the meal through a “sieve basket” of plaited
splints or corn husks, the Indian housewife made it up
into little loaves or cakes which she boiled in earthenware
jars of water into which red-hot stones were dropped.
Or the corn meal might be prepared as a gruel mixed with
meat and vegetables, a concoction which the Algonquian
Indians called sagamité. To preserve corn for long
periods, it was charred and stored in pits lined with mats
of straw.

Another favorite food of the Iroquois was bread made
from nuts or sunflower seeds. When the nut paste or
sunflower-seed meal was boiled in water, the oil, rising
to the top, was skimmed off and preserved in gourds or
vessels of bark. The Indians used it, as we use butter,
to enrich and flavor food. Lacking salt, the Troquois
naturally preferred dishes of a rather pungent flavor.
They relished the dried intestines of animals, which were
eaten raw. A special delicacy was the embryo of a bird
taken from the egg. The flesh of dogs, their one domestic
animal, was held in high esteem. In fact, a lack of
squeamishness in regard to food was a matter of pride
with the Iroquois braves. Colden says:

Their Men value themselves, in having all Kind of Food in equal
Esteem. A Mohawk Sachem told me with a Kind of Pride, that a Man
eats every Thing without Distinction, Bears, Cats, Dogs, Snakes,

Frogs, etc., intimating that it is Womanish to have any delicacy in the
Choice of Food.

The Iroquois had but one full meal a day. This was a
combined breakfast and dinner and was usually eaten
before midday. The food was served warm to each
person in earthenware or wooden bowls. They had

[ 74 |

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

neither tables, nor chairs, nor any room that might serve
as a separate dining room or kitchen; each person ate
when and where he pleased. The men usually ate first,
the women and children afterwards. Toward evening
maize, in the form of hominy, was boiled and put aside
to be used cold as a lunch in the morning or evening and
for the entertainment of visitors; but there was no formal
breakfast or supper.

Hospitality was universal among the Iroquois. If a
man entered a house, whether he was a villager or a
stranger, it was the duty of the women to set food before
him. To omit to do this would have been an unpardon-
able affront. It was contrary to Indian etiquette to ask
a visitor to state his business; he must be served with
food and tobacco, and his hosts must wait in silence until
he should be sufficiently rested and refreshed to speak.
This law of hospitality was but one of many communistic
practices. It helped to equalize the distribution of food,
a most important matter to people living from day to day
largely on the uncertain fortune of the chase. Anyone
was thus able to secure necessary food so long as there was
food in the community.

Not only were the women cooks, farmers, and house
builders; they were also skilled in needlework, and spent
a great part of their time in fashioning garments out
of the skins of animals. In Heriot’s “Travels through
Canada” is the following description of the garb of the
Iroquois:

The habiliments of the Iroquois consist of several pieces, being a
kind of tunic, an apron, a robe calculated to cover the whole, and shoes
for the feet. The apron is made of skins well dressed, or of European
cloth. . . . The stockings, or leggings, are of skins sewed on the out-
side, having beyond the seam a double selvage of three inches in
breadth, which guards the limbs from being injured by brushing against
the underwood and boughs, in passing through the forests. The
women wear the same articles of dress, and fix them by garters around

the knee; the men attach them by strings to the belt around the waist.
These leggings have no feet, but enter into the shoes made of soft

[75]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

leather, generally of deer skin, and frequently neatly embroidered
with the quills of porcupines, stained of different hues. A species
of buskin ascending to the calf of the leg is sometimes worn.

The robe is a kind of blanket of about five or six feet square, made
of the skins of buffaloes, deer, elk, or of several beaver or marten skins
sewed together. All the natives in the neighborhood of Europeans,
preserve the fashion of their ancient dress, changing the materials
only. For the tunic, linen or cotton shirts are worn, and the re-
mainder of the dress is of woollen stuff. The leather of which the
shoes are made is prepared by smoking and thereby rendered impervi-
ous to moisture. They adorn the inside of the skins of buffaloes and
of deer, by delineating upon them figures of men and animals painted
with black and red colours, and also by working them with porcupine
quills, stained with variegated tints.

Writing at a still later date, Morgan, in his “League
of the Iroquois,” has given a description of the full-dress
costume the warriors wear in some of their ceremonial
dances. He also adds some interesting details with re-
gard to the making and the ornamentation of the various
garments.

One of the most prominent articles of apparel was the Kilt, Ga-ka’-ah,
which was secured around the waist by a belt, and descended to the
knee. In ancient times this was made of deerskin. It was fringed
and embroidered with porcupine quill-work. . . . In modern times
various fabrics have been substituted for the deerskin, although the
latter is still used. . .

Upon the head-dress, Gus-id-weh, the most conspicuous part of the
costume, much attention was bestowed. The frame consisted of a
band of splint, adjusted around the head, with in some instances a
cross-band arching over the top from side to side. A cap of net-work,
or other construction, was then made to enclose the frame. Around
the splint, in later times, a silver band was fastened, which completed
the lower part. From the top a cluster of white feathers depended.
Besides this, a single feather of the largest size was set in the crown
of the head-dress, inclining backwards from the head. It was secured
in a small tube, which was fastened to the cross-splint, and in such a
manner as to allow the feather to revolve in the tube. This feather,
which was usually the plume of the eagle, is the characteristic of the
Iroquois head-dress.

Next was the Leggin, Gisé-Ad, which was fastened above the knee
and descended upon the moccason. It was also originally made of
deerskin, and ornamented with quill-work upon the bottom and side,

[76 ]

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

the embroided edge being worn in front. In later times, red broad-
cloth, embroided with bead-work, has been substituted for the deer-
skin in most cases... .

The Moccason [4h-té-gudé] was also made of deerskin. In the
modern moccason the front part is worked with porcupine quills after
the ancient fashion, while the part which falls down upon the sides is
embroidered with bead-work according to the present taste... .

In ancient times the Iroquois used another shoe made of the skin
of the elk. They cut the skin above and below the gambrel joint, and
then took if off entire. As the hind leg of the elk inclines at the joint
nearly at a right angle, it was naturally adapted to the foot. The lower
end was sewed firmly with sinew, and the upper part secured above the
ankle with deer strings.

As with the Eskimo, and indeed most primitive people,
while the women busied themselves at home, the men were
usually away on hunting or war expeditions. Until fire-
arms were introduced by the white men, the principal
weapon was the bow and arrow. An arrow often had but
two feathers, stripped from their quills and fastened to the
shaft in such a way as to give them a twist and so make
the arrow revolve in its flight. Pointed with a head of
flint chipped down to a sharp edge, and propelled from a
tautly strung bow, such an arrow could easily bring down
the deer, the wildfowl, or an enemy. Sometimes the
tips were of horn or bone, which, although not so hard
as the flint, could be given longer points and were there-
fore more dangerous. Arrows were carried in a quiver
made of the skin of a small animal taken off entire and
dressed with the hair on, or sometimes of unhaired deer-
skin embroidered with porcupine quills. An ordinary
quiver would hold from fifteen to twenty arrows.

Long expeditions were often made by water, in canoes
of birch or elm bark. For fashioning a canoe, an Indian
usually strips the bark from the tree in a single piece
of the required length and width, and after removing
the rough outside, proceeds to shape it. The rim he forms
of pieces of white ash, or other elastic wood, stitching
them around the edges inside and outside by means of
bark thread and splints. The ribs are narrow strips of

aa)

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

ash set about a foot apart along the bottom of the canoe,
turned up along the sides, and secured under the rim.
Both ends of an Indian canoe are alike, the two side
pieces being brought together to form a sharp and ver-
tical prow. A canoe may be twelve feet long with room
for only two men, or forty feet long and able to carry
thirty.

Although by no means so inventive as the Eskimo,
who in that respect are the cleverest of all the native
tribes, the Iroquois were not lacking in ingenuity. Their
pump drill for fire-making, for example, if indeed it
was native to them and not introduced by Europeans,
was a considerable advance on the original primitive
method of twirling the end of one stick within a cleft
made in another. These drills were weighted at one end
by a small disk and were operated with a cord and bow.

The Iroquois were likewise very ingenious in the mat-
ter of basket making, particularly in contriving recep-
tacles for special purposes, as the flat sieve basket for
sifting corn meal, and the conical basket used in fishing.
The fisherman would stand in the rapids of a creek or
river, and with a stick would direct the fish into one of
these long, closely woven baskets, which, partly sub-
merged, made an effective trap. Such baskets might
be woven of corn-husks, of flags, or of splints made from
the black ash. The splints were often dyed before they
were woven and were moistened to make them more
pliable.

One of the most conspicuous articles of Iroquois manu-
facture was the baby frame, in which the child was
securely fastened and thus carried about on the mother’s
back or suspended from a peg or the limb of a tree. The
frame itself consisted of but three pieces of wood, the
bottom board, the foot board and the bow at the top on
which was spread a covering that protected the baby’s
head. After the child’s arms and legs had been securely
pinioned by means of the swaddling bands, it was

[78 ]

ee ee a ee

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

enveloped in a blanket and lashed upon the frame with
belts of bead-work, so that only its face was visible.
The frame was often elaborately carved and ornamented,
and was suspended from the mother’s head by means of
one of the burden straps in the weaving of which these
Indians showed great skill. These bands were fashioned,
by a process of finger weaving, from cords made by
twisting filaments of bark together, which formed the
warp; while the woof was filled in by passing finer threads
of the same material across the cords over and under
each alternately from side to side and back again. Morgan
says that “in the manufacture of the several species of
burden strap, more skill, ingenuity, and patient industry
are exhibited, perhaps, than in any other single article
fabricated by the Iroquois.”

If we accept the following interpretation, from the
Fesuit Relations, of the Indians’ theory of disease, we
must admit that they had anticipated Freud by at least
three centuries:

They believe that there are two main sources of disease: one of
these is in the mind of the patient himself, which desires something,
and will vex the body of the sick man until it possesses the thing re-
quired. For they think that there are in every man certain inborn
desires, often unknown to themselves, upon which the happiness of
individuals depends. For the purpose of ascertaining desires and
innate appetites of this character, they summon soothsayers, who, as
they think, have a divinely-imparted power to look into the inmost
recesses of the mind. . . . They believe that another source of dis-

ease is the hidden arts and the charms of sorcerers, which they seek
to avert by means of absurd ceremonies.

A third class of diseases, which the Father fails to men-
tion, was recognized by the Iroquois as being due to
natural causes and therefore curable by natural remedies.

The treatment of disease was consistent with these
theories, as is shown in the two following extracts from
the Relations:

They are convinced that they are afflicted with diseases only because
the soul is in want of something for which it craves; and that it is only

[79]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

necessary to give it what it desires, in order to detain it peacefully in
the body. . . . Adying man may be seen surrounded by awls, scissors,
knives, bells, needles, and a thousand other trifles, from the least of
which he expects to obtain health. If at last he happen to die, his
death is attributed to the absence of some article that he desired.
“He died,” they say, ‘‘because his soul wished to eat the flesh of a dog,
or of a man; because a certain hatchet that he wished for could not be
procured; or because a fine pair of leggings that had been taken
from him could not be found.” If, on the contrary, the sick man re-
covers his health, he attributes his cure to the gift of the last thing he
wished for during his illness, and afterwards he cherishes it forever,
preserving it carefully until his death.

The second passage deals with the treatment of a
disease supposed to be caused by the magic arts of an
enemy:

Towards evening of the ninth of January [1656], we were spectators
of the most subtle sorcery of the Country, employed for the cure of a
sick woman of our cabin who has long been ailing. The Sorcerer
[shaman] entered with a Tortoise-shell [rattle] in his hand, half full of
small pebbles,—such are their instruments of magic. He took a seat
in the midst of a dozen women who were to assist him in banishing the
disease, and the neighbors gathered about to see this superstitious
ceremony. All it consists in 1s, that the Magician strikes the Tortoise-
shell against a mat, and intones a song, while the women dance about
him, in time with his singing and with the noise of the Tortoise-shell.
You see them move their feet, arms, head, and entire body, with such
violence that great drops of perspiration soon cover their bodies. At
the first trial, the disease was not expelled, or at the second, or at the
third; this caused the dance to be prolonged far into the night, while the
patient’s s illness abated not a particle.

Among the Iroquois each family group possessed a tract
of land on which the women raised their crops of corn,
beans, squash, and other vegetables. The ground was
first burned over to clear it of weeds and underbrush.
The soil was then loosened with wooden mattocks and
the grains of corn deposited in hillocks at a little dis-
tance from each other. The success of the Iroquois as
farmers is shown by statistics given of the destruction of
their stores by American troops at the close of the Revolu-
tion. It is said that in Sullivan’s expedition in 1779,

[ 80 ]

PLATE 28

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; oe g
of FUP TIS OOS
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“Their Manner of Fishynge in Virginia.” By John White, the first
English artist to visit America, in 1585

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

the Americans destroyed in the villages of the Iroquois
160,000 bushels of grain and in one orchard 1,500 fruit
trees, some of them of great age. In this expedition, we
are told, no less than forty Indian towns were burnt, of
which Genesee, the largest, contained 128 houses.

Another art of the Iroquois, now lost but once carried
on extensively by the women, was the making of pottery.
Of this industry Morgan says:

One of the most ancient Indian arts was that of pottery. It was
carried to considerable perfection by the Iroquois at an early day, as
is shown by the specimens which are still occasionally disentombed
from the burial places, where they were deposited beside the dead;
but the art itself has been so long disused that it is now entirely lost.
Pipes, and earthen pots of various designs and sizes, are the principal
objects thus found. Some of these specimens of black pottery, which
is the best variety, are of so fine a texture as to admit of a considerable
polish, and so firm as to have the appearance of stone. Their common
pottery is of a clay color, and is a compound of common clz7 and
pulverized quartz.

It was not, however, skill in the material arts of life
that gave the Iroquois their ascendancy over other Indian
tribes in the East and compelled the representatives of
the most powerful nations in Europe to treat with them
as equals. It was an extraordinary genius for social
organization, which culminated in a confederation that
endured through two centuries and served in some respects
as a model for the union of the Colonies. To get a clear
idea of the League, one must understand something of the
underlying social structure of the Five Nations.

Among the Iroquois it was blood kinship, real or
fictitious, that formed the basis of citizenship in a highly
complex social fabric. In modern society an individual is
identified as belonging to a certain city, township, district,
or state, his right to citizenship in his nation depending
upon his local habitation rather than upon his name or
family connections. Theoretically at least, in the modern
state, a man’s family—his social status—is entirely dis-
tinct from his legal and political rights. ‘All men,” we

[ 81]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
like to say, “are equal in the eyes of the Law.” In short,
the individual is the ultimate unit of the modern state, and
localized groups of individuals form the larger units.

Among the Indians, on the contrary, and particularly
among the Iroquois, the individual was nothing—the
family everything. Unless a man belonged to one of the
large family groups, either by blood or by adoption, he
was regarded as an alien and an enemy. ‘The Iroquois,
like many other tribes, traced kinship solely through the
mother’s line, never through that of the father. The
family groups were known as ohwachira, or ohwachia, for
we find, even among these earliest Americans, some—as
the Mohawk—who pronounced their 7’s, and others—as
the Onondaga—who discarded that troublesome letter
altogether. All the members of an ohwachira being, theo-
retically at least, descended from the same female ancestor,
were regarded as members of the same family, and habit-
ually addressed one another in the terms of such rela-
tionship. A woman’s immediate household—her husband
and children—belonged of course to the same “‘fireside,”’
but the husband was a member of his mother’s ohwachira,
never of that of his wife, marriage between members
of the same ohwachira being forbidden by law. In a
single long-house, however, there would be many fire-
sides, the members of which would belong to the same
ohwachira, as would the members of other firesides in
other long-houses. The younger members of such related
firesides would be regarded as brothers and sisters and
would so address each other. The older women would be
“sisters” to one another and “‘mothers” to the younger
generation; while the oldest of all would be sisters to those
of their own generation and mothers and grandmothers
to the others.

When one of the daughters of such a household married,
she continued to live at her accustomed fireside until
after the birth of her first child. It was then in order
for the young family to establish its own fireside, either in

[ 82 ]

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

the long-house occupied by the wife’s family, or in another
lodge shared by other members of the wife’s ohwachira.

Just as all the women of a child’s ohwachira were to him
mothers and grandmothers, so the brothers of the women
were his uncles and his granduncles. All the kindred of a
child’s father, even his father’s parents, bore to him the
relation of uncles and aunts, with the exception of those
of his own generation, who were his “‘cousins.”’

The headship of an ohwachira was always conferred
upon a woman. There was no question of sex equality
among the Iroquois—women were supreme.

Among the family groups, or ohwachira, some, of
course, would be more closely allied than others. Such
allied ohwachira formed a sisterhood or clan, designated
by some characteristic name belonging to them exclusively.
There were at least three, sometimes more, such clans in
the tribes of the Five Nations.

Each ohwachira had originally one Federal male chief-
ship and one Federal female chiefship. Among the
Mohawk, for example, there were nine such ohwachira
distributed among three clans as follows:

MOHAWK CLANS

1. Turtle

a. Turtle of the Rattle Kind

b. Turtle of the Smooth-Shell Kind

ce. Turtle of the Small Stripe (or convex-back) Kind
2. Wolf

a. Long-legged, Forest Wolf

b. Bush Wolf

c. Cub Wolf
9... Beat

a. Adult Mother Bear
b. Weanling Cub
c. Nursing Cub

No other ohwachira of the Mohawk had a right to a
Federal chiefship.

[ 83 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

The three clans—Bear, Wolf, and Turtle (or Tortoise) —
were common to all of the Five Nations and the only
clans of two—the Mohawk and the Oneida. In addition
to these, the three other nations, the Cayuga, the Seneca,
and the Onondaga, at the time of the founding of the
League, had each a number of other clans—the Deer, Eel,
Beaver, Snipe, Hawk, and Heron—bringing the number
of clans in some tribes up to eight, most of which were
common to the three last-named tribes. These additional
clans are supposed to have arisen both by natural growth
and by the custom of adopting prisoners of war wholesale
into a tribe, thereby constituting new clans.

Each nation was governed by a tribal council made up
of chiefs of the several clans, who voted, not individually
nor by clans, but by p&Aratries. The phratry was a sis-
terhood of clans, just as the clan was a sisterhood of
ohwachira. This system, while complicated, was nec-
essary for conducting parliamentary business in_ the
Indian fashion, which ignored the principle of rule by
majorities, and required absolute unanimity. The chiefs
of a clan having agreed upon a course of action, would
then consult the wishes of the representatives of their
sister clans. These being agreed among themselves
could usually come to an agreement with the chiefs of the
remaining clan or clans constituting the opposing phratry.
At any time, however, a single chief might, by a dissent-
ing voice, obstruct the work of a council.

Each of the Five Nations being governed by this com-
plicated organization, it was but taking one more step
to organize a Federal Council, which formed the ruling
body of the League. This union was brought about
chiefly through the patriotic and farsighted leadership
of one man, one of the truly great statesmen of the world—
Deganawida.

Deganawida, who lived in the sixteenth century, is
described by tradition as a demigod, possibly the very
last of the race of demigods to live upon the earth, having

[ 84 ]

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

a mortal mother and a divine father and being endowed
with faculties and abilities far beyond those of common
men.

To a poor and humble woman, so the story runs, it
had been revealed in a dream that her daughter—a
maiden—would bear a child who should be called Degana-
wida and who should indirectly bring about the ruin
of his people. Thinking to thwart this evil destiny, the
mother and daughter, as soon as the child was born,
carried it to a stream which was frozen over, thrust it
into the water through a hole which they cut in the ice,
and leaving it to drown, returned to their lodge. But
when they awoke the next morning, they found the in-
fant, unharmed, lying asleep between them. Twice
again they carried the child to the icy river and endeavored
to drown him there. And twice again they awoke in
the morning to find him safe asleep between them. So,
recognizing that it was the will of the Master of Life
that the child should live, they accepted the charge, gave
him the name Deganawida, as had been commanded,
and thereafter reared him carefully until he grew to
manhood.

Deganawida, arrived at man’s estate, revealed to his
mother and grandmother that he must leave them in
order to perform a great work in other lands. The
“white canoe’’—probably a canoe made of birch bark—
in which he is said to have started on his journey, has
been confused in later tradition with the ice canoe of the
Iroquois Winter God, and by a still further misunder-
standing has been described in modern literature as
made of flint or stone. Yet the story is but four hundred
years old!

Deganawida soon gave proof of his divine origin by
the extraordinary orenda, or magic power, he displayed
in overcoming the obstacles and difficulties of his great
task, by his astuteness in his dealings with the tribes, and
by his wisdom in establishing the fundamental principles

[85 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

of the League. In short, Deganawida was more than a
mere demigod; he was a true prophet, statesman, and
lawmaker of the Stone Age of North America. Tradition
assigns him to no tribe, but he is by some believed to have
been a Huron.

Closely associated with Deganawida in the formation
of the League was Hiawatha. Although of great renown,
this Iroquois chieftain was an entirely different person
from the legendary Chippewa god, Nanabozho, whose
exploits have been immortalized by Longfellow under
the name of “Hiawatha.” The real Hiawatha is the hero
of two conflicting traditions, one of which idealizes him
as a great and far-seeing statesman, the true originator
of the League. The legend which seems to accord more
closely with the facts, however, describes him as the
disciple and follower of Deganawida.

According to this tradition, Hiawatha was once a can-
nibal—like the “Demons” of the Yesuit Relations—and
when first seen by Deganawida was in the act of bring-
ing into his lodge the dead body of a man he had just
killed. This body he proceeded to quarter and to cook
in a pot of water. Deganawida, unseen by Hiawatha,
climbed to the top of the lodge, where, by peering through
the smoke-hole in the roof he could watch the cannibal
at his gruesome task. While thus looking down, he suc-
ceeded by mental suggestion in making Hiawatha realize
what a horrible thing he was doing. Mistaking the face
of Deganawida, reflected in the boiling water, for his own,
Hiawatha was struck by the contrast between its great
beauty and the fearful contents of the pot. He exclaimed,
“That face and this kind of business do not agree,” and
then and there resolved never again to eat human flesh.
Accordingly he carried the pot some distance from the
lodge and emptied it.

Returning, Hiawatha encountered Deganawida, who
had descended from the roof and now came forward
to meet him. Recognizing the beautiful face which had

[ 86 |

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

turned him from his evil ways, Hiawatha became from
that moment Deganawida’s devoted follower and ally.
It is said that he received the name Hiawatha from
Deganawida. These two sought to bring about reforms
which had for their object the ending of all strife, murder,
and war, and the promotion of universal peace and well-
being. Closely associated with Deganawida and Hia-
watha in this work was Djigonsasen, a renowned woman
chief of another Iroquoian tribe, the Neutral Nation.

The most bitter opponent that Deganawida, Hiawatha,
‘ and Djigonsasen encountered was a powerful chieftain
of the Onondaga, Atotarho or Wathatotarho, a man of
great force of character—haughty, crafty, and remorse-
less—possessing orenda of great power. Tradition de-
scribes him as a monster, on whose head grew, instead
of human hair, great serpents whose horrible folds en-
veloped his body. By his stratagems Atotarho pre-
vented Hiawatha from addressing the Onondaga council,
and by his magic arts he brought about the death of
Hiawatha’s seven daughters. It was not until after the
tribes of the Mohawk, the Oneida, and the Cayuga
had joined the confederation that Atotarho and the
Onondaga were won over, and then their consent to enter
the League was gained only by granting them unusual
concessions. It was agreed that the Onondaga should
be the leading nation of the confederacy; that their chief
town should be the federal capital, where the great
councils of the League should be held and where its
records should be preserved; and that the nation should
be represented in the council by thirteen senators, while
no other nation had more than ten.

It was further agreed that no act of the Federal council
to which the Onondaga objected should be valid. To
enhance the personal dignity of Atotarho, five Federal
chiefs were designated as his special aids. In view of
all these distinctions, it is not surprising that his suc-
cessor, who two centuries later retained the same pre-

[87]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

rogatives, should have been occasionally styled by the
English colonists “the Emperor of the Five Nations.”

In founding the League, the statesmen of the Iroquois
declared that it was established for the promotion of
universal peace among all the tribes of men—for the
safeguarding of health, happiness, and human life. To
that end the Founders advocated as the proper basis of
government three great double doctrines or principles—
six in all—which were:

1. (a) Health of mind and body.

(b) Peace among individuals and groups of in-
dividuals.

(a) Righteousness in conduct; its advocacy in
thought and speech.

(b) Equity in the adjustment of rights and ob-
ligations.

3. (a) Physical strength or power; order.

(b) Orenda, or magic power, of people and institu-
tions.

One of the most important reforms instituted by the
League in accordance with these principles was the
prohibition of cannibalism as among members of the
confederated nations—this did not apply, of course, to
enemies in battle—and the substitution of a legal tender
in the blood-feud as the price of the life of a man or woman.
The price of a man’s life was fixed at twenty strings of
wampum, ten for the dead man and ten for the forfeited
life of his murderer. For the life of a woman, the legal
tender was thirty strings of wampum, because the value
of a woman’s life to the community was regarded as
double that of a man’s.

With regard to the Federal Council, or governing
body of the League, Hewitt says:

The League of the Iroquois had no chief magistrate or so-called

head chief. Each tribal council was composed of both Federal and
tribal chiefs, one of whom, usually a Federal chief, was the Firekeeper,

[ 88 |

PLATE 29

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Model of an Iroquois “long

BJOSIUUTTAT ‘s0uvod yAVq Yyoitq a3 Wwodf suluny suvIpuy vmaddryy

of ALV Id

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

like a speaker of a modern assembly, among whose duties it was to
open and close the sessions of the Council by an appropriate and largely
prescribed address. There were in each tribal council chiefs whose
office was not hereditary, but who through merit had been installed like
other chiefs as chiefs of their tribe. At their death their office ceased.
In every tribe there were able men who many times had as much if not
more power than any member of the council. Sometimes these men
have been called head chiefs of their respective tribes. After attaining
this preeminence it was customary to install them as merit chiefs. . . .
Another name for this class of chiefs was pine-tree chiefs. . . .

The establishment at Onondaga of the seat of Federal power by the
founders of the League of the Iroquois made Onondaga not only one
of the most important and widely known towns of the Iroquois tribes,
but also of North America north of Mexico. At the zenith of the
power of the Iroquois it was the capital of a government whose dominion
extended from the Hudson River on the east to the Falls of the Ohio
and Lake Michigan on the west, and from the Ottawa River and Lake
Simcoe on the north to the Potomac River on the south and the Ohio
on the southwest.

Around the Great Council Fire of the League of the Iroquois at
Onondaga, with punctilious observance of the parliamentary proprie-
ties recognized in Indian diplomacy and statecraft, and with a decorum
that would add grace to many legislative assemblies of the white man,
the Federal senators of the Iroquois tribes devised plans, formulated
policies, and defined principles of government and political action
which not only strengthened their state and promoted their common
welfare but also deeply affected the contemporary history of the whites
in North America. To this body of half-clad Federal chieftains were
repeatedly made overtures of peace and friendship by twa of the most
powerful kingdoms of Europe, whose statesmen often awaited with
apprehension the decision of this senate of North American savages.

John Bartram, in his Yournal, has given the following
account of the proceedings of the council of the League
which he attended in 1743 as a representative of the Com-
monwealth of Pennsylvania, seeking to make a treaty of
peace with the Iroquois:

This afternoon the chiefs met in council, and three of them spoke
for near a quarter of an hour each. .. .

This the interpreter told me was the opening of the diet, and was in
the opinion of these people abundantly sufficient for one day, since
there is nothing they contemn as much as precipitation in publick
councils; indeed they esteem it at all times a mark of much levity in

[89]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

any one to return an immediate answer to a serious question however
obvious, and they consequently spin out a Treaty, where many points
are to be moved, to a great length of time. . . .

This council was followed by a feast, after 4 o’clock we all dined
together upon 4 great kettles of Zzdian corn soop, which we soon
emptied, and then every chief returned to his home... .

About noon the council sat a 2d time, and our interpreter had his
audience, being charged by the governor with the conduct of the treaty.
Conrad Weiser (the interpreter) had engaged the Indian speaker to
open the affair to the chiefs assembled in council; he made a speech
near half an hour, and delivered 3 broad belts and 5 strings of Wampum
to the council, on the proper occasions. There was a pole laid a cross
from one chamber to another over the passage, on this their belts and
strings were hung, that all the council might see them and here have
the matters in remembrance: The conference held till 3, after which
we dined, this repast consisted of 3 great kettles of Indian corn soop,
or thin hominy, with dry’d eels and other fish boiled in it, and one
kettle full of young squashes and their flowers boiled in water, and a
little meal mixed; this dish was but a weak food, last of all was served
a great bowl full of Indian dumplings, made of new soft corn, cut or
scraped off the ear, then with the addition of some boiled beans, lapped
well up in Indian corn leaves, this is good hearty provision.

After dinner, we had a favourable answer, corroborated by several
belts of Wampum, with a short speech to each, these we carried away as
our tokens of peace and friendship. The harangue concluded with a
charge to sit still as yet, for tho’ they had dispatched our business
first, it was not because they were weary of us, but to make us easy.
This compliment preceded other business, which lasted till near sun
set, when we regaled on a great bowl of boiled cakes, 6 or 7 inches
diameter, and about 2 thick, with another of boiled squash, soon after,
the chiefs in a friendly manner took their leave of us, and departed
every one to his lodging: this night we treated two of the chiefs that
lived in the council hall, which as I mentioned, was our quarters:
they drank chearfully, wishing a long continuance of uninterrupted
amity between the Judians and the English.

Colden, in his “History of the Five Indian Nations”
has this to say concerning Indian oratory:

The People of the Five Nations are much given to Speech-making,
ever the natural Consequence of a perfect Republican Government:
Where no single Person has a Power to compel, the Arts of Persuasion
alone must prevail. As their best Speakers distinguish themselves in
their publick Councils and Treaties with other Nations, and thereby
gain the Esteem and Applause of their Countrymen, (the only Supe-

[90]

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

riority which any one of them has over the others) it is probable they
apply themselves to this Art, by some Kind of Study and Exercise,
in a great Measure. It is impossible for me to judge how far they
excel, as I am ignorant of their Language; but the Speakers whom I
have heard, had all a great Fluency of Words, and much more Grace
in their Manner, than any Man could expect, among a People entirely
ignorant of all the liberal Arts and Sciences. .. .

They have no Labeals in their Language, nor can they pronounce
perfectly any Word wherein there is a Labeal; and when one en-
deavours to teach them to pronounce these Words, they tell one, they
think it ridiculous that they must shut their Lips to speak. Their
Language abounds with Gutterals and strong Aspirations, these make
it very sonorous and bold; and their Speeches abound with Metaphors,
after the manner of the Eastern Nations, as will best appear by the
Speeches that I have copied.

Among the speeches thus preserved for us is one made
by a Mohawk sachem to the English on the occasion of
the sacking of the town of Schenectady by the French
in 1690. Colden’s account is in part as follows:

The Mohawk Sachems came to Albany to condole, according to their
Custom, with their Friends, when any Misfortune befals them. I
shall give their Speech on this Occasion, as it will be of Use to the
Reader, in order to his forming a true Notion of the Indian Genius.
They spoke the twenty-fifth of March as follows:

“Brethren, the Murder of our Brethren at Schenectady by the
French grieves us as much as if it had been done to ourselves, for we
are in the same Chain. . . . Be not therefore discouraged. We give
this belt [of wampum] fo wipe away your tears. . .

“Our Chain is a strong Chain, it is a Silver Chain, it can neither
rust nor be broken. We, as to our Parts, are resolute to continue the

War.

“We will never desist, so long as a Man of us remains. Take Heart,
do not pack up and go away, this will give Heart to a dastardly Enemy;
We are of the Race of the Bear, and a Bear you know never yields,
while one Drop of Blood is left. We must all be Bears; giving a sixth
Belt.

“Brethren, be patient, this Disaster is an Affliction which has fallen
from Heaven upon us. The Sun, which hath been cloudy, and sent
this Disaster, will shine again with its pleasant Beams. Take Cour-
age, said he, Courage, repeating the word several Times as they gave
a seventh Belt.”

[91]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Great virtue resided, according to Indian belief, in the
belts and strings of wampum which, among the Iroquois,
were the indispensable accompaniment of every ceremonial
occasion whether political or religious. The primitive
wampum of the Iroquois is said to have consisted of
strings of a small fresh-water spiral shell, which was re-
placed at a later day by manufactured beads made from
the shell of the common clam or quahog and probably
introduced among the Indians by the Dutch. These
beads were of two colors, purple and white, and were
perforated lengthwise and strung on sinew or bark thread.
Whether in the form of strings or when woven into belts,
the wampum beads served as a permanent token of the
speeches “‘talked into” them, and were used to record
treaty stipulations, to convey messages, and for many
religious and social purposes. Morgan gives the following
description of a wampum belt:

Wampum belts were made by covering one side of a deerskin belt
with these beads, arranged after various devices, and with most
laborious skill. As a belt four or five feet long by four inches wide
would require several thousands of these beads, they were estimated
at a great price. . . . Sometimes they are all of one color, in others
variegated, and in still others woven with the figures of men to symbol-
ize, by their attitudes, the objects or events they were designed to
commemorate.

Tokens of all public acts, preserved in the belts of
wampum, were in the care of the Onondaga chief who
bore the title of “Keeper of the Wampum.”

As originally constituted the Federal Council comprised
forty-seven chiefs. Upon Skanawati, a powerful chief of
the Onondaga, of the Turtle clan, were conferred the
double powers of Firekeeper and Chief Warrior of the
Federal Council. As bearer of two distinct titles it
was said of him that his body was divided in twain.
These offices Skanawati continued to hold until after the
admission to the League of two important groups of the
Seneca, each of which was controlled by a powerful chief.

[92]

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

In order to induce these two leaders to join the League,
they were given the offices of a modern secretary of state,
and secretary of war respectively, so that Skanawati was
no longer Chief Warrior (Secretary of War). The Federal
Council then numbered forty-nine, and this number was
never changed, although when the Tuscarora and other
tribes were later admitted to the League, their tribal
chiefs were permitted to represent them in the Federal
Council.

Of Skanawati as a representative Iroquois chieftain,
Hewitt says:

The character of some of the chief men and statesmen of the Onon-
daga appears in the following incident: Early in 1648 the Hurons
resolved to send another embassy to Onondaga. This embassy con-
sisted of six men, accompanied by one of the three Onondaga ambassa-
dors then officially in their country, the other two, including Skanawati,
the head of the Onondaga embassy, and the firekeeper of the Federal
council, remaining as hostages. The new Huron embassy was un-
fortunate, for its members were captured and killed by a force of more
than 100 Mohawk and Seneca who had lurked about the borders of
the Huron country. The Onondaga accompanying this embassy was
spared, and two Hurons succeeded in escaping. When this distressing
information reached the ears of Skanawati early in April, this proud
Onondaga ambassador, who had remained with the Hurons as a
hostage, suddenly disappeared. Naturally the Hurons suspected
that he had stealthily fled away, but a few days after his disappear-
ance his corpse-was discovered in the forest lying on a bed of fir branches,
where he had, from chagrin, taken his own life by cutting his throat.
In order to exonerate themselves the Hurons notified his companion,
who explained that the cause of Skanawati’s despair was the shame he
felt at the contempt for the sacredness of his person shown by the
Seneca and the Mohawk in going to the Huron country and slaughter-
ing the Huron people while his own life was in pledge for the keeping
of the faith of his people. Of such men was the great Federal Council
of the Iroquois composed.

Horatio Hale, who edited the Iroquois “‘Book of Rites,”
says:

By the ordinances of their League, it was required that the number
of their federal senate should be maintained undiminished. On the
death of one of its members, it was the duty of the nation to which he

[93]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

belonged to notify the other nations of the event, and of the time and
place at which he would be lamented and his successor installed. The
notice was given in the usual manner, by official messengers, who
bore for credentials certain [designated] strings of wampum, appro-
priate to the occasion. The place of meeting was commonly the chief
town of the nation which had suffered the loss. . . .

It was customary for the chiefs of the mourning nation,
on receiving word of the near approach of their guests, to
go forth to a designated spot where a fire was kindled, and
there await the arrival of the others. The visiting chiefs,
having assembled at the customary meeting place “‘at the
edge of the woods,” moved forward in solemn proces-
sion, chanting the names of the founders of the League
in the prescribed words that had been handed down from
generation to generation. After each of the revered
names, an invocation was uttered, sometimes:

Do ye continue to listen,
Ye rulers!

sometimes:

That was the roll of you,

You who were joined in the work,
You who completed the work,
The Great League.

Thus solemnly chanting, the chiefs arrive at the symbolic
fireside, where they are welcomed according to a prescribed
ritual by a chief of the mourning nation and escorted to
the tribal council house, to the accompaniment of the
same processional, taking up the long list of the forty-nine
names where it had been left off. There was little chance
of one of the sacred names being missed, for they had been
perpetuated in the Federal Council since its founding.
The departed chief for whom the nations mourned had
borne one of the great names, and his successor would
continue to bear it.

The solemn rite of condolence for the loss of the dead
and of the installation of his successor forms the subject

[94]

py ge —-

——

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

matter of the “Book of Rites,” which gives both the
Indian text and an English translation. One of the
essential parts of this rite, the “Requickening Address,”
has also been translated by Hewitt, who gives the following
interpretation of the ceremony:

The tribes of the League or Confederation are organized in two basic
organic units—in two sisterhoods of tribes—each of which is con-
stituted of two or more tribes which are correlated one with another
as sisters, this being the descriptive term indicative of their kinship
relations; the tribes of one of these sisterhoods of tribes address the
tribes of the other sisterhoods as “our cousins.”

The sisterhood of clans or the sisterhood of tribes, representing
symbolically the male sex, is addressed as “my father’s clansmen”
or “our father’s clansmen” because the side of the male sex is the
father’s side or father clan-group, or father tribe-group. Again the
sisterhood of clans, or the sisterhood of tribes representing symbolically
the female sex, is addressed as “my offspring” or “our offspring,”
because, in the fireside family, the children belong to the ‘‘mother,”
and as this is the mother group or side—the mother clan-group—it is
also the “offspring” group or side; but this group or side may also be
addressed as “woman,” as may be seen in the words of the so-called
“six songs.” Thus, it is seen that the fundamental dualism consists
of the concepts—male sex or principle, the father, the fatherhood, in
nature, on the one hand, and the female sex or principle, the mother,
the motherhood, in nature, on the other. .

The federal or league dualism consisted, on the father side, of the
Mohawk, the Onondaga, and the Seneca tribes, and on the mother
side, of the Oneida and the Cayuga tribes, the three tribes forming a
sisterhood of tribes, and the two tribes forming another sisterhood of
tribes. These sisterhoods have also been called phratries of tribes in
the literature relating to these Iroquoian tribes and their League or
Confederation.

In every place of public assembly there is, or at least there is assumed
to be, a hearth or fire-altar, some distance from either end of the
song-bench which occupies the central part of the room or space, and
which serves as a divisional line between the father and the mother
sides or tribal groups of the League, for the father group of tribes
occupies one side of the fire, and the mother group of tribes the other,
in both civil and religious public assemblies.

It is one of the rules or laws of the federal organization that in the
case of the death of one or more chiefs in either tribal sisterhood the
tribes of this sisterhood become mourners for a year or until the vacant
chiefship or chiefships shall have been filled in accordance with strict

[95 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

rules of ritualistic procedure, which govern a large part of the pro-
ceedings of the so-called Council of Condolence and Installation of
Chiefs. It is then the official duty of the other sisterhood of tribes
to perform the rights and ceremonies of this council for the rehabilita-
tion of its cousin sisterhood of tribes; for during the period of its
mourning it should not transact any public business. . . .

The Requickening Address in the ritual of the Condoling and Installa-
tion Council of the League or Confederation of the Iroquois derives
its name from its designed or purposed power and function to restore
to life—to requicken the dead chief and lawgiver in the person of a
legally chosen cotribesman, and, to heal and to soothe the wounded
and bereaved mind of a cousin sisterhood of tribes—a cotribesman
who shall live in the official name of the dead lawgiver. In Iroquoian
polity the office never dies, only its bearer can die. . . . The polity of
the Iroquois as expressed in the ordinances of the League requires
that the number of chiefs constituting their federal council should be
maintained undiminished in number. . . . So potent—and so terrible—
so full of orenda or magic power—are the matters comprised in the
ritual of this great council that it is regarded as imperative to hold this
Council of Condolence and Installation only in the autumn and winter.
It is so deeply concerned with the dead and with the powers that
requicken and preserve the living from the power of the Destroyer,
and so it was thought to be deadly and destructive to growing seeds
and plants and fruits were it held during the spring or summer—the
period of growth and rebirth. Its purpose in part is to nullify and
overcome the power of Death and to restore to its normal condition
the orenda, or magic power, of the stricken sisterhood of tribes, whether
of the father or mother side. It was taught that the death of even one
person weakened the orenda or magic power of the people, and so the
death of a ruler was a greater blow; and to restore the life of the
people the various institutions of the Condoling and Installation
Council were devised to thwart the assaults of death and to repair
any injury done by it to the power of the people to live in health
anid peace... i. «

The Requickening Address sets out in detail the evils and wounds
which befall a stricken people—the calamitous effects of death’s
power, and it asserts that it counteracts these evils and restores to life
the dying people in the person of their newly installed chief... .

This address is accompanied by fourteen strings of wampum. The
orator delivers one of these wampum strings to the mourning side at
the conclusion of every material statement. Hence his address is
also called the Fourteen Matters, and also Ne Adondak'sah, t.e., The
Wampum Strings of Requickening.

[ 96 ]

PLATE 31

Thayendanegea, or Joseph Brant, Mohawk chief and colonel in

the British Army during the Revolution. Artist unknown. Cour-
tesy of Mr. David I. Bushnell, Junior

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

In his account of the Condoling Council in the “Book
of Rites,” Hale says:

The chant and the Book end abruptly with the mournful exclama-
tion “Now we [two] are dejected in mind.” . . . As the council is
held, nominally at least, for the purpose of condolence, and as it
necessarily revives the memory of the departed worthies of their
republic, it is natural that the ceremonies throughout should be of a
melancholy cast. . . In fact, when we consider that the founders of
the League, with remarkable skill and judgment, managed to compress
into a single day the protracted and wasteful obsequies customary
among other tribes of the same race, we shall not be surprised to find
that they sought to make the ceremonies of the day as solemn and
impressive as possible.

The other ceremonies of the Iroquois were not of this
solemn character. Morgan enumerates six regular
festivals, or thanksgivings, which were observed by them.
These were the Maple, Planting, Strawberry, Green
Corn, Harvest, and New Year’s or White Dog festivals.
The Maple festival, usually called the Maple Dance,
was the first festival of the spring and was observed as a
local feast in all the villages of the League. The other
feasts followed in regular succession, and culminated in
the great New Year’s or White Dog Festival, which was
held in mid-winter, and was the most elaborate and im-
portant feast of all.

All these feasts were of a religious character, and
were celebrated by symbolic rites and dances, chief among
which were the Feather dance, the Fish dance, and the
Trotting dance. The Feast of the White Dog lasted seven
days, the mornings being devoted to observances marked
by song and sacrifice, and the evenings to dancing and
feasting. The white dog offered as a messenger to bear
the prayers of the people to the Life God was strangled
and then burned. In strangling the dog, which was done
on the second day of the festival, they were careful not to
shed its blood or break its bones. It was then spotted
with red paint and decorated with feathers, and a string of
white wampum was hung around its neck. Voluntary

[97 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

offerings, in the shape of ornaments of various kinds, were
placed upon the body. The dog was then suspended
by the neck about eight feet from the ground, on the
branching prong of a pole. There it hung until the morn-
ing of the fifth day, when it was taken down to be burned.

The burning of the dog was marked by great ceremony
in which the impersonator of the Master of Life played an
important part. A procession was formed around the
burning altar on which the body of the dog was finally
laid with great solemnity during the intoning of the final
address. The people then returned to the council house,
where the Feather dance was performed, and the rest
of the day was given up to feasting and merrymaking,
as a token to the Master of Life that his children were
happy and grateful for all his blessings. After two more
days of such observances, the ceremony was brought to
an end with the Peach-stone or (Plum-stone) game. This
was a ceremonial game in which six peach- or plum-stones,
burned on one side to blacken them, were rolled about like
dice in a bowl, the count depending upon the number
which came up of one color, and the stakes being repre-
sented by beans. In this contest, the people were repre-
sented by players who played two at a time under the
supervision of managers and watched by a delighted
throng of spectators. The playing of the Peach-stone
game was the concluding exercise not only of the New
Year’s, but also of the Green Corn and the Harvest
festivals.

The Peach-stone game derived its significance from its
connection with an incident in the legendary history of the
Iroquois Master of Life, De‘haé™“hiyawa”kho”, who, as
the personification of the life force, was the creator ofall
living things upon the earth. His beneficent activities
are thus recounted by Hewitt:

De‘haé™“hiyawa”’kho™ then toiled at his tasks, forming the various

kinds of animals and birds and making various varieties of useful
trees, shrubs, and plants. In all this work his grandmother and his

[98 |

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

twin brother [O‘ha’a’, the personification of winter] sought to thwart
him by all manner of devices, but by the timely counsel of his father
[of the race of The Great Turtle] he was able to defeat their efforts.
De‘haé™“hiyawa”kho” labored to prepare the earth for man, the
human being, whom later he was to create. . . . Finally the grand-
mother, who had exhausted all her methods of opposition, challenged
her grandson to a game of the bowl and plum pits, the prize of the
winner to be the rulership of the phenomena, processes, and the flora
and fauna of the earth. The grandson willingly accepted the chal-
lenge.

Th accordance with custom, ten days were allowed the contestants
to prepare for the struggle of their powerful orendas. At the end of
this time the grandmother came to the lodge of her grandson, bringing
her bowl and plum pits. He said he would use her bowl, but not her
plum pits, as these were something alive and under the control of the
mind of the grandmother, or the user. The plum pits in this game
serve as dice. The dice of De‘haé™hiyawa’”’kho™ were the tops of
the heads of chickadees, who had responded to his call for aid. He
took six of the tops of the heads, and they remained magically alive.
When he and his grandmother were ready De‘haé™hiyawa’’kho”
called in a loud voice, “All you whose bodies I have formed, do you
now put forth to the uttermost your orenda, in order that we may
conquer in this struggle, so that you may live!” Then, when it came
his turn to shake the bowl, he exclaimed, “Now, verily, shall appear
the good or ill fortune of all the things that I have done or made!”
But the grandmother failed to score, while De‘haé™hiyawa’’kho”
made the highest score possible at one shake of the bowl, and so won
the government and rulership of all living things.

Finally this great bet between De‘haé™hiyawa’’kho™ and his
redoubtable grandmother is dramatized and played at the annual
New Year festival and also at the annual harvest festival or ingathering
of crops.

Beset on all sides by enemies, it was but natural that the
Iroquois should be almost continually at war. War
might be declared either by the federal council or by an
individual nation. Having enlisted volunteers, a war
chief would go through his village dressed in full costume,
singing songs, and dancing the war-dance. He would soon
be joined by other singing, dancing warriors, dressed in
full regalia. By the time the band had assembled, the
women would have a quantity of charred corn prepared
with which they filled the deerskin pouches of the warriors

[99]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

as provision for the journey. With but a small supply
of this concentrated food it was possible for the Indians to
make long expeditions. By mixing the ground corn with
water a nourishing meal could be quickly prepared with-
out the necessity of making a fire and thus running the
risk of betraying their location to the enemy.

A band would take the warpath in single file, moving
through the forest silently and rapidly. On their return,
as soon as they reached the outskirts of their village, they
sent a messenger to announce their approach by a long-
drawn, wailing cry, “Ku’we! Ku'we!” repeated to indicate
the number of prisoners or scalps they had taken. They
then entered the village in a dancing procession, bringing
their captives and trophies with them. After being
received by a spokesman with a speech of welcome and con-
gratulation, a reply was made by one of the band, who
described their adventures. This ceremony was con-
cluded by another war-dance.

The women of the tribe usually decided the fate of the
captives, which might be either adoption or death by
torture, although exchange of prisoners between enemies
was sometimes practiced by the Indians. All prisoners
were subjected to the ordeal of the gantlet, which meant
that each unfortunate was forced to run between two rows
of women and children who were provided with whips,
clubs, knives, etc., with which to strike the prisoner as
he ran. Those who fell from exhaustion were killed
outright as unworthy to be saved, but those who reached
the goal in safety might be adopted into an ohwachira
and given the names of the dead Iroquois whose places
they were to take. A captive offered for adoption to a
family who had lost one of its number through accident
or disease would probably be spared if he succeeded in
“running the gauntlet.” But if he were offered as a sub-
stitute for one who had been killed or taken prisoner by
an enemy, he was consigned to torture and death. It is
recorded that one warrior whose brother had been killed

[ 100 |

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Wampum belts in the National Museum. Described by
Beauchamp in Bull. N. Y. State Mus. No. 41, Vol. 8, 1901.
Fig. t. Belt said to have belonged to Tecumseh. White
figures of men and houses. Two joining hands, with flag,
indicate an alliance. - Fig. 2.. Belt probably not Indian work.
Letters I. G. S. may be, initials of John Graves Simcoe,
Governor-General of Upper Canada, 1791-94. Fig. 3. Small
belt, supposed to have belonged to the Mohawk, of white
and purple beads, with thongs of twisted buckskin

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A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

put to death no less than forty prisoners. The horrible
custom of cannibalism in war, still practiced by the
Iroquois at the time of the discovery, was in part at least
due to their belief that by partaking of the flesh of a man
who had died bravely under torture the participants in the
act would imbibe something of the dead man’s courage.

Another barbarous custom of the Iroquois and of some
of the other Eastern tribes, but not originally so wide-
spread as has been supposed, was that of scalping a fallen
foe. This was accomplished by a deft circular incision
of the knife, and a tug at the scalp-lock, usually allowed
to grow longer for that purpose, by which the entire
scalp, or a part of it, was removed. As a rule scalps were
taken as trophies from those already dead, but the proc-
ess, while painful, was not necessarily fatal, and was
often practiced on a victim as a means of torture and
occasionally served as a punishment and a warning to
the scalped man’s tribe, to which he might be returned.
Usually, however, the entire head of a foe slain in battle
was taken as a trophy of the slayer’s valor.

The Iroquois were relentless enemies, and did not
scruple to destroy their foes by any means in their power.
Although not strong in numbers, their methods of war-
fare, particularly after they had been supplied by the
Dutch with fire-arms, terrorized and intimidated the
surrounding tribes so effectually that their mastery was
acknowledged as far south as the Tennessee River.
Many hostile tribes were practically exterminated, and
the remnants adopted, helping thereby to swell the
numbers and increase the prestige of the Iroquois. When
the Tuscarora, a related people, were driven from their
homeland by the white settlers of North Carolina, they
took refuge with the Iroquois, who were thereafter known
as the Six Nations.

In their domestic life the Iroquois were on a remark-
ably high plane. They held women in great honor and
were kind and indulgent parents, seldom punishing their

[Tor |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

children, who, while enjoying the utmost liberty, were,
as a rule, docile and obedient. Marriages were arranged
by the parents of the young people and were solemnized
by an exchange of gifts. Husband and wife were, of
course, always of different clans, marriage between
members of the same clan, and between those of the
same phratry, being formerly forbidden.

With regard to the character of the Iroquois, Hale
says:

The Indians must be judged, like every other people, not by the
traits which they display in the fury of a desperate warfare, but by
their ordinary demeanor in time of peace, and especially by the char-
acter of their social and domestic life. . . . At home the Indians are
the most kindly and generous of men. Constant good humor, un-
failing courtesy, ready sympathy with distress, and a truly lavish
liberality mark their intercourse with one another. . .

The Iroquois, who had seemed little better than demons to the
missionaries while they knew them only as enemies to the French
or their Huron allies, astonished them, on a nearer acquaintance, by
the development of similar traits of natural goodness. . . .

We become conscious of the fact that the aspect in which these
Indians have presented themselves to the outside world has been in
a large measure deceptive and factitious. The ferocity, craft and
cruelty, which have been deemed their leading traits, have been
merely the natural accompaniments of wars of self-preservation, and
no more indicated their genuine character than the war-paint, plume
and tomahawk of the warrior displayed the customary guise in which
he appeared among his own people. The cruelties of war, when war
is a struggle for national existence, are common to all races. The
persistent desire for peace, pursued for centuries in federal unions,
and in alliances and treaties with other nations, has been manifested
by few as steadily as by the countrymen of Hiawatha [and Degana-
wida].

Such were the Iroquois, who were destined to match
their prowess and their wit against the strong arm and
trained intelligence of the white invaders of their land.
Had the whites delayed their coming for another century,
they might have found a truly formidable empire ar-
rayed against them. And if the Iroquois had been left
until the present day to work out their destiny, it is not

[ 102 |

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

at all improbable that they might have developed their
wampum hieroglyphics into a genuine written language
and have been by this time well on the way to a civiliza-
tion of theirown. What the character of that civilization
would have been can only be conjectured; but, if Hale’s
estimate of them be not too greatly idealized, it is possible
that these Indians might have succeeded in establishing
an enduring State based on the six foundation stones of
the League—health, happiness, righteousness, justice,
power, and strength of character.

[ 103 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
REFERENCES

BarTraM, JoHN. Observations on the inhabitants, cli-
mate, soil, rivers, productions, animals, and other
matters worthy of notice made by Mr. John Bartram
in his travels from Pensilvania to Onondaga, Oswego,
and the Lake Ontario in Canada. London, 1751.

CarTIER, JAcQuES. Brief récit, et succinte narration, de la
nauigation faicte es ysles de Canada. Paris, 1545.

CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE. Voyages: ou journals és dé-
couvertes de la Nouvelle France. Tomes 1-11. Paris,
1830.

CoLpEN, CADWALLADER. The history of the Five Indian
Nations of Canada, which are dependent on the
province of New York in America. London, 1747.

Cusick, Davis. Sketches of ancient history of the Six
Nations. 2d ed. Tuscarora, N. Y., 1828.

Have, Horatio. Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confedera-

tion: a study in anthropology. Salem, Mass., 1881.

, editor. The Iroquois book of rites. (Brinton’s

library of aboriginal literature, No. 2.) Philadel-

phia, 1883.

Heriot, Georce. Travels through the Canadas. Lon-
don, 1807.

Hewitt, J. N. B. Iroquoian Cosmology. First part.
aist Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Washington,
1904.

— The requickening address of the League of the
Iroquois. J: Holmes anniversary volume, pp. 163-
179. Washington, 1916.

— Some esoteric aspects of the League of the Iroquois.
Proc. 1gth Int. Cong. Americanists, 1915, pp. 322-
326. Washington, 1917.

— A constitutional league of peace in the stone age of
America: the League of the Iroquois and its constitu-
tion. Smithsonian Inst. Ann. Rep. 1918, pp. 527-
545. Washington, 1920.

[ 104 ]

A LEAGUE OF FIVE NATIONS: THE IROQUOIS

Hewirt, J. N. B. Iroquoian Cosmology. Second part,
with introduction and notes. 43rd Ann. Rep. Bur.
Amer. Ethnol. [In press.]

Kenton, Epwna, editor. The Indians of North America,
from “The Jesuit relations and allied documents:
travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in
New France, 1610-1791,” edited by Reuben Gold
Thwaites. Vols. 1-11. New York (Harcourt, Brace
ey @e,),) [1927].

Lescarsot, Marc. Histoire de la Novvelle-France.
‘Paris; 1672)

Morcan, Lewis H. League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or
Iroquois. Rochester, New York, and Boston, 1851.

—— Houses and house-life of the American Aborigines.
Cont. N. Amer. Ethnol. Vol. 4. Washington, 1881.

SAGARD THEODAT, GABRIEL. Histoire de Canada. Tomes
iiy., (Paris, 1636.

—— Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons. Tomes 1-1.
Paris, 1865.

SmiTH, Erminnig A. Myths of the Iroquois. 2d Ann.
Rep. Bur. Ethnol. Washington, 1883.

[ 105 ]

CHAPTER: V

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR
DESCENDANTS: THE PUBBLOS

WuiLe the French and English were struggling for
dominion in the East, other adventurers of a quite different
type had already set about the conquest of the more
alluring empire of the Southwest. The invaders of the
northeastern coast were, for the most part, permanent
colonists bent upon establishing homes in a rude and sav-
age land. The native inhabitants of that land seemed to
these determined pioneers merely so many obstacles to be
cleared away like the forests in order to make room for
the fields and homesteads of the new Americans.

The Spaniards, in the South and West, had another
purpose. Though obliged to relinquish the hope of find-
ing the eastern coast of India on the farther side of the
Atlantic, they still dreamed of boundless treasures hidden
away somewhere on the vast new continent. Their aim,
therefore, was to explore and possess the country rather
than to settle it. Led by the dream of conquest, they had
sailed westward through the Gulf of Mexico to the land
of the Aztecs, only to find there a barbarous people, more
advanced than their eastern neighbors in many ways,
but far from possessing the riches which the Spaniards
sought.

The disappointed conquerors were the more ready,
therefore, to heed rumors which began to reach them
from time to time of a greater and richer kingdom to the
north. These reports told of a fabulous Province of
Cibola where were seven wonderful cities, filled with

[ 106 |

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

treasures of gold and silver and turquoise, to be reached
only by a long journey through trackless desert lands.

Undaunted by the difficulties and thinking only of the
vast riches in prospect, a force of 400 Spaniards and
20,000 friendly Indians (according to Castafieda, the
chronicler of the expedition) was got together under the
command of Nufio de Guzman. The difficulties of travel
proved so great, however, that the army got no farther
than the borderland of New Spain, where Guzman, in
1530, established the town of Culiacan to mark the north-
ern outpost of the Spanish possessions in the province
called New Galicia, and hastened back again to Mexico
City.

Three years earlier an expedition of 300 men under
Pamfilo de Narvaez, likewise in search of fabulous
treasures, had been sent out from Spain to explore the
peninsula of Florida. Of this luckless band only four,
including their leader, Cabeza de Vaca, and a negro called
Stephen or Estevan, survived and, after eight years of
incredible suffering, succeeded in making their way west-
ward to the Spanish province of New Galicia. There
they related their adventures, embellishing them with
marvelous stories of the riches which, they had heard,
were to be found in the still unexplored country.

Spurred on by renewed visions of great cities and
boundless wealth in the region to the north, the Spaniards
nevertheless wisely determined first to test the truth of
these new reports. Accordingly the Governor of New
Galicia, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, dispatched a
small scouting party, under the leadership of the Francis-
can, Fray Marcos de Nizza, and with the negro Estevan
as guide, to explore the country. In a short time Fray
Marcos returned, reporting that Estevan had reached
Cibola but had been killed there by the natives; and that
he himself, following after, had seen one of the Seven
Cities from a distance, and was satisfied, from its appear-
ance and from the reports which had been sent back to

[ 107 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

him from time to time by Estevan, that it was a rich and
populous land.

Soon afterwards Coronado’s famous expedition, with
Fray Marcos as guide, set out to find the Seven Cities.
The friar faithfully conducted the leader, and his mail-
clad mounted troops and foot-soldiers armed with cross-
bows and firearms, to the province of Cibola and its
Seven Cities, which proved to be the country occupied
by the seven ancient pueblos of the Zufi Indians. The
account of Castafieda reflects the bitter disappointment
of the Spaniards. He relates that when the soldiers got
their first glimpse of the “city” which the Spaniards called
Cibola and which has been identified as the ancient Zufi
pueblo of Hawik’uh, “‘such were the curses that were
hurled at Friar Marcos that I pray God may protect
him from them.” He continues:

It is a little, unattractive village looking as if it had been crumpled
all up together. There are mansions in New Spain which make a
better appearance at a distance. It is a village of about 200 warriors,
is three and four stories high, with the houses small and having only
a few rooms, and without a courtyard. One yard serves for each
section. The people of the whole district had collected here, for there
are seven villages in the province, and some of the others are even
larger and stronger than Cibola. These folks waited for the army
drawn up by divisions in front of the village. When they refused
to have peace on the terms the interpreters extended to them, but
appeared defiant, the Santiago [the Spanish war-cry, used in battle
with the “Infidels”] was given, and they were at once put to flight.
The Spaniards then attacked the village, which was taken with not a
little difficulty, since they held the narrow and crooked entrance
[defending themselves by hurling great stones from their terraces
upon the Spaniards]... . But the first fury of the Spaniards could
not be resisted, and in less than an hour they entered the village and
captured it. They discovered food there, which was the thing they
were most in need of. After this the whole province was at peace.

After the subjugation of the Zufi, the Spaniards visited
and seized most of the other Indian pueblos. Castafieda
lists some sixty-six villages and estimates their popula-
tion at about 20,000. From these towns, in spite of their

[ 108 |

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CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

poverty, Coronado replenished his supplies of food and
clothing, and leaving part of his force to hold the new
possessions, pressed on with the rest of the army to fol-
low another rainbow. This new object of the Spaniards’
quest was called Quivira, and their chief informant and
guide, who had told of great riches to be found there,
was a certain treacherous Indian, an adopted captive of
the Pueblos, whom his white dupes called “the Turk.”
Reaching Quivira after many hardships and finding
that it was merely the tent-village of a wandering
Indian tribe, the disappointed adventurers promptly
garroted “the Turk,” who confessed that he had led
them out on the plains at the instigation of the Pueblos
in the hope that they might lose their way and be slaugh-
tered by some hostile Indian tribe. After long wandering
on the trackless prairie, Coronado and his little army
at last succeeded in finding their way back to their com-
panions in the Pueblo country.

Two years of fruitless exploration and barren conquests
finally convinced Coronado that the quest was vain;
baffled, disheartened, and ill, he led his soldiers back to
New Spain, leaving behind him a number of Franciscan
friars to establish missions and convert to Christianity
the 20,000 (or perhaps only 10,000) new subjects of the
King of Spain. Thus nearly four hundred years ago the ,
“blessings of civilization and the Christian religion”
were brought to the Pueblo Indians. Yet when first
visited by Americans, some three hundred years later,
these Indians were found to be still living in their ancient
way, for the most part, and still practicing the rites of
their own religion. Finding them difficult to subdue
and too poor to exploit, the Spaniards, after nominally
subjugating them, had allowed them to remain in undis-
turbed possession of their homes.

The Pueblo Indians, although speaking four distinct
languages, of which there are several separate dialects,
and occupying detached towns that are entirely indepen-

[ 109 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

dent and self-governing, must nevertheless be regarded
as a single group because of the similarity of their tra-
ditions, customs, and religious practices, a similarity
strengthened by frequent intermarriage.

Their country comprises the high plateaus or mesas of
New Mexico and Arizona. These are literally table-
lands—flat-topped, precipitous heights rising in terraces
to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. This is an
arid land, parched by a blazing sun in summer and in
winter swept by wind-driven snows. It is the country
of the canyons, which have been cut by the rushing
mountain torrents to a depth of thousands of feet through
the soft sandstone formation of the mesas. Many
streams have seemingly exhausted themselves in this
gigantic task, for they are today no more than rivulets
almost lost in the depths of the gorges, sometimes, indeed,
quite smothered in their sandy beds before they have
found an outlet into some larger stream. In summer,
however, when the mountain snows melt, and brief but
terrific thunderstorms are frequent, the rivers are often
turned into raging torrents that overspread their banks
and dash themselves against the walls of their deep
prisons.

Ages ago the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians found in
the sheer walls of these river gorges a safe retreat from the
fiercer tribes around them. Here they hid, building
their stone houses in the deeper recesses of the cliffs and
scooping out cavelike dwellings in the softer strata of
the precipices. The ruins of these ancient homes,
abandoned long before the coming of the Spaniards, are
found as far north as Colorado and Utah. In the course
of centuries, because of overcrowding or for other reasons,
the cliff dwellers moved farther and farther south along
the river courses, still building or burrowing in the can-
yon walls and still cultivating the arable land along the
river banks. Even when they began to construct their
houses on the mesas above the river gorges, they long

| 110 |

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

retained the old home sites as convenient places in sum-
mer for overlooking and guarding the growing crops.

In his novel “The Delight Makers,” Bandelier has
pictured such a cliff-dwelling community and has peopled
with the life of bygone ages a certain site actually dis-
covered and described by him. This is the canyon of
the Tyuoni, or the Rito de los Frijoles, a small tributary
of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, nearly opposite the
town of Santa Fé. It is supposed to have been the
ancient home of the tribe of Queres (Keres, or Keresan
Indians) who now occupy the pueblo of Cochiti. In
“The Delight Makers” Bandelier describes them as they
must have lived long before the Spaniards broke the
quiet of ancient Cochiti with the trampling of horses
and the barking of guns. Hundreds of years before
that event the Rito was already deserted. Today
nothing remains but the ruins of the former homes and
the traditions of the modern Queres. The young hero
of Bandelier’s story is typical of the Pueblos as they
must have appeared to the Spaniards, and is thus de-
scribed:

His costume was very plain. A garment of unbleached cotton,
coarsely woven, covered the body as low as the knee. The garment,
sleeveless and soiled by wear, was tied over the right shoulder. A
reddish-brown scarf or belt of the same material fastened it around
the waist. Feet, arms, and the left shoulder were bare. Primitive
as was the costume, there was, nevertheless, an attempt here and there
atdecoration. The belt was ornamented with black and white stitches; ~

from each ear hung a turquoise suspended by a cotton thread, and a
necklace of coloured pebbles strung on yucca fibre encircled the neck.

Where the width of the canyon permitted, the cliff
dwellers often built pueblos in every essential similar
to those of today. In their ruins are found traces of the
curious structures called kivas or (by the Spaniards)
estufas. Of these semisubterranean buildings, Bande-
lier says:

A circular structure thirty feet in diameter rose a few feet only
above the soil, like the upper part of a sunken cylinder. Its top was

eataiaes

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

flat, and large flags of stone formed a rough staircase leading to its
roof. In the center, a square opening appeared, out of which a tall
beam, notched at regular intervals like a primitive ladder, protruded,
and down which also the beam disappeared as if it extended into the
bowels of the earth. This edifice, half underground, half above the
soil, was what today is called in New Mexico an estufa. . .

The estufas were more numerous in a single pueblo formerly than
they are now. Nor are they always sunken. At the Rito there were
at least ten, five of which were circular chambers in the rock of the
cliffs. These chambers or halls were, in the times we speak of, gather-
ing places for men exclusively. No woman was permitted to enter,
unless for the purpose of carrying food to the inmates. Each clan had
its own estufa, and the young men slept in it under the surveillance of
one or more of the aged principals, until they married and frequently
even afterward.

There the young men became acquainted with the affairs of their
individual connections, and little by little also with the business of the
tribe. There, during the long evenings of winter, old men taught
them the songs and prayers embodying traditions and myths, first of
their own clan, then of their tribe. The estufa was school, club-house,
nay, armory to a certain extent. It was more. Many of the promi-
nent religious exercises took place in it. The estufa on special occa-
sions became transformed into a temple for the clan who had reared it.

It will be noticed that the estufas, or kivas, of the Pueblo
Indians fulfilled many of the same purposes as the kashims
of the Western Eskimo. They were built wholly by the
men; the dwelling houses, chiefly by the women, al-
though the men brought the timber used in the ceilings,
which often had to be transported for long distances,
and put it in place, also assisting with the heavier stone
construction. The Pueblos used stone and clay (or adobe,
as the Spaniards call it) in building their houses, not so
much for the sake of durability or safety as for the same
reason that the Eskimo used snow and the Iroquois
bark—because they were the materials that happened to
be at hand. For this reason, largely, the ancient buildings
in the canyons were of stone construction, made from
the bowlders along the streams or the sandstone of the
cliffs, merely cemented together by mud—not true adobe,
which is a sort of plastic clay. Later pueblos, erected on

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CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

the mesas farther south, were built almost wholly of the
sun-dried adobe bricks on a foundation of stone, the
whole covered with a smooth layer of the adobe. This was
put on by hand, and in such ancient walls as are now
standing, the marks of small palms and fingers still re-
main, showing that then as now the women and children
were the plasterers. Substantial as these dwellings were,
they were by no means permanent abiding places for their
builders, who moved on from one site to another, usually
in a southerly direction, leaving their former homes as
storehouses in which men of our own time find many
strange treasures of the past.

The same story of sites abandoned, of massive buildings,
which must have required the work of generations to
erect, deserted for new ones built at a like cost of time
and labor, has been repeated over and over again; until,
as Bandelier says, not a single pueblo inhabited at ‘he
present day occupies the same site as in Coronado’s time,
with the exception of Acoma, built by a tribe of Keresan
Indians, which is the oldest occupied settlement in the
United States.

Acoma stands on the top of a mesa which Lummis de-
scribes as “one rock—a dizzy air-island above the plain—
three hundred and fifty-seven feet high [and seven thou-
sand feet above sea level], seventy acres in area upon its
irregular but practically level top—a stone table upheld
by ineffable precipices which are not merely perpendicular
but in great part actually overhanging. The contour of
those cliffs is an endless enchantment... . It is the
noblest specimen of fantastic erosion on the continent.”
Upon this Gibraltar of the Southwest, stands the “sky-
built city,”’ the pueblo of Acoma, three stories high, form-
ing a solid wall at the back, but terraced in front, each
story opening on the roof of the story beneath, “‘like a
flight of three gigantic steps.” As arule the only entrance
to the rooms of the first story is through hatchways in the
roof, which are reached by ladders on the outside and

nes")

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

provided with other ladders for descent inside. Very
small doorways open out on the roofs of the first and
second stories, and both of the upper roofs are reached
by steps on the division walls which separate the houses
from each other. The rooms from front to back are com-
municating, and each floor (sometimes two or three
floors) is occupied by one family. The whole building
houses about 500 people. Although the oldest of the oc-
cupied pueblos, Acoma has nevertheless suffered some
changes of Spanish origin; the corner firepits are now
provided with adobe flues, topped by curious chimneys
made of a series of unbottomed earthen jars; the hatch-
ways and the doorways, once covered only with skins or
cotton blankets, are now securely fastened with doors of
wood; while the window openings are often inclosed with
sheets of gypsum, and sometimes with American glass.
Before the coming of the Spaniards these Pueblo In-
dians had no four-footed friend or servant to do their
bidding or to bear their burdens. Of the building of

Acoma, Lummis says:

No other town in the world is reached only by such vertiginous trails,
or rather by such ladders of the rock; and yet up these awful rocks
the patient Quéres have brought upon their backs every timber, every
stone, every bit of adobe mud to build that strange city and its
marvellous church. There are timbers fourteen inches square and
forty feet long, brought by human muscle alone from the mountains
twenty miles away. The church walls are sixty feet high and ten feet
through; and the building covers more ground than any modern
cathedral in the United States. The graveyard in front, nearly two
hundred feet square, took forty years in the building; for first the
gentle toilers had to frame a giant box with stone walls, a box forty
feet deep at the outer edge, and then fill it backful by backful with
earth from the far plain. In the weird stone “ladders” by which the
top of the cliff is reached, the patient moccasined feet of forgotten
centuries have sunk their imprint six inches deep in the rock. An-
tiquity and mystery haunt every nook. The very air is hazy with
romance. How have they lived and loved and suffered here in their
skyward home, these quiet Hano Oshatch—the Children of the Sun.

[114]

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

Ancient as Acoma is—and it was an ancient city when
the Spaniards first saw it—there are legends of a still
older Acoma, which suffered a tragic fate in the dim dis-
tant past. The pueblo then stood on the great rock now
known as the Mesa Encantada, or the Enchanted Mesa,
three miles north of its present site, and twice as high.
~ Ona day when the people were down in the plain beneath,
tending their crops, an earthquake split the mesa and
overthrew the steep ladder-rock which was the only means
of ascent. The people in the plain were thus made home-
less “‘and three doomed women, left at home, were shut
aloft to perish upon the accursed cliff.”

Even today the people must descend from the heights
to do their farming on the plateau, where their crops have
been greatly increased both in kind and quantity since
the Spaniards added wheat to the original staple, corn,
and many vegetables to the ancient beans, squashes, and
melons, besides planting orchards of peach trees. Where
once turkeys were the only creatures shepherded—kept
for their feathers chiefly, as were also captive eagles—
flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of horses and cattle
are now pastured, while patient burros carry burdens
even to the top of the mesa up a specially constructed
trail. The ancient way of farming is today being rapidly
replaced by more modern and profitable methods. In
order to be near their flocks and crops, the Queres have
built in their well-watered valley a summer pueblo called
appropriately Acomita. And practically every farmer is
the owner of at least one horse.

_ Greatly changed as are their outdoor occupations, life

at the pueblo itself—as in most Indian pueblos—goes on
much as it did when the Queres lived in the Rito, so many
centuries ago. The women still grind their corn at the
grinding stones which are found in every household today
and in every ruined pueblo and cliff dwelling of the past.
These stones, called metates, are flat slabs set slantingly in
small compartments made of adobe walls about two feet

[as]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

high. There are usually three metates that are used suc-
cessively in grinding the corn, the first being the roughest
and the last the smoothest stone. The grinding is invari-
ably done by women, one of whom kneels beside each
metate, armed with a stone shaped somewhat like a flat
rolling pin. The first scatters on the rough slab in front of
her unbroken kernels of corn which she then proceeds to
crush with her stone pin, using an up-and-down motion
like that of a woman scrubbing clothes on a washboard.
When a sufficient quantity of the corn has been crushed,
it is passed to the next worker who in like manner grinds
it on her smoother stone, whence it passes to the third
woman who completes the process by means of her still
smoother metate. In this way the corn is reduced to a
fairly smooth meal. This is the ancient method of the
Pueblos as is shown by the remains of metates found in
even the oldest cliff dwellings. The Pueblos today grind
their wheat into flour by the same tedious process.

The meal is made into a thin batter and baked on flat
stones in the open fireplace today just as it was when the
Queres lived in the Rito. Except for some few American
innovations the pueblos are as bare of furniture now as
they were before the white men found them. It seems
strange that with their comparatively permanent dwell-
ings, the Indians should not have constructed some sort
of tables and chairs. But they were content with rude
benches—usually of adobe or stone—built around the
walls of the room. The earthen or flagged floors—always
scrupulously clean—serve as a demimodion: couch on
which at night are spread skins and blankets that by
day are rolled up and placed on the benches. During
the day much time is spent on the sunny terraces
outdoors.

One of the tasks of the women of Acoma is bringing
water to the pueblo. This strenuous but picturesque
custom is thus described by Lummis:

| arou

PLATE 37

Modern water jars from the pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico. In the
National Museum

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

There are no dwellings on the southern mesa; but thither leads—
down the side of the crag-hyphen and up again—a trail, deep worn in
the rock, to the great reservoir, chief of the many hollows which serve
Acoma for water-works. ... In the high, dry air of this altitude
these natural stone reservoirs keep the rain-water cool and fresh the
whole year around; and the supply almost never fails. When it does,
there are fine springs in the plain whereupon to draw. Every drop
of water in the house is brought by the women in three to five gallon
tinajas upon their heads—an exercise which may be largely responsi-
ble for the superb necks and chests and the confident poise of head
notable among all Pueblo women. There is no more picturesque sight
than the long file of these comely maids and matrons marching home-
ward in the sunset glow with their careless head-burdens.

At the time of Coronado’s invasion the people of Acoma
fared better than did the Zuii, since they did not resist the
Spanish conquerors, but received them kindly, believing
them to be gods. Half a century later, in 1598, when
another Spanish soldier, Juan de Onate, visited them, the
Acomas voluntarily submitted, intending to entrap the
Spaniards later. Ofiate and his immediate followers, un-
suspicious of the danger, escaped it by pushing on toward
Tusayan, the name the Spaniards gave to the country of
the Hopi. But Ofiate’s lieutenant, Juan de Zaldivar,
arriving later on his way to join the commander, was en-
ticed, with his few followers, by the Acomas up to their
city, where all but five were put to death with the clubs
and clumsy flint knives of their treacherous hosts. These
five succeeded in breaking away from their assailants, and
—since there was no other way of escape—hurled them-
selves from the top of the cliff, wounded as they were.
Miraculously, one only jumped to his death. The rest
escaped to join Ofate’s army in Tusayan and to there
find avengers for their murdered comrades. A month
later the citadel of Acoma was stormed by a determined
band of seventy men led by Zaldivar, who after three
days of hand-to-hand fighting finally forced the people
of Acoma to submit to the power of Spain.

Thirty years afterward, in 1629, the Acomas were con-

lai7 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

verted to Christianity (outwardly, at least) by Fray
Juan Ramirez, one of the heroic band of Franciscan
friars who followed in the wake of Spain’s conquests as
the Jesuit priests did for France. Although the Acomas
tried at first to transfix him with their arrows before he
could ascend to their high city, the heroic friar withstood
their wrath and finally succeeded in winning them to his
faith. He lived alone among the people of Acoma for
twenty years, teaching them not only religion but their
letters also, and inspiring them to build their first church.

In 1680 the Acomas joined with the other Pueblos in a
general massacre of all the Spaniards, in the course of
which the solitary friar, Lucas Maldonado, then in Acoma,
was set upon and killed, and the church built for Fray
Juan Ramirez was torn down. For only twelve years did
the Pueblos keep their independence. Then, in 1692,
Diego de Vargas reconquered the country, and Acoma
surrendered peaceably to the Spanish arms. After once
more rebelling in 1696, the Acomas again yielded, and
about 1700 the Mission was reestablished and the church
rebuilt. Since then there has been peace in Acoma, but
for a generation or more there has been no resident priest
to minister to the people, who seem more and more in-
clined to revert to the pagan religion of their fore-
fathers.

The history of Acoma in the three hundred and fifty
years of the Spanish occupation has been repeated with
varying details in most of the other pueblos. As has
been said, the Zufii were the most intractable, rebelling
again and again, and even deserting their homes for
others which they built on a high tableland called Thunder
(or Corn) Mountain. There they lived for twelve years
after the great rebellion of 1680, until de Vargas came
and succeeded in coaxing them down once more to the
valley of the Zufi River. They, too, were outwardly
good Catholics, while still practicing, at first secretly and
today openly, the rites of their ancient faith.

[ 118 |

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

As Bandelier studied the ways of the Queres, so Frank
H. Cushing devoted his life to solving the intricacies of
Zufii psychology and mythology, even living among them
for years as a Zuii in order to win their confidence, for no
Spaniard nor other foreigner had ever before been admitted
to their religious ceremonies.

Buried in half-forgotten numbers of the Century
Magazine is Cushing’s vivid account of his first visit to the
Zufi and of his adoption by them. How he received his
marching orders and his first impression of Zufiland he
recounts as follows:

One hot summer day in 1879, as I was sitting in my office in the
ivy-mantled old South Tower of the Smithsonian Institution, a mes-
senger boy tapped at my door and said:

“Professor Baird wishes to see you, sir.”

The professor, picking up his umbrella and papers, came toward
the door as I entered.

“Have n’t I heard you say you would like to go to New Mexico to
study the cliff-houses and Pueblo Indians?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you still like to go?”

paves; /sir:

“Very well, then, be ready to accompany Colonel Stevenson’s col-
lecting party, as ethnologist, within four days. I want you to find
out all you can about some typical tribe of Pueblo Indians. Make
your own choice of field, and use your own methods; only get the in-
formation. You will probably be gone three months. Write me
frequently. I’m in a hurry this evening. Look to Major Powell, of
the Bureau of Ethnology, if you want further directions. Good-day.”

Thus it happened that, on a sultry afternoon in late September, by
no means firmly seated in the first saddle I had ever bestridden, I was
belaboring a lazy Government mule just at the entrance of a pass
between two great banded red-and-gray sandstone mesas, in the midst
of a waterless wilderness. . . . Beyond the pass I followed the winding
road up a series of cedar-clad sand-hills to where they abruptly termi-
nated in a black lava descent of nearly two hundred feet. . . .

Descending, I chanced to meet, over toward the river, an Indian.
He was bare-headed, his hair banged even with his eyebrows in front,
and done up in a neat knot behind, with long locks hanging down
either side. He wore a red shirt and white cotton pantalets, slitted at
the sides from the knees down so as to expose his bare legs, and raw-
hide soled moccasins. Strings of shell-beads around his neck, and a

[119]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

leather belt around his waist, into which were stuck a boomerang or
two, completed his costume. Knitting-work in hand, he left his band
of dirty white and black sheep and snuffling goats in charge of a wise-
looking, grizzled-faced, bob-tailed mongrel cur, and came, with a sort
of shuffling dog-trot, toward the road, calling out, “Hai! hai!” and ex-
tending his hand, with a most good-natured smile.

I shook the proffered hand warmly, and said, “Zufi?”

“E!” exclaimed the Indian, as he reverentially breathed on my hand
and from his own... .

I hastened on with all the speed I could scourge out of my obsti-
nate, kicking mule, down the road to where the rivulet crossed it, and
up again, nearer and nearer to the strange structures.

Imagine numberless long, box-shaped adobe ranches, connected
with one another in extended rows and squares, with others, less and
less numerous, piled up on them lengthwise and crosswise, in two,
three, even six stories, each receding from the one below it like the
steps of a broken stairflight,—as it were, a gigantic pyramidal mud
honeycomb with far outstretching base,—and you can gain a fair
conception of the architecture of Zuiii.

Everywhere this structure bristled with ladder-poles, chimneys, and
rafters. The ladders were heavy and long, with carved slab cross-
pieces at the tops, and leaned at all angles against the roofs. The
chimneys looked more like huge bamboo-joints than anything else I
can compare them with, for they were made up of bottomless earthen
pots, set one upon the other and cemented together with mud, so
that they stood up, like many-lobed, oriental spires, from every roof-
top. Wonderfully like the holes in an ant-hill seemed the little win-
dows and door-ways which everywhere pierced the walls of this giant
habitation, and like ant-hills themselves seemed the curious little
round-topped ovens which stood here and there along these walls or
on the terrace edges... .

Not an Indian was anywhere to be seen, save on the topmost ter-
races of this strange city. There hundreds of them were congregated
gazing so intently down into one of the plazas beyond that none of
them observed my approach, until I had hastily dismounted, tied my
mule to a corral post, climbed the refuse-strewn hill and two or three
ladders leading up to the house-tops. The regular thud, thud of
rattles and drums, the cadence of rude music which sounded more like
the soughing of a storm wind amid the forests of a mountain than the
accompaniment of a dance, urged me forward, until I was suddenly
confronted by forty or fifty of the men, who came rushing toward
me with excited discussion and gesticulation. One of them approached
and spoke something in Spanish, motioning me away, but I did not
understand him, so I grasped his hand and breathed on it as I had

| 120 ]

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CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

seen the herder do. Lucky thought! The old man was pleased,
smiled, breathed in turn on my hand, and then hastily addressed the
others, who, after watching me with approving curiosity, gathered
around to shake hands and exchange breaths. . . .

At last, gaining my wished-for position on the edge of the terrace,
I came face to face with nearly the whole population of Zufii. The
music had ceased and the dancers had temporarily retired, but all
over the upper terraces were young men in groups and pairs, jauntily
mantled in red, green, blue, black, and figured blankets, only the upper
portions of their painted faces and occasional patches of their silver-
bedecked persons being exposed. Here and there an elaborately
plumed straw hat surmounted one of these enveloped statues, aside
from which not an article of civilized apparel appeared. Opposite,
women and girls, attired in clean, blue-black, embroidered blanket
dresses, neat, softly draped head-shawls, and huge-legged, white
buckskin moccasins, were standing and sitting on the lower terraces,
or in one side of the court below. . . . Old, gray-haired men, muffled
in heavy, striped serapes, sat or squatted around, or leaned on their
crooked sticks. Innumerable children, some naked, others half clad
in tattered cotton shirts and short trousers, were chasing one another
about the terraces, wrestling, screeching, or pelting any stray dog
that came around, while a few imitated the older people by sitting in
silent expectation.

After a brief interval, a priest, with plumed head and trailing white
buckskin mantle, gravely stepped in through a tunnel under the
houses, scattering on the ground, as he came, sacred meal from a
vessel which he held in one hand, while with the other he waved a
beautiful wand of macaw plumes. He was followed by some twenty
dancers elaborately costumed from head to foot. Close-fitting plumed
wigs covered their heads, and black, long-bearded, yellow-eyed masks,
with huge rows of teeth from ear to ear, red tongues lolling out be-
tween them, gave frightful grinning expressions to their faces. Their
half-nude bodies were painted black and yellow, while badges of
buckskin were crossed over their shoulders, and skirts of the same
material, secured at the waists with elaborately embroidered and
fringed sashes, depended to the ankles. Their feet were incased in
green and red buskins, and to the legs were bound clanging rattles of
tortoise-shell and deer-hoofs. Their necks were decorated with heavy
necklaces of shell beads and coral, shining disks of Aaliotis [shell]
hanging from them in front and behind; while the arms were be-
decked with green bands, fluttering turkey plumes, silver bangles and
wrist-guards of the same material. Each carried in his right hand a
painted gourd rattle, in his left, bow, arrows and long wands of yucca.

As the leader sounded his rattle they all fell into a semicircular

[ 121 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

line across the plaza, and began stepping rapidly up and down, sway-
ing from side to side, facing first one way, then the other, in perfect
unison, and in exact time to their rattles and strange measures of
wild music.

Sprawling about the ground in front of and behind the row of
dancers, in attitudes grotesque yet graceful, I observed for the first
time ten most ludicrous characters, nude save for their skirts and neck-
cloths of black tattered blanketing, their heads entirely covered with
flexible, round, warty masks. Both masks and persons were smeared
over with pink mud, giving the appearance of reptiles in human form
that had ascended from the bottom of some muddy pool and dried so
nearly the color of the ground and the surrounding houses that at
first it had been difficult to distinguish them.

One of them seated himself a little way off and began pounding,
with a short, knotty war-club, a buffalo-skin bale, which he held
between his knees, while the others, motionless save for their heads,
which they were continually twisting and screwing about, or nodding
in time to the drummer’s strokes, kept up a series of comments and
banterings which sometimes convulsed the whole throng of spectators
with laughter.

In a footnote Cushing explains that “these were the
Keé-ye-mo-shi, or ‘Guardians of the “Sacred Dance,”’
whose business it is to entertain the spectators during the
intervals of the dance, by rude buffoonery and jokes, in
which comic speeches and puns play an important part.
The office is sacred, and elective annually from among the
priesthood of the nation.” These so-called clown priests
are found in all the Pueblo tribes, usually forming a dis-
tinct order of the priesthood. Among the Queres they are
called the Koshare, the ‘Delight Makers” of Bandelier’s
novel.

Thus auspiciously was the adventurous young scientist
initiated into his life work. But his purpose of winning the
confidence and friendship of the Zufi people was not
accomplished until he had succeeded in overcoming
their first suspicions and instinctive hostility and had
faced with tact and courage more than one situation 1n-
volving personal risk and danger.

All went well until the Indians observed their young

729}

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

guest, on one occasion, busily sketching in colors the
dancers in the courtyard preparing for one of their sacred
dances. This time, however, their suspicions gave way to
admiration. “They were wonder-struck,” says Cushing,
“and would pass their fingers over the figures as though
they expected to feel them. Failing in this, they would
look at the back of the leaves, as children look behind
mirrors to see what has become of the images.”

On another occasion, the young scientist had sketched
the portrait of a pretty little girl, The child’s grand-
mother, looking over the sketches, recognized the por-
trait. “She shook her head, frowned, and covering her
face with her hands, began to cry and howl most dolefully.
... At intervals during the remainder of the day, I
could hear her talking, scolding, and sobbing over what
she regarded as a great misfortune to her family.”

It was then that Cushing, in order to overcome the un-
reasonable opposition of the Zufi to his sketching, decided
to live among them and share their life. He was given a
room in the house of the Zufii governor, an old chief who
had been disposed to favor the bold investigator from the
beginning.

Here, after the departure of the rest of his party for
another field of investigation, Cushing was further initiated
into the Zufii way of living, although his writing and
sketching were still frowned upon and he himself was
kept under close surveillance. The governor seemed
especially anxious to persuade the young man to for-
swear civilization and become altogether Zufi.

Neither persuasion, warning, nor threats, however,
availed to induce the scientist to give up the objection-
able practice of carrying his notebook about with him
wherever he went and making notes and sketches of all
that he saw. The governor advised him against it;
council of chiefs was held; and they even attempted
forcibly to prevent him from indulging in the unpopular

habit.
[ 123 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

A second council was called [this time in secret]. . . . It discussed
various plans for either disposing of me, or compelling me to desist.
Among others was the proposal that I be thrown off the great mesa
[Thunder Mountain] . . . but it was urged that should this be done,
“Wa-sin-to-na’ [the usual Pueblo name for the United States Gov-
ernment] might visit my death on the whole nation. .. .

At last a plan was hit upon which the simple natives thought would
free them from all their perplexities. Surely, no objection could be
offered to the “death of a Navajo” [by which was meant a sacrifice of
life, either animal or human, at the Great Knife Dance,—the ancient
war Kd-ka of the Zufii]. Forthwith the Knife Dance was ordered, as
it was thought possible that the appearance of this dance would be
sufficient to intimidate me, without recourse to the additional vio-
lencée ist

When the great dance appeared . . . the dancers filed in through
the covered way, preceded by a priest, and arranged themselves in a
line across the court. Their costumes were not unlike those of the
first dance I had witnessed, save that the masks were flatter and
smeared with blood, and the beards and hair were long and streaming.
In their right hands the performers carried huge, leaf-shaped, blood-
stained knives of stone, which, during the movements of the dance,
they brandished wildly in the air, in time and accompaniment to their
wild songs and regular steps, often pointing them toward me.

As the day advanced, spectators began to throng the terraces and
court, few, however, approaching to where I was sitting [on one of the
terraces of the dance court]; and the masked clowns made their ap-
pearance.

I had been busy with memoranda and had succeeded in sketching
three or four of the costumes, when there dashed into the court two
remarkable characters. Their bodies, nude save for short breech-
clouts, were painted with ashes. Skull-caps, tufted with split corn-
husks, and heavy streaks of black under their eyes and over their
mouths, gave them a most ghastly and ferocious appearance. Each
wore around his neck a short, twisted rope of black fibre, and each was
armed with a war-club or ladder-round.

These terrifying apparitions, shouting “Kill him! Kill
him! began to climb a ladder to the roof at the point
where Cushing was sitting, and where a number of Indians
had already collected around him, cutting off all chance of
escape. The young scientist, finding himself chug ene
mercy of an infuriated band of savage fanatics, displayed

[ 124 ]

PLATE 40

A Zufi matron carrying water jar. Unmarried women wear their
hair coiled over the ears

OSTX9YAT MIN ‘TUNZ jo ojqand ‘suadpIeyyy ulo-) 9y4 jo s0uep ]eluOUWlIa")

Ses WN

Wy ALVId

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

a coolness and resourcefulness worthy of a soldier facing
like fearful odds on the field of battle:

I forced a laugh, quickly drew my hunting knife from the bottom
of the pouch, waved it two or three times in the air so that it flashed
in the sunlight, and laid it conspicuously in front of me. Still smiling,
I carefully placed my book—open—by the side of the pouch and laid a
stone on it to show that I intended to resume the sketching. Then
I half rose, clinging to the ladder-pole with one hand, and holding the
other in readiness to clutch the knife. The one below [on the ladder]
suddenly grabbed the skirt of the other and shouted, “‘Hold on, he is a
ki-he! a ki-he! [by which he meant a friend sent by the gods]. We
have been mistaken. This is no Navajo.”

In order to appease the gods, however—and the
spectators—a dog was immediately procured and sacrificed
with hideous barbarity.

" Whether the Indians had really designed to murder me, or merely
to intimidate me, my coolness, as well as my waving of the knife
toward the sun, both largely accidental, had made a great impression
on them. For never afterward was I molested to any serious extent
in attempting to make notes and sketches.

That night, the old chief was profuse in his congratulations and
words of praise. I had completed in him, that day, the winning of
the truest of friends; and by so doing had decided the fate of my
mission among the Zufii Indians.

Soon afterwards the old governor prevailed upon Cush-
ing to adopt the Zufi style of dress, and gave him a
separate little house to live in, where he was required by
his new guardian to sleep in the cold on a hard bed made
by spreading sheepskins on the floor, with only two
blankets as covers, in order, as the old chief expressed it,
to “harden his meat.” To all these discomforts the young
man cheerfully submitted, for he was now permitted to
attend even the most sacred assemblies to which no out-
sider had, in modern times, ever been admitted. Thus
did this young soldier on the outposts of scientific knowl-
edge obey the orders of his superior office. “Use your
own methods,” Secretary Baird had said, “‘only, get the
information.”

But it was surely something more than the scientist’s

paasyl

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

zeal which led Cushing later on to take the final step of
being received into the tribe as the foster son of the old
chief who had shown him so much kindness. His foster
father himself performed the ceremony of piercing the
young man’s ears and of bestowing upon him the Indian
name, Té-na-tsa-h:

When all was over, my father took me to the window, and looking
down with a smile on his face, explained that I was “named after a
magical plant which grew on a single mountain in the west, the flowers
of which were the most beautiful in the world, and of many colors,
and the roots and juices of which were a panacea for all injuries to the
flesh of man. That by this name,—which only one man in a genera-
tion could bear —would I be ifaw as long as the sun rose and set,
and smiled on dhe Coru people of the cart as a Shi-wi (Zufi).”

So it came about that for four years, instead of the three
months originally allotted to him, Frank H. Cushing, or
Medicine Flower, as the Indians called him, remained
among the Zufii, sharing their daily life, attending their
councils and witnessing their most sacred and ancient
rites. With the result that, aside from the comprehen-
siveness and accuracy of the knowledge thus obtained,
Cushing was able to interpret the Zuni psychology with a
sympathetic understanding rarely attained by the scien-
tific student, especially in the case of a white man
coming into contact with a primitive people. Thus
through the eyes of this sensitive observer we gain an
insight into Zui philosophy and Zufi tradition, which
might otherwise have remained a sealed book for all
time.

Like other Pueblos, the Zufi believe that they origi-
nally emerged from their underground birthplace, or
Sipapu, led by the Hero Twins, children of the Sun and
Moon who in their turn were brother and sister, children
of the Sky Father and the Earth Mother. Fire and the
sun are the principal objects of Zufii worship, together
with many lesser gods personifying various objects and
forces of nature.

[ 126 |

ie ee

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

Although today a homogeneous nation, occupying one
pueblo and speaking one language, which represents a
distinct linguistic stock and is intelligible to no other
Indian tribe, the Zufii, according to Cushing, are de-
scended from two parental stocks, one from the north,
the other from the southwest, who came together after
the former had already settled in the Zufi valley. These
were later augmented by individuals from other tribes
and stocks.

In the Zufi valley they multiplied and spread, until,
when Coronado came upon them, there were seven inde-
pendent fortress-like pueblos, compactly built of stone and
adobe, each turning toward the river front its many-ter-
raced castle and presenting to the approach of friend and
foe alike a high, blank wall, pierced only here and there
by passageways leading through the building to the court
beyond. The cities of Cibola were of the mystic number
of seven, and today Zufii may be divided roughly
into seven quarters, each dedicated to one of the seven
Quarters of the universe—north, west, south, east,
the upper, the under world, and the middle from which
the others proceed and in which they come together
again. These “world quarters” in turn are typified by the
seven cardinal points of the Zufii compass and by seven
colors or combinations of colors. For example, North
is symbolized by yellow, the color of winter sunlight and
the aurora; blue, signifying the twilight and the Pacific,
typifies the West; red, for summer and for fire, is
the South; white, dawn-light, is the color of the East;
the Zenith is many-colored, like sunlight on clouds;
black, the color of deep caves and springs, stands for the
Lower Regions; while the Midmost or Middle is of all
colors.

At one time not long ago the Zufi comprised nineteen
clans divided into seven phratries representing the seven
world quarters. The midmost phratry includes but one
clan, the Pichi-kwe or Parrot-Macaw people, regarded

freza

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

as the mother clan of the entire tribe. Each of the other
phratries originally consisted of three clans, some of
which are now extinct. In the various ceremonials
throughout the year, the phratry, or group of clans, most
nearly related to the season or the purpose of the ceremony
is given precedence.

The social organization of the Zufi is further compli-
cated by many societies or priesthoods, each of which
has its special function appropriate to one or another of
the religious ceremonials. To these orders belong the
hideously painted priests and merrymakers described
by Cushing in the story of his first adventures in Zufi.
They, too, are divided roughly into seven groups with
reference to the seven world quarters, from the Ice-
wand people, for the north, to the Rattle-snake people,
for the lower region, the seventh or middle region being
assigned to the ancient order of the Ké’ké or A’kékd-kwe,
the Mystic Dance Drama people.

In the office of the K‘ydk'/u, or keeper of the rituals of
creation, the Zufii have, moreover, succeeded in preserv-
ing their myths and traditions in what Cushing terms
“a series of sacred epics, a sort of inchoate Bible.” In
this way they preserved the solidarity of the tribe even
when it was divided among the “Seven Cities,” making
their outlying pueblos subsidiary to the central one
representing the “middle region.”

It is a matter for much wonderment, when one reads
the details of Zui history during the 350 years of Spanish
domination, that their native social and religious organ-
ization should have been preserved down to the present
day. Again and again, after fleeing from their be-
leaguered towns to their stronghold on the high mesa

r “Thunder Mountain,” they returned and made sub-
mission to their Spanish masters. The Franciscan
friars established missions among them, many were
baptized, churches were built. Still the Zufii, in hidden
kivas, like the ancient Christians in the Catacombs of

[ 128 |

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‘suryeq ‘u10> Suryoaed pue Sulpuis UIWIOAA “WUNASNyy [BUOTVNY 9y3 Ur suvIpuy doz] aya jo dnois ATU J

fe
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cy ALVId

ote

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

Rome, practiced in secret the religion of their fathers,
and in secret the priests and elders instructed the younger
members of the tribe in the myths and the sacred rites
of their people.

All would go well so long as the Zufi were permitted
to be loyal pagans as well as good Christians. Unfor-
tunately, the zeal of the Fathers and the efficiency of the
civil police seldom permitted this compromise to continue
long. Then the Zufi, driven to rebellion, would again
massacre the soldiers and the priests, again plunder and
burn the churches, and again take refuge in their citadel
on Thunder Mountain.

In 1680 came the general uprising of all the Pueblo
tribes under the leadership of the prophet-patriot, Pope.
The Zufi, joining in the rebellion, killed one of their
priests, and successfully overthrew the Spanish power.

Later, when the Spaniards had again gained the as-
cendancy, and had for the last time persuaded the Zufi
to descend from their stronghold, the Indians built mas-
sive kivas in hidden nooks, where they might practice
their religious rites in secret, undisturbed by Spanish
intervention. Between 1775 and 1780 the Spaniards,
still apparently hoping to Christianize these invincible
pagans, built the old Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe
now in ruins in the grand plaza of Zufi, the decorations
of which were partly gifts from the King of Spain and
partly the work of resident monks. But under the
crumbling plaster now falling from the ruined walls are
revealed paintings evidently executed by Zufi artists
who mingled pagan symbols of their gods with the designs
supplied by the friars. It is supposed that it was the
discovery of this sacrilege which caused the priests to
cover with plaster the offending images.

The mission flourished for a while, but when the
priests again tried to suppress the native rites, the people
grew disaffected. Unless they were allowed to remain
pagan at heart, they were not willing to conform to

[ 129 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

even the outward observances of Christianity. So the old
church had to be abandoned, “‘never again,” says Cush-
ing, “‘to be reoccupied save on occasions of the parochial
visits of priests resident in far-away Mexican towns or
in other Indian pueblos.” Henceforth the Zufii were
left undisturbed in the practice of their ancient faith.

Northwest of Zufii, in the province that the Spaniards
called Tusayan, Coronado found another tribe of Pueblo
Indians, speaking neither the languages of the Queres
nor that of the Zufii, but belonging to a quite distinct
linguistic stock—the Shoshonean. These people called
themselves the Hdépitu, or “peaceful people,” a name
which has been shortened to Hopi, and which is used now
in preference to the older name, Moqui, by which they were
first known. The term Moqui is peculiarly objectionable
to the Hopi, since it was first given them by hostile Pueblo
tribes and means, in the Hopi language, “‘the dead.”

The Shoshonean stock is a large and important family,
including, besides the Hopi, their near relatives, the Ute
and Comanche, as well as other tribes, widely separated
from these, in California. Moreover, the Shoshonean, as
well as the Piman group of languages, has been found by
linguists to be related to the Nahautl group of Mexico,
which includes the Aztec. Of all the Shoshonean family,
however, the Hopi are the only ones who have adapted
themselves to the Pueblo way of life. In traditions and
in customs, with but a few minor local differences, they are
of a piece with the other Pueblo Indians.

Like the Zufii, the Hopi changed the location of their
pueblos after the coming of the Spaniards. They forsook
the lower range of plains, and rebuilt their cities on the
higher mesas. But, unlike the Zufii, they have preferred
the comparative safety of their present elevated position
to the convenience of life at the lower level. The Spaniards
found them living in seven pueblos, and today there are
seven cities on the high flat mountain tops. Only six of
these, however, are occupied by the Hopi. The seventh,

[ 130 ]

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

Tewa or Hano, is the home of an alien tribe, who took
refuge there when driven from their home by the Spaniards
in the seventeenth century. The Tewas are of Tanoan
stock the fourth great family of Pueblo Indians, whose
villages in New Mexico include Taos, the largest of all
the pueblos.

The first American to visit the Hopi pueblos was
Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives in command of the Colorado
Exploring Expedition in 1858. His account of the pueblo
of Mishongnovi, quoted by Morgan in ‘Houses and House
Life,” reminds one of descriptions of Acoma and Zuhi:

The town is nearly square and surrounded by stone walls 15 feet
high, the top of which forms a landing extending around the whole. .

Each pueblo is built around a rectangular court. . . . The exterior
walls, which are of stone, have no openings, and would have to be
scaled or battered down before access could be gained to the interior.
The successive stories are set back, one behind the other. The lower
rooms are reached by trap-doors from the first landing. The houses
are three rooms deep, and open upon the interior court. The arrange-
ment is as strong and compact as could well be devised, but as the
court is common, and the landings are separated by no partitions, it
involves a certain community of residence. . . .

The faces of the bluffs have been ingeniously converted into ter-
races. These were faced with neat masonry, and contained gardens,
each surrounded with a raised edge so as to retain water upon the
surface. Pipes from the reservoir permitted them at any time to be
irrigated. [Colorado Exploring Expedition, pp. 120, 121.]

One of the most interesting of the occupied pueblos of
the Hopi is Walpi, situated at the extreme end of what is
known as the “First Mesa,” upon which are found also
the pueblos of Sichumnovi and Tewa or Hano. The largest
of all the Hopi pueblos is Oraibi, which Donaldson says
“contains almost as many inhabitants as all the rest com-
bined, viz. goo.” He gives its altitude as 6,730 feet.

Perhaps the best description of the site of the pueblo
of Walpi is to be found in Victor Mindeleff’s “Study of
Pueblo Architecture”’:

The Walpi promonotory is so abrupt and difficult of access that there
is no trail by which horses can be brought to the village without

Lage |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

passing through Hano and Sichimovi, traversing the whole length of
the mesa tongue and crossing a break or depression in the mesa sum-
mit close to the village. Several foot trails give access to the village,
partly over the nearly perpendicular faces of the rock. . . . All the
water used in these villages except such as is caught dusing showers in
the basin-like water pockets of the mesa top, is laboriously brought
up these trails in large earthenware canteens slung over the backs of
the women.

Supplies of every kind, provisions, harvested crops, fuel, etc., are
brought up these steep trails, and often from a distance of several
miles, yet these conservative people tenaciously cling to the incon-
venient situation selected by their fathers long after the necessity
for so doing has passed away.

On this steep and nearly inaccessible promontory the
people of Walpi built their city, house by house, it is said,
beginning with a few small clusters, which were added to
from time to time as the inhabitants of the lower site
moved up and joined the pioneers on the summit. This
gradual building resulted in a much more rambling and
irregular plan than that of the typical pueblo. Through-
out Tusayan at the present day the single room seems to
be regarded as the pueblo unit and is considered a com-
plete house. By the addition of many of these units, in
course of time, the pueblo attains the distinction of a
complete village. Doubtless the manner of building is
today much the same as it was when the first house of the
present Walpi was constructed. Mindeleff describes the
process as follows:

A suitable site having been selected, the builder considers what the
dimensions of the house should be, and these he measures by paces,
placing a stone or other mark at each corner. He then goes to the
woods and cuts a sufficient number of timbers for the roof of a length
corresponding to the width of his house. Stones are also gathered and
roughly dressed, and in all these operations he is assisted by his friends,
usually of his own gens [or clan]. These assistants recetve no com-
pensation except their food, but that of itself entails considerable
expense on the builder, and causes him to build his house with as few
helpers as possible.

The material having been accumulated, the builder goes to the
village chief, who prepares for him four small eagle feathers. The

[ 132]

PLATE 43

——

Pueblo of Walpi, Arizona, showing terraced sheep corrals. Seven hundred feet above the plain

saduyta tdozy aya Jo asasuvy] ‘vuoziry “Tqresg jo ojqand ay} ut yoo y

Wr ALVId

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

chief ties a short cotton string to the stem of each, sprinkles them with
votive meal, and breathes upon them his prayers for the welfare of
the proposed home and its occupants. These feathers are called
Nakwa kwoci, a term meaning “a breathed prayer,” and the prayers
are addressed to Masauwu, the Sun, and to other deities concerned
in house-life. These feathers are placed in the four corners of the
house and a large stone is laid over each of them. The builder then
decides where the door is to be located, and marks the place by setting
some food on each side of it; he then passes around the site from right
to left, sprinkling piki[“paper bread’’] crumbs and other particles of
food, mixed with native tobacco, along the lines to be occupied by the
walls. As he sprinkles this offering he sings to the Sun his Kitdauwi,
house song: “Si-ai, a-hai, si-ai, a-hai.” The meaning of these words
the people have now forgotten.

According to Mindeleff, the Hopi women are the
builders as well as the plasterers of the houses. He
witnessed the building of a house in Oraibi of which he
says:

There was but one man present at this house-building, whose
grudgingly performed duty consisted of lifting the larger roof beams
and lintels into place and of giving occasional assistance in the heavier
work. The ground about this house was strewn with quantities of
broken stone for masonry, which seemed to be all prepared and brought
to the spot before building began; but often the various divisions of
the work are carried on by both men and women simultaneously.
While the men were dressing the stones, the women brought earth and
water and mixed a mud plaster. Then the walls were laid in irregular
courses, using the mortar very sparingly.

The house [or room] is always built in the form of a parallelogram,
the walls being from 7 to 8 feet high and of irregular thickness, some-
times varying from 15 to 22 inches in different parts of the same
wallixcs..

The making of the roof is the work of the women. When it is
finished, the women proceed to spread a thick coating of mud for a
floor. After this follows the application of plaster to the walls. For-
merly a custom prevailed of leaving a small space on the wall unplas-
tered, a belief then existing that a certain Katchina (or minor deity)
came and finished it, and although the space remained bare, it was
considered to be covered with an invisible plaster. . . .

A hole is left in one corner of the roof, and under this the woman
builds a fireplace and chimney. The former is usually but a small
cavity about a foot square in the corner of the floor. Over this a

[p433)!

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

chimney hood is constructed, its lower rim being about 3 feet from
thedfloor:”.)°..\.

All the natives, as far as could be ascertained, regard this single-
roomed house as being complete in itself, but they also consider it the
nucleus of the larger structure. When more space is desired, as when
the daughters of the house marry and require room for themselves,
another house is built in front of and adjoining the first one, and a
second story is often added to the original house. The same cere-
mony is observed in building the ground story in front, but there is no
ceremony for the second and additional stories.

The kivas, or ceremonial chambers, of the Hopi differ
from those of the other pueblos in being in the shape of
parallelograms instead of circular and entirely sub-
terranean instead of only partially so. They are usually
constructed in the face of the mesa cliff, by excavating it
to the required depth and height, and then building up
the outer wall with masonry.

The ceremonies conducted within these chambers, as
well as the more public rites, or “dances,” have been
witnessed and recorded by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes. These
include the so-called Katcina mysteries, the rituals of the
sun and fire worship, and the celebrated Snake Dance.
While many of the details of these ceremonies are bizarre
and barbaric, they have certain hidden, symbolic mean-
ings which, when understood, illuminate much that would
otherwise seem merely fantastic or even horrible. The
ruling passion of the Indian—his intense conservatism
and reverence for the past—either underrated or al-
together ignored by the zealous Spanish missionaries, was
the chief reason for the failure of the priests genuinely to
Christianize the Pueblos, even after three hundred years
of close contact. This conservatism, which finds ex-
pression in a sort of ancestor worship, i is especially em-
bodied in the Katcina ceremonies.

The Katcinas, impersonated by masked men or by
effigies, are deified spirits of the dead. The rites dedi-
cated to them are, like most other Pueblo ceremonials,
partly dramatizations of old myths and legends, and

[ 134 ]

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

partly incantations, designed to influence these lesser
gods and through them the greater divinities in such a
way that the Sky Father and Earth Mother shall bestow
the blessings of sunshine, rain, and a bountiful harvest
upon their children, the Hopitu. The Katcina cere-
monies are celebrated during the winter months within
the kivas. Special altars are erected, and many prayer-
plumes and pifion needles offered to the gods. And
upon a background of fine white sand spread upon the
floor are traced in various colored minerals the curious
“dry paintings,” whose patterns are handed down through
the priesthood from generation to generation. After
being produced with infinite pains, these pictures are
obliterated at the end of the ceremonies.

There are two principal ceremonies connected with the
sun worship of the Hopi; one in mid-winter, on the short-
est day of the year, the purpose of which is to induce the
Sun to return and warm the land; and the other in mid-
summer, on the longest day, to compel the Sky God to
water the fields and make the corn grow and ripen.
These results are not brought about by prayer, but by
the compelling power of the ancient magic rites. The
most striking objects connected with these rites are the
extraordinary altars and the two chief dramatis personae,
the Sky God, represented by effigies of the Horned
Serpent manipulated by hidden priests, and the Sun,
impersonated by a man masked and decorated to repre-
sent a bird.

The ceremonies dedicated to the Fire God are scarcely
less elaborate and important than those through which
homage is paid to the Sun. There are two “new fire”
ceremonies, one in November, the other in midsummer,
the former being the more elaborate. Masawu, the Fire
God, is the chief personage impersonated in this rite.
Before he makes his entry into the pueblo, the trails have
been symbolically closed to all mortals by prayer meal
scattered across them, all fires have been extinguished

[135 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

in the houses, and the streets are deserted. Masawu
stalks through the dark and silent pueblo until he reaches
the kiva where the priests are already assembled.

Within the kiva amid chants and the ringing of bells
and noise of rattles, the appointed priests twirl their
drills in the depressions of the long fireboard or firestone,
which is the ancient and sacred way in which the new
fire must be produced. In a minute or two smoke
arises, in another minute or two sparks begin to fly, and,
falling through slots in the fireboard, ignite the corn
pollen and cedar bark laid beneath the board as tinder.
With this flame the fuel heaped in readiness in the central
firepit of the kiva is lighted.

Masawu, the Fire God, now steps forward and lays on
the sacred flame his offering of a prayer plume and pifion
needle, followed by the priests who make each in turn
a similar offering. Messengers now light torches at the
new fire and bear them through the town to start the
household fires. At the close of the ceremonies the new
fire is extinguished and the ashes carried to the rim of
the mesa and thrown over the cliff with pinches of prayer
meal.

Snakes being representatives of the Sky God are held
in especial veneration by the Hopi and figure largely in
the so-called Snake Dance, the ceremony celebrated every
two years in Walpi, and every year in some one of the
Hopi viilages, at midsummer, in order to bring about
the necessary rainfall. This weird rite has been observed
and described many times. Its chief features are the
large snakes—often deadly rattlesnakes—which the
dancers handle fearlessly and usually with no serious
consequences. This has been attributed to the gentle-
ness with which the snakes are treated and to the fact
that, in the case of the rattlesnakes, they are handled
in such a way that they have no opportunity for coiling—
a necessary preliminary to striking.

But if it is unfair to judge a people by their practices

[ 136 ]

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Ss? ALVId

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

in war, it is no less unjust to estimate their character by
actions born of age-old superstition and religious frenzy.
The picture of a painted savage holding between his teeth
the slippery, writhing body of a venomous snake is far
less agreeable than that of a peaceful, industrious, law-
abiding citizen of the United States. And of the two,
we must regard the latter as by far the truer portrait of
the average Hopi man.

The Hopi are given the following high rating in the
“Handbook”’:

In mental traits the Hopi are the equal of any Indian tribe. They

posses a high artistic sense, exhibited by their pottery, basketry, and
weaving. They are industrious, imitative, keen in bargaining, have

some inventive genius, and are quick of perception. . . . They are
tractable, docile, hospitable, and frugal, and have always sought to be
peaceable. ...

The Hopi are monogamists, and as a rule are faithful in their marital
relations. Murder is unknown, theft is rare, and lying is universally
condemned. Children are respectful and obedient to their elders and
are never flogged except when ceremonially initiated as kachinas.
From their earliest years they are taught industry and the necessity
of leading upright lives.

For every Indian pueblo occupied today there are
dozens of ruins scattered far and wide over the plateau
region. These are the remains of houses occupied during
the long-continued, straggling migrations of the Pueblo
tribes and their remote ancestors, the cliff dwellers. Most
of the cliff dwellings are found in the northern canyons and
some of the most interesting and best preserved specimens
are now included in the National Park of the Mesa Verde.
Long detailed descriptions have been written of these
curious structures, built within inaccessible caverns in
the face of the sandstone bluffs of the canyons, over-
looking the farmlands on the river bottom, which was
the only place where crops might be raised with any degree
of success. “Cliff-Palace,” “Spruce-Tree House,’’ and
other ruins, have been made the subjects of special mono-

graphs by Doctor Fewkes.
[ 137]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

In places where the river lands are widened, by the
spreading apart of the canyon walls, into pleasant, fertile
valleys, stone pueblos were erected of a plan and construc-
tion superior to any of those inhabited today. Such
were the great pueblos on the Chaco River, of which the
Pueblo Bonito is said to be the finest specimen; in these
and other ruins have been found specimens of pottery
more symmetrical and artistic than any made by the
Pueblos of today. Such buildings were evidently erected
in the Golden Age of the Pueblo Indians. But eventually
they, too, were abandoned for some unknown reason,
and the people built themselves new homes on high,
defensive sites like that of Acoma.

Another type of dwelling, the ruins of which may now
be seen in many of the canyons of New Mexico, is known
as the “cavate lodge,” which is an artificial cave, some-
times three or four rooms deep, hollowed out of the softer
strata of the sandstone cliffs. These dwellings are so
primitive that it is thought they were intended chiefly for
lookouts, refuges, or storehouses. Sometimes one or more
of the rooms was walled up as a tomb for the dead.

A modification of the cavate lodge is often found
where a natural cave has been transformed into a dwelling
by the simple process of walling up the entrance with
stone masonry, leaving openings for the door and windows.
In such structures may be seen the crude beginnings of
the complex architecture of the pueblos.

The stone and adobe dwellings, the fine pottery,
basketry, and weaving, the irrigation canals and the
agricultural pursuits of the Pueblos unite to make them
appear a people far more civilized than other North
American Indians. But all these characteristics were
the result of their sedentary way of life. Although today
they are skilled silversmiths, at the time of the discovery
they knew no more of metal work than did their kindred
in other parts of the country, nor were they any nearer a
written language than were the other tribes. They present

[ 138 ]

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

a striking illustration of the influence of environment on
the development of civilization. Some of the earliest
beginnings of their distinctive culture are found in the
ruins of ancient Pecos in New Mexico. With reference to
the evolution of this culture, Kidder has pointed out that
agriculture in the New World must have originated in
the highlands of Mexico and Central America, for in
that region is found a heavy seeded grass which was
probably the wild ancestor of corn.

Corn-growing once established in the Southwest brought
about the gradual transformation of a nomadic people into
a race of farmers. They now had leisure to perfect their
arts, which the most ancient ruins show included basketry
but not pottery. The early forerunners of the Pueblo
Indians are known as the Basket Makers. Their gradual
progress toward a higher stage of culture known as the
post-Basket Maker period, is thus described by Kidder:

In the course of time the Basket Makers, becoming more and more
dependent upon their crops and correspondingly more sedentary in
habit, either discovered for themselves, or more probably, learned
from tribes to the south, that vessels fashioned from clay, dried in the
sun, and finally fired, were easier to make, and more suitable for hold-
ing water and for cooking, than the baskets that had hitherto served
these purposes. At about the same time they began to enlarge their

storage cists into dwellings, to wall them higher with slabs, and to
provide them with pole-and-brush roofs.

The next stage found by archeologists in excavating
the ancient ruins, and called by them the pre-Pueblo
period, presents several distinct characteristics, these
being: the presence of bows and arrows; the use of cotton;
and particularly the practice of skull deformities which
Kidder interprets as indicating the arrival in the South-
west of a new race which eventually became the preponder-
ating one. With regard to the evolution of the pre-Pueblo
period into the classic culture of the Pueblo Indians,
Kidder says:

At the present time we have enough data as to pre-Pueblo ruins to
enable us to characterize them fairly accurately. We also have

[ 139 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

abundant data as to the developed Pueblo culture. But the small
pueblo-like ruins that presumably were built during the transition
period between the two are, as Morris observes, practically unknown.
I use the term “transition” advisedly, for it is evident that there was
no sharp break, either in culture or in race between pre-Pueblo and
Pueblo. It is most important then, that these small ruins be sought
out and excavated, because in them we should find the germs of all
the traits that were later developed and combined to form the classic
Pueblo culture.

In connection with this still unsolved problem it is
interesting to find in Bandelier’s ‘Final Report,” written
in 1889 (p. 28), the following passage: ‘““We notice re-
mains of more permanent habitations—vestiges of house-
hold pottery—along the Canadian River in the steppes,
far away from those sections where the ‘Pueblos’ have
dwelt and dwell today.” Ina footnote he adds:

Ruins are found both east and west of Wagon Mound. I have not
been able to visit them, and cannot therefore speak of their character.
Those east lie on Canadian River, and twenty-five miles east from the
railroad. The pottery, of which I have seen specimens, appears to be
similar to that made by the Pueblos. One specimen had the bright
glossy ornaments, apparently covered with a very coarse glaze, pecu-
liar to some of the older Pueblo pottery.

These Canadian River ruins have in recent years been
investigated by Moorehead, who says, concerning the
type of culture he found there:

It is not Mississippi valley form; it is not Pueblo; it probably marks
the transition. . . . So far as the writer can observe, we have a tribe
originally living in the buffalo country and of “‘Plains Culture” status
which changed as it spread westward up the Canadian. . . . As they
moved farther away from the buffalo country they continued to
change and develop until they established themselves in permanent
villages—were no longer-nomads—and finally became the Pueblo-

Cliff Dweller people.
Kidder thus sums up the achievements of the Pueblo
Indians:

Few races have gone as far toward civilization as did the Pueblos
while still retaining the essential democracy of primitive life. Most
other peoples, as they advanced from savagery, have first set up for

[ 140 ]

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9F ULV Id

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

themselves, and later fallen under the domination of rulers temporal
or religious; aristocracies or theocracies have sprung up, and the gap
between the masses and the classes has become wider and wider. But
among the Pueblos no such tendency ever made headway; there were
neither very rich nor very poor, every family lived in the same sort of
quarters, and ate the same sort of foods, as every other family. Pre-
eminence in social or religious life was to be gained solely by individual
ability and was the reward of services rendered to the community.

In the 16th century the Pueblos had fallen from many of their old
ranges, were reduced in numbers, and had lost something of their
former skill in material accomplishments. But their customs had not
changed, and they still held out undismayed among their savage
enemies. There can be little doubt that had they been allowed to
work out their own salvation, they would eventually have overcome
their difficulties, and might well have built up a civilization of a sort
not yet attempted by any group of men. It is the tragedy of native
American history that so much human effort has come to naught, and
that so many hopeful experiments in life and in living were cut short
by the devastating blight of the white man’s arrival.

[141 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
REFERENCES

BANDELIER, ADoLF F. The Delight Makers. [New edi-
tion.] New York (Dodd, Mead & Co.), [1916].

—— Final report of investigations among the Indians of
the Southwestern United States. Parts 1 and 2.
Papers Archaeol. Inst. Amer. (Amer. Ser.) Vols. 3
and 4, 1890; 1892.

—— The Gilded Man (El Dorado) and other pictures of
the Spanish occupancy of America. New York
(Appleton), 1893.

Cuapin, FrepericK H. The land of the Cliff-Dwellers.
Boston (Appalachian Mountain Club), 1892.

Cusuinc, Frank H. My adventures in Zufii. Century
Magazine, Dec., 1882; Feb., May, 1883.

—— Outlines of Zufii creation myths. 13th Ann. Rep.

Bur. Ethnol. Washington, 1896.

Zuni folk tales. New York (Putnam), Igol.

Dona.pson, THomas. Moqui Pueblo Indians of Arizona
and Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Extra Census
Bull. 11th Census U. S. Washington, 1898.

Fewxes, J. W. The Snake ceremonial at Walpi. J. Amer.
Ethnol. Archaeol. Vol. 4, 1894.

—— Tusayan Katcinas. 15th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol.
Washington, 1897.

—— Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park:
Spruce-Tree House. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 41.
Washington, IgIl.

—— Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park:
Cliff-Palace. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 51. Wash-
ington, IgII.

—— A prehistoric Mesa Verde pueblo and its people.
Smithsonian Inst. Ann. Rep. 1916, pp. 461-488.
Washington, 1917.

—— Sun worship of the Hopi Indians. Smithsonian
Inst. Ann. Rep. 1918, pp. 493-526. Washington,
1920.

[142]

CLIFF DWELLERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

Fewxes, J. W. Fire worship of the Hopi Indians.
Smithsonian Inst. Ann. Rep. 1920, pp. 589-610.
Washington, 1922.

Houcu, Water. Culture of the ancient pueblos of the
upper Gila River Region, New Mexico and Arizona.
U.S. Nation. Mus. Bull. 87. Washington, 1914.

— The Hopi Indians. Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Iowa
Press), 1915.

Kipper, A. V. An introduction to the study of South-
western archaeology with a preliminary account of the
excavations at Pecos. New Haven (Yale University
Press), 1924.

Lummis, Cartes F. The Land of Poco Tiempo. New
York (Scribner’s), 1925.

Minveterr, V. A study of Pueblo architecture: Tusayan
and Cibola. 8th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. Wash-
ington, 1891.

MooreuHeEab, W. K. Recent explorations in northwestern
Wexas, vAmer:i Anthrop..(N.'S.).’ Vols: 235 pp: 1-11,
1921.

NorDENSKIOLD, G. The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde,
Southwestern Colorado, their pottery and imple-
ments. Stockholm, [1893].

STEVENSON, Matitpa Coxe. The Zufi Indians, their
mythology, esoteric fraternities, and ceremonies.
23rd Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Washington,
1904.

Winsuip, Georce P. The Coronado expedition, 1540-
1542. 14th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. Washington,
1896.

[ 143 ]

CHAPTER VI

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

In striking contrast to the industrious and peaceable
Pueblos were their near neighbors and arch enemies,
the Navaho and Apache. The Navaho were of Atha-
pascan stock and had migrated from their ancient northern
home, doubtless in pursuit of the buffalo, which ranged
freely over the North American plateau from the southern
shores of Hudson Bay to the northern borders of the
Gulf of Mexico. These hunters from the north finally
settled in eastern Arizona, where the Navaho Reservation
is now located. There they dwelt in their characteris-
tic ““hogans”—cabins constructed of the trunks of small
trees set upright, filled in with boughs, and covered with
mud—and practiced irrigation for their growing crops.
Still they did not altogether forego their marauding
habits, but would often swoop down on their nearest
neighbors, the Hopi and other Pueblo tribes, plundering
crops and carrying off women into captivity. Indeed
it may have been these captive Pueblo women who first
taught the Navaho the art of weaving the beautiful
blankets for which they are now so famous, although
among both the Hopi and the Navaho today this work
is usually done by the men.

The Apache, on the other hand, though related to the
Navaho, never settled in a permanent community, but
clung to their old nomadic existence, living on the buffalo
and other animals and on what plunder they could wrest
from the more prosperous village Indians. Coveting
the horses of the Spanish settlers, they possessed them-

[144 ]

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

selves of these and of their wild descendants, with which
the plains were soon overrun, and were then able to
terrorize the whole of the Southwest. None were im-
mune from their sudden and deadly raids, and many
communities were practically wiped out of existence.
It was because of such raids by the Apache and other
marauding tribes that the Pima Indians were driven
from the Casas Grandes, which are supposed to have
been their ancient dwellings, and eventually settled on
the banks of the Gila and Salt rivers in Arizona, where
they no longer built stone and adobe houses but lived in
small dome-shaped huts made of pliable poles and covered
with thatch and mud.

In “The Land of Poco Tiempo,” Lummis gives the
following vivid picture of the Apache and his ways:

A white man would have starved to death without his commissary;
but the Apache had an elastic adaptability which enabled him to eat
more, or live on less, as circumstances might require, than anyone
else. To him the desert afforded a menu when he had time to stop
for it. . . . With imperative cudgel he punches, belabors, and scatters
[a tangle of leaves and twigs] and presently extracts a score of fat
prairie-mice—a feast indeed. Or, with a long and supple switch he
trudges among the sand hillocks with intermittent lashings of the
ground, and returns with a toothsome string of gracile lizards. Hapless
the rattlesnake who shall erect himself on burring coil to make mouths
at an Apache when the belt hangs loose! Evicted from that lozenged

hide, his delicate gray meat shall make a dainty entrée. . . . When
his hardy broncho at last succumbs .. . his services are not yet
ended. The tenderest portions of him... are hastily hacked off

to dangle in sun-cured strips across the back of his successor. His
long intestine, mayhap, is cleaned—after Chihuicahui [7.e., Apache]
notions of cleaning—and becomes a water-keg of great capacity and
matchless portability. If transportation is adequate, twenty feet
or so of this unique canteen is wound around a led-horse; if horses be
scarce, four or five feet of it is slung, life-preserver fashion, about
the neck of some athletic brave, and gives a family water for a week.

Besides mice, lizards, and snakes, the desert supplied
the Apache with a variety of vegetable foods. Chief
among these were the mesquite bean, which was reduced
to meal and made into cakes; the fruit of the “Spanish

[145 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

bayonet,” which is not unlike dates when dried; the
mountain acorn; and above all, the mescal plant, the
varied uses of which Lummis enumerates as follows:
This bristling benefactor gives the aborigine a quasi-bread which is
at once nutritious and lasting; two athletic intoxicants; thread and

even clothing, and countless minor staples. It grows throughout the
whole vast realm the Apache ranged, an ever-present base of supplies.

On the vast grassy plains east of the desert home of
the Apache dwelt many powerful and warlike Indian
tribes, chiefly of the great Siouan family, numbering
among them the Sioux or Dakota, the Omaha, the Man-
dan, and many other distinct and often mutually hostile
nations.

The Sioux, from whom the Siouan family takes its
name, are typical of the Plains tribes in general, and
correspond perhaps most nearly to the popular ideal of
the American Indian. Among them we find the customs
and the costumes everywhere associated with our usual
ideas of the Indians. They wore the deerskin shirt
and leggings, fringed and ornamented with quills or
beadwork, the moccasins, likewise embroidered with
colored quills or beads, and the great feather headdress,
often reaching to the ground, all of which are imitated
today in the dress of children “playing Indian.”” Another
characteristic garment of the Plains Indian was the robe
of buffalo skin, tanned to a wonderful softness and beauti-
fully white, on which was sometimes painted the record
of the warrior’s deeds. In later years, these robes were
replaced by blankets.

The Plains Indians used for their tents the same sort of
tanned and whitened skins that their robes were made
of, and ornamented them in a similar way with paint-
ings.

Before the coming of the Spaniards the only domesti-
cated animal on the prairies was the dog, but the Siouan
tribes, like the Apache, very soon learned to tame and
train the wild horses; and by the time these Indians

[ 146 |

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

were first encountered by Americans, they had become
skilled and accomplished horsemen. The acquisition of
horses helped the Indians greatly in hunting the buffalo.
How important that animal was in their economy may
be seen in Castafieda’s description, which is the earliest
account that we have of the Plains tribes:

They came to a country level as the sea, and in these plains there
was such a multitude of cows that they are numberless. These cows
are like those of Castile, and somewhat larger, as they have a little
hump on the withers, and they are more reddish, approaching black;
their hair, more than a span long, hangs down around their horns and
ears and chin, and along the neck and shoulders like manes, and down
from the knees; all the rest is a very fine wool, like merino; they have
very good, tender meat, and much fat. Having proceeded many days
through these plains, they came to a settlement of about 200 inhabited
houses. The houses were made of the skins of cows, tanned white,
like pavilions or army tents. The maintenance or sustenance of these
Indians comes entirely from the cows, because they neither sow nor
reap corn. With the skins they make their houses, with the skins
they clothe and shoe themselves; of the skins they make rope, and
also of the wool; from the sinews they make thread, with which they
sew their clothes and also their houses; from the bones they make
awls; the dung serves them for wood [fuel], because there is nothing
else in that country; the stomachs serve them for pitchers and vessels
from which they drink; they live on the flesh; they sometimes eat it
half roasted and warmed over the dung, at other times raw; seizing it
with their fingers, they pull it out with one hand and with a flint
knife in the other they cut off mouthfuls, and thus swallow it half
chewed; they eat the fat raw, without warming it; they drink the blood
just as it leaves the cows, and at other times after it has run out, cold
and raw; they have no other means of livelihood. These péople have
dogs like those in this country, except that they are somewhat larger,
and they load these dogs like beasts of burden, and make saddles for
them like our pack saddles; and they fasten them with their leather
thongs, and these make their backs sore on the withers like pack
animals. When they go hunting, they load these with their necessi-
ties, and when they move—for these Indians are not settled in one
place, since they travel wherever the cows move, to support them-
selves—these dogs carry their houses and they have the sticks of their
houses [tent-poles] dragging along tied on to the pack-saddles besides
the load which they carry on top, and the load may be, according
to the dog, from thirty-five to fifty pounds.

[147 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

While the picture of uncouth savages given by Cas-
tafieda may have been true of the special tribe that he
described, later observers have testified to the dignity,
decorum, and ceremoniousness of the Siouan Indians.
In this connection McGee says:

The warriors, habituated to expressing and recognizing tribal affilia-
tion and status in dress and deportment, were notably observant of
social minutiae, and this habit extended into every activity of their
lives. They were ceremonious among themselves and crafty toward
enemies, tactful diplomatists as well as brave soldiers, shrewd strate-
gists as well as fierce fighters; ever they were skillful readers of human
nature, even when ruthless takers of human life. . . . Their stoicism
was displayed largely in war—as when the captured warrior went
exultingly to the torture, taunting and tempting his captors to mult-
ply their atrocities even until his tongue was torn from its roots, in
order that his fortitude might be proved.

In “The Oregon Trail” Parkman gives a vivid account
of the breaking up of a Sioux encampment—a village of
the Oglala tribe—and the ensuing buffalo hunt:

At daybreak, however, as I was coming up from the river after my
morning’s ablutions, I saw that a movement was contemplated. Some
of the lodges were reduced to nothing but bare skeletons of poles; the
leather covering of others was flapping in the wind as the squaws
pulled it off. One or two chiefs of note had resolved, it seemed, on
moving; and so having set their squaws at work, the example was
followed by the rest of the village. One by one the lodges were sink-
ing down in rapid succession, and where the great circle of the village
had been only a few moments before, nothing now remained but a
ring of horses and Indians, crowded in confusion together. The
ruins of the lodges were spread over the ground, together with kettles,
stone mallets, great ladles of horn, buffalo-robes and cases of painted
hide, filled with dried meat. Squaws bustled about in busy prepara-
tion, the old hags screaming to one another at the stretch of their
leathern lungs. The shaggy horses were patiently standing while the
lodge-poles were lashed to their sides, and the baggage piled upon their
backs. The dogs, with tongues lolling out, lay lazily panting and
waiting for the time of departure. Each warrior sat on the ground
by the decaying embers of his fire, unmoved amid the confusion, hold-
ing in his hand the long trailing rope of his horse.

As their preparations were completed, each family moved off the
ground. The crowd was rapidly melting away. I could see them

[148 ]

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INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

crossing the river, and passing in quick succession along the profile
of the hill on the farther side. When all were gone, I mounted and
set out after them, followed by Raymond, and, as we gained the sum-
mit the whole village came in view at once, straggling away for a mile
or more over the barren plains before us. Everywhere glittered the
iron points of lances. The sun never shone upon a more strange
array. Here were the heavy-laden pack-horses, some wretched old
women leading them, and two or three children clinging to their
backs. Here were mules or ponies covered from head to tail with
gaudy trappings, and mounted by some gay young squaw, grinning
bashfulness and pleasure as the Meneaska looked at her. Boys with
miniature bows and arrows wandered over the plains, little naked
children ran along on foot, and numberless dogs scampered among
the feet of the horses. The young braves, gaudy with paint and
feathers, rode in groups among the crowd, often galloping, two or
three at once along the line, to try the speed of their horses. Here
and there you might see a rank of sturdy pedestrians stalking along
in their white buffalo-robes. These were the dignitaries of the village,
the old men and warriors, to whose age and experience that wandering
democracy yielded a silent deference. With the rough prairie and
the broken hills for its background, the restless scene was striking and
picturesque beyond description. Days and weeks made me familiar
with it, but never impaired its effect upon my fancy.

As we moved, on, the broken column grew yet more scattered and
disorderly, until, as we approached the foot of a hill, I saw the old
men before mentioned seating themselves in a line upon the grounds, in
advance of the whole. They lighted a pipe and sat smoking, laughing,
and telling stories, while the people, stopping as they successively
came up were soon gathered in a crowd behind them. Then the old
men rose, drew their buffalo robes over their shoulders, and strode on
as before. Gaining the top of a hill, we found a steep declivity before
us. There was not a minute’s pause. The whole descended in a
mass, amid dust and confusion. The horses braced their feet as they
slid down, women and children screamed, dogs yelped as they were
trodden upon, while stones and earth went rolling to the bottom. In
a few moments I could see the village from the summit, spreading
again far and wide over the plain below. . .

Our encampment that afternoon was not far from a spur of the Black
Hills, whose ridges, bristling with fir trees, rose from the plains a mile
or two on our right. That they might move more rapidly towards
their proposed hunting-grounds, the Indians determined to leave at
this place their stock of dried meat and other superfluous articles.
Some left even their lodges, and contented themselves with carrying
a few hides to make a shelter from the sun and rain. Half the in-

[149]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

habitants set out in the afternoon, with loaded pack-horses, towards
the mountains. Here they suspended the dried meat upon trees,
where the wolves and grizzly bears could not get at it. All returned
atevening.. 1.

As we galloped across a plain thickly set with sage bushes, the
foremost riders vanished suddenly from sight, as if diving into the
earth. The arid soil was cracked into a deep ravine. Down we all
went in succession and galloped in a line along the bottom, until we
found a point where, one by one, the horses could scramble out. Soon
after, we came upon a wide shallow stream, and as we rode swiftly
over the hard sand-beds and through the thin sheets of rippling water,
many of the savage horsemen threw themselves to the ground, knelt
on the sand, snatched a hasty draught, and leaping back again to their
seats, galloped on as before.

Meanwhile scouts kept in advance of the party; and now we began
to see them on the ridges of the hills, waving their robes in token that
buffalo were visible. These however, proved to be nothing more
than old straggling bulls, feeding upon the neighboring plains, who
would stare for a moment at the hostile array and then gallop clumsily
off. At length we could discern several of these scouts making their
signals to us at once; no longer waving their robes boldly from the
top of the hill, but standing lower down, so that they could not be
seen from the plains beyond. Game worth pursuing had evidently
been discovered. The excited Indians now urged forward their tired
horses even more rapidly than before. . . . The Indians, still about a
hundred in number, galloped in a dense body at some distance in
advance, a cloud of dust flying in the wind behind them. I could
not overtake them until they had stopped on the side of the hill where
the scouts were standing. Here each hunter sprang in haste from the
tired animal he had ridden, and leaped upon the fresh horse he had
brought with him. There was not a saddle or bridle in the whole
party. A piece of buffalo-robe, girthed over the horse’s back, served
in the place of the one, and a cord of twisted hair, lashed round his
lower jaw, answered for the other. Eagle feathers dangled from every
mane and tail, as marks of courage and speed. As for the rider, he
wore no other clothing than a light cincture at his waist, and a pair
of moccasins. He had a heavy whip, with a handle of solid elk-horn,
and a lash of knotted bull-hide, fastened to his wrist by a band. His
bow was in his hand, and his quiver of otter or panther skin hung at
his shoulder. Thus equipped, some thirty of the hunters galloped
away towards the left, in order to make a circuit under cover of the
hills, that the buffalo might be assailed on both sides at once. The
rest impatiently waited until time enough had elapsed for their com-
panions to reach the required position. Then riding upward in a

[150]

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

body, we gained the ridge of the hill, and for the first time came in
sight of the buffalo on the plain beyond.

They were a band of cows, four or five hundred in number, crowded
together near the bank of a wide stream that was soaking across the
sand-beds of the valley. This valley was a large circular basin, sun-
scorched and broken, scantily covered with herbage, and surrounded
with high barren hills, from an opening in which we could see our
allies galloping out upon the plain. The wind blew from that direc-
tion. The buffalo, aware of their approach, had begun to move,
though very slowly and in a compact mass. I have no farther recol-
lection of seeing the game until we were in the midst of them, for as
we rode down the hill other objects engrossed my attention. Numerous
old bulls were scattered over the plain, and ungallantly deserting
their charge at our approach began to wade and plunge through the
quicksands of the stream, and gallop away towards the hills. One old
veteran was straggling behind the rest, with one of his fore-legs,
which had been broken by some accident, dangling about uselessly.
His appearance as he went shambling along on three legs, was so
ludicrous that I could not help pausing for a moment to look at him.
As I came near, he would try to rush upon me, nearly throwing him-
self down at every awkward attempt. Looking up, I saw the whole
body of Indians full an hundred yards in advance. I lashed Pauline
in pursuit and reached them just in time; for at that moment, each
hunter, as if by a common impulse, violently struck his horse, each
horse sprang forward, and, scattering in the charge in order to assail the
entire herd at once, we all rushed headlong upon the buffalo. We
were among them in an instant. Amid the trampling and the yells
I could see their dark figures running hither and thither through
clouds of dust, and the horsemen darting in pursuit. While we were
charging on one side, our companions attacked the bewildered and
panic-stricken herd on the other. The uproar and confusion lasted
but a moment. The dust cleared away, and the buffalo could be
seen scattering as from a common centre flying over the plains singly,
or in long files and small compact bodies, while behind them followed
the Indians, riding at furious speed, and yelling as they launched
arrow after arrow into their sides. The carcasses were strewn thickly
over the ground. Here and there stood wounded buffalo, their bleed-
ing sides feathered with arrows; and as I rode by them their eyes
would glare, they would bristle like gigantic cats, and feebly attempt
to rush up and gore my horse. . . .

The hunters began to return. The boys, who had held the horses,
behind the hill, made their appearance, and the work of flaying and
cutting up began in earnest all over the field. I noticed my host
Kongra-Tonga beyond the stream, just alighting by the side of a cow -

[151]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

which he had killed. Riding up to him, I found him in the act of
drawing out an arrow, which, with the exception of the notch at the
end, had entirely disappeared in the animal. I asked him to give it
to me, and I still retain it as a proof, though by no means the most
striking one that could be offered of the force and dexterity with
which the Indians discharge their arrows.

The hides and meat were piled upon the horses, and the hunters
began to leave the ground... .

And now the hunters, two or three at a time, came rapidly in, and
each consigning his horses to the squaws, entered his lodge with the
air of a man whose day’s work was done. The squaws flung down the
load from the burdened horses, and vast piles of meat and hides were
soon gathered before every lodge. By this time it was darkening
fast, and the whole village was illumined by the glare of fires. All
the squaws and children were gathered about the piles of meat, ex-
ploring them in search of the daintiest portions. Some of these they
roasted on sticks before the fires, but often they dispensed with this
superfluous operation. Late into the night the fires were still glowing
upon the groups of feasters engaged in this savage banquet around
CHEM. Geren.

We remained encamped on this spot five days, during three of
which the hunters were at work incessantly, and immense quantities
of meat and hides were brought in... .

Hour after hour the squaws would pass and repass with their vessels
of water between the stream and the lodges. . . . In all quarters the
meat, hung on cords of hide, was drying in the sun, and around the
lodges, the squaws, young and old, were laboring on the fresh hides
stretched upon the ground, scraping the hair from one side and the
still adhering flesh from the other, and rubbing into them the brains
of the buffalo, in order to render them soft and pliant.

It should not be thought that the Plains Indians had no
means of livelihood but hunting the buffalo, and that
they lived exclusively in skin tents, or tipis. While
hunting was their chief occupation, and while their
movements were largely regulated by the wanderings of
the buffalo, nevertheless there were seasons, while the
herds grazed on their favorite pasture lands, when most
of the hunters were able to establish fairly permanent
villages and to practice agriculture to a limited extent.
At such times they raised considerable quantities of the
principal Indian staples, maize, squash, and beans.

[152]

ylompvaq Sulop uaipprys
Surys Suruury ‘uvotuuad Suryeur uso, “UMasnyy [PUOTVAY OY} Ul SURIPUyT XNOIS ay3 jo dnois Ayre yy

6F ALV Id

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

Some of the Plains tribes, as the Osage, who were
originally woodland dwellers, once lived in bark houses
similar to those of the Eastern Indians, but these were
replaced by the skin tipis or by the earth lodges used by
some of these Indians at the time that they were first
encountered by white men. The construction of both tipi
and lodge is described in detail by Miss Fletcher and Doctor
La Flesche in their monograph on “The Omaha Tribe’”’:

The tipi was a conical tent. Formerly the cover was made of 9 to
12 buffalo skins tanned on both sides. To cut and sew this cover so
that it would fit well and be shapely when stretched over the circular
framework of poles required skilful workmanship. . . . The tent poles
were 14 to 16 feet long. Straight young cedar poles were preferred.
The bark was removed and the poles were rubbed smooth. The
setting up of a tent was always a woman’s task. She first took four
poles, laid them together on the ground, and then tied them firmly
with a thong about 3 feet from one end. She then raised the poles
and spread their free ends apart and thrust them firmly into the
ground. ‘These four tied poles formed the true framework of the tent.
Other poles—io to 20 in number, according to the size of the tent—
were arranged in a circle, one end pressed well into the ground, the
other laid in the forks made by the tied ends of the four poles. The
last pole to be placed in position was one to which the semicircular
skin cover had been tied, which was then stretched around the whole
framework, the two edges being securely pinned or tied together, leav-
ing an oval opening which formed the doorway and over which a
skin was hung.

The earth lodge was a circular dwelling, having walls about 8 feet
high and a dome-shaped roof, with a central opening for the escape of
smoke and the admission of light. The task of building an earth
lodge was shared by men and women. The marking out of the site
and the cutting of the heavy logs was done by the men. When the
location was chosen, a stick was thrust into the spot where the fire-
place was to be, one end of a rawhide rope was fastened to a stick
and a circle 20 to 60 feet in diameter was drawn on the earth to mark
where the wall was to be erected. The sod within the circle was
removed, the ground excavated about a foot in depth, and the earth
thrown around the circle like an embankment. . . . Split posts were
set close together, having one end braced against the bottom of the
bank and the other end leaning against beams [supported by an
inner row of small crotched posts], thus forming a wall of timber.
The opening generally, though not always, faced the east. Midway

[153]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

between the central fireplace and the wall were planted 4 to 8 large
crotched posts about to feet in height on which heavy beams rested,
these serving to support the roof. This was made of long, slender,
tapering trees stripped of their bark. . . . The slender ends were cut
so as to form the circular opening for the smoke. . . . Outside the
woodwork of the walls and roof, branches of willow were laid cross-
wise and bound tight to each slab and pole. Over the willows a heavy
thatch of coarse grass was arranged so as to shed water. On the grass
was placed a thick coating of sod. . . The entrance way, 6 to Io
feet long, projected from the door and was built in the same manner
as the lodge and formed part of it. A curtain of skin hung at the
inner and one at the outer door of this entrance way. . . . Couches
were arranged around the wall in the spaces between the posts of the
framework. These were provided with skins and pillows and served
as seats by day and as beds by night.

There were some poetic and charming customs relating
to child life among the Omaha, the first of these being the
introduction of the child to the universe, when the priest
intoned the following beautiful prayer:

Ho! Ye Sun, Moon, Stars, all ye that move in the heavens,
I bid you hear me!
Into your midst has come a new life.
Consent ye, I implore!
Make its path smooth, that it may reach the brow of the first hill!
Ho! Ye Winds, Clouds, Rain, Mist, all ye that move in the air,
I bid you hear me!
Into your midst has come a new life.
Consent ye, I implore!
Make its path smooth, that it may reach the brow of the second hill!
Ho! Ye Hills, Valleys, Rivers, Lakes, Trees, Grasses, all ye of earth,
I bid you hear me!
Into your midst has come a new life.
Consent ye, I implore!
Make its path smooth, that it may reach the brow of the third hill!
Ho! Ye Birds, great and small, that fly in the air,
Ho! Ye Animals, great and small, that dwell in the forest,
Ho! Ye Insects that creep among the grasses and burrow in the
ground,
I bid you hear me!
Into you midst has come a new life.
Consent ye, I implore!
Make its path smooth, that it may reach the brow of the fourth hill!

[154]

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

Ho! All ye of the heavens, all ye of the air, all ye of the earth:
I bid you all to hear me!

Into your midst has come a new life.
Consent ye, consent ye all, I implore!

Make its path smooth, that it shall travel beyond the four hills!

The next ceremony in the life of the child was that by
which he was introduced to the tribe. It was known as
“turning the child.” Through this ceremony he took his
place as a member of the tribe and his baby name was
discarded. A significant feature of the ceremony consisted
in supplying the child with new moccasins to take the
place of those it had worn as an infant. Baby moccasins
were made with a small hole in the sole of one, to signify,
to a spirit messenger from the other world, that the child
was not ready to go on a journey, its moccasins were
worn out—a pretty conceit for cheating Death. When
the new moccasins were put on the child at the close of
the “turning” ceremony, it was to signify that the child
was ready for his life journey.

The culminating point of the ceremony was reached
when the officiating priest ceremonially “‘turned” the child,
that is, presented him in succession to the east, south,
west, and north, each time turning him completely around,
from left to right, and intoning the following song:

Turned by the winds goes the one I send yonder;

Yonder he goes who is whirled by the winds;

Goes, where the four hills of life and the four winds are standing;
There, in the midst of the winds do I send him,

Into the midst of the winds, standing there.
(The Thunder rolls.)

In the case of a boy, another ceremony was added,
called Wébashna meaning “‘to cut the hair,” by which the
boy was said to be consecrated to the Thunder, the power
controlling the life and death of the warrior.

The hair of a person was popularly believed to have a vital con-
nection with the life of the body, so that anyone becoming possessed
of a lock of hair might work his will on the individual from whom

[155]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

it came. . . . It is to be noted that later, when the hair was suffered
to grow on the boy’s head, a lock on the crown of the head was parted
in a circle from the rest of the hair and kept constantly distinct and
neatly braided. Upon this lock the war honors of the warrior were
worn, and it was this lock that was cut from the head of a slain enemy
and formed the central object in the triumph ceremonies, for the
reason that it preeminently represented the life of the man who had
been slain in battle.

On the return of the boy to his home at the conclusion
of the ceremonies, the father cut his son’s hair in the
symbolical manner of his gens; as, for instance, in the
case of the Wathi’gishe, whose tabu was the tongue
and head of the buffalo, all the hair was cut from the
child’s head except a tuft over the forehead, one on
each side of the crown, and a short lock at the nape of
the neck, representing the head, horns, and tail of the
buffalo. Another curious pattern was that of a gens who
were forbidden to touch any sort of insect, and consisted
of a number of little locks left around the base of the skull
from which all the rest of the hair had been cut, which
were said to represent the many legs of insects. Whatever
the pattern, the boy’s hair was worn thus until he had
cut all of his second set of teeth. It was then allowed
to grow, the scalp lock being parted off and kept braided,
no matter how unkempt the rest of the hair might be.

Later on, the youth, as an initiation into manhood, was
required to keep a severe and protracted fast, during
which time the animal, bird, or other object which was to
become his personal fetish through life, was revealed
to him in a vision. This object the boy was to seek and
possess through life as his “‘personal totem’”—the oyaron
of the Iroquois.

The tribal subdivisions of the Omaha are spoken of as
gentes instead of clans because descent was traced through
the father instead of through the mother as in the case of
many other Indian tribes. The tribe as a whole was
governed by a Council of Seven Chiefs. During their
deliberations, which were made with much solemnity

[156]

wnosnyAy [BEUOTIE NT 9yy ul AdTURAS Aq suljuledg « PUNY oyeyng SUM sy

os ALVId

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

and ceremony, the most essential rite was the smoking
of the two Sacred Pipes by the two principal chiefs.

The ancient tribal organization and the old customs
are now things of the past, to be learned only from the
old men of the tribe. Fortunately most of this fast
vanishing lore has been carefully preserved in the memoir
on the Omaha from which the foregoing facts have been
gleaned.

The Mandan Indians, a division of the Siouan family,
who formerly lived on the banks of the upper Missouri,
were first visited and described by white men in 1738.
After several accounts of less importance had appeared,
George Catlin, the artist, who visited the Mandan in the
spring of 1833, gave an extended description of the tribe
in his book on the North American Indians, which ap-
peared in 1841.

Two years after Catlin’s account, Prince Maximilian of
Wied published his ““Voyage en l’Amérique du Nord” in
which he gave a detailed and accurate description of the
Mandan villages as they appeared during his visit there
in the winter of 1833-4. At the time of Prince Maxi-
milian’s visit, the Mandan, because of the ravages of the
smallpox and the attacks of hostile tribes, had been so
reduced that they had been forced to abandon their
original villages, nine or ten in number, and had moved
farther up the river where they built two villages in the
neighborhood of the Arikara, a Caddoan tribe, with whom
they made an alliance against the dreaded Sioux.

The status of the Mandan women, according to Maxi-
milian, was not a very enviable one. Although conceding
that they were as a rule well treated, he says that they
were expected to do all the really laborious work, such as
fetching fuel, carrying water, cooking, tanning skins,
making clothing, cultivating the fields, and building the
lodges with some assistance from the men. Polygamy
was allowed, although few men had more than four wives
and the majority only one. Among the Mandan the

[157]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

husband was regarded as the head of the household, and
usually shared his lodge with the families of his married
sons. Sometimes women were treated with such harsh-
ness and brutality that they committed suicide by hang-
ing. “The women,” Maximilian says, “have nothing
to indemnify them for their incessant and laborious work,
not even good clothing, for this right of the fair sex in
Europe is claimed among the Indians by the men. It is
singular,” he adds, “that these women who are condemned
constantly to work like slaves, refuse to do any work
whatever if they marry a white man, and, the Whites
being entirely in the power of the Indians and the relations
of their wives, they are obliged to submit to this.”

One of the occupations of the Mandan women was the
manufacture of pottery. They made their pots and vessels
from a dark, slate-colored clay burnt to a yellowish-red
and mixed with flint or granite which was reduced to
powder by the action of fire. The Mandan vessels were
shaped and smoothed by means of a round stone. After
being completed, the pot was filled and surrounded with
dry shavings and then burnt, but never glazed.

The men manufactured their own weapons and the
curious boats, called bull-boats, in which they navigated
the river. These boats were circular, and consisted of a
light framework of wood covered with buffalo skin.
They were propelled by means of a paddle, and looked
very much like giant wash-tubs. For transporting their
belongings over the plains, the Indians employed the
“travois,” a sort of sledge, drawn by a single dog or
horse, which was sometimes improvised from the family
tent by using the poles as the shafts and the skin cover as
the body of the litter.

Catlin, who spent some time among the Mandan shortly
before Prince Maximilian’s visit, not only made many
paintings of their dwellings and costumes, but also de-
scribed them in detail in his “Letters and Notes,” which
he illustrated with line drawings copied from his own

[158]

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seaW ar to eeortbey

nozdos[

PLATE 51.

Skin tipis of the Shoshoni. Photographed by W. H. Jackson
during one of the early surveys of the West

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

paintings. Among these delicate yet spirited drawings we
find pictures of the river banks and bluffs, of the mountains
and the prairies, with antelopes, prairie dogs, and buffalo
in their native haunts and characteristic attitudes.
Through these scenes we are led finally to the site of the
Mandan villages of which there is the following descrip-
tion:

Their village has a most novel appearance to the eye of a stranger;
their lodges are closely grouped together, leaving but just room enough
for walking and riding between them; and appear from without, to be
built entirely of dirt; but one is surprised when he enters them, to
see the neatness, comfort, and spacious dimensions of the earth-
covered dwellings. They all have a circular form, and are from forty
to sixty feet in diameter. . . . On top of, and over the poles forming
the roof, is placed a complete mat of willow-boughs, of half a foot
or more in thickness, which protects the timbers from the dampness
of the earth, with which the lodge is covered from bottom to top, to
the depth of two or three feet; and then with a hard or tough clay,
which is impervious to water, and which with long use becomes quite
hard, and a lounging place for the whole family in pleasant weather—
for sage—for wooing lovers—for dogs and all. . . .

On the roofs of the lodges, besides the groups of living, are buffaloes’
skulls, skin canoes [bull boats], pots and pottery; sleds and sledges—
and suspended on poles, erected some twenty feet above the doors of
their wigwams, are displayed in a pleasant day, the scalps of warriors,
preserved as trophies; and thus proudly exposed as evidence of their
warlike deeds. In other parts are raised on poles the warriors’ pure
and whitened shields and quivers, with medicine-bags attached; and
here and there a sacrifice of red cloth, or other costly stuff.

Outside the village was the cemetery, or “village of the
dead,” in which, as the Indians say, the “dead live.”” On
scaffolds, high enough to be out of the reach of dogs and
wild animals, lay the bodies, each dressed and painted as
for a festival, closely wrapped in fur robes, and provided
with bow and arrows, pipe and tobacco, shield, knife,
flint and steel, together with food to last until the soul
should reach the spirit land. Each body lay on its back
upon a separate scaffold, with feet pointing toward the
rising sun. Relatives of the dead might be seen at any
time lying prostrate under the scaffolds, lamenting with

[159]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

cries and howls, tearing their hair, and gashing themselves
with knives or otherwise torturing themselves, as a
penance to appease the spirits of the dead.

When the scaffolds decayed and the bodies fell to the
ground, relatives buried the remains; but the skulls,
bleached white, were placed in circles of a hundred or
more on the prairie, at equal distances apart, with the
faces all looking to the center, where, upon a little mound
at the foot of a “medicine pole” bearing sacrificial objects,
were placed two buffalo skulls, a male and a female. Each
human skull rested upon a bunch of wild sage which was
carefully tended and renewed when faded, as flowers are
renewed upon a white man’s grave. And food was often
placed before each skull, that the former owners might
not go hungry in the spirit world.

Although Catlin was inclined to idealize the Mandan
in all his writings, his description of their manner of
wearing their hair makes no very pleasing picture.
He says:

The stature of the Mandans is rather below the ordinary size of
man, with beautiful symmetry of form and proportion, and wonderful
suppleness and elasticity; they are pleasingly erect and graceful, both
in their walk and their attitudes; and the hair of the men, which
generally spreads over their backs, falling down to the hams, and
sometimes to the ground, is divided into plaits or slabs of two inches
in width, and filled with a profusion of glue and red earth or ver-
milion, at intervals of an inch or two, which becoming very hard,
remains in and unchanged from year to year.

This mode of dressing the hair is curious, and gives to the Mandans
the most singular appearance. The hair of the men is uniformly all
laid over from the forehead backwards; carefully kept above and
resting on the ear, and thence falling down over the back, in these
flattened bunches, and painted red, extending oftentimes quite on to
the calf of the leg, and sometimes in such profusion as almost to
conceal the whole figure from the person walking behind them... .

The hair of the women is also worn as long as they can possibly
cultivate it, oiled very often, which preserves on it a beautiful gloss
and shows its natural colour. They often braid it in two large plaits,
one falling down just back of the ear, on each side of the head; and on
any occasion which requires them to “‘put on their best looks,” they

[ 160 |

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€S ULy Id

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

pass their fingers through it, drawing it out of braid, and spreading
it over their shoulders. The Mandan women observe strictly the same
custom, which I observed amongst the Crows and Blackfeet (and, in
fact, all other tribes I have seen, without a single exception), of parting
the hair on the forehead, and always keeping the crease or separation
filled with vermillion or other red paint.

In mourning, like the Crows and most other tribes, the women are
obliged to crop their hair all off; and the usual term of that condolence
is until the hair has grown again to its former length.

When a man mourns for the death of a near relation the case is
quite different; his long, valued tresses are of much greater importance,
and only a lock or two can be spared. Just enough to tell of his grief
to his friends, without destroying his most valued ornament, is doing
just reverence and respect to the dead.

Vanity and effeminacy among the Mandan were carried
to their greatest extreme by a distinct and apparently
degenerate class of whom Catlin gives a detailed
description:

These gay and tinselled bucks may be seen in a pleasant day in all
their plumes, astride of their pied or dappled ponies, with a fan in the
right hand made of a turkey’s tail—with whip and a fly-brush at-
tached to the wrist of the same hand, and underneath them a white and
beautiful and soft pleasure-saddle, ornamented with porcupine quills
and ermine, parading through and lounging about the village for an
hour or so, when they will cautiously bend their course to the suburbs
of the town, where they will sit or recline upon their horses for an
hour or two, overlooking the beautiful games where the braves and
the young aspirants are contending in manly and athletic amuse-
ments;—when they are fatigued with this severe effort, they wend
their way back again, lift off their fine white saddle of doe’s-skin,
which is wadded with buffalo’s hair, turn out their pony—take a little
refreshment, smoke a pipe, fan themselves to sleep, and doze away
the rest of the day.

Having once overcome the native antipathy of the
Mandan braves, Catlin found that they were eager to
have him paint their portraits and regarded it as a high
honor. But when the artist was about to put on canvas a
picture of one of the “‘dandies,”” which would have been
a valuable addition to his portrait gallery, the chiefs be-
came very indignant and informed him, through the inter-

lent

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

preter, that if he continued to paint portraits of such
“worthless fellows,” they should insist on having their
own destroyed—a threat which effectually ended the
sitting.

The artist, however, painted portraits of many of the
more distinguished chiefs of the tribe, among whom
perhaps the most interesting was Mah-to-toh-pa. Of
this chieftain’s dress and adornments and their significance
Catlin has left the following account, which is the more
valuable since both the dress and robe which Mah-to-
toh-pa presented to the artist, after wearing them while
his portrait was being painted, were destroyed by fire and
water in Philadelphia before the collection came into the
possession of the Smithsonian Institution:

Mah-to-toh-pa had agreed to stand before me for his portrait at
an early hour of the next morning, and on that day I sat with my
palette of colors prepared, and waited till twelve o’clock, before he
could leave his toilette with feelings of satisfaction as to the propriety
of his looks and the arrangement of his equipments; and at that time
it was announced that “Mah-to-toh-pa was coming in full dress!” I
looked out of the door of the wigwam and saw him approaching with a
firm and elastic step, accompanied by a great crowd of women and
children, who were gazing on him with admiration, and escorting him
to my room. No tragedian ever trod the stage, nor gladiator ever
entered the Roman Forum, with more grace and manly dignity than
did Mah-to-toh-pa enter the wigwam, where I was in readiness to
receive him. He took his attitude before me, and with the sternness
of a Brutus and the stillness of a statue, he stood until the darkness
of night broke upon the solitary stillness. His dress, which was a
very splendid one, was complete in all its parts, and consisted of a shirt
or tunic, leggings, moccasins, head-dress, necklace, shield, bow and
quiver, lance, tobacco-sack, and pipe; robe, belt, and knife; medicine-
bag, tomahawk, and war-club, or ro-ko-mo-kon.

The shirt, of which I have spoken, was made of two skins of the
mountain sheep, beautifully dressed, and sewed together by seams
which rested upon the arms; one skin hanging in front upon the breast,
and the other falling down upon the back; the head being passed
between them, and they falling over and resting on the shoulders.
Across each shoulder, and somewhat in the form of an epaulette, was
a beautiful band, and down each arm from the neck to the hand was
a similar one, of two inches in width (and crossing the other at right

[ 162]

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

angles on the shoulder) beautifully embroidered with porcupine quills
worked on the dress, and covering the seams. To the lower edge of
these bands the whole way, at intervals of half an inch, were attached
long locks of black hair, which he had taken with his own hand from
the heads of his enemies whom he had slain in battle, and which he
thus wore as a trophy, and also as an ornament to his dress. The
front and back of the shirt were curiously garnished in several parts
with porcupine quills and paintings of the battles he had fought, and
also with representations of the victims that had fallen by his hand.
The bottom of the dress was bound or hemmed with ermine skins, and
tassels of ermines’ tails were suspended from the arms and the shoulders.

The Leggings, which were made of deer skins, beautifully dressed,
and fitting tight to the leg, extended from the feet to the hips, and
were fastened to a belt which was passed around the waist. These,
like the shirt, had a similar band, worked with porcupine quills of
richest dyes, passing down the seam on the outer part of the leg, and
fringed also the whole length of the leg, with the scalp-locks taken
from his enemies’ heads.

The Moccasins were of buckskin, and covered in almost every part
with the beautiful embroidery of porcupines’ quills.

The Head-dress, which was superb and truly magnificent, consisted
of a crest of war-eagles’ quills, gracefully falling back from the fore-
head over the back part of the head, and extending quite down to his
feet; set the whole way in a profusion of ermine, and surmounted on
the top of the head, with the horns of the buffalo, shaved thin and
highly polished.

The Necklace was made of 50 huge claws of nails of the grizzly bear,
ingeniously arranged on the skin of an otter, and worn, like the scalp-
locks, as a trophy—as an evidence unquestionable, that he had con-
tended with and overcome the desperate enemy in open combat.

His Shield was made of the hide of the buffalo’s neck, and hard-
ened with the glue that was taken from its hoofs; its boss was the skin
cf a polecat, and its edges were fringed with rows of eagles’ quills and
hoofs of the antelope.

His Bow was of bone, and as white and beautiful as ivory; over its
back was laid, and firmly attached to it, a coating of deer’s sinews,
which gave it its elasticity, and of course death to all that stood
inimically before it. Its string was three stranded and twisted of
sinews, which many a time had twanged and sent the whizzing death
to animal and to human victims.

The Quiver was made of a panther’s skin and hung upon his back,
charged with its deadly arrows; some were poisoned and some were not;
they were feathered with hawks’ and eagles’ quills; some were clean
and innocent, and pure, and others were stained all over, with animal

[ 163 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

and human blood that was dried upon them. Their blades or points
were of flints, and some of steel; and altogether were a deadly maga-
zine.

The Lance or spear was held in his left hand; its blade was two-
edged and of polished steel, and the blood of several human victims
was seen dried upon it, one over the other; its shaft was of the toughest
ash, and ornamented at intervals with tufts of war-eagles’ quills.

His Todacco-sack was made of the skin of an otter, and tastefully
garnished with quills of the porcupine; in it was carried his k’nick-k’neck
mixture (the bark of the red willow, which is smoked as a substitute
for tobacco); it contained also his flint and steel, and spunk for lighting.

His Pipe, which was ingeniously carved out of the red steatite (or
pipe-stone), the stem of which was three feet long and two inches wide,
made from the stalk of the young ash; about half its length was wound
with delicate braids of the porcupine’s quills, so ingeniously wrought
as to represent figures of men and animals upon it. It was also orna-
mented with the skins and beaks of wood-peckers’ heads, and the
hair of the white buffalo’s tail. The lower half of the stem was painted
red, and on its edges it bore the notches he had recorded for the snows
(or years) of his life.

His Robe was made of the skin of a young buffalo bull, with the fur
on one side, and the other finely and delicately dressed, with all the
battles of his life emblazoned on it by his own hand.

His Belt, which was of a substantial piece of buckskin, was firmly
girded around his waist; and in it were worn his tomahawk and scalp-
ing-knife.

His Medicine-bag was the skin of a beaver, curiously ornamented
with hawks’ bills and ermine. It was held in his right hand and his
ro-ko-mo-kon (or war-club) which was made of a round stone, tied up
in a piece of rawhide, and attached to the end of a stick, somewhat in
the form of a sling, was laid with others of his weapons at his feet.

Such was the dress of Mah-to-toh-pa when he entered my wigwam
to stand for his picture; but such I have not entirely represented it in
his portrait; having rejected such trappings and ornaments as inter-
fered with the grace and simplicity of the figure. He was beauti-
fully and extravagantly dressed; and in this he was not alone, for
hundreds of others are equally elegant. In plumes, and arms, and
ornaments, he is not singular; but in laurels and wreaths he stands
unparalleled. His breast has been bared and scarred in defense of
his country, and his brows crowned with honors that elevate him
conspicuous above all of his nation. There is no man amongst the
Mandans so generally loved, nor any one who wears a robe so justly
famed and honorable as that of Mah-to-toh-pa.

I said his robe was of the skin of a young buffalo bull, and that the

[ 164 |

spray du0}s pur “Iay vay UT Pasvdud JO aI¥q ‘pooM jo saypuRY fsqnyo 1M odvqouul

w$ ALVId

sajofoo wor Apoq ayy ydaj01d 0} punosd aaoqe sovjd yoo [eLng ‘survyd ay} uo [eling pjoyvos MOID YW

SHS ILA Kal

INDIANS ‘OF THE PLAINS

battles of his life were emblazoned on it; and on a former occasion,
that he presented me a beautiful robe, containing all the battles of
his life, which he had spent two weeks’ time in copying from his
original one, which he wore on his shoulders.

This robe, with its tracings on it, is the chart of his military life; and
when explained, will tell more of Mah-to-toh-pa.

Twelve battle-scenes are there represented, where he has contended
with his enemy, and in which he has taken fourteen of their scalps.
The groups are drawn according to his own rude ideas of the arts.

One of the battle scenes on the robe (Figure 10) repre-
sents the death of Mah-to-toh-pa’s brother at the hands
of an Arikara chief. Mah-to-toh-pa’s vengeance upon the
slayer is thus described by Catlin:

The following was, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary exploits of
this remarkable man’s life, and is well attested by Mr. Kipp, and
several white men, who were living in the Mandan village at the time
of its occurrence. In a skirmish, near the Mandan village, when they
were set upon by their enemies, the Riccarees [Arikara], the brother
of Mah-to-toh-pa was missing for several days, when Mah-to-toh-pa
found the body shockingly mangled, and a handsome spear left piercing
the body through the heart. The spear was by him brought into the
Mandan village, where it was recognized by many as a famous weapon
belonging to a noted brave of the Riccarees, by the name of Won-ga-
tap. This spear was brandished through the Mandan village by
Mah-to-toh-pa (with the blood of his brother dried on its blade),
crying most piteously, and swearing that he would some day revenge
the death of his brother with the same weapon.

It is almost an incredible fact, that he kept this spear with great
care in his wigwam for the space of four years, in the fruitless expec-
tation of an opportunity to use it upon the breast of its owner; when
his indignant soul, impatient of further delay, burst forth in the most
uncontrollable frenzy and fury, he again brandished it through the
village, and said, that the blood of his brother’s heart which was seen
on its blade was yet fresh, and called loudly for revenge. “Let every
Mandan (said he) be silent, and let no one sound the name of Mah-
to-toh-pa—let no one ask for him, nor where he has gone, until you
hear him sound the war-cry in front of the village, when he will enter
it and show you the blood of Won-ga-tap. The blade of this lance
shall drink the heart’s blood of Won-ga-tap, or Mah-to-toh-pa mingles
his shadow with that of his brother.”

With this he sallied forth from the village, and over the plains,
with the lance in his hand; his direction was toward the Riccaree

[ 165 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

village, and all eyes were upon him, though none dared to speak till
he disappeared over the distant grassy bluffs. He travelled the distance
of two hundred miles entirely alone, with a little parched corn in his
pouch, making his marches by night, and laying secreted by days,
until he reached the Riccaree village; where (being acquainted with
its shapes and its habits, and knowing the position of the wigwam of
his doomed enemy) he loitered about in disguise, mingling himself
in the obscure throng; and at last, silently and alone, observed througn
the rents of the wigwam the last motions and movements of his
victim, as he retired to bed with his wife; he saw him light his last pipe,
and smoke it “‘to its end” —he saw the last whiff, and saw the last curl
of blue smoke that faintly steeped from its bowl—he saw the village
awhile in darkness and silence, and the embers that were covered in
the middle of the wigwam gone nearly out, and the last flickering
light which had been gently playing over them; when he walked softly,
but not slyly, into the wigwam and seated himself by the fire, over
which was hanging a large pot, with a quantity of cooked meat remain-
ing in it; and by the side of the fire, the pipe and tobacco-pouch which
had just been used; and knowing that the twilight of the wigwam was
not sufficient to disclose the features of his face to his enemy, he very
deliberately turned to the pot and completely satiated the desperate
appetite, which he had got in a journey of six or seven days, with
little or nothing to eat; and then, as deliberately, charged and lighted
the pipe, and sent (no doubt, in every whiff that he drew through its
stem) a prayer to the Great Spirit for a moment longer for the con-
summation of his design. Whilst eating and smoking, the wife of
his victim, while laying in bed, several times enquired of her husband,
what man it was who was eating in their lodge? to which, he as many
times replied, “It is no matter; let him eat, for he is probably hungry.”

Mah-to-toh-pa knew full well that his appearance would cause no
other reply than this, from the dignitary of the nation; for, from an
invariable custom amongst these Northern Indians, any one who is
hungry is allowed to walk into any man’s lodge and eat. Whilst
smoking his last gentle and tremulous whiffs on the pipe, Mah-to-
toh-pa (leaning back, and turning gradually on his side, to get a better
view of the position of his enemy, and to see a little more distinctly
the shapes of things) stirred the embers with his toes (readers, I had
every word of this from his own lips, and every attitude and gesture
acted out with his own limbs), until he saw his way was clear; at
which moment, with his lance in his hands, he rose and drove it through
the body of his enemy, and snatching the scalp from his head, he darted
from the lodge—and quick as lightning, with the lance in one hand,
and the scalp in the other, made his way to the prairie! The village
was in an uproar, but he was off, and no one knew the enemy who had

[ 166 |

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

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[ 167 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

struck the blow. Mah-to-toh-pa ran all night, and lay close during
the days; thanking the Great Spirit for strengthening his heart and
his arm to this noble revenge, and prayed fervently for a continuance
of his aid and protection till he should get back to his own village.
His prayers were heard; and on the sixth morning, at sunrise, Mah-
to-toh-pa descended the bluffs, and entered the village amidst deafening
shouts of applause, while he brandished and showed to his people the
blade of his lance, with the blood of his victim dried upon it, over
that of his brother; and the scalp of Won-ga-tap suspended from its
handle.

Other important events in Mah-to-toh-pa’s life as
pictured on the robe are described as follows:

8. Mah-to-toh-pa, or Four Bears, kills a Shienne chief, who chal-
lenged him to single combat, in presence of the two war-parties; they
fought on horseback with guns, until Mah-to-toh-pa’s powder-horn was
shot away; they then fought with bows and arrows, until their quivers
were emptied, when they dismounted and fought single-handed. The
Shienne drew his knife, and Mah-to-toh-pa had left his; they struggled
for the knife, which Mah-to-toh-pa wrested from the Shienne, and
killed him with it; in the struggle, the blade of the knife was several
times drawn through the hand of Mah-to-toh-pa, and the blood is
seen running from the wound.

This extraordinary occurrence also, was one which admits of, and
deserves a more elaborate description, which I will here give as it was
translated from his own lips, while he sat upon the robe, pointing to
his painting of it; and at the same time brandishing the identical knife
which he drew from his belt, as he was showing how the fatal blow
was given; and exhibiting the wounds inflicted in his hand, as the blade
of the knife was several times drawn through it before he wrested it
from his antagonist.

A party of about 150 Shienne warriors had made an assault upon the
Mandan village at an early hour in the morning, and driven off a
considerable number of horses, and taken one scalp. Mah-to-toh-pa,
who was then a young man, but famed as one of the most valiant of
the Mandans, took the lead of a party of fifty warriors, all he could
at that time muster, and went in pursuit of the enemy; about noon
of the second day, they came in sight of the Shiennes; and the Man-
dans seeing their enemy much more numerous than they had expected,
were generally disposed to turn about and return without attacking
them. They started to go back, when Mah-to-toh-pa galloped out
in front upon the prairie, and plunged his lance into the ground; the
blade was driven into the earth to its hilt—he made another circuit
around, and in that circuit tore from his breast his reddened sash,

| 168 |

PLATE 56

F A %
? : re ae Ee
ra =. = cae

A Cheyenne tree burial, Oklahoma. The body was wrapped in a
buffalo skin

SIOALI] a4} Surmoys ‘Aprurvy auuaAdyD YW

4g ALVId

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

which he hung upon his handle as a flag, calling out to the Mandans,
“What! have we come to this? We have dogged our enemy two days,
and now when we have found them, are we to turn about and go back
like cowards? Mah-to-toh-pa’s lance, which is red with the blood of
brave men, has led you to the sight of your enemy, and you have fol-
lowed it; it now stands firm in the ground, where the earth will drink
the blood of Mah-to-toh-pa! you may all go back, and Mah-to-toh-pa
will fight them alone!”

During this maneuver, the Shiennes, who had discovered the Man-
dans behind them, had turned about, and were gradually approaching,
in order to give them battle; the chief of the Shienne war-party seeing
and understanding the difficulty, and admiring the gallant conduct
of Mah-to-toh-pa, galloped his horse forward within hailing distance,
in front of the Mandans, and called out to know “‘who he was who had
stuck down his lance and defied the whole enemy alone?”

“T am Mah-to-toh-pa, second in command of the brave and valiant
Mandans.”

“I have heard often of Mah-to-toh-pa, he is a great warrior—dares
Mah-to-toh-pa to come forward and fight this battle with me alone,
and our warriors will look on?”

“Ts he a chief who speaks to Mah-to-toh-pa?”

“My scalps you see hanging to my horse’s bits, and here is my lance
with the ermine skins and the war-eagle’s tail!”

“You have said enough.”

The Shienne chief made a circuit or two at full gallop on a beautiful
white horse, when he struck his lance into the ground, and left it
standing by the side of the lance of Mah-to-toh-pa, both of which
were waving together their little red flags, tokens of blood and defiance.

The two parties then drew nearer, on a beautiful prairie, and the
two full-plumed chiefs, at full speed, drove furiously upon each other,
both firing their guns at the same moment. They passed each other
a little distance and wheeled, when Mah-to-toh-pa drew off his powder-
horn, and by holding it up, showed his adversary that the bullet had
shattered it to pieces and destroyed his ammunition; he then threw
it from him, and his gun also—drew his bow from his quiver, and an
arrow, and his shield upon his left arm! The Shienne instantly did
the same; Ais horn was thrown off, and his gun was thrown into the
air—his shield was balanced on his arm—his bow drawn, and quick as
lightning, they were both on the wing for a deadly combat! Like two
soaring eagles in the open air, they made their circuits around, and
the twangs of their sinewy bows were heard, and the war-whoop,
as they dashed by each other, parrying off the whizzing arrows with
their shields!’ Some lodged in their legs and others in their arms;
but both protected their dodies with their bucklers of bull’s hide.

[ 169 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Deadly and many were the shafts that fled from their murderous
bows. At length the horse of Mah-to-toh-pa fell to the ground with
an arrow in his heart. His rider sprang to his feet, prepared to renew
the combat; but the Shienne, seeing his adversary dismounted, sprang
from his horse, and driving him back, presented the face of his shield
toward his enemy, inviting him to come on! A few shots more were
exchanged thus, when the Shienne, having discharged all his arrows,
held up his empty quiver, and dashing it furiously to the ground, with
his bow and his shield, drew and brandished his naked knife!

“Yes!” said Mah-to-toh-pa, as he threw Ais shield and quiver to
the earth, and was rushing up. He grasped for his knife, but his belt
had it not; he had left it at home! His bow was in his hand, with
which he parried his antagonist’s blow, and felled him to the ground!
A desperate struggle now ensued for the knife—the blade of it was
several times drawn through the right hand of Mah-to-toh-pa, in-
flicting the most frightful wounds, while he was severely wounded in
several parts of the body. He at length succeeded, however, in
wresting it from his adversary’s hand, and plunged it to his heart.

By this time the two parties had drawn up in close view of each
other, and at the close of the battle Mah-to-toh-pa held up, and
claimed in deadly silence, the knife and scalp of the noble Shienne
chief.

g. Several hundred Minatarrees and Mandans attacked by a party
of Assinneboins—all fled but Mah-to-toh-pa, who stood his ground,
fired, and killed one of the enemy, putting the rest of them to flight,
and driving off sixty horses! He is here seen with his lance and shield—
foot-tracks of his enemy in front, and his own party’s horse-tracks
behind him, and a shower of bullets flying around his head; here he
got the name of “The Four Bears,” as the Assinneboins said he rushed
on like four bears.

10. Mah-to-toh-pa gets from horse and kills two Ojibbeway women
and takes their scalps; done by the side of an Ojibbeway village, where
they went to the river for water. He is here seen with his lance in
one hand and his knife in the other—an eagle’s plume head-dress on
his horse, and his shield left on his horse’s back. I incurred his ill-
will for awhile by asking him whether it was manly to boast of taking
the scalps of women, and his pride prevented him from giving me any
explanation or apology. The interpreter, however, explained to me
that he had secreted himself in the most daring manner, in full sight
of the Ojibbeway village, seeking to revenge a murder, where he
remained six days without sustenance, and then killed the two women
in full view of the tribe, and made his escape, which entitled him to
the credit of a victory, though his victims were women... .

12. Mah-to-toh-pa between his enemy the Sioux, and his own people,

[170]

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

with an arrow shot through him, after standing the fire of the Sioux
for a long time alone. In this battle he took no scalps, yet his valor
was so extraordinary that the chiefs and braves awarded him the
honor of a victory.

This feat is seen in the center of the robe—head-dress of war-eagles’
quills on his own and his horse’s head—the tracks of his enemies’
horses are seen in front of him, and bullets flying both ways all around
him. With his whip in hand, he is seen urging his horse forward,
and an arrow is seen flying, and bloody, as it has passed through his
body. For this wound, and the several others mentioned above,
he bears the honorable scars on his body, which he generally keeps
covered with red paint.

Such are the battles traced upon the robe of Mah-to-toh-pa, or
Four Bears, interpreted by J. Kipp from the words of the hero while
sitting upon the robe, explaining each battle as represented.

Through the favor of a medicine-man whose portrait
he had painted, Catlin was permitted to view the most
secret rites of the chief religious festival of the Mandan,
never before witnessed in its entirety by a white man.

This ceremony lasted four days, during which several
dances were performed in the village plaza. The rites
had, besides their religious significance, three distinct ob-
jects: (1) to celebrate the subsiding of the Flood, an im-
portant event in the mythology of the Mandan, as it 1s in
that of most river-dwelling peoples; (2) to dance the
“bull dance” in honor of the buffalo; and (3) to initiate
the youths of the tribe into manhood through an ordeal
of privation and torture, which was designed to prepare
them for extreme endurance and to make a severe test of
their bodily strength. In his vivid descriptions and
accurate drawings, Catlin has left a valuable record of
this last grotesque and horrible ceremony, the worst ter-
rors of which are happily now a thing of the past.

During the first three days of the festivities, the can-
didates for the torture, closely guarded in the medicine
lodge, were required to observe a rigid fast and vigil,
abstaining wholly during that time from food, drink, and
sleep. It is possible that by this measure they were
rendered to some degree unconscious and consequently

(a7

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

less sensitive to the tortures which were inflicted upon
them on the fourth day and which brought the ceremonies
to a close. This ordeal, which was practiced by many of
the Plains tribes, consisted in suspending the candidates
by means of skewers passed through the muscles of the
back, and in otherwise mutilating and gashing them.
After such torments had been borne to the point of
producing unconsciousness, the candidates were sent out
from the medicine lodge to where, with various heavy
accouterments attached to skewers thrust through the
flesh of arms and legs, they were dragged over the ground
as rapidly as possible, until both the weights and the
skewers which held them were broken away through the
flesh, and the victim again fainted from pain and loss of
blood. No aid could be offered to any victim, but he must
be left to the mercy of “The Great Spirit.”” As soon as he
was able to rise and make his way to his lodge, his friends
took him in hand and applied remedies to his wounds.

When the buffalo were at last exterminated by means
of firearms which the Indian hunters had acquired from
the white men, the roving life of the nomads of the plains
necessarily came to an end. Even if the buffalo had not
been slaughtered, both they and the Indians whose liveli-
hood depended on them must have been driven from their
ancient range by the advancing tide of civilization. The
former wild tribes of the Plains are now gathered in
various reservations where they have adopted an agricul-
tural mode of life and are rapidly being converted into
thrifty and civilized citizens of the United States.

There are still old people among them, however, as in
the Omaha tribe, who remember the dismay and distress
of mind which fell upon them when it was first realized
that the buffalo, which was so closely linked with all their
traditions and which they had been taught to believe
had been given to them as an inexhaustible supply of
food forever, had indeed vanished and with it their old
free life.

[172]

PLATE 58

A bull-boat of the Hidatsa, North Dakota. Buffalo hide on a wooden
framework

PLATE 59

A Paiute village, Utah. These brush lodges represent the most
primitive habitations known to the North American Indians

INDIANS OF THE PLAINS
REFERENCES

Carver, JONATHAN. Travels through the interior parts
of North America in the years 1766, 1767, and 1768.
London, 1778.

—— Three years’ travels through the interior parts of
North America for more than five thousand miles.
Philadelphia, 1796.

CaTiin, Georce. Letters and notes on the manners, cus-
toms, and condition of the North American Indians.
Vols. 1-11. New York and London, 1844.

—— O-kee-pa: a religious ceremony; and other customs
of the Mandans. Philadelphia, 1867.

Covers, Extiotr, editor. History of the expedition of
Lewis and Clark to the sources of the Missouri River
and to the Pacific in 1804~-5-6. A new edition. Vols.
1-1v. New York, 1893.

Donatpson, THomas. The George Catlin Indian gallery.
U. S. Nation. Mus. Ann. Rep. 1885, pp. 399-406.
Washington, 1886.

Dorsey, James Owen. Omaha dwellings, furniture, and
implements. 13th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. Wash-
ington, 1896.

Siouan sociology. 15th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol.

Washington, 1897.

FLETCHER, ALIcE C. and La FLescue, Francis. The
Omaha Tribe. 27th Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol.
Washington, IgII.

Irvinc, Joun T. Indian sketches taken during an ex-
pedition to the Pawnee tribes. Vols. 1-11. Phila-
delphia, 1835.

James, Epwin. Account of an expedition from Pittsburgh
to the Rocky Mountains ... under the command of
Major Stephen H. Long. Vols. 1-1, and atlas.
Philadelphia, 1823.

La FLescue, Francis. The Osage Tribe: rite of vigil. 39th
Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Washington, 1925.

[173 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

McGeeg, W J. The Siouan Indians: a preliminary sketch.
16th Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Washington,
1897.

Matruews, W. Ethnography and philology of the
Hidatsa Indians. U.S. Geog. Geol. Surv. Misc. Pub.
No. 7. Washington, 1877.

MaxIMILiAN, Prince oF WeiD. Travels in the interior of
North America. Translated from the German by
H. Evans Lloyd. London, 1843.

ParKMAN, Francis. The Oregon trail: sketches of
prairie and Rocky Mountain life. 8th ed. Boston,
1883.

Witt, G. F. and Spinpen, H. J. The Mandans: a study
of their culture, archaeology, and language. Papers
Peabody Mus. Amer. Archaeol. Ethnol. Harvard
Univ. Vol. 3, No. 4. Cambridge, Mass., 1906.

[174]

CHAPTER VII

WEoE COAST TRIBES

Cur off from the rest of the mainland by towering moun-
tain ranges and vast tracts of desert land, the tribes of the
West Coast, although including representatives of such
widely distributed families as the Shoshonean and Atha-
pascan, developed in their isolation a culture distinct
from and for the most part inferior to that of the red-
skinned statesmen of the East, the pueblo-builders of
the Southwest, and the huntsmen of the central Plains
region.

The effects of environment are nowhere more clearly
shown than in two California tribes, the Mohave and
their near neighbors and relatives, the Yuma, who to-
gether form a connecting link between the culture of the
Southwest and that of the West Coast as represented by
the Dieguefio and other tribes of southern California.

The Mohave, who lived in scattered dwellings along the
Colorado River, were wanderers and warriors to an extent
undreamed of by most California tribes. They were
athletic and well developed and famous for the artistic
painting and tattooing of their bodies. These decorations
largely supplied the place of clothing, for on account of
the mild climate both the Mohave and Yuma dispensed
with all garments except the bark-fiber petticoat of the
women and the breechcloth of the men. They built their
houses of logs, with four supporting poles at the center,
walls only two or three feet high, and nearly flat roofs of
brush covered with sand.

[175 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

The Mohave resembled the Pueblos in practicing a rude
sort of agriculture and their granaries were somewhat
like kivas, being cylindrical structures with flat roofs. For
animal food they depended largely on salmon which they
ate broiled or stewed. Although a river tribe, these
Indians had no canoes but used instead rafts, or da/sas,
made of bundles of reeds. Their pottery was better, their
basketry poorer, than elsewhere in California. They
differed from their California neighbors also in using shells
as jewelry, not as money.

In social organization, however, as well as in many cus-
toms, the Mohave resembled other California Indians.
The tribe was divided into gentes, with inheritance in the
male line. Chiefs were hereditary but not so important
as three other leaders chosen for their ability—the war-
leader, the master of entertainments, and the shaman, or
medicine man.

The Mohave had no cemeteries, as cremation of the
dead was the universal practice throughout California.
However, the ashes were buried after a fashion, for the
logs on which the body was burned were placed over a
trench and as body and fuel were consumed the ashes
fell into the excavation and were covered over with
sand. Not only was the dead man’s body destroyed,
but his house, containing all his property was also set on
fire. Into the blaze mourners cast their own personal
belongings, sometimes even their garments.

Like other tribes of southern California, both the
Mohave and the Yuma were familiar with the narcotic
properties of the Jimson weed and made use of the drug
in their religious observances in order to produce dreams.
Such dreams were regarded as the basis of all religion and
indeed of all knowledge.

The Dieguefo, whose name was derived from the
Franciscan mission of San Diego, were among the most
primitive of the California Indians. They lived in the
southernmost part of the State and were practically the

[ 176 ]

WEST COAST TRIBES

same people as the Cocopa and other tribes of the north-
ern part of Lower California.

The Dieguefio resembled the Mohave in their gentile
system, by which descent was traced through the father’s
line, and in a number of other customs. Like the Mohave,
for example, they took not only the scalp lock from a
fallen foe, but the entire scalp including the ears. These
gruesome trophies are said to have adorned the heads
of the dancers in the scalp-dance which followed a
victory.

A braided girdle of agave fiber for carrying burdens
was the sole article worn by the men, while the women
were clad only in the two-piece petticoat popular among
all California tribes. The rear portion of this garment
was of willow bark; the front apron of the same material
or of strings closely netted or braided. Sandals made of
agave fiber about half an inch thick were sometimes worn.
Both men and women wore their hair long, the men
bunching it on the crown of the head, the women letting
it hang loose but trimmed across the forehead into a deep
“bang” to the eyebrows.

Just north of the Dieguefio were the Luisefio who were
likewise named for a mission, that of San Luis Rey de
Francis. Although of Shoshonean stock they resembled
their relatives east of the mountain ranges even less than
did the Dieguefio their Yuman kinsfolk. Because of the
similarity of environment, the Luisefio and Diegueifio were,
in fact, much alike, although the Luisefio were even more
primitive than were the Dieguefio. These southern
Californians raised no crops but lived chiefly on acorns
and various bulbous plants, supplemented by a variety
of animal foods including not only fish and game but also
reptiles, insect larvae, and worms—almost everything, in
fact, except dogs and men.

For religious ceremonies the southern California Indians
used the wamkish or “temple,” which was merely a
circular plot of ground inclosed within a fence or hotshish

logge

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

of brush. This unroofed ceremonial inclosure was as-
sociated with the generally practiced rites of mourning and
the foloache or Jimson-weed religion.

A very definite link between the West Coast Shosho-
neans and the Pueblo Indians is found in the sand paint-
ings which both used as part of their religious ceremonials.
The painting was made in the wamkish or ceremonial in-
closure and was a part of the Luisefio Jimson-weed
initiation for boys, the Yunish Matakish or death rite,
and the adolescence ceremony for girls. As with the
Pueblos, these sand paintings were conventionalized
religious symbols, the knowledge of which was confined to
the initiates of the Jimson-weed cult and was imparted
secretly by the elders to the younger members of the
tribe.

The toloache ritual, by which boys were initiated into
the Jimson-weed or Chingishnish religion, had as its most
important proceeding the taking of the drug, which 1s
very powerful and has been known to produce fatal
results.

The ceremony of initiation concluded with the ant
ordeal, in which the victim was fastened down on an ant
hill, and the insects allowed to bite him at will. This novel
form of torture was ended by releasing the sufferer and
whipping the ants from his body with nettles.

The girls’ ceremony was also a characteristic rite among
the Shoshoneans of southern California. Its central
feature was the “roasting.” Several girls were usually
treated at once, thereby making the ceremony more
general and increasing its importance. A few tribes,
however, as the Yurok, Hupa, and Mohave, made the
rite individual and an affair for kinsmen rather than the
whole community. Kroeber gives the following descrip-
tion of the roasting ordeal:

The first step in the ceremony was to make the girls swallow balls

of tobacco as an ordeal. Only those who did not vomit were con-
sidered virtuous. As the Indians say, this was a hard test.

[ 178 ]

WEST COAST TRIBES

The girls were then placed on their backs in a pit that had previously
been lined with stones, heated, and then carpeted with tussock grass
and sedge. Two warmed flat stones were put on the abdomen of
each maiden. The girls lay as still as possible for three days. At
night men and in the day women danced around the pit. Each girl
had her head covered with an openwork basket to keep the flies off,
the Luisefio say—perhaps to prevent undue and prejudicial move-
ments. ...

The girls did not wholly fast, but refrained from meat, fish, and
salt. Once every 24 hours they left the pit, which was then reheated.

When finally taken out the girls had their faces painted by the wife
of the officiating chief. Bracelets and anklets of human hair and
necklaces of Echinocystis macrocarpa, a variety of prickly “sea-urchin,”
were put upon them. They were now free to go about.

There is one southern Californian tribe of whom
mention should be made, although they are practically
extinct and very little can now be learned about them.
These are the Chumash who formerly occupied the coast
and three large islands of the Santa Barbara region.
They were among the first of the California Indians to be
discovered by the Spaniards who came to their shores
toward the middle of the sixteenth century, and finding
them peaceable and friendly, established several missions
among them. They were more maritime in their way of life
than any other Californian tribe and seem to have been
the only ones to construct seaworthy canoes. These were
made of planks lashed together and cemented with as-
phalt, which occurs in large quantities along the coast.

The art of decorating wooden vessels with an inlay
of haliotis was known to the Chumash, but no specimen of
their work is now extant. They were also skilled in bas-
ketry, which was an art very highly developed in Cali-
fornia. They did not, however, manufacture pottery,
but used soapstone for their pots and vessels as did the
far-northern Eskimo. The Chumash used metates,
mortars, and pounding slabs of stone. Other remains in-
clude large stone rings, sometimes beautifully polished,
supposed to have been used to slip over the women’s
digging sticks to give the stroke more force. Such, at

[179]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

least, is the explanation of their use given by the natives.
Pipes have also been found made of stone tubes, doubtless
employed chiefly by shamans. Pipes of wood or cane
were probably used by the people generally, although
their remains have perished. The Chumash used clam-
shell disk beads as money, and probably furnished most of
the supply for the southern tribes. They employed the
usual method of measuring the strung beads on the
circumference of the hand.

Some distance farther north on the coast, separated
from the Chumash by various intervening tribes, was a
related nation, the Pomo. They are still in existence
and are today the second most populous of the California
tribes, numbering more than 1,200 and exceeded only by
the Mono. It is estimated that they numbered originally
nearly 8,000. About three-fourths of the present popula-
tion are said to be of unmixed blood.

There were several distinct geographical divisions of
the Pomo who together formed a continuous and com-
paratively compact body. The heart of their land was
the valley of Russian River. To the east of this valley and
separated from it by a range of mountains is a basin con-
taining one of the few large bodies of fresh water in Cali-
fornia—Clear Lake; this formed another center for the
Pomo population. Still farther east and north, and cut
off from Clear Lake by another range of mountains,
were the Sacramento Valley Pomo, sometimes called the
Salt Pomo from their ownership of a famous deposit of
salt.

Attempts of neighboring tribes to steal the salt led to
numerous conflicts, including one or two with the Clear
Lake Pomo. Comparatively few of the Pomo lived on
the coast. Fewer still occupied the redwood district; aside
from deer and acorns these gloomy forests furnished little
food.

The political unit among the Pomo was the village
and there were about seventy-five of these, besides many

[ 180 ]

PLATE 60

Mohave Indian chief in ceremonial paint, National Museum

WEST COAST TRIBES

smaller clusters of dwellings and camping places, most
of which were grouped around some one of the principal
villages. These were inhabited by a people who had little
to fear from danger of famine. They had no need to cul-
tivate the soil, for food supplies were to be found on
every hand.

Pomo customs in dress, house-building, and such mat-
ters, differed in certain details according to the habitat.
The double skirt of the women, for instance, was made
of such materials as might be at hand in any particular
locality. Where deer were to be had, it was made of
skin; on the coast, of shredded inner redwood bark;
in Russian River Valley, of willow bark; and on Clear
Lake, of tule rush. Of these materials, fiber seems to
have been the favorite. Basketry caps were not worn.
The only headgear was supplied by the carrying net
which was woven into a broad band in front to ease the
strain on the forehead. As for the men, they did not
bother with clothes at all except perhaps a skin wrapped
around the hips.

California moccasins and other footgear were so clum-
sily made that the Indians usually preferred to go about
barefoot. This, indeed was the usual practice of the
North American tribes except when on long expeditions.
Soft moccasins were occasionally worn, however, and
sometimes sandals and leggings of tule or of netted
twine formed part of the Pomo costume. Men wore ear
tubes of long, incised bird bones, or wooden rods tipped
with a bead and small brilliant feathers. Nosepins of
haliotis were also worn. The women had a variety of
beads and other ornaments.

Types of houses also depended on the climate and
vegetation of each district. Along the shore and in the
adjacent belt of heavy timber the living house was built
of slabs of redwood bark leaned together into a cone from
six to eight feet high and from ten to fifteen feet across,
without any covering of earth. A central post suggests

[ 181 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

the possible evolution of the semisubterranean house.
This type of dwelling was made also by other tribes who
lived in the neighborhood of the redwood trees. Such
houses were necessarily small and accommodated only
single families.

The Pomo had a true sweat-house, distinct from the assembly or
dance house, though the two were identical in plan and differed only
in size, use, and name. A diameter of 15 or 20 feet sufficed for this
sudatory or “fire lodge,” ho shane or holi shane. The men, besides
sweating daily, usually slept in this structure, which was peculiarly
theirs and spent much of their spare time during winter within it.
Evidently the cha or gha, the living house, was for women, children,
property, cooking, and eating; a man’s normal place was in one of the
two shane.

What Kroeber calls “the makeshift character of central
California culture” is perhaps most apparent in the
failure to use the redwood, with which the coast people
were abundantly supplied, for building seaworthy canoes
such as were common farther north. These California
tribes seem to have been content with rafts of a few logs
for crossing streams and visiting mussel and sea-lion
rocks offshore. On Clear Lake the rafts, although made
of bundled tule rush, were often boat-shaped, with rising
sharp prow, a stern, and gunwales to prevent the waves
from washing over the top.

In basketry, on the other hand, the Pomo excelled.
Their baskets are accounted the finest made in Califor-
nia—perhaps in the world. In certain features they are
unique. In order to appreciate these points, some un-
derstanding of the technique of basket-making is neces-
sary.

The typical basketry of the Indians of the East was
simply plaited and made by intertwining two strands
of like material, such as corn-husks. This produced a
stiff, inflexible shape. The materials and methods of
the California Indians were altogether different and much
more varied and adaptable. Consequently they were

| 182 |

WEST COAST TRIBES

able to secure a remarkable variety and a high degree
of beauty in their products.

In making their baskets the California Indians used
chiefly two methods—twining and coiling. In the twined
work the heavy foundation is vertical from the center
to the rim of the basket and the woof of lighter material
is horizontal. Twined work is done with two strands
carried simultaneously, alternating above and below
each other, completely hiding the foundation. The
product is usually quite flexible, but returns to and main-
tains its proper shape. In coiled work the heavy founda-
tion is laid in horizontal coils around the basket with the
filling run spirally around the heavy twigs. Such baskets
are usually rigid and firm.

The Pomo are the only California Indians who under-
stand “lattice twining” or wickerwork, and the only
ones who use the methods of twining and of coiling
equally well. In northernmost California coiling 1s
never practiced. To the south, twining is employed
only for the coarser forms of basketry, for burden baskets,
seed beaters, parching trays, cradles, traps, and the
like. Baskets of the finer sort, intended for caps, for
cooking utensils, or for holding water, all, indeed, which
are intended for decoration or permanent use, are inva-
riably coiled. The Pomo employ both methods, although
their boiling receptacles are usually twined and their
feathered and gift baskets chiefly coiled.

The special expertness of the Pomo in basketry is
shown by the fact that they use diagonal as well as plain
twining, and coil over three rods or one with nearly
equal frequency. Another feature which distinguishes
their work is the method of ornamentation. In the
North, where twining is best understood, the only means
of introducing color into the pattern is by overlaying or
facing; that is, using a double thread for twining, so that
the colored thread shows only on one side. This method
is unknown to the Pomo. Their favorite means of or-

[ 183]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

namentation is by the use of feathers. A description of
this work is given by Kroeber:

Black, wavy quail plumes may be scattered over the surface of a
basket, or fine bits of scarlet from the woodpecker’s scalp worked
into a soft, brilliant down over the whole of a coiled receptacle; or
both be interspersed, or small woven-in-beads be included among the
feathers. The height of display is reached in the basket whose entire
exterior is a mass of feathers, perhaps with patterns in two or three
lustrous colors. A gently flaring bowl of this sort, a luminous scarlet
intersected by lines of soft, brilliant yellow, with a solid edge of beads
and fringe of evenly cut pendants of haliotis, the whole 12, 15, or 18
inches across, radiates a genuine magnificence that appeals equally to
the savage and the civilized eye. It is not inappropriately that
American fancy has denominated these masterpieces ‘“‘sun baskets”;
although the native has learned the designation from the white man.
To him they served as gifts and treasures; and above all they were
destroyed in honor of the dead. It is impressive and representative
not only of the gentle melancholy sentiments of the Pomo but of the
feelings of the California Indians as a whole, that these specimens of
the highest artistic achievement that their civilization has been able
to produce were dedicated to purposes of mourning their kindred.

Of the amazing skill of the Pomo women Kroeber says:

The perfection with which the Pomo woman combines fineness and
evenness of stitch, especially in her coiled wares, is truly remarkable.
. . . Elsewhere, 30 wrappings per linear inch make an unusually
fine basket; among the Pomo this is rather common, and 60 stitches,
and even more, can be found.

One sort of basket which was universally used among
the California Indians was the carrying basket, always
conical in shape and woven in varying ways according to
locality. Throughout California, on account of the
scarcity of boats and the absence of suitable dogs, trans-
portation was by human carriers alone, who bore their
burdens always on the back, and usually hung them from
the forehead, only occasionally from the chest.

The cradle used by the Pomo was of the sitting type
found among the tribes to the north of them. It was
a basket made of rather heavy sticks laid close and
united by the twining method. The bottom in which

[ 184 ]

PLATE 61

I |
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“Sitting” type of cradle used by the Wintun Indians of
Northern California

PLATE 62

Carved elk-antler spoons for acorn gruel made by the Yurok Indians
of California

WEST COAST TRIBES

the child is set is round, the sides straight. A hood is
sometimes fashioned of a separate little cone of openwork
basketry on which may be placed a piece of skin or a mat
to protect the child’s face.

Although these Indians had only the most primitive
sort of fire-drill, they used another device for producing
fire which seems to have been unique; two lumps of
quartz were struck against each other and the shower
of sparks thus produced was caught on tinder. The
Pomo were the chief manufacturers of shell money in
California. A certain large clam which was found in
great abundance in the region was used for this purpose.
The shells were broken up and ground on sandstone
until the pieces were nearly round, then bored, strung,
and given a finish by being rolled on a slab. The value
of these coins varied according to their size and degree of
polish. Since constant handling gave the shell a gloss
not to be obtained in any other way, the older the money
became the more highly it was prized. Not only did the
Pomo prepare the shell money, but they were expert in
making long strings consisting of definite numbers of the
beads. These Indians developed a mathematical sense
far in advance of their neighbors. They were a wealthy
people and liked to calculate the amount of their riches.

Although thus commercially minded, the Pomo were
not without a vein of mysticism which expressed itself in
their elaborate religious ceremonies consisting of two
sets of rituals, the Hah/uigak, or “ghost ceremony,” and a
still more important festival known as the Guksu rites.
The former must be distinguished from certain recent
modifications known as the “‘ghost-dance movement,” the
earlier wave of which originated in Nevada about 1870
to 1872 and swept over northern California including the
Pomo within its influence.

Pomo impersonators in the ghost dances (from some of
which women were excluded) were of two kinds—the

Hahluigak, or ghosts, and the No-hahluigak, or “ash”
[185]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

ghosts. The ordinary ghosts, attended by the ash
ghosts, gave their performances by day. The exhibitions
of the ash ghosts, who appear to have been the higher
class, possessing special power over fire, were usually
conducted at night. Kroeber gives the following descrip-
tion of both classes of performers:

On his head the ghost dancer wore a net filled with down, a feather
tuft, a band of yellow-hammer quills that followed the crown and
hung down behind, and a circlet of pepperwood leaves. No other
regalia were worn except a girdle and sometimes a necklace of the
same foliage. The entire body was covered with paint... .

The ash ghosts were more simply dressed. Their ornaments were
restricted to a few feathers on the head, and a screen of leaves to hide
the face. The body was completely painted.

The badge of authority of the ash ghosts was a crooked stick, the
butt of which was fashioned to represent the head of a crane... .

At times the ghosts carried living rattlesnakes, and on approaching
the dance house at night they are reported to have worn on their
heads some sort of flaming device... .

Even the ordinary ghost dancers would scatter coals of fire about
the house when angered, but outright exhibitions, such as eating live
coals and plunging the hands into the fire, were reserved to the ash
ghosts. . .

The most important of all the ceremonials was the
Guksu rite. The old men in charge of the Guksu also
directed the ghost ritual; the head one of the initiates
was the custodian of the feathers and other paraphernalia
used in the ghost ceremony, while the others helped to
dress and paint the ghost dancers.

The Guksu was the chief of the spirits impersonated by
the Pomo in this ceremony. He wore the “big head”
ornament of radiating feather-tipped sticks which ter-
minated in front in a Cyrano nose of red feathers, and
carried a double bone whistle and a long staff tipped with
feathers. Another spirit impersonated in these rites was
called Shalnis, whose costume consisted of a feather-
covered mantle of network which fell from the crown of
his head, entirely enveloping his form. He was painted
black and carried a plain black staff.

[ 186 |

WEST COAST TRIBES

According to Powers, the Pomo possessed a definite and
characteristic conception of heaven:

They believe that in some far, sunny island of the Pacific—an
island of fadeless verdure; of cool and shining trees, looped with
clinging vines; of bubbling fountains; of flowery and fragrant savannas,
rimmed with lilac shadows, where the purple and wine-stained waves
shiver in a spume of gold across the reefs, shot through and through
by the level sunbeams of the morning—they will dwell forever in an
atmosphere like that around the Castle of Indolence; for the deer and
the antelope will joyously come and offer themselves for food, and the
red-fleshed salmon will affectionately rub their sides against them,
and softly wriggle into their reluctant hands. It is not by any means
a place like the Happy Hunting Grounds of the lordly and eagle-eyed
Dokotas, where they are “drinking delight of battle” with their peers,
or running in the noble frenzy of the chase; but a soft and a forgetting
land, a sweet oblivious sleep, awaking only to feast and then to sleep
again.

In northern California, the Yurok were the center of a
remarkable civilization affiliated with that of the tribes of
the northwest coast rather than with the more primitive
cultures of central and southern California. They shared
in many of the customs and beliefs of the alien tribes im-
mediately surrounding them, chief of whom were the
Karok to the northeast and the Hupa to the southeast.
Together with the Yurok these tribes were the leaders in a
culture which reached a higher level than was to be found
elsewhere in California; in the technical excellence of their
arts they were rivaled only by the far-distant Chumash.

Money was even more essential to Yurok institutions
than to those of the Pomo, and consisted, among these
northern tribes, of dentalium shells. Two species of this
mollusk occur in California, D. hexagonum in the south
and D. indianorum in the north. Since both species
live in comparatively deep water, however, their presence
was unknown to the Indians. So the Yurok, instead
of depending on their own supply, imported the tapering,
tubular shells from the north. Every shell which they
received had doubtless traveled many miles, probably
hundreds, and had passed from nation to nation on the

[ 187]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

way. Had any Yurok thought to look for the source
of supply on his own coast, he might have unearthed
untold wealth for himself and his nation.

Almost as much as these shells the Yurok prized
woodpecker scalps, which besides forming a medium of
exchange were used as material for dance head-dresses
and the trimming of other regalia. Kroeber says that
they represent the Yurok idea of the acme of splendor.
Dentalia, on the other hand, were used solely as money.
When large sums changed hands, however, the shell
money was usually supplemented by various other ob-
jects possessing intrinsic value, such as deerskins of rare
colors and large blades of obsidian and flint.

Social standing and influence among the Yurok was
chiefly a question of wealth. A great deal depended on
the price paid for a woman in marriage, for not only was
the dignity of both husband and wife, but also the social
standing of their children enhanced thereby. A poor
man was despised chiefly for the small sum he had been
able to pay for the mother of his children, and for the
cheapness of his own mother. Children for whom no
price had been paid were regarded as illegitimate and
stood at the bottom of the social scale. A girl’s father,
in arranging for her marriage, did not always consult
her wishes, but made the best bargain he could, both
for his own profit and for her honor.

Marriage being by purchase, it logically followed that
divorce entailed the refunding of the money paid for the
bride. A man was not expected to divorce his wife
except for good cause, such as laziness or sterility. With
regard to this, Kroeber says:

An implied condition of purchase of a wife was that she bear chil-
dren. Sterility therefore meant nonfulfillment of contract, and was
perhaps the most frequent cause of divorce. If a couple with chil-
dren separated, the woman could take them with her only on full re-
payment of her original price. On the other hand, each child left with

the husband reduced the repayment, and several canceled it alto-
gether. Theoretically, therefore, the average middle-aged or elderly

| 188 |

PLATE 63

Karok plank house, showing double pitch and ragged shingling
of roof. Northern California

a a eee — satis sone arm ae Sg a eg eae

Boat of Yurok manufacture on Trinity River at Hupa, California

pvap ay3 jo spnos ayy 03 yoy dn adpis ayy ‘puodaq
SeIUIOJTLD “ANY YIwuUrepy oy} Jo Yurq oT uo uTtUeY Jo UMO} Patovs SppioM dy} JO Jojzuad Yow oY L

79 ALV Id

WEST COAST TRIBES

woman with adult children was free to return to her parents’ house,
and remained with her husband from choice alone. . . .

Similarly, it might be inferred that a wife was bought for a natural
span of life. If she died young a sister or kinswoman was due the
husband. If he passed away first his equity did not lapse but re-
mained in the family, and she was married by his brother. In either
event, however, a payment, smaller than the original one, was made
to her family . . . [since] no union could take place without a pay-
ment... %

Unfaithfulness on the part of the wife does not appear
to have been a cause for divorce, but entailed the pay-
ment of a fine to the husband of from one to five strings
of money. Since the payment of money was the only
way in which an offense might be atoned for, a man who
was unable to pay the required fine often became the
slave of the one whom he had wronged. Except among
these more advanced northwestern tribes, the institution
of slavery was unknown in California.

One of the most gainful occupations among the Yurok
was the healing art, which was, as a rule, monopolized
by the women, whose power to cure disease was believed
to depend on the possession of one or more “pains”
which enabled the shaman to see and extract similar
pains from sick people. These pains, acquired by the
shaman from a spirit, usually of a dead ancestor, were
supposed to be animate, material objects which operated
after the fashion of a homeopathic remedy. I quote
in part Kroeber’s transcription of a shaman’s story:

I began with a dream. At that time I was already married at
Sregon. In the dream I was on Bald Hills. There I met a Chilula
man who fed me deer meat which was black with blood. . . .

In the morning I was ill. A doctor was called in to treat me and
diagnosed my case. Then I went to the sweat house to dance for Io
nights. This whole time I did not eat. Once I danced until I became
unconscious. They carried me into the living house. When I re-
vived I climbed up the framework of poles for drying fish, escaped
through the smoke hole, ran to another sweat house, and began to
dance there.

On the tenth day, while I was dancing, I obtained control of my
first “‘pain.’”’ It came out of my mouth looking like a salmon liver, and

[ 189 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

as I held it in my hands blood dripped from it to the ground. This
is what I had seen in my dreams on Bald Hills. I then thought that
it was merely venison. It was when I ate the venison that the pain
entered my body.

Once, while the others slept, I dreamed I saw an uma’a [magician]
coming. One of his legs was straight, the other bent at the knee, and
he walked on this knee as if it were his foot, and had only one eye.
Then I shouted, dashed out, and ran down along the river. My male
relatives pursued me and brought me back unconscious. Then I
danced for three nights more. At this time I received my four largest
pains. One of these is blue, one yellowish, another red, and the fourth
white. Because I received these in dreaming about the wma’a they
are the ones with which I cure sickness caused by an uma’a.

My smaller pains are whitish and less powerful. It is they that
came to me in my first period of training. The pains come and go
from my body. I do not always carry them in me. Today they are
Iusideofane. . .

Gradually I obtained more control over my pains, until finally I
could take them out of myself, lay them in a basket, set this at the
opposite end of the sweat house, and then swallow them from where
Pstonde sas.

When I am summoned to a patient, I smoke and say to myself: “I
wish you to get well because I like what they are paying me.” If
the patient dies, I must return the payment. Then I begin to doctor.
After I have danced a long time I can see all the pains in the sick
person’s body. . . . Sometimes a doctor really wishes to kill people.
Then she blows her pains out through her pipe, sending them into the
person that she hates.

Money was as important in healing the scars of war as
in restoring sick people to health. Among the commer-
cially minded Yurok, war was not considered an honor-
able pursuit, as among so many of the Eastern tribes,
but simply murder on a large scale. Their wars were
merely feuds that involved large groups of people. All
avoided being drawn into such a war, as they avoided
taking sides in private quarrels. Settlement took the
form of compensation for damages. Such compensation
was mutual and not confined to the losing side, with the
paradoxical result that the winner, who usually inflicted
the greater damage, had to bear the chief burden of
making “‘reparations!”

[ 190]

WEST COAST "TRIBES

The Yurok fought usually with bows and arrows. In
close fighting they used a short stone club for cracking
the heads of their enemies. Spears were only occasion-
ally employed. They took no scalps but sometimes
decapitated a fallen foe to make sure he was dead. No
shields were carried, but body armor was sometimes
used in the shape of jackets made either of thick elk hide
or of rods wound together with string. The latter sort
was not very popular, being as stiff and unyielding as
a strait-jacket. The women were almost as warlike
as the men, sometimes rushing into a fight and laying
hold of some of the enemy in order that the men might
kill them.

In times of peace the Yurok dispensed not only with
their armor, but with nearly all clothing. Kroeber’s
account of their dress is as follows:

The dress of northwestern California was essentially that of all
the tribes of the State. Young men usually folded a deerskin about
the hips. Their elders did not scruple to go naked. A breechclout
was not worn. Women put on a buckskin apron, about a foot wide,
its length slit into fringes, which were wrapped with a braid of lustrous
Xerophyllum [a kind of snail-shell], or strung with pine nuts. From
the rear of the waist a much broader apron or skirt was brought
around to meet the front piece. The rear apron was again fringed,
but contained a considerable area of unslit skin. Women also habitu-
ally wore neat, round, snugly fitting caps of basketry. These were
modeled with a nearly flat top, but degenerated after some months
into a peak. In cold weather both sexes threw over the shoulders a
blanket or cape, normally of two deer hides sewn together... .

Rich women ornamented their dress heavily. Haliotis and clam
shells jangled musically from the ends of the fringes; and occasionally
a row of obsidian prisms tinkled with every step. Poor women
contented themselves with less. They sometimes had recourse to a
simple skirt of fringed inner bark of the maple, which was standard
wear for adolescent girls and novitiate shamans.

All women had the entire chin, from the corners of the mouth
downward, tattooed solidly except for two narrow blank lines. ...
This style is universal in northwestern California.

The Yurok construct their houses of planks split
from logs with wedges. These they set endwise in the

[ 191 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

ground usually two rows thick to form the walls. Two
plates are laid across the end walls to serve as ridge-poles,
that is, if the house is the home of a man of wealth. A
single-ridged house is a sign of poverty.

The interior of the house consists of a square room,
which is on two levels, the central portion being dug out
from two to five feet deep, forming a pit which serves to
mark the sites of ancient houses. The fireplace is a
shallow depression in the middle of the pit, usually
bordered by stones. Above it is a frame of poles for
drying salmon and other provisions.

The “‘shelf? area which surrounds the central pit is
used for storage and if the family is prosperous 1s usually
filled with huge baskets of acorns covered with inverted
conical baskets. The rest of the space is often crowded
with various other provisions as well as baskets and
utensils temporarily out of commission. Most of the
occupations of the family when indoors are carried on
in the pit. Many houses have also a sort of stone-
flagged porch, which serves as an outdoor living room.

The sweat-house was an important institution among
the Yurok, as it served not only for the sleeping quarters
of the men and boys but also as a temple where the
most sacred religious rites were held. It was a smaller
structure than the dwelling house, accommodating only
seven regular occupants. The interior was entirely in-
stead of only partially excavated, and the side walls did
not reach above the surface of the ground.

The porch is even more important to the sweat-house
than to the dwelling. A considerable space in front of
the main entrance is paved with stones. Here the old
men gather to sun themselves and to talk. Except
in the northeastern part of the State the method of
producing steam by pouring water over heated stones
is unknown in California. When the Yurok wish to
indulge in the luxury of a sweat bath, they kindle a wood

[ 192 |

WEST COAST TRIBES

fire in the stone pit and tightly close both the entrance
and the small exit at the back, so that an intense heat is
soon produced, as well as volumes of smoke. The sweater
lies on the ground in order to avoid suffocation. After the
fire has burned itself out, he opens the exit, wriggles out,
and plunges into the nearby river or ocean.

The Yurok, with their neighbors, the Tolowa and
Wiyot, were manufacturers of canoes which were sold
to other neighboring tribes, including the Hupa and
Karok. The Yurok canoe was dug out of half a redwood
log and was a clumsy but symmetrical boat. Although
used on the ocean, this canoe is especially adapted for
navigating a rushing river full of rocks, having a square
prow and rounded bottom without a stern. The paddles
are stout poles six to eight feet long, spreading into
narrow, heavy blades, and used by standing men. The
helmsman, who is seated, wields a short paddle.

Although the Yurok, like all California Indians, de-
pended on the acorn as a staple food, they ate more
fish, particularly salmon, than was customary among
the other tribes. The large ocean mussel, too, was com-
monly used by the people on the coast, while salt was
furnished by seaweed dried in round blackish cakes.
The flesh of the whale was greatly prized as food, but,
as the Yurok did not attempt to hunt sea animals, except
the sea-lion, their supply was limited to such whales as
might be stranded on the beach. The food supply of
these people was usually ample enough to make it un-
necessary for them to eat the grasshoppers, angle-worms,
and yellow-jacket larvae popular elsewhere in the State.
In times of scarcity, however, they fell back on almost
anything, particularly availing themselves of the large
yellow slugs common in California. Both reptiles and
dogs, however, were considered poisonous.

The Yurok were accustomed to eat but two meals a
day—breakfast, which came late, after the greater part
of the day’s work was over, and supper in the evening,

[ 193 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

about sunset. They were light eaters and gluttony was
frowned upon as the vice of a poor and shiftless man.

Fish were taken usually with dip nets, although seines
and other set nets, as well as harpoons, were sometimes
used. For their nets the Yurok used a heavy two-ply
twine made from the fibers of an iris leaf. It was the
women’s duty to gather the leaves and extract two fine
silky fibers from each by means of an artificial thumb-
nail of mussel shell. The string was usually twisted and
the nets always knotted by men, who used implements
made of elk antler. The nets were weighted by means
of stones which were grooved, pierced, or naturally per-
forated.

In hunting the sea-lion, the Yurok disguised themselves
in bear- or deerskins and awaited the animals at their
haunts on the rocks. As the sea-lions clambered up, the
hunters attracted their attention by barking and wrig-
gling and otherwise “playing sea-lion,” much as the
Eskimo hunters “play seal.” They then leaped up and
harpooned them. As the sea-lion dived into the water,
it was followed by boat, the harpoon regained by means
of the line, and the animal speared again. In this way
a canoe might be dragged far out to sea before the sea-
lion had ceased its struggles.

The acorns used as food by the Yurok as by all other
California tribes, would have been inedible except for
the process of leaching employed. They were first
gathered, dried, and stored away in great baskets, and
later shelled and pounded into meal. For this purpose
a stone pestle, usually a foot long, was used on a hard,
smooth slab or rock. The Yurok used pestles that were
carefully dressed and shaped and sometimes ornamented
with a raised ring or flange on the handle, whereas most
of the other Californians were satisfied with a rough
cobble. The Yurok had no mortar, but the acorn frag-
ments and meal were kept from scattering by a flaring
basketry hopper, while a brush made of soaproot fibers

[ 194 ]

WEST COAST TRIBES

was used to sweep up whatever escaped this container.
Ancient mortars have occasionally been brought to light
in the Yurok country, but their use seems to be wholly
unknown to the present inhabitants.

After being pulverized the meal was spread out in a
hollow in a mound of clean sand, and hot water poured
over it in order to remove the bitter taste of the tannic
acid. This was the quick method of leaching. Some-
times acorns were buried for a year in swampy mud,
and were purplish when taken out ready to be roasted
on hot coals; usually, however, they were prepared by
pounding and leaching as described above.

After the hot water had drained off through the sand
the acorn meal was ready to be cooked. This was usually
done by stirring it, together with a quantity of hot stones,
in closely woven baskets used as pots. The stirring
was necessary to prevent the hot stones from burning
holes in the basket. As in the case of the pestles, we
find the stirring paddles of the Yurok and their nearest
neighbors much better shaped and more highly orna-
mented than were the “mush paddles” of other Cali-
fornia tribes. The Yurok paddle is always made of some
hard wood, and is sometimes nearly four feet long. When
prepared, the acorn gruel of the California Indian is al-
most as tasteless as wheat flour cooked in water would
be, and about as nourishing, being usually richer in
starch and in some cases decidedly oily.

Almost the only crop raised by the Yurok was tobacco
for smoking. Those who grew tobacco sold to those
farther south, who did not. The same species grows
wild also, but is never used by the Yurok for fear it may
have sprouted in a graveyard, although it grows chiefly
along sandy bars close to the river. The natives of
California seem to have used their tobacco undiluted
with bark, and to have smoked chiefly at bedtime in the
sweat house in order to induce drowsiness. Their pipes
were slightly curved tubes made of polished hardwood,

[ 195 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

the bowl sometimes lined with soapstone. They were
kept in little pouches of deerskin in which tobacco was
also carried. To fill a pipe one had only to press it down
into the tobacco at the bottom of the pouch.

The Yurok’s only method of making baskets was that
of twining, and in this style of basketry they excelled.
They made a great variety, from the coarse burden and
storage baskets to small trays and bowls for serving
individual portions of fish and acorn mush. Perhaps the
finest work was lavished on the basket caps worn by the
women.

Various objects which the Yurok made of wood in-
cluded head-rests and stools; cylindrical boxes or trunks
hollowed out from the smaller logs of the redwood and
closed with a lid that was lashed on; rectangular platters
or trays for deer meat; huge finger bowls for cleaning the
deer meat from the hand before it could come in con-
tact with any sea animal; and the standard fire-drill.

The points of cutting instruments and other imple-
ments were made of elk horn, which was also used for
spoons having rather flat bowls and carved handles.
Most Californians dipped up their acorn gruel with their
fingers, but the Yurok were more fastidious in their
habits. Elk or deer horn was also used for making purses
or money boxes, which were cylindrical in shape, like the
large wooden boxes for valuables, but only six or seven
inches long, and would hold several folded strings of
dentalia.

Considering the tools with which the Yurok artisan
was obliged to work, the results achieved were truly
remarkable. Logs and planks were split with wedges of
elk horn, curved or nearly flat according to the intended
use, the edges of which had been sharpened by rubbing
on stone. The wedges were driven by pear-shaped mauls,
from six to eight inches long, of basalt or other rock.
These were carefully made and shaped, usually quite
symmetrical, and sometimes beautifully finished. In

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the care they bestowed on the manufacture of these tools
the Yurok differed from most Californians, who were
content with unshaped stones. Another tool on which
the Yurok lavished great pains was the stone handle
of the adz, the blade of which consisted of heavy mussel
shell lashed on with thongs.

Religion among the Yurok centered about certain
localities which were regarded as hallowed by having been
the scene from time immemorial of sacred rites performed
in honor of some mythological person or spirit. The
most sacred rite connected with the ceremonials was the
recitation of a long formula, usually given by an old man
accompanied by an assistant, who also performed the
prescribed symbolic acts, such as fasting and secluding
themselves from the ordinary dwellings and occupations
of men. Certain ceremonies in the sweat-house preceded
the public recitation. These occupied several nights,
during which offerings of tobacco or angelica root were
thrown on the fire.

After the recitation of the formula, the sacred dance
began and was repeated every afternoon, sometimes
both afternoon and morning, for five, ten, or more days.
Women did not join in the performance but were onlook-
ers only. Any man, however, might take part. The
dancers’ regalia consisted of the most precious possessions
of the Yurok, and so eager were the rich men of the town
to display their wealth that they readily supplied the
performers with their greatest treasures—all except
dentalium money. The largest obsidian and flint blades,
the whitest deerskins, and the most gorgeous bands of
woodpecker scalps were handed over to the dancers for
display. The performers were men noted for their
ability to sing and dance, and constantly composed new
words that were sung to the old dance melodies. The
two most famous dances are known as the White Deer-
skin and the Jumping dance.

A local dance of a less solemn nature was the so-called

[ 197 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Kepel Dam dance, which was a Deerskin dance associated
with the building of a salmon dam at the village of Kepel
in early autumn. None of these ceremonies, however,
has been performed for many years.

Since the love of money is the ruling passion among
the Yurok it is not surprising to find that one of their
deities is Pelintsiek, “Great Dentalium,” who appears
to be the Indian prototype of our “Almighty Dollar.”
A greater god than Pelintsiek, however, is the mighty
Pulekukwerek for whom the Yurok have the greatest
veneration. The creator of all things was Wohpekumen,
who was less noble and more inclined to play tricks than
the great Pulekukwerek.

Other characters in Yurok mythology are Megwomets,
a bearded dwarf, who carries acorns on his back and 1s
the giver of vegetable foods; Segep, the coyote, less praised
than among other California tribes; Wertspit, the locust
larva, who wished death into the world; and Kego’or,
the porpoises, who dwelt at Kenek until men were created.
Thunder and Earthquake also lived at Kenek, until
Earthquake was beaten at his favorite game of shinny.
The house sites of many of these great ones of old are
still shown at the little town.

The Yurok believe that the world floats on water—a
river which has its source in the sky. There the Deer-
skin dance is danced nightly, and there live the gigantic
white coyote and his yellow mate, who are the parents
of all coyotes on earth.

The Yurok civilization, superior in many ways to the
culture of either southern or central California, was
shared by a group of neighboring tribes, who spoke dif-
ferent languages but were much alike in traditions and
customs. On the north were the Athapascan Tolowa;
on the east, the Karok (the “upstream people’), who
lived on the banks of the Klamath River just above the
Yurok (the “down-stream people’); while on the south
were more Athapascan tribes, and the Wiyot. Of the

[ 198 |

WEST COAST TRIBES

southern Athapascans, the nearest to the Yurok and the
most closely associated both with them and with the
Karok were the Hupa. These three nations were on
the most friendly terms with one another; trading, inter-
marrying, and taking part in one another’s religious
celebrations.

Trade between the Yurok and the Hupa was especially
active; the one being a coast-dwelling nation of fishermen
and manufacturers, and the other living in a region which
abounded in game and vegetable products, they were
able to supply each other’s needs to a considerable extent.
From the Yurok the Hupa bought canoes, salt-water
fish, mussels, and seaweed, in exchange for acorns and
other inland food. The two tribes looked upon each
other as relatives and friends.

The Hupa occupy a beautiful valley some six or eight
miles long through which flows the Trinity River together
with a number of smaller streams from the high moun-
tain ranges on either side. So secluded were these peo-
ple that they knew nothing of the coming of the white
men until 1850 when they were suddenly overrun by both
whites and Chinese in the first mad rush for gold. Hunted
from their homes like wild animals, it was not until the
majority of their persecutors had left for richer fields
that the unfortunate Hupa ventured to return and take
up the broken threads of their existence in their old home,
which was finally secured to them as a reservation in
1864.

Their houses, built of planks like those of the Yurok,
were grouped in villages on the banks of the river, usu-
ally near a spring. The larger dwellings, called xonta,
were used as sleeping places for the women and as store-
houses for the family possessions, while the men occupied
the smaller sweat-houses or “taikyuw.”’

These inland people were habitually better clothed
than were those of the warmer coast region. For dress
occasions the men wore tunics made of two deerskins

[ 199 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

with the hair on, which were joined along one side with
the necks meeting over the left shoulder and were held
in place by a belt at the waist; sometimes these pictur-
esque garments were made of panther skins. Ordinarily
only a breechclout of skins was worn, supplemented by
leggings sewed up the front with sinew and ornamented
with fringes and sometimes with paintings. Moccasins
of buckskin with elk-hide soles were also sometimes
worn. The long hair of the men was tied in two clubs
on either side of the head or in one at the back and was
held in place by a fillet sometimes ornamented with red
woodpecker scalps. In their ears they wore dentalium-
shell earrings with tassels of woodpecker feathers. Orna-
mental skin quivers full of arrows were a part of “full
dress.” Other skin bags or pockets as well as sacks
made of netting were carried when needed.

The women wore the double petticoat and apron
popular with all the California tribes. These were made
of buckskin, fringed and ornamented with strands of
shells and beads. In cold weather a long cape of various
kinds of skins was worn around the shoulders. A close-
fitting cap of basketwork and moccasins similar to those
worn by the men completed the woman’s costume. Her
favorite ornaments were shell or bead earrings and neck-
laces. Her hair was worn in two long pigtails on either
side of the face, ornamented with strands of leather,
sometimes covered with red woodpecker crests, and
perfumed with sprays of the yerba buena, a kind of mint.
A heavily tattooed chin added the final touch to a woman’s
beauty.

Mighty hunters were the Hupa, bringing down elk,
deer, panthers, and other big game with no other weapon
than the flint-tipped arrows they shot with unerring skill
from their stout yew bows. Stalking the game to get
within bowshot was no easy task. To do so required
much watchful waiting and senses scarcely less keen than
those of the hunted wild’ things. In order to deceive the

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WEST COAST TRIBES

sensitive nostrils of the elk and deer, the Hupa hunter
would carefully bathe and perfume his body with fra-
grant incense from smoking fir-tree boughs or sweet-
smelling herbs of various kinds. He would then conceal
himself within a mask of the head and antlers, sometimes
the entire skin, of an elk. Thus disguised he would trot
along on all fours, playing elk so successfully that he
might even deceive a panther crouching in a tree overhead
ready for a spring. Leaping upon his prey and seeking
to sink his teeth in its neck, the unwary beast would
find his jaws impaled upon the projecting points of long
pins which the hunter, in anticipation of just such an emer-
gency, always thrust through the masses of his hair worn
coiled upon his neck underneath the elk skin.

The Hupa depended upon the elk and deer for many
things besides food. Their efficiency in adapting every
portion of the animal to a variety of uses was scarcely
less, indeed, than that of the Chicago pork packers, who
are famous for utilizing all parts of the hog “except the
squeal.” In his memoir on “The Life and Culture of
the Hupa,” Goddard illustrates the cleverness of the
Indians in this respect:

The man who succeeded in securing an elk had a large quantity of
welcome food, a skin which, when properly tanned, would defend him
in battle from the arrows of the enemy, and antlers which furnished
him material for spoons and wedges.

The deerskins were also very valuable. They were in constant
demand for clothing and bedding. The hides were retained by the
master of the hunt. . . . The carcass was cut in accordance with pre-
scribed rules. Some portions were not eaten at all, among them the
flesh on the floating ribs and the breast bone. Other parts were for-
bidden to women. None of the animal was wasted save from religious
scruples. The blood was drunk at once. The stomach, in which
other parts were put, was buried in the ashes until cooked and then
eaten. The ears were a delicacy to be roasted in the camp-fire and
eaten after the hunt. The bone of the leg was saved with its marrow,
which was of service in mixing paint. The sinews were saved for
bowstrings. The brain was removed and dried that it might be used
in dressing the hide. The meat which was not needed for immediate
consumption was cut into strips by the women and cured over a fire.

[ 201 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

The Hupa bill-of-fare included, besides venison, many
small animals such as squirrels and woodrats, and a
variety of birds such as the grouse, pheasant, and moun-
tain quail. Fish also formed an important article of diet,
particularly the salmon, which during the spring and
fall runs were caught in great quantities by means of
nets and traps. In olden times, before the clean waters
of the Trinity had been muddied by mining operations,
the salmon were taken by means of spears. These were
long poles ending in two prongs tipped with barbs of
bone or horn which, like the harpoon heads of the Eskimo,
were detachable and controlled by a long line fastened
to the shaft of the spear.

Sturgeon was another fish greatly prized by the Hupa
not only as food but also for the glue obtained from the
head. Trout and other small fish, including great num-
bers of lamprey eels, were also taken, usually in dip nets.
The favorite food for a long journey was dried salmon
roe, which was eaten without cooking, as were also all
kinds of dried fish.

The staple vegetable food of the Hupa was acorn
mush, which was sometimes eaten hot, sometimes baked
as bread and eaten cold. This is still a favorite food.
Dried hazelnuts, ripe chinquapin, and roasted nuts of
the pepperwood are also eaten, as well as seeds of pines
and grasses, various lily bulbs, particularly those of the
soaproot, and the fresh shoots of many plants. These
last are eaten raw, but the bulbs are cooked in much the
same fashion as the Apache prepares his mescal—that
is, they are roasted in a pit for about two days and when
cooked in this manner are said to be an agreeable and
nourishing food. As for fruits, it is hard to realize that
wild grapes and berries were all that were known to the
natives of California, so famous now for its oranges,
apples, grapes, figs, and almost every other kind of fruit,
all of which have been introduced by the white invaders
of the land.

[ 202 |

WESTF COAST, TRIBES

The only plant cultivated by the Hupa was tobacco.
Like the Yurok, they believed that the wild variety was
poisonous, particularly if it had grown ona grave. Théir
pipes were usually of wood having the bowl faced with
serpentine or sandstone and decorated with an inlay of
mother-of-pearl. Occasionally the entire pipe would be
made of sandstone.

The manufacture of pipes, bows and arrows, and other
implements and utensils of wood or horn, the cultivation
of tobacco, and the dressing of hides, were considered
the duties of the men. On the women devolved the fine
arts of cooking, sewing, and basketry. Hupa basketry
is of twined work, the simplest example of which is found
in the lattices used in the fish dams, while finer types are
seen in the closely woven cooking and burden baskets
and in the ornamental ones used as hats by the women.
The designs are usually geometrical, the most popular
figure being the triangle or modifications of it obtained
by combining a number in various ways. The favorite
colors are black and red.

In many of their customs, such as marriage by pur-
chase, the religious dances, and the use of dentalium
shells for money, the Hupa were very much like their
neighbors, the Yurok. In their social organization,
too, they followed the Yurok very closely. Wealth was
greatly respected and the head man in a village was in-
variably the richest person there. Wrongdoing was pun-
ishable by a fine, but in the case of murder the money
might be rejected by the murdered man’s relatives and
life for life exacted instead—not necessarily the life of
the murderer, but that of some member of his family.
Even an accidental death might be atoned for in this way.
Goddard mentions an instance of the accidental death
of a child who was burned to death in a fire a woman had
built for heating wash-water out of doors. Although
the woman was in no way at fault, the life of her son

[203 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

was sought as a recompense. With regard to the further
extension of this principle, Goddard says:

If the feud was between villages or tribes, the death of any male
member of the village or tribe atoned for the injury. This principle
was applied to the whole white race. If a white man killed an Indian,
a white man’s life was due in return. Wanton killing of Indians by
the first white men caused many an innocent white man’s death.
This small regard for the mere individual and the great regard for the
family is a point to be kept well in mind when dealing with or studying
the Indians.

Since the Hupa valley was converted into a reservation,
the history of the natives seems to have been far from
happy. Goddard gives the following survey of the

situation:

H. L. Knight, an attorney at law, of Eureka, who spent some
months on the Reservation in 1871, has this to say concerning the
treatment they [the Hupa] had received and were receiving from the
men in charge:

“If the Reservation was a plantation, the Indians were the most
degraded slaves. I found them poor, miserable, vicious, degraded,
dirty, naked, diseased, and ill-fed. The oldest men, or stout middle-
aged fathers of families, were spoken to just as children or slaves.
They know no law but the will of the Agent; no effort has been made
to teach them any, and where it does not conflict with this dictation,
they follow the old forms of life—polygamy, buying and selling of
women, and compounding crime with money ad libitum.” (Report of
the Indian Commissioner, 1871, p. 158.)

The Reservation was abandoned as a failure in 1877,
but with a change at Washington it was afterwards de-
cided to continue it. Army officers were put in charge
and the industrial affairs of the Reservation were straight-
ened out. In 1892 the soldiers were removed, but great
harm had already been done by their long-continued
presence after all need for it had passed. Goddard says
of this phase of Government control:

Nothing could have been worse for these Indians than the mainte-
nance of these men in comparative indleness in their midst. It may
be said in all truth that if the Government in 1864 had resolved to do

all that ‘lay in its power to demoralize this people, it could hardly
have taken a course more sure to reach that end than the one followed.

[ 204 ]

PLATE 68

Upper—Medicine-man’s wand from the Kwakiutl Indians, British
Columbia. Lower—Carved and inlaid dish of sheep’s horn from the
Haida Indians of southeastern Alaska. In the National Museum

WEST COAST TRIBES

Since the removal of the military element, however,
the situation of the Hupa has greatly improved. They
are becoming self-supporting through farming, stock
raising, and other useful occupations and trades. They
are acquiring some education and are as a rule law-abiding.
In 1904 Goddard reported the tribe as numbering 450
with a nearly equal birth and death rate.

The degree of civilization attained by the West Coast
tribes is found to increase steadily as the warm and
enervating climate of the south is replaced by the more
stimulating conditions of life farther north. Of the
inhabitants of the Northwestern coasts and _ islands,
Boas gives the following general account:

The Pacific Coast of America between Juan de Fuca Strait and
Yakutat Bay is inhabited by a great many Indian tribes distinct in
physical characteristics and distinct in languages, but one in culture.
Their arts and industries, their customs and beliefs, differ so much
from those of all other Indians that they form one of the best defined
cultural groups of our continent.

While a hasty glance at these people and a comparison with other
tribes emphasize the uniformity of their culture, a closer investigation
reveals many peculiarities of individual tribes which prove that their
culture has developed slowly and from a number of distinct centers,
each people adding something to the culture which we observe at the
present day.

The region inhabited by these people is a mountainous coast inter-
sected by innumerable sounds and fiords and studded with islands,
large and small. Thus intercourse along the coast by means of
canoes is very easy, while access to the inland is difficult on account
of the rugged hills and the density of the woods.

Dense forests along the coast furnish wood, particu-
larly the red cedar, of which the natives make houses,
canoes, implements, and utensils, utilizing the bark for
clothing and rope. Garments and blankets were for-
merly made of the skins of various animals. Today
they are more often woven of mountain-goat wool, dog’s
hair, feathers, or a mixture of these.

Carvings in wood and stone are usually of character-
istically grotesque designs executed with great skill.

[ 205 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

The most artistic products of the handiwork of these
people, however, are the baskets of which a great variety
are made, from the large, open-mesh carrying basket
to the closely woven, water-tight pots of basketry in which
water is boiled by means of heated stones.

The animal food furnished by the abundant supply
of land and sea animals, fish, and shellfish, is supple-
mented by roots, berries, seaweed and sea grass. The
sea grass and berries, as well as fish roe and other kinds
of animal food, are dried for winter use and eaten mixed
with fish oil which is kept in bottles of dried kelp. Fish
oil, in fact, furnishes the invariable sauce for winter
foods, even for preserved crabapples and other fruits.
Fresh meat in winter is supplied by the elk, deer, and
various other game, which are hunted today with guns,
but were formerly shot with arrows tipped with stone,
bone, or copper, or caught in large nets made of cedar
bark, deer sinews, or nettles.

Many different languages are spoken by the North
Pacific tribes, including the Tlingit, Haida, and Wakashan
tongues. The last named—the Wakashan—is repre-
sented by two groups of dialects spoken respectively by
the Nootka and the Kwakiutl, both of whom inhabit
parts of Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland.

The Kwakiutl are described by Boas as having a re-
markable and distinct type of face—much longer than
that of the average Indian, with a high, hooked nose.
They are divided into various tribes having many sub-
divisions. Each of these groups traces its origin to a
mythical ancestor who descended from heaven, or emerged
from the underworld or the ocean, built his house, and
founded his family at a certain place—actually some old
village site, showing that the group was originally a
village community. Each group claims a distinct rank
and certain privileges based on the adventures of its
mythological ancestor. These privileges and distinctions
descend to the children through the mother, but are

| 206 |

WEST COAST TRIBES

bestowed upon the father also at the time of his marriage
as a kind of dowry. A curious custom gave the name
and rank of a man to his slayer, who might put his own
successor in place of his killed enemy. In this way names
spread from tribe to tribe. Not all the individuals of a
clan enjoyed the same rank. As with all the tribes of
the Northwest coast, the Kwakiutl were divided into
three classes—the nobility, common people, and slaves.

One of the most distinctive institutions among the
tribes of the North Pacific is the potlatch, which is the
name given to festivals at which great quantities of
property are either given away or destroyed as evidence
of the owner’s wealth. As practiced among the Kwakiutl,
however, according to Boas, the property thus given away
is always returned with interest and constitutes an
investment rather than a gift. In his memoir on the
Kwakiutl Indians, published in 1897, Boas gives the
following explanation of the potlatch:

The child when born is given the name of the place where it is
born. This name it keeps until about a year old. Then his father,
mother, or some other relative, gives a paddle or a mat to each mem-
ber of the clan and the child receives his second name. When the
boy is about to or 12 years old, he obtains this third name. In order
to obtain it, he must distribute a number of small presents, such as
shirts or single blankets, among his own clan or tribe. When the
youth thus starts out in life, he is liberally assisted by his elders, par-
ticularly by the nobility of the tribe.

I must say here that the unit of value is the single blanket. . .
When a native has to pay debts and has not a sufficient number of
blankets, he borrows them from his friends and has to pay the following
rates of interest:

For a period of a few months, for 5 borrowed blankets 6 must be
returned; for a period of six months, for 5 borrowed blankets 7 must be
returned; for a period of twelve months or longer, for 5 borrowed
blankets 1o must be returned... .

When a boy is about to take his third name, he will borrow blankets
from the other members of the tribe, who all assist him. . .. The
next June he pays his debts in a festival, at which all the clans from
whom he borrowed blankets are present. The festival is generally
held on the street or at an open place near the village. Up to this

[ae7,]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

time he is not allowed to take part in feasts. But now he may dis-
tribute property in order to obtain a potlach name. . . .

Still more complicated is the purchase or the gift, however one
chooses to name it, of a “copper.”’ All along the North Pacific Coast

. . curiously shaped copper plates are in use, which in olden times
were made of native copper... but which nowadays are worked
out of imported copper. . . . The front of the copper is covered with
black lead, in which a face, representing the crest animal of the owner,
is graven. These coppers have the same function which bank notes
of high denominations have with us. The actual value of the piece of
copper is small, but it is made to represent a large number of blankets
and can always be sold for blankets. The value is not arbitrarily set,
but depends upon the amount of property given away in the festival
at which the copper is sold.

The only valid measure of a man’s wealth, according
to Kwakiutl ideas, is the amount of property that he is
willing to destroy. Boas thus describes the working out
of this principle:

The rivalry between chiefs and clans finds its strongest expression in
the destruction of property. A chief will burn blankets, a canoe, or
break a copper, thus indicating his disregard of the amount of property
destroyed and showing that his mind is stronger, his power greater,
that that of his rival. If the latter is not able to destroy an equal
amount of property without much delay, his name is “broken.” He
is vanquished by his rival and his influence with the tribe is lost, while
the name of the other chief gains correspondingly in renown. . .

In by far the greater number of cases where coppers are broken the
copper is preserved. . . . Finally, somebody succeeds in buying up
all the broken fragments, which are riveted together, and the copper
has attained an increased value. Since the broken copper indicates
the fact that the owner has destroyed property, the Indians pride
themselves upon their possession.

During their festivals the Kwakiutl wore masks repre-
senting the face and deeds of an ancestor. One of these
masks, now in the Berlin Museum, is double and is
opened and closed by means of strings. It represents
Nolis, an ancestor of a certain group, the outer mask
showing him in a state of rage vanquishing his rivals,
the inner one picturing him as kindly disposed, distributing
property in a friendly way. On top of the mask is the

[ 208 ]

WEST COAST TRIBES

image of a bear’s head, which refers to a legendary bear
who broke the dam that prevented Nolis from sending
his property up the river.

The Kwakiutl passion for destroying property found ex-
pression in their feasts at which not only was a great
quantity of food consumed but the house itself was
frequently threatened with destruction, as well as the
lives of both host and guests. These festivities were
known as “grease feasts” and are thus described by
Boas:

When a person gives a grease feast, a great fire is lighted in the
center of the house. The flames leap up to the roof and the guests
are almost scorched by the heat. Still the etiquette demands that
they do not stir, else the host’s fire has conquered them. Even when
the roof begins to burn and the fire attacks the rafters, they must
appear unconcerned. The host alone has the right to send a man
up to the roof to put out the fire. While the feast is in progress the
host sings a scathing song ridiculing his rival and praising his own
clan, the feats of his forefathers and his own. Then the grease is
filled in large spoons and passed to the rival chief first. If a person
thinks he has given a greater grease feast than that offered by the
host, he refuses the spoon. Then he runs out of the house to fetch
his copper “‘to squelch with it the fire.” The host proceeds at once
to tie a copper to each of his house posts. If he should not do so, the
person who refused the spoon would on returning strike the posts
with the copper, which is considered equal to striking the chief’s face.

In his pride on such an occasion a chief would risk not
only his own home but that of several other related fami-
lies who might be occupying the same house. Such
houses are large and well built. They are thus described
by Boas, in part:

The houses of the Kwakiutl form a square, the sides of which are
from 40 to 60 feet long. The door is generally in the center of the
side nearest the sea, which forms the front of the house. The latter
has a gable roof, the ridge of which runs from the front to the rear.
The walls consist of boards which are fastened to a framework of

MES en oie
The house is inhabited by eras families, each of whom has a fire-
place of its own. The corners belonging to each family are divided off
from the main room by a rough framework of poles, the top of which

[ 209 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

is used for drying fish or other sorts of food. On each side of the fire
stands the immense settee, which is large enough for the whole family.
. . . The houses generally face the beach and are built in a row... .
Opposite to the houses, on the side of the street toward the sea, there
are platforms; summer seats, on which the Indians pass most of their
time, gambling and conversing.

Besides the family totems, which are hereditary
animals, the Kwakiutl had a complicated tribal mythol-
ogy, the chief figures of which were impersonated in the
ceremonies conducted by the various secret societies which
were as numerous and as powerful among these north-
western tribes as among the Pueblos of the Southwest.
Here, too, they formed a bond of union among peoples of
such alien tongues as the Kwakiutl and their more north-
ern neighbors, the Haida and the Tlingit Indians.

On the Queen Charlotte Islands, a group about sev-
enty-five miles northwest of Vancouver Island, live the
Haida, whose nearest relatives are found distributed
along the coast to the north, on the Aleutian Islands
and on the Siberian coast of Asia. These Indians form
a distinct type, being, as a rule, larger, more stalwart,
and of lighter complexion than other American tribes.
This difference is especially marked in the women, who
are tall and athletic, while the typical Indian woman is
short and apt to be fat, especially in middle age.

Living so far from the mainland, the Haida made long
voyages in dug-out canoes of red cedar, sometimes
large enough to carry as many as a hundred persons, to-
gether with the necessary equipment. Ordinarily, canoes
were made to accommodate from twenty to thirty people.
In these the Haida were accustomed to travel as far as to
Victoria on Vancouver Island, and thence to the various
towns on Puget Sound.

The Haida brought with them, for sale or traffic,
furs, seal oil, silver ornaments such as bracelets, rings,
and earrings, and carvings in wood and stone. The
stone carvings were made of a peculiar kind of slate-

[ 210 |

WEST COAST TRIBES

stone found on the Queen Charlotte Islands, very soft
when first quarried and easily carved into fanciful figures
of various kinds, but growing very hard upon exposure to
air after being rubbed with oil which seems to harden
as well as polish it.

The wood carvings of the Haida were most often dis-
played on the totem poles which usually formed part
of the front walls of their dwellings. The houses were
built with planks around a central excavation after the
usual fashion of the northwest coast, but were rendered
distinctive by the presence of these posts, which were
usually made from a single cedar tree hollowed out at
the back. They were sometimes from fifty to sixty feet
high and were elaborately carved and painted in bril-
liant shades of red, yellow, and green. A circular open-
ing near the ground served as the entrance to the house.
The carvings represented the totems or heraldic designs
of the families occupying the dwelling. As each lodge
usually housed several families, the carvings might be
said to indicate the family names of the different occu-
pants, serving the same purpose as personal cards in
the entrance of the modern apartment house. Of one of
their mythological creatures, the thunder bird, Swan says:

The belief in the thunder bird is common with all the tribes of the
northwest coast. . . It is a belief in a supernatural being of gigantic
stature, who resides in the mountains and has a human form. When
he wishes for food he covers himself with wings and feathers as one
would put on a cloak. Thus accoutered, he sails forth in search of
prey. His body is of such enormous size that it darkens the heavens,
and the rustling of his wings produces thunder.

The lightning is produced by a fish, like the Hypocampus, which
he gets from the ocean and hides among his feathers. When he sees
a whale he darts one of these animals down with great velocity, and
the lightning is produced by the creature’s tongue, which is supposed
to be like that of the serpent.

The Tlingit inhabit a great archipelago on the southern
coast of Alaska, which possesses a comparatively mild
and equable climate.

Parr |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Their villages number a score or more and are occupied
by closely related tribes, including the Stickeens, the
Sitkas, the Yakutat, the Chilkat, and others less well
known than these. All these tribes are divided into two
groups of clans known as the Raven and the Wolf families
and speak dialects of the same language—the Tlingit
tongue. Members of clans belonging to the same family
or phratry were forbidden to marry one another, with the
exception of the Eagle clan, the members of which, al-
though they belonged to the Raven Phratry, might marry
on either side.

The Tlingit traced descent through the mother’s
line and the children belonged to the clan of the mother.
Since the father and all his relatives belonged to a differ-
ent clan, however, there was nothing to prevent the
intermarriage of relatives on the paternal side of the
house.

Most of the native manners and customs of these
Indians are rapidly dying out with the advance of civili-
zation. ‘Totem poles are no longer erected, but the art
of carving still survives and miniature totem poles,
canoes, paddles, and trinket boxes are manufactured
for sale among the tourists. The Chilkat are famous
for the blankets they weave from the wool of the moun-
tain goats.

The old method of constructing canoes is still used to
some extent. This consists in splitting a log of the
required length, roughly hollowing it out, and then filling
it with water into which hot stones are thrown. When
the wood has become sufficiently pliable through this
process of steaming, braces are put in to hold it in shape.
The canoe is then completed by patient chipping and
sandpapering to give it a smooth finish. The braces
are left in to serve as seats, although formerly the occu-
pants sat in the bottom to paddle. This is said to have
caused most of the men to have misshapen legs. Since
the introduction of oars, both oars and paddles have

[ 212 |

PLATE 69

SSS

Y
},
ly y
Y yx A),
y
Yy
Yi }
Yyy |
Yy )
Yi

SSS

Haida man and woman.

British Columbia.
those used in totem poles

The tattoo designs
resemble

PLATE 70

Left—A Haida pole, supposed to be the most elaborate column
in Alaska, in the Territorial Park, Sitka. Right—A Tlingit
pole

WEST COAST TRIBES

been used in conjunction and a sail is also used whenever
possible.

Basketry is the principal industry of the Tlingit women
and is carried on in practically every home, chiefly by
the older women, who are experts in the art. Native
dyes of many brilliant tints, chiefly yellow, green, and
red, are used, combined of course with the black so
frequently found in northwest color schemes, which is
produced by the use of black straws found in the bottom
of certain lakes.

The importance of the totem in the life of these people
is explained in detail by Jones as follows:

The totem pole is but one of the many expressions of totemism.
Everything the native possesses, in many instances even his person,
carries totemic designs. He does not make a common halibut hook,
or a paddle, a spoon, a bracelet, or scarcely any other object, without
etching his totem on it. Why? Because everything he uses is asso-
ciated with his patron friend and protector, be it eagle, crow, bear, or
wolf. If he puts the image of his patron on his halibut hook, it will
help him to have good success; on his paddle, to go safely over the
deep; on his spoon, to protect him from poisonous foods; on his house,
to bless his family. . . .

All handiwork in wood, stone, bone, horn, copper, gold, and silver
bears totemic designs. So with moccasins, baskets, and blankets.
In this age even marble tombstones are ordered to bear the same.
In the burial grounds of natives may now be seen marble monu-
ments (white man totem) with the salmon, the grampus, and other
totemic figures chiselled on them. Not a few natives have tatooed on
their person their totemic patron... .

The memorial or mortuary pole is a monument erected in the burial
ground to the memory of the dead. It usually carries the single image
of the patron animal of the deceased. When cremation was the uni-
versal custom of disposing of the dead, cavities were made in the back
of the mortuary tablets in which to deposit the ashes of the de-
Ceased... <)..

Totem poles vary in height from a few feet to fifty or more. They
are usually very costly, not because of their intrinsic, but for their
sentimental, value. In some instances they are valued at three or
four thousand dollars each. They are carved out of a solid tree
trunk (usually yellow cedar), and by tools of the natives’ own make, a
rude adz being the principal one used.

[ 213 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Certain aspects of this distinctive culture of the North-
west coast were shared, as we have seen, by the Eskimo
of Alaska. Like their southern neighbors, however,
the Alaska Eskimo are abandoning their old customs and
manner of life for the doubtful blessings of the white
man’s civilization. The native tongues are fast vanish-
ing before the all-conquering English; the old religion
is being replaced by a curious sort of pseudo-Christianity;
and the tribal laws must in time be discarded for the white
man’s method of dispensing justice.

[214 ]

WEST COAST TRIBES
REFERENCES

Boas, Franz. The social organization and the secret soci-
eties of the Kwakiutl Indians. U.S. Nation. Mus.
Ann. Rep. 1895, pp. 311-738. Washington, 1897.

— The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island. Mem. Amer.
Mus. Nat. Hist. Jesup North Pacific Expedition.
Volts, Part2. New York; 1909.

— The social organization of the Kwakiutl. Amer.
Anthtoap. (Na5.) Vol.-22, pp: 111-126;,.1920.

Gopparb, Puiny Earte. Life and culture of the Hupa.
Univ. Calif. Pub. Amer. Archaeol. Ethnol. Vol. 1,
No. 1, Berkeley, 1903.

—— Hupa texts. Univ. Calif. Pub. Amer. Archaeol.
Ethnol. Vol. 1, No. 2. Berkeley, 1904.

Jones, Livineston F. A study of the Thlingets of Alaska.
London, [i914].

Krause, Auret.- Die Tlinkit Indianer. Auftrage der
Bremer geographichan Gesellschaft, 1880-81. Jena,
1886.

Kroeser, A. L. Handbook of the Indians of California.
Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 78. Washington, 1925.
[Contains a bibliography of 415 titles.]

Mason, Oris T. The Ray collection from Hupa Reser-
vation. Smithsonian Inst. Ann. Rep. 1886, Part 1,
pp. 205-239. Washington, 1889.

Powers, STEPHEN. ‘Tribes of California. Cont. N.
Amer. Ethnol. Vol. 3. Washington, 1897.

Swan, James G. The Haidah Indians of Queen Char-
lotte’s Islands, British Columbia. Smithsonian Cont.
Knowl. 267. Washington, 1874.

Swanton, Joun R. Contributions to the ethnology of the
Haida. Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. Jesup North
Pacific Expedition, Vol. 5, Part 1, New York, Igo.

WaTeERMAN, T. T. Some conundrums in Northwest Coast

Atte, mer Anthrop: (N. S.)) Vel. 25, pp. 435-451,
1923.
[ork]

CHAPTER VIII

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

ESKIMO

SEDNA AND THE FuLtmart

Once upon a time there lived on a solitary shore an
Inung with his daughter Sedna. His wife had been dead
for some time and the two led a quiet life. Sedna grew
up to be a handsome girl and the youths came from all
around to sue for her hand, but none of them could touch
her proud heart. Finally, at the breaking up of the ice
in the spring a fulmar? flew from over the ice and wooed
Sedna with enticing song. ‘Come to me,” it said, “come
into the land of the birds, where there is never hunger,
where my tent is made of the most beautiful skins. You
shall rest on soft bearskins. My fellows, the fulmars,
shall bring you all your heart may desire; their feathers
shall clothe you; your lamp shall always be filled with
oil, your pot with meat.” Sedna could not long resist
such wooing and they went together over the vast sea.
When at last they reached the country of the fulmar,
after a long and hard journey, Sedna discovered that her
spouse had shamefully deceived her. Her new home
was not built of beautiful pelts, but was covered with
wretched fishskins, full of holes, that gave free entrance
to wind and snow. Instead of soft reindeer skins her
bed was made of hard walrus hides and she had to live on
miserable fish, which the birds brought her. “Too soon

1Franz Boas. The Central Eskimo, 6th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., pp. 583-585.
2 An Arctic sea bird of the petrel family.

| 216 |

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

she discovered that she had thrown away her oppor-
tunities when in her foolish pride she had rejected the
Inuit youth. In her woe she sang: “Aja. O father, if
you knew how wretched I am you would come to me and
we would hurry away in your boat over the waters.
The birds look unkindly upon me the stranger; cold winds
roar about my bed; they give me but miserable food.
O come and take me back home. Aja.”

When a year had passed and the sea was again stirred
by warmer winds, the father left his country to visit
Sedna. His daughter greeted him joyfully and besought
him to take her back home. The father hearing of the
outrages wrought upon his daughter determined upon
revenge. He killed the fulmar, took Sedna into his boat,
and they quickly left the country which had brought
so much sorrow to Sedna. When the other fulmars
came home and found their companion dead and his wife
gone, they all flew away in search of the fugitives. They
were very sad over the death of their poor murdered com-
rade and continue to mourn and cry until this day.

Having flown a short distance they discerned the boat
and stirred up a heavy storm. The sea rose in immense
waves that threatened the pair with destruction. In
this mortal peril the father determined to offer Sedna
to the birds and flung her overboard. She clung to the
edge of the boat with a death grip. The cruel father
then took a knife and cut off the first joints of her fingers.
Falling into the sea they were transformed into whales,
the nails turning into whalebone. Sedna holding on to
the boat more tightly, the second finger joints fell under
the sharp knife and swam away as seals; when the father
cut off the stumps of the fingers they became ground
seals. Meantime the storm subsided, for the fulmars
thought Sedna was drowned. The father then allowed
her to come into the boat again. But from that time
she cherished a deadly hatred against him and swore
bitter revenge. After they got ashore, she called her

[217]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

dogs and let them gnaw off the feet and hands of her
father while he was asleep. Upon this he cursed himself,
his daughter, and the dogs which had maimed him;
whereupon the earth opened and swallowed the hut, the
father, the daughter, and the dogs. They have since
lived in the land of Adlivun, of which Sedna is the mistress.

TROQUOIAN
CHEROKEE

How THE Wortp Was Mape!

The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water,
and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a
cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid
rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the peo-
ple will die and the cords will break and let the earth
sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again.
The Indians are afraid of this.

When all was water, the animals were above in Gal-
ff‘lati, beyond the arch; but it was very much crowded,
and they were wanting more room. They wondered what
was below the water, and at last Dayuni’si, ““Beaver’s
Grandchild,” the little Water-beetle, offered to go and
see if it could learn. It darted in every direction over
the surface of the water, but could find no firm place
to rest. Then it dived to the bottom and came up with
some soft mud, which began to grow and spread on every
side until it became the island which we call the earth.
It was afterward fastened to the sky with four cords, but
no one remembers who did this.

At first the earth was flat and very soft and wet. The
animals were anxious to get down, and sent out different
birds to see if it was yet dry, but they found no place

1James Mooney. Myths of the Cherokee. oth dun. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol.,
PP. 239-240.

| 218 |

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

to alight and came back again to Galfif’lati. At last it
seemed to be time, and they sent out the Buzzard and told
him to go and make ready for them. This was the Great
Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see now. He
flew all over the earth, low down near the ground, and
it was still soft. When he reached the Cherokee country,
he was very tired, and his wings began to flap and strike
the ground, and wherever they struck the earth there
was a valley, and where they turned up again there was
a mountain. When the animals above saw this, they
were afraid that the whole world would be mountains,
so they called him back, but the Cherokee country re-
mains full of mountains to this day.

When the earth was dry and the animals came down,
it was still dark, so they got the sun and set it in a track
to go every day across the island from east to west, Just
overhead. It was too hot this way, and Tsiska’gili’, the
Red Crawfish, had his shell scorched a bright red, so that
his meat was spoiled; and the Cherokee do not eat it.
The conjurers put the sun another handbreadth higher
in the air, but it was still too hot. They raised it another
time, and another, until it was seven handbreadths high
and just under the sky. Then it was right, and they
left itso. This is why the conjurers call the highest place
Gilkwa’gine Di’galif’latiyii’, “the seventh height,”
because it is seven handbreadths above the earth. Every
day the sun goes along under this arch, and returns at
night on the upper side to the starting place.

There is another world under this, and it is like ours
in everything—animals, plants, and people—save that
the seasons are different. The streams that come down
from the mountains are the trails by which we reach this
underworld, and the springs at their heads are the door-
ways by which we enter it, but to do this one must fast
and go to water and have one of the underground people
for a guide. We know that the seasons in the underworld
are different from ours, because the water in the springs

[ 219]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

is always warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the
outer air.

When the animals and plants were first made—we do
not know by whom—they were told to watch and keep
awake for seven nights, just as young men now fast and
keep awake when they pray to their medicine. They
tried to do this, and nearly all were awake through the
first night, but the next night several dropped off to sleep,
and the third night others were asleep, and then others,
until on the seventh night, of all the animals only the
owl, the panther, and one or two more were still awake.
To these were given the power to see and to go about
in the dark, and to make prey of the birds and animals
which must sleep at night. Of the trees, only the cedar,
the pine, the spruce, the holly, and the laurel were awake
to the end, and to them it was given to be always green
and to be greatest for medicine, but to the others it was
said: “Because you have not endured to the end you
shall lose your hair every winter.”

Men came after the animals and plants. At first there
were only a brother and sister until he struck her with a
fish and told her to multiply, and so it was. In seven
days a child was born to her, and thereafter every seven
days another, and they increased very fast until there
was danger that the world could not keep them. Then
it was made that a woman should have only one child
in a year, and it has been so ever since.

Tue First Fire!

In the beginning there was no fire, and the world was
cold, until the Thunders (Ani’-Hyff’tikwala’ski), who
lived up in Galif’lati, sent their lightning and put
fire into the bottom of a hollow sycamore tree which
grew on an island. The animals knew it was there,

1James Mooney. Myths of the Cherokee. sgth dnn. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol.,
PP. 241-242.

[ 220 |

Yysy Jof gsnoy a5vJoqs Joy 3 OWLS] UII}SI AA

TL ALWI1d

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

because they could see the smoke coming out at the
top, but they could not get to it on account of the water,
so they held a council to decide what to do. This was a
long time ago.

Every animal that could fly or swim was anxious to go
after the fire. The Raven offered, and because he was so
large and strong they thought he could surely do the
work, so he was sent first. He flew high and far across
the water and alighted on the sycamore tree, but while
he was wondering what to do next, the heat had scorched
all his feathers black, and he was frightened and came
back without the fire. The little Screech-owl (Wa’huhu’)
volunteered to go, and reached the place safely, but
while he was looking down into the hollow tree a blast
of hot air came up and nearly burned out his eyes. He
managed to fly home as best he could, but it was a long
time before he could see well, and his eyes are red to this
day. Then the Hooting Owl (U’guku’) and the Horned
Owl (Tski/i’) went, but by the time they got to the hol-
low tree the fire was burning so fiercely that the smoke
nearly blinded them, and the ashes carried up by the
wind made white rings about their eyes. They had to
come home again without the fire, but with all their
rubbing they were never able to get rid of the white
rings.

fe no more of the birds would venture, and so the
little Uksu’hi snake, the black racer, said he would go
through the water and bring back some fire. He swam
across to the island and crawled through the grass to
the tree, and went in by a small hole at the bottom. The
heat and smoke were too much for him, too, and after
dodging about blindly over the hot ashes until he was
almost on fire himself he managed by good luck to get
out again at the same hole, but his body had been scorched
black, and he has ever since had the habit of darting
and doubling on his track as if trying to escape from
close quarters. He came back, and the great blacksnake,

pao]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Gile’gi, “The Climber,” offered to go for fire. He swam
over to the island and climbed up the tree on the outside,
as the blacksnake always does, but when he put his head
down into the hole the smoke choked him so that he fell
into the burning stump, and before he could climb out
again he was as black as the Uksu’hi.

Now they held another council, for still there was no
fire, and the world was cold, but birds, snakes, and four-
footed animals, all had some excuse for not going, be-
cause they were all afraid to venture near the burning
sycamore, until at last Kanane’ski Amai’yéhi (the Water
Spider) said she would go. This is not the water spider
that looks like a mosquito, but the other one with black
downy hair and red stripes on her body. She can run
on top of the water or dive to the bottom, so there would
be no trouble to get over to the island, but the question
was, how could she bring back the fire? “Ill manage
that,” said the Water Spider; so she spun a thread from
her body and wove it into a tusti bowl, which she fastened
on her back. Then she crossed over to the island and
through the grass to where the fire was still burning.
She put one little coal of fire into her bowl, and came back
with it, and ever since we have had fire, and the Water
Spider still keeps her tusti bowl.

Iroquois
Creation Mytu

A SENECA VERSION !

There were, it seems, so it is said, man-beings dwelling
on the other side of the sky. So, just in the center of
their village the lodge of the chief stood, wherein lived

1J. N. B. Hewitt. Iroquoian Cosmology. (First Part.) 27st dunn. Rep. Bur. Amer.
Ethnol., pp. 221-254.

[ 222

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

his family, consisting of his spouse and one child, a girl,
that they two had.

He was surprised that then he began to become lone-
some. Now, furthermore, he, the Ancient, was very lean,
his bones having become dried; and the cause of this con-
dition was that he was displeased that they two had the
child, and one would think, judging from the circum-
stances, that he was jealous.

So now this condition of things continued until tne
time that he, the Ancient, indicated that they, the peo-
ple, should seek to divine his Word; that is, that they
should have a dream feast for the purpose of ascertain-
ing the secret yearning of his soul. So now all the peo-
ple severally continued to do nothing else but to assemble
there. Now they there continually sought to divine his
Word. They severally designated all manner of things
that they severally thought that he desired. After the
lapse of some time, then, one of these persons said: “Now,
perhaps, I myself have divined the Word of our chief, the
excrement. And the thing that he desires is that the
standing tree belonging to him should be uprooted, this
tree that stands hard by his lodge.” The chief said:
“Gwa‘’” [expressing his thanks].

So now the man-beings said: “We must be in full
number and we must aid one another when we uproot
this standing tree; that is, there must be a few to grasp
each several root.” So now they uprooted it and set
it up elsewhere. Now the place whence they had up-
rooted the tree fell through, forming an opening through
the sky earth. So now, moreover, all the man-beings
inspected it. It was curious; below them the aspect
was green and nothing else in color. As soon as the man-
beings had had their turns at inspecting it, then the chief
said to his spouse: “Come now, let us two go to inspect
it.” Now she took her child astride of her back. Thither
now he made his way with difficulty. He moved slowly.
They two arrived at the place where the cavern was.

[ 223]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Now he, the Ancient, himself inspected it. When he
wearied of it, he said to his spouse: ‘‘Now it is thy turn.
Come.” “Age’,”’ she: said, ‘imyself; I fear it?” 9¢Gomie
now, so be it,” he said, ‘“‘do thou inspect it.” So now
she took in her mouth the ends of the mantle which she
wore, and she rested herself on her hand on the right side,
and she rested herself on the other side also, closing her
hand on either side and grasping the earth thereby.
So now she looked down below. Just as soon as she
bent her neck, he seized her leg and pushed her body
down thither. Now, moreover, there [7.e., in the hole]
floated the body of the Fire-dragon with the white body,
and, verily, he it was whom the Ancient regarded with
jealousy. Now Fire-dragon took out an ear of corn,
and verily he gave it to her. As soon as she received
it she placed it in her bosom. Now, another thing, the
next in order, a small mortar and also the upper mortar
[pestle] he gave to her. So now, again, another thing
he took out of his bosom, which was a small pot. Now,
again, another thing, he gave her in the next place, a
bone. Now, he said: “This, verily, is what thou wilt
continue to eat.”

Now it was so, that below [her] all manner of otgon
[malefic] male man-beings abode; of this number were
the Fire-dragon, whose body was pure white in color,
the Wind, and the Thick Night.

Now, they, the male man-beings, counseled together,
and they said: ‘“‘Well, is it not probably possible for us
to give aid to the woman-being whose body is falling
thence toward us?’ Now every one of the man-beings
spoke, saying: “I, perhaps, would be able to aid her.”
Black Bass said: “I, perhaps, could do it.” They, the
man-beings, said: “Not the least, perhaps, art thou
able to do it, seeing that thou hast no sense [reason].”’
The Pickerel next in turn said: “I, perhaps, could do it.”
Then the man-beings said: “And again we say, thou
canst not do even a little, because thy throat is too long

[ 224 ]

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

[thou art a glutton].”” So now Turtle spoke, saying:
“Moreover, perhaps I would be able to give aid to the
person of the woman-being.”” Now all the man-beings
confirmed this proposal. Now, moreover, Turtle floated
there at the point directly toward which the body of
the woman-being was falling thence. So now, on the
Turtle’s carapace, she, the woman-being, alighted. And
she, the woman-being, wept there. Some time after-
ward she remembered that seemingly she still held [in her
hands] earth. Now she opened her hands, and, more-
over, she scattered the earth over Turtle. As soon as
she did this, then it seems that this earth grew in size.
So now she did thus, scattering the earth very many
times [much]. In a short time the earth had become
of a considerable size. Now she herself became aware
that it was she herself, alone seemingly, who was forming
this earth here present. So now, verily, it was her cus-
tom to travel about from place to place continually.
She knew, verily, that when she traveled to and fro the
earth increased in size. So now it was not long, verily,
before the various kinds of shrubs grew up and also
every kind of grass and reeds. . . . Indeed, it did thus come
to pass, and the cause that brought it about is that she,
the Ancient-bodied, is, as a matter of fact, a controller,

[a god].

PUEBLO
ZUNI
Tue Tria or Lovers
OR
Tue Maipen or MATSAKI AND THE RED FEATHER!

[In this charming tale of an Indian Orpheus and Eury-
dice, the hero has the misfortune to slay unwittingly
his beautiful and beloved bride. To comfort him, the
spirit of the maiden allows him to follow her on her jour-

1Frank H. Cushing. Zufi Folk Tales, New York (Putnam), 1go1, pp. 1-33.

225

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

ney to the Land of the Dead. As she will be invisible
during the daytime, she bids him bind upon her brow
a sacred red feather which shall be his guide.]

So at sunrise the young man went away and gathered
feathers of the summer birds, and cut many prayer-
sticks, whereon he bound them with cotton, as gifts to
the Fathers. Then he found a beautiful downy feather
plucked from the eagle, and dyed it red with ocher, and
tied to it a string of cotton wherewith to fasten it over
the forehead of the spirit maiden. When night came,
he took meal made from parched corn and burnt sweet-
bread, and once more went down to the plaza and sat
by the grave-side.

When midnight came and the light glowed forth
through the grave-sands, lo! the maiden-spirit came out
and stood by his side. She seemed no longer sad, but
happy, like one going home after long absence. Nor was
the young man sad or single-thoughted like one whose
mind errs; so they sat together and talked of their journey
till the dayland grew yellow and the black shadows gray,
and the houses and hills came out of the darkness.

“Once more would I tell thee to go back,” said the
maiden’s spirit to the young man; “but I know why thou
goest with me, and it is well. Only watch me when the
day comes, and thou wilt see me no more; but look whither
the plume goeth, and follow, for thou knowest that thou
must tie it to the hair above my forehead.”

Then the young man took the bright red plume out
from among the feathers of sacrifice, and gently tied it
above the maiden-spirit’s forehead.

As the light waved up from behind the great mountain
the red glow faded out from the grave-sands and the
youth looked in vain for the spirit of the maiden; but
before him, at the height of one’s hands when standing,
waved the light downy feather in the wind of the morn-
ing. Then the plume, not the wife, rose before him, like
the plumes on the head of a dancer, and moved through

[ 226 |

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

the streets that led westward, and down through the
fields to the river. And out through the streets that led
westward, and down on the trail by the river, and on
over the plains always toward the land of evening, the
young man followed close to the red feather; butatlast he
began to grow weary, for the plume glided swiftly before
him, until at last it left him far behind, and even now
and then lost him entirely. Then, as he hastened on,
he called in anguish:

“My beautiful bride! My beautiful bride! Oh, where
art thou?”

But the plume, not the wife, stopped and waited....

[Thus day after day the young man followed the red
plume, the trail getting rougher and more difficult and
the youth growing ever more and more weary, until he
reached one day the edge of a deep canyon, “the walls
of which were so steep that no man could pass them
alive.’’]

For a moment the red plume paused above the chasm,
and the youth pressed on and stretched his hand forth
to detain it; but ere he had gained the spot, it floated on
straight over the dark cafion, as though no ravine had
been there at all; for to spirits the trails that once have
been, even though the waters have worn them away,
still are.

Wildly the young man rushed up and down the steep
brink, and despairingly he called across to the plume:
“Alas! ah, my beautiful wife! Wait, only wait for me,
for I love thee and cannot turn from thee!’ Then, like
one whose thoughts wandered, he threw himself over the
brink and hung by his hands as if to drop, when a jolly
little striped Squirrel, who was playing at the bottom
of the cafion, happened to see him, and called out: “Tsith/!
Tsithl!” and much more, which meant “4h hai! Wanani!”
“You crazy fool of a being! You have not the wings of a
falcon, nor the hands of a Squirrel, nor the feet of a spirit,
and if you drop you will be broken to pieces and the

[ 227 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

moles will eat up the fragments! Wait! Hold hard, and
I will help you, for though I am but a Squirrel, I know
how to think!”

Whereupon the little chit ran chattering away and
called his mate out of their house in the rock-nook:
“Wife! Wife! Come quickly; run to our corn room and
bring me a hemlock, and hurry! hurry! Ask me no
questions; for a crazy fool of a man over here will
break himself to pieces if we don’t quickly make him a
ladder.”

So the little wife flirted her brush in his face and
skipped over the rocks to their store-house, where she
chose a fat hemlock and hurried to her husband who was
digging a hole in the sand underneath where the young
man was hanging. Then they spat on the seed, and
buried it in the hole, and began to dance round it and
sing,—

“Kidthla tsilu,
Silokwe, silokwe, silokwe;
Ki'ai silu silu,
Tsithl! Tsithl!”’

Which meant, as far as any one can tell now (for it was a
long time ago, and partly squirrel talk),

“Ffemlock of the
Tall kind, tall kind, tall kind,
Sprout up hemlock, hemlock,
Chit’ Chis!”

And every time they danced around and sang the song
through, the ground moved, until the fourth time they
said “Tsithl! Tsithi!” the tree sprouted forth and kept
growing until the little Squirrel could jump into it, and
by grabbing the topmost bough and bracing himself
against the branches below, could stretch and pull it,
so that in a short time he made it grow as high as the
young man’s feet, and he had all he could do to keep the

[ 228. |

PLATE 72

Left—Sword of tHle’wekwe, the Zufii order of Sword Swallowers. Right—Mili
(ear of corn covered with plumes), insignia of the Zufii order of O’naya’natkia

(Life Giver’s)

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

poor youth from jumping right into it before it was strong
enough to hold him. Presently he said “Tsithl! Tsithl!”
and whisked away before the young man had time to
thank him. Then the sad lover climbed down and
quickly gained the other side, which was not so steep;
before he could rest from his climb, however, the plume
floated on, and he had to get up and follow it.

[Later the sad youth was obliged to leave his wife
in the land of departed spirits, which was at the bottom
of a great lake whither he could not follow her.]

Then with a cry of despair and anguish he crawled to
the lake-shore and buried his face in the sands and
rank grasses. Suddenly he heard a low screech, and then
a hoarse voice seemed to call him. He looked, and a
great Owl flew over him, saying: “Muhai! Hu hu! Hu hu!”

“What wilt thou?” he cried, in vexed anguish.

Then the Owl flew closer, and, lighting, asked: ““Why
weepest thou, my child?”

He turned and looked at the Owl and told it part of
his trouble, when the Owl suddenly twisted its head
quite around—as owls do—to see if anyone were near;
then came closer and said: “I know all about it, young
man. Come with me to my house in the mountain, and
if thou wilt but follow my counsel, all will yet be well.”
Then the Owl led the way toa cave far above and bade him
step in. As he placed his foot inside the opening, behold!
it widened into a bright room, and many Owl-men and
Owl-women around greeted him happily, and bade him
sit down and eat.

The old Owl who had brought him, changed himself
in a twinkling, as he entered the room, and hung his owl-
coat on an antler. Then he went away, but presently
returned, bringing a little bag of medicine. “Before I
give thee this, let me tell thee what to do, and what
thou must promise,” said he of the owl-coat.

The young man eagerly reached forth his hand for the
magic medicine.

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THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

“Fool!’’ cried the being; “‘were it not well, for that
would I not help thee. Thou art too eager, and I will
not trust thee with my medicine of sleep. Thou shalt
sleep here, and when thou awakest thou shalt find the
morning star in the sky, and thy dead wife before thee
on the trail toward the Middle Ant Hill. With the rising
sun she will wake and smile on thee. Be not foolish,
but journey preciously with her, and not until ye reach
the home of thy fathers shalt thou approach her or kiss
her; for if thou doest this, all will be as nothing again.
But if thou doest as I counsel thee, all will be well, and
happily may ye live one with the other.”

He ceased, and, taking a tiny pinch of the medicine,
blew it in the face of the youth. Instantly the young
man sank with sleep where he had been sitting, and the
beings, putting on their owl-coats, flew away with him
under some trees by the trail that led to Matsaki and the
Ant Hill of the Middle.!

Then they flew over the lake, and threw the medicine
of sleep in at the windows, and taking the plumed prayer-
sticks which the young man had brought with him, they
chose some red plumes for themselves, and with the others
entered the home of the K@ké. Softly they flew over the
sleeping fathers and their children (the gods of the Kaka
and the spirits) and, laying the prayer-plumes before
the great altar, caught up the beautiful maiden and bore
her over the waters and woodlands to where the young
man was still sleeping. Then they hooted and flew
off to their mountain.

As the great star came out of the dayland, the young
man awoke, and lo! there before him lay his own beauti-
ful wife. Then he turned his face away that he might
not be tempted, and waited with joy and longing for the
coming out of the sun. When at last the sun came out,
with the first ray that brightened the beautiful maiden’s

1 The ancient pueblo of Zufii itself was called Haélonawan, or the Ant Hill, the ruins of
which, now buried beneath the sands, lie opposite the modern town.

[ 230 ]

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

face, she opened her eyes and gazed wildly around at
first, but seeing her lonely lover, smiled, and said: ‘Truly,
thou lovest me!”

Then they arose and journeyed apart toward the home
of their fathers, and the young man forgot not the counsel
of the Owl, but journeyed wisely, till on the fourth day
they came in sight of the Mountain of Thunder and saw
the river that flows by Salt City.

As they began to go down into the valley, the maiden
stopped and said: “Hahud, | am weary, for the journey
is long and the day is warm.”’ Then she sat down in the
shadow of a cedar and said: “Watch, my husband, while
I sleep a little; only a little, and then we will journey
together again.” And he said: “Be it well.”

Then she lay down and seemed to sleep. She smiled
and looked so beautiful to the longing lover that he softly
rose and crept close to her. Then, alas! he laid his hand
upon her and kissed her.

Quickly the beautiful maiden started. Her face was
all covered with sadness, and she said, hastily and an-
grily: “Ah, thou shameless fool! I now know! Thou
lovest me not! How vain that I should have hoped for
thy love!”

With shame, indeed, and sorrow, he bent his head low
and covered his face with his hands. Then he started
to speak, when an Owl flew up and hooted mournfully
at him from a tree-top. Then the Owl winged her way
to the westward, and ever after the young man’s mind
wandered.

Alas! alas! Thus it was in the days of the ancients.
Maybe had the young man not kissed her yonder toward
the Lake of the Dead, we would never have journeyed
nor ever have mourned for others lost. But then it 1s
well! If men and women had never died, then the
world long ago had overflown with children, starvation,
and warring.

Thus shortens my story.

[ 282 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

PLAINS INDIANS
OMAHA

Tue SacrepD Pore !

Tradition states that the Sacred Pole was cut before
the “Ponca gens broke away [from the Omaha] and be-
came the Ponca tribe.” Other evidence indicates that
the tribes had already become more or less distinct when
the Sacred Pole was cut.

There are two versions of the story of the finding of
the Sacred. Pole, «4.

The account in the Omaha Sacred Legend is as
follows:

During this time a young man who had been wandering came back
to his village. When he reached his home he said: “Father, I have
seen a wonderful tree!’ And he described it. The old man listened
but he kept silent, for all was not yet settled between the tribes.

After a little while the young man went again to visit the tree. On
his return home he repeated his former tale to his father about the
wonderful tree. The old man kept silent, for the chiefs were still
conferring. At last, when everything was agreed upon between the
tribes, the old man sent for the chiefs and said: ““My son has seen a
wonderful tree. The Thunder birds come and go upon this tree,
making a trail of fire that leaves four paths on the burnt grass that
stretch toward the Four Winds. When the Thunder birds alight
upon the tree it bursts into flame and the fire mounts to the top. The
tree stands burning, but no one can see the fire except at night.”

When the chiefs heard this tale they sent runners to see what this
tree might be. The runners came back and told the same story—
how in the night they saw the tree standing and burning as it stood.
Then all the people held a council as to what this might mean, and the
chiefs said: “We shall run for it; put on your ornaments and prepare
as for battle.” So the men stripped, painted themselves, put on their
ornaments, and set out for the tree, which stood near toa lake. They
ran as in a race to attack the tree as if it were a warrior enemy. All
the men ran. A Ponca was the first to reach the tree, and he struck it
as he would an enemy.

1 Fletcher and La Flesche. The Omaha Tribe, 27th Ann. Rep. Amer. Bur. Ethnol.,
pp- 217-219.

rege |

PLATE 73

Bowls with symbolic designs from the ancient pueblo of Sikyatki,
Arizona. In the National Museum

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

Then they cut the tree down and four men, walking in line, carried
it on their shoulders to the village. The chiefs sang four nights the
songs that had been composed for the tree while they held a council
and deliberated concerning the tree. A tent was made for the tree and
set up within the circle of lodges. The chiefs worked upon the tree;
they trimmed it and called it a human being. They made a basket-work
receptacle of twigs and feathers and tied it about the middle. Then
they said: “It has no hair!” So they sent out to get a large scalp
lock and they put it on the top of the Pole for hair. Afterward the
chiefs bade the herald tell the people that when all was completed they
should see the Pole.

Then they painted the Pole and set it up before the tent, leaning
it on a crotched stick, which they called imongthe (a staff). They
summoned the people, and all the people came—men, women, and
children. When they were gathered the chiefs stood up and said:
“You now see before you a mystery. Whenever we meet with troubles
we shall bring all our troubles to him [the Pole]. We shall make
offerings and requests. All our prayers must be accompanied by gifts.
This [the Pole] belongs to all the people, but it shall be in the keeping
of one family (in the Hoga gens), and the leadership shall be with
them. If anyone desires to lead (to become a chief) and to take respon-
sibility in governing the people, he shall make presents to the Keepers
[of the Pole] and they shall give him authority.”” When all was finished
the people said: “Let us appoint a time when we shall again paint him
[the Pole] and act before him the battles we have fought.” The time
was fixed; it was to take place in “‘the moon when the buffaloes bellow”
(July). This was the beginning of the ceremony of Waxthe’xe xigithe,
and it was agreed that this ceremony should be kept up.

S10UXx

THE ADVENTURES OF IcTINIKE!

Many tales are told by the Iowa Indians regarding
Ictinike, the son of the sun-god, who had offended his
father, and was consequently expelled from the celestial
regions. He possesses a very bad reputation among the
Indians for deceit and trickery. They say that he taught
them all the evil things they know, and they seem to re-
gard him as a Father of Lies. The Omahas state that he

1Lewis Spence. The Myths of the North American Indians, London, 1914, pp.
266-268.

[ 233 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

gave them their war-customs, and for one reason or an-
other they appear to look upon him as a species of war-
god. A series of myths recount his adventures with
several inhabitants of the wild. The first of these is as
follows:

One day Ictinike encountered the Rabbit, and hailed
him in a friendly manner, calling him “grandchild,” and
requesting him to do hima service. The Rabbit expressed
his willingness to assist the god to the best of his ability
and inquired what he wished him to do.

“Oh, grandchild,” said the crafty one, pointing upward
to where a bird circled in the blue vault above them,
“take your bow and arrow and bring down yonder bird.”

The Rabbit fitted an arrow to his bow, and the shaft
transfixed the bird, which fell like a stone and lodged in
the branches of a great tree.

“Now, grandchild,” said Ictinike, “go into the tree and
fetch me the game.”

This, however, the Rabbit at first refused to do, but at
length he took off his clothes and climbed into the tree,
where he stuck fast among the tortuous branches.

Ictinike, seeing that he could not make his way down,
donned the unfortunate Rabbit’s garments, and, highly
amused at the animal’s predicament, betook himself to
the nearest village. There he encountered a chief who
had two beautiful daughters, the elder of whom he mar-
ried. The younger daughter, regarding this as an affront
to her personal attractions, wandered off into the forest
in a fit of the sulks. As she paced angrily up and down
she heard some one calling her from above, and, looking
upward, she beheld the unfortunate Rabbit, whose fur
was adhering to the natural gum which exuded from the
bark of the tree. The girl cut down the tree and lit a fire
near it, which melted the gum and freed the Rabbit. The
Rabbit and the chief’s daughter compared notes, and dis-
covered that the being who had tricked the one and
affronted the other was the same. Together they pro-

[ 234 ]

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

ceeded to the chief’s lodge, where the girl was laughed
at because of the strange companion she had brought back
with her. Suddenly an eagle appeared in the air above
them. Ictinike shot at and missed it, but the Rabbit
loosed an arrow with great force and brought it to earth.
Each morning a feather of the bird became another eagle,
and each morning Ictinike shot at and missed this newly
created bird which the Rabbit invariably succeeded in
killing. This went on until Ictinike had quite worn out
the Rabbit’s clothing and was wearing a very old piece
of tent skin; but the Rabbit returned to him the garments
he had been forced to don when Ictinike had stolen his.
Then the Rabbit commanded the Indians to beat the
drums, and each time they were beaten Ictinike jumped
so high that every bone in his body was shaken. At length,
after a more than usually loud series of beats, he leapt to
such a height that when he came down it was found that

the fall had broken his neck. The Rabbit was avenged.

IcTINIKE AND THE Buzzarp!

One day Ictinike, footsore and weary, encountered a
buzzard, which he asked to oblige him by carrying him
on its back part of the way. The crafty bird immediately
consented, and, seating Ictinike between its wings, flew
off with him.

They had not gone far when they passed above a hol-
low tree, and Ictinike began to shift uneasily in his seat
as he observed the buzzard hovering over it. He re-
quested the bird to fly onward, but for answer it cast
him headlong into the tree-trunk, where he found himself
a prisoner. For a long time he lay there in want and
wretchedness, until at last a large hunting-party struck
camp at the spot. Ictinike chanced to be wearing some
raccoon skins, and he thrust the tails of these through
the cracks in the tree. Three women who were standing

1 Lewis Spence. The Myths of the North American Indians, 1914, p. 268.

[ 235 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

near imagined that a number of raccoons had become
imprisoned in the hollow trunk, and they made a large
hole in it for the purpose of capturing them. Ictinike at
once emerged, whereupon the women fled. Ictinike lay
on the ground pretending to be dead, and as he was cov-
ered with the raccoon-skins the birds of prey, the eagle,
the rook, and the magpie, came to devour him. While
they pecked at him the buzzard made his appearance for
the purpose of joining in the feast, but Ictinike, rising
quickly, tore the feathers from its scalp. That is why the
buzzard has no feathers on its head.

WEST COAST TRIBES

KAROK
Karoxk FaBtes !

There are many apologues and fables in vogue among
the Karok, which gifted squaws relate to their children
on winter evenings and through the weary days of the
rainy season, while they are cooped up in their cabins;
and some of them are not entirely unworthy of a place
in that renowned old book written by one A’sop. A
few specimens are given here.

FABLE OF THE ANIMALS

A great many hundred snows ago, Kareya, sitting on
the Sacred Stool, created the world. First, he made
the fishes in the big water, then the animals on the green
land, and last of all, The Man. But the animals were
all alike yet in power, and it was not yet ordained which
should be for food to others, and which should be food
for The Man. Then Kareya bade them all assemble
together in a certain place, that The Man might give
each his power and his rank. So the animals all met
together, a great many hundred snows ago, on an evening

1Stephen Powers. Tribes of California, Cont. N. Amer. Ethnol., Vol. 3, pp. 35-49.

[ 236 |

umnasnyy [BuO Ny
ayy ut dnoryy ‘asnoy Suidaay pur ‘ystp puv jaep ‘doy Suruuids Surpnpour ‘usipplys wmory Jo sow
: 3} Sl [st pus iY IM J

¥L ALVId

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

when the sun was set, that they might wait over night
for the coming of The Man on the morrow. Now Kareya
commanded The Man to make bows and arrows, as
many as there were animals, and to give the longest to
the one that should have the most power, and the shortest
to the one that should have the least. So he did, and
after nine sleeps his work was ended, and the bows and
arrows which he made were very many.

Now the animals being gathered together in one place,
went to sleep, that they might rise on the morrow and
go forth to meet The Man. But the coyote was ex-
ceedingly cunning, above all the beasts that were, he
was so cunning. So he considered within himself how
he might get the longest bow, and so have the greatest
power, and have all animals for his meat. He determined
to stay awake all night, while the others slept, and so
go forth first in the morning and get the longest bow.
This he devised within his cunning mind, and then he
laughed to himself, and stretched out his snout on his
fore-paws, and pretended to sleep, like the others. But
about midnight he began to get sleepy, and he had to
walk around camp and scratch his eyes a considerable
time to keep them open. But still he grew more sleepy,
and he had to skip and jump about like a good one to
keep awake. He made so much noise this way that he
woke up some of the other animals, and he had to think
of another plan. About the time the morning star came
up, he was so sleepy that he couldn’t keep his eyes open
any longer. Then he took two little sticks and sharp-
ened them at the ends, and propped open his eyelids,
whereupon he thought he was safe, and he concluded
he would take just a little nap, with his eyes open,
watching the morning star. But in a few minutes he
was sound asleep, and the sharp sticks pierced through
his eyelids, and pinned them fast together.

So the morning star mounted up very swiftly, and
then there came a peep of daybreak, and the birds began

[237 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

to sing, and the animals began to rise and stretch them-
selves, but still the coyote lay fast asleep. At last it
was broad daylight, and then the sun rose, and all the
animals went forth to meet The Man. He gave the
longest bow to the cougar, so he had the greatest power
of all; and the second longest to the bear; and so on,
giving the next to the last to the poor frog. But he still
had the shortest one left, and he cried out, ““What animal
have I missed?” ‘Then the animals began to look about,
and they soon spied the coyote lying fast asleep, with
the sharp sticks pinning his eyelids together. Upon
that all the animals set up a great laugh, and they jumped
on the coyote and danced upon him. Then they led
him to The Man—for he could see nothing because of
the sticks—and The Man pulled out the sticks, and gave
him the shortest bow of all, which would shoot an arrow
hardly more than a foot. And all the animals laughed
very much.

But The Man took pity on the coyote, because he was
now the weakest of all animals, weaker even than the
frog, and he prayed to Kareya for him, and Kareya
gave him cunning, ten times more than before, so that he
was cunning above all the animals of the wood. So the
coyote was a friend to The Man and to his children after
him, and helped him, and did many things for him, as
we shall see hereafter.

In the legendary lore of the Karok the coyote plays the
same conspicuous part that Reynard does in ours, and the
sagacious tricks that are accredited to him are endless.
When one Karok has killed another, he frequently barks
like the coyote in the belief that he will thereby be endued
with so much of that animal’s cunning that he will be
able to elude the punishment due to his crime.

THE COYOTE DANCING WITH THE STARS

After Kareya gave the coyote so much cunning he
became very ambitious, and wanted to do many things

[ 238 |

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

which were very much too hard for him, and which Ka-
reya never intended he should do. One of them once
got so conceited that he thought he could dance with the
stars, and so he asked one of them to fly close to the top
of a mountain and take him by the paw, and let him dance
once around through the sky. The star only laughed
at him and winked its eye, but the next night when it
came around, it sailed close to the mountain and took the
coyote by the paw, and flew away with him through the
sky. But the foolish coyote soon grew tired of dancing
this way, and could not wait for the star to come around
to the mountain again. He looked down at the earth
and it seemed quite near to him, and as the star could
not wait or fly low just then, he let go and leaped down.
Poor coyote! he was ten whole snows in falling, and when
he struck the earth he was smashed as flat as a willow
mat.

Another one, not taking warning from this dreadful
example, asked a star to let him dance once round through
the sky. The star tried to dissuade him from the fool-
hardy undertaking, but it was of no avail; the silly ani-
mal would not be convinced. Every night when the
star came around, he would squat on top of a mountain
and bark until the star grew tired of his noise. So one
night it sailed close down to the mountain and told the
coyote to be quick for it could not wait, and up he jumped
and caught it with his paw, and went dancing away
through the great blue heaven. He, too, soon grew tired,
and asked the star to stop and let him rest a little while.
But the star told him it could not stop, for Kareya had
made it to keep on moving all the while. Then he tried
to get on the star and ride, but it was too small. Thus
he was compelled to keep on dancing, dangling down from
one paw, and one piece of his body after another dropped
off until there was only one paw left hanging to the
star.

[ 239 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Hapa

Tue Birtu or Sin!

The Haida of British Columbia and the Queen Char-
lotte Islands possess a striking myth relating to the incar-
nation of the Sky-god, their principal deity. The daughter
of a certain chief went one day to dig in the beach. After
she had worked some time she dug up a cockle-shell. She
was about to throw it to one side when she thought she
heard a sound coming from it like that of a child crying.
Examining the shell she found a small baby inside. She
carried it home and wrapped it in a warm covering, and
tended it so carefully that it grew rapidly and soon began
to walk.

She was sitting beside the child one day when he made
a movement with his hand as if imitating the drawing of
a bowstring, so to please him she took a copper bracelet
from her arm and hammered it into the shape of a bow,
which she strung and gave him along with two arrows.
He was delighted with the tiny weapon, and immediately
set out to hunt small game with it. Every day he returned
to his foster mother with some trophy of his skill. One
day it was a goose, another a woodpecker, and another
a blue jay.

One morning he awoke to find himself and his mother
in a fine new house, with gorgeous door-posts splendidly
carved and illuminated in rich reds, blues and greens.
The carpenter who had raised this fine building married
his mother, and was very kind to him. He took the boy
down to the sea-shore, and caused him to sit with his
face looking toward the expanse of the Pacific. And so
long as the lad looked across the boundless blue there was
fair weather.

His father used to go fishing, and one day Sin, for such

1Lewis Spence. The Myths of the North American Indians, London, 1914, pp.
314-316.

[ 240 ]

™~

PLATE

heir own

ES sare on t

The blanke

Shoshoni women and child in a tipi.

weaving

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

was the boy’s name, expressed a wish to accompany him.
They obtained devil fish for bait, and proceeded to the
fishing ground, where the lad instructed his father to pro-
nounce certain magical formulae, the result of which was
that their fishing-line was violently agitated and their
canoe pulled around an adjacent island three times.
When the disturbance stopped at last they pulled in the
line and dragged out a monster covered with piles of
halibut.

One day Sif went out wearing a wren-skin. His mother
beheld him rise in stature until he soared above her and
brooded like a bank of shining clouds over the ocean.
Then he descended and donned the skin of a blue jay.
Again he rose over the sea, and shone resplendently.
Once more he soared upward, wearing the skin of a
woodpecker, and the waves reflected a colour as of
fire.

Then he said: “Mother, I shall see you no more; I
am going away from you. When the sky looks like my
face painted by my father there will be no wind. Then
the fishing will be good.”

His mother bade him farewell, sadly, yet with the proud
knowledge that she had nurtured a divinity. But her sor-
row increased when her husband intimated that it was time
for him to depart as well. Her supernatural son and
husband, however, left her a portion of their power. For
when she sits by the inlet and loosens her robe the wind
scurries down between the banks and the waves are ruffled
with tempest; and the more she loosens the garment the
greater is the storm. They call her in the Indian tongue
Fine-weather-Woman. But she dwells mostly in the
winds, and when the cold morning airs draw up from the
sea landward she makes an offering of feathers to her
glorious son. The feathers are flakes of snow, and they
serve to remind him that the world is weary for a glimpse

of his golden face.
[ 241 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
TLINGIT
Notes on Triincir LeGenps }

Many of their legends assume to explain the origin
of things and the mysteries of existing phenomena.
One tells of the creation of the world. Ya/kth (the
immense imaginary bird) is the mighty Creator.

Other legends claim to give us the origin of man,
of the sun, moon, and stars, of the whale-killer and of
other animals.

For example, the origin of the iniquitous little mos-
quito is thus given:

There was in ancient times a great giant,” cruel and very
bloodthirsty. His passion was to kill men, drink their
blood and eat their hearts.

Many men tried to kill the giant, but were unable
to do so until this plan was conceived: A man pretended
to be dead and lay down on his blanket. The giant
came along and saw him. He felt of the man’s flesh and
found that he was still warm. Then he began to gloat
over him and say, “J will eat his heart and drink his
blood.” So he lifted up the man, who allowed his head
to hang down just as if he were dead, and carrying him
into his house laid him down, and then went on some
errand.

Immediately the man jumped up and seized a bow and
arrow. Just then the son of the giant came in, and he
pointed the arrow at the boy’s head and asked him where
his father’s heart was, and threatened to kill him if
he did not tell. The boy answered that his father’s
heart was in his heel.

Then the giant came in and the man shot the arrow
through his heel. Just as the giant lay dying, he said:
“Though you burn me, I will still eat you.”

1 Livingston F. Jones. A Study of the Thlingets of Alaska, London, pp. 183-187.

2Tn some versions, an old woman.

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

After the giant was dead the body was cremated.
Then the man, in derision, took the ashes and threw
them to the winds. But each particle of the ashes
became a mosquito.

THE Son or THE WoLrF CHIEF!

Once upon a time a town near the North Pacific Ocean
suffered greatly from famine and many of the Indians
who lived there died of hunger. It was terrible to see
them sitting before their doors, too weak and listless to
move, and waiting silently and hopelessly for death
to come. But there was one boy who behaved quite
differently from the rest of the tribe. For some reason
or other Ae seemed quite strong on his legs, and all day
long he would go into the fields or the woods, with his
bow and arrows slung to his back, hoping to bring back
a supper for himself and his mother.

One morning when he was out as usual, he found a
little animal that looked like a dog. It was such a
round, funny little thing that he could not bear to kill
it, so he put it under his warm blanket, and carried
it home, and as it was very dirty from rolling about in
the mud and snow, his mother washed it for him. When
it was quite clean, the boy fetched some red paint which
his uncle who had died of famine had used for smearing
over their faces, and put it on the dog’s head and legs
so that he might always be able to trace it when they
were hunting together.

The boy got up early next morning and took his dog
into the woods and the hills. The little beast was very
quick and sharp, and it was not long before the two
got quite a number of grouse and birds of all sorts; and
as soon as they had enough for that day and the next,
they returned to the wigwam and invited their neigh-
bors to supper with them. A short time after, the boy
was out on the hills wondering where the dog had gone,

1Mrs. Lang. The Strange Story Book, London, 1913, pp. 110-115.

[ 243 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

for, in spite of the red paint, he was to be seen nowhere.
At length he stood still and put his ear to the ground
and listened with all his might, and that means a great
deal, for Indian ears are much cleverer at hearing than
European ones. Then he heard a whine which sounded
as if it came from a long way off, so he jumped up at
once and walked and walked till he reached a small
hollow, where he found that the dog had killed one of
the mountain sheep.

“Can it really de a dog?” said the boy to himself.
“T don’t know; I wish I did. But at any rate, it deserves
to be treated like one,” and when the sheep was cooked,
the dog—if it was a dog—was given all the fat part.

After this, never a day passed without the boy and
the dog bringing home meat, and thanks to them the
people began to grow fat again. But if the dog killed
many sheep at once, the boy was always careful to give
it first the best for itself.

Some weeks later the husband of the boy’s sister
came to him and said:

“Lend me your dog, it will help me greatly.” So
the boy went and brought the dog from the little house
he had made for it, and painted its head and its feet,
and carried it to his brother-in-law.

“Give it the first thing that is killed as I always do,”
observed the boy, but the man answered nothing, only
put the dog in his blanket.

Now the brother-in-law was greedy and selfish and
wanted to keep everything for himself; so after the dog
had killed a whole flock of sheep in the fields, the man
threw it a bit of the inside which nobody else would touch,
exclaiming rudely:

“Here take that! It is quite good enough for you.”

But the dog would not touch it either, and ran away
to the mountains yelping loudly.

The man had to bring back all the sheep himself, and
it was evening before he reached the village. The first

[ 244 |

PLATE 76

Upper—Ancient ceremonial basket of exquisite workmanship from
Santa Barbara County, California. Lower—Tulare trinket basket from
the Tulare Indian Reservation, California. In the National Museum

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

person he saw was the boy who was waiting about for
him.

“Where is the dog?” asked he, and the man answered:

“Tt ran away from me.”

On hearing this the boy put no more questions, but he
called his sister and said to her:

“Tell me the truth. What did your husband do to
the dog? I did not want to let it go, because I guessed
what would happen.”

And the wife answered:

“He threw the inside of a sheep to it, and that is why it
ran off.”

When the boy heard this, he felt very sad, and turned
to go into the mountains in search of the dog. After
walking some time he found the marks of its paws, and
smears of red paint on the grass. But all this time the
boy never knew that the dog was really the son of the
Wolf Chief and had been sent by his father to help him,
and he did not guess that from the day that he painted
red paint round its face and on its feet a wolf can be told
far off by the red on its paws and round its mouth.

The marks led a long, long way, and at length they
-brought him to a lake, with a town on the opposite side
of it, where people seemed to be playing some game, as
the noise that they made reached all the way across.

“T must try if I can get over there,” he said, and as he
spoke, he noticed a column of smoke coming right up from
the ground under his feet, and a door flew open.

“Enter!” cried a voice, so he entered, and discovered
that the voice belonged to an old woman, who was called
“Woman-always-wondering.”’

“Grandchild, why are you here?” she asked, and he
answered:

“T found a young dog who helped me to get food for
the people, but it is lost and I am seeking it.”

“Its people live right across there,” replied the woman,

[245 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

“Gt is the Wolf Chief’s son, and that is his father’s town
where the noise comes from.”

“How can I get over the lake?” he said to himself, but
the old woman guessed what he was thinking and replied:

“My little canoe is just below here.”

“Tt might turn over with me,” be thought, and again
she answered him:

“Take it down to the shore and shake it before you
get in, and it will soon become large. Then stretch your-
self in the bottom and, instead of paddling, wish with
all your might to reach the town.”

The boy did as he was told, and by and by he arrived
on the other side of the lake. He shook the canoe a
second time, and it shrunk into a mere toy-boat which
he put in his pocket, and after that he went and watched
some boys who were playing with a thing that was like
a rainbow.

“Where is the Chief’s house?” he asked when he was
tired of looking at their game.

“At the other end of the village,” they said, and he
walked on till he reached a place where a large fire was
burning, with people sitting round it. The chief was
there too, and the boy saw his little wolf playing about
near his father.

“There is a man here,” exclaimed the Wolf Chief.
“Vanish all of you!” and the wolf people vanished in-
stantly, all but the little wolf, who ran up to the boy and
smelt him and knew him at once. As soon as the Wolf
Chief beheld that, he said:

“T am your friend; fear nothing. I sent my son to
help you because you were starving, and I am glad you
have come in quest of him.” But after a pause, he
added:

“Still, I do not think I will let him go back with you;
but I will aid you in some other way,” and the boy did
not guess that the reason the chief was so pleased to see
him was because he had painted the little wolf. Yet,

[ 246 |

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

as he glanced at the little beast again, he observed with
surprise that it did not look like a wolf any longer, but
like a human being.

“Take out the fish-hawk’s quill that is hanging on the
wall, and if you should meet a bear, point the quill straight
at it, and it will fly out of your hand. I will also give
you this,” and he opened a box and lifted out a second
quill stuck in a blanket. “If you lay this side on a sick
person, it will cure him; and if you lay the other side on
your enemy, it will kill him. Thus you can grow rich
by healing sick people.”

So the boy and the Wolf Chief made friends, and they
talked together a long time, and the boy put many
questions about things he had seen in the town, which
puzzled him.

“What was the toy the children were playing with?”
he asked at last.

“That toy belongs to me,” answered the chief. “If
it appears to you in the evening it means bad weather,
and if it appears in the morning it means fine weather.
Then we know that we can go out on the lake. It is a
good toy.”

“But,” continued he, “you must depart now, and
before you leave eat this, for you have a long journey
to make and you will need strength for it,” and he dropped
something into the boy’s mouth.

And the boy did not guess that he had been absent
for two years, and thought it was only two nights.

Then he journeyed back to his own town, not a boy any
more, buta man. Near the first house he met a bear and
he held the quill straight towards it. Away it flew and
hit the bear right in the heart; so there was good meat
for hungry people. Further on, he passed a flock of sheep,
and the quill slew them all and he drew it out from the
heart of the last one. He cooked part of a sheep for
himself and hid the rest where he knew he could find
them. After that he entered the town.

[ 247 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

It seemed strangely quiet. What had become of all
his friends and of the children whom he had left behind
him when he left to seek for his dog? He opened the
door of a hut and peeped in: three or four bodies were
stretched on the floor, their bones showing through their
skin, dead of starvation; for after the boy had gone to
the mountains there was no one to bring them food. He
opened another door, and another and another; every-
where it was the same story. Then he remembered the
gift of the Wolf Chief and he drew the quill out of his
blanket and laid one side of it against their bodies, so that
they all came to life again, and once more the town was
full of noise and gaiety.

“Now come and hunt with me,” he said; but he did
not show them his quill lest he should lose it as he had
lost the dog. And when they beheld a flock of mountain
sheep grazing, he let fly the quill so quickly that nobody
saw it go, neither did they see him pull out the quill and
hide it in his blanket. After that they made a fire and
all sat down to dine, and those who were not his friends
gave him payment for the meat.

For the rest of his life the man journeyed from place
to place, curing the sick and receiving payment from their
kinsfolk. But those who had been dead for many years
took a long while to get well, and their eyes were always
set deep back in their heads, and had a look as if they

had seen something.

[ 248 |

MYTHS AND LEGENDS
REFERENCES

Boas, Franz. Kwakiutl tales. Columbia Univ. Cont.
Anthrop. Vol. 2. New York, Igto.

Jupson, KaTHERINE B., editor. Myths and legends of
Alaska. Chicago (A. C. McClurg), 1911.

—— Myths and legends of California and the Old South-
west. Chicago (A. C. McClurg), 1912.

—— Myths and legends of the Great Plains. Chicago
(ANG. McClure), 1913:

Lanc, Mrs. The strange story book. Edited by Andrew
Lang. London and New York (Longmans, Green),
1913.

Lummis, Cuartes F. The man who married the moon,
and other Pueblo Indian folk-stories. New York,
1894.

Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. 1gth Ann. Rep.
Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Washington, 1902.

Spence, Lewis. The myths of the North American
Indians. London (Harrap), 1914.

Swanton, Joun R. Haida texts and myths. Bur. Amer.
Ethnol. Bull. 29. Washington, 1905.

—— Tlingit Myths and Texts. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull.
39. Washington, 1909.

CHAPTER IX
THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

Except for legends of semi-mythical heroes, no records
have come down to us of the deeds of individual Indians
of America north of Mexico prior to the coming of the
white men in 1492. Before that epoch-making voyage
of Columbus, the red men, to be sure, had inhabited the
continent of North America for many centuries; but
because of the Babel of tongues and the lack of a written
language, their story during all that time is forever lost,
except as it can be read in the rough by those skilled in
interpreting archeology and folklore.

It was not until their white foes became their chroni-
clers that the Indians began really to live in history.
The records of the colonies show that in their dealings
with the invaders the “savages” often prove themselves,
in statecraft and in strategy, the equals of their civilized
opponents. Nevertheless, the superiority of the whites
in equipment, discipline, and knowledge, could not but
give them the ultimate victory. Every brief triumph
of Indian cunning and Indian prowess served only to
prolong a futile struggle against the invincible march
of civilization. But the struggle, though hopeless, was
desperate and determined, and sufficed to give many an
Indian name a permanent place in colonial history.

To Columbus, and indeed to most of the early explorers,
the Indians offered nothing but kindness until events
taught them to do otherwise. The whites, coming in
great ships from beyond the outermost limits of the
Indian world, armed with terrible weapons, bringing

[ 250 ]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

strange animals, and offering in barter bright and glitter-
ing objects never before seen by the red men, had to the
savage mind all the characteristics of gods. Their ad-
vent was easily the most wonderful event in Indian
history. It was therefore natural that these extraordinary
beings should be both attractive and awe-inspiring to the
natives, who welcomed them with offerings of deer meat
and of tobacco sacred to the gods, and were ready to
fall down and worship them.

Too soon came disillusionment, when events revealed
that the new gods had the intention and the power of
supplanting their dusky worshipers in the land. Even
had the Indians remained personally unmolested by the
whites, it would have been well-nigh intolerable to them
to behold their sheltering forests destroyed, their game
animals slaughtered or dispersed, their waterways ob-
structed, and their lands usurped by the all-powerful
strangers. When, in addition to these inescapable in-
juries, they saw their warriors wantonly shot down or
enslaved, their women debauched, and their homes de-
stroyed, it is small wonder that they began to harry and
plunder, to burn and massacre, in a vain attempt to rid
the land of the invader.

For the Indians were no mild-mannered people to be
treated thus with impunity. Wary statesmen, skillful
war leaders they had, and loyally they did their bidding.
No fear of torture or punishment could deter them.
They were familiar with bloodshed under the most re-
volting circumstances. Such a race does not submit
without a struggle to domination by invaders.

The white men, however, had deadly aids which
turned the scale against the Indians. Not only were
they provided with muskets and cannon, protected with
steel armor practically impenetrable to Indian weapons,
and mounted in some instances on armored horses which
struck terror to the savage heart; but they brought in
their train pestilences, such as the smallpox, which

[251]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

decimated the Indian villages, and strong drink, which
stole away the judgment of their statesmen.

The Europeans, for the most part, felt only contempt
for the natives, whom they regarded as an inferior race
and whose rights they considered themselves in no way
bound to respect. Moreover, many of the colonizers
looked upon themselves as a new holy people, invading
a new promised land, whose pagan inhabitants it was
the will of the Almighty that they should exterminate.
Franklin quotes one of the Indian orators as saying:
“The Great Spirit, who made all things, made everything
for some use. Now, when he made rum he said, ‘Let
this be for the Indians to get drunk with; and it must
be so.’”” And Franklin, Quaker and peace lover, adds:
“Indeed, if it be the design of Providence to extirpate
these savages in order to make room for the cultivators
of the earth, it seems not impossible that rum may be
the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the
tribes who formerly inhabited the seacoast.”

When the colonists, through encroachments and mis-
understandings which led to acts of violence, became
familiar with the horrors of Indian warfare, fury and
hatred were added to their original feelings of contempt
and arrogance. They now looked upon the Indians
not merely as inferior beings but as dangerous wild beasts
that it was their duty to destroy. Thus arose those sav-
age Indian wars which raged for so long in New England,
Virginia, and the Carolinas.

Not only were there natural local causes of antagonism
between the Indians and the whites, but European quar-
rels of long standing led the English, French, Spanish,
and Dutch to play off against each other the forces of
the savages. Thus in New England both the French
and the Dutch were instrumental in inciting Indian
warfare, the one on the northern, the other on the south-
western border. Besides frequent Indian forays in the
remoter districts, there were two serious wars between

[252]

PLATE 77

Powhatan’s mantle of deerskin with figures worked in shells,
obtained by early Virginia colonists 300 years ago. In the Ash-
molean Museum, Oxford

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

the New England colonists and the Indians in the seven-
teenth century.

In 1637 the colony of Connecticut, aided by a few men
from Massachusetts, waged a war of extermination
against the Pequot Indians, by which the entire tribe was
reduced to an impotence almost equivalent to anni-
hilation. For forty years thereafter the Indians made
no determined stand against the whites, although Con-
necticut was involved to some extent in a struggle be-
tween the Narraganset and the Mohegan, both of whom
had signed a treaty of peace with the English in 1638,
at the close of the Pequot War. The Mohegan treach-
erously murdered the Sachem of the Narraganset at
the instigation of the commissioners of the United Col-
onies, thereby cementing an alliance between their chief,
Uncas, and the colony of Connecticut, which lasted for
forty years. Because of the jealousy it created among
other tribes, this pact between the Mohegan and the
English became one of the chief causes of the final struggle
between the Indians and the whites for the possession of
New England territory, known as King Philip’s War.

King Philip, as the English called him, was the second
son of Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag tribe, who
had always maintained friendly relations with the white
men. On the death of his father and elder brother,
Philip, or Metacom, became chief.

He was the most remarkable of all the Indians of
New England. For nine years after his elevation to
the chieftaincy, although accused of plotting against
the colonists, he seems to have devoted his energies
to observation and preparation rather than to overt
actions of a warlike nature. He even acknowledged
himself the King’s subject. But war with the English
was inevitable, and the struggle called King Philip’s
War (1675-76) broke out, resulting in the practical ex-
termination of the Indians after they had inflicted great
losses upon the whites.

[ 253 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

The ability of King Philip is seen in the plans he made
before the war began, the confederacy he formed, and
the havoc he wrought among the white settlements.
Of ninety towns, fifty-two were attacked and twelve
were completely destroyed. The bravery of the Indians
was in many cases remarkable. Only treachery among
the natives in all probability saved the colonists from
extinction. In the decisive battle, a night attack, at a
a swamp fortress in Rhode Island, August 12, 1676, the
last force of the Indians was defeated with great slaughter,
King Philip himself being among the slain. His body
was subjected to the indignities usual at that time,
and his head is said to have been exposed at Plymouth
for twenty years. His wife and little son were sold as
slaves in the West Indies.

Widely divergent estimates of King Philip’s character
and achievements have been entertained by different
authorities, but he can not but be considered a man of
marked abilities, Weeden says: “History has made
him ‘King Philip’ to commemorate the heroism of his
life and death. He almost made himself a king by his
marvelous energy and statecraft put forth among the
New England tribes. Had the opposing power been a
little weaker, he might have founded a temporary king-
dom on the ashes of the colonies.” King Philip has
furnished the inspiration for several poems, tales, and
histories.

Meantime, somewhat similar struggles, with the in-
evitable outcome of victory for the whites and defeat
for the Indians, were taking place farther south. Though
oft-told, the story of the colony of Virginia and its dealings
with Powhatan and his family is too interesting and appro-
priate to be omitted. The settlement at Jamestown, Vir-
ginia, in 1607, was made in spring, when beautiful flowers
filled the woods and beguiled the newcomers into fancy-
ing that all would go easily and well. They took no care
to raise food, but wasted the warm months without serious

[254]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

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Held this fiate & Syflion where Capt: Smith oe
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Fic. 11. A map published in Captain John Smith’s History of Virginia
[255]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

preparation for winter. When sickness and starvation
threatened them, the bold Captain John Smith, though
envied and disliked by many, undertook to trade for corn
with the Indians of the great confederation of the Pow-
hatan. Ascending the River Chickahominy in December
1607, his skiff was at length stopped by shallows, but he
proceeded by canoe with two companions and an Indian
guide. Landing in White Oak Swamp, near the present
city of Richmond, they were attacked by 200 Indians
under the chief Opecancanough, and captured. Two Eng-
lishmen were killed, but Smith, as he says, so astonished
his captors with his pocket compass and his knowledge
that they, regarding him as a magician, carried him about
the country, and at length to their great “emperor,” Pow-
hatan, who received them at Werowocomoco (now
Gloucester on the York River), where, clad in a coonskin
robe, he held his court in a kind of long wigwam.

Here, as Smith says, after some time two stones were
brought before the emperor, and Smith, being bound,
was laid with his head thereon. Warriors with clubs
were about to dash out his brains, when it is said the
princess Pocahontas, about 13 years of age, threw her-
self upon him and saved his life. Powhatan adopted
Smith as his son and made him a chief, gave him corn,
and sent him back to the settlement, where he arrived
in good time to save the remnant of the English, and to
discomfit his enemies.

The princess Pocahontas became very friendly and
came often to Jamestown bringing food. She was some-
times dressed in a robe of doeskin lined with down from
the breast of the wild pigeon, and wore a white plume
in her hair, and bracelets of coral. Powhatan, who ruled
a confederacy of many tribes scattered over 8,000 square
miles of territory, with a total population of 8,000 In-
dians including 2,500 warriors, remained friendly to the
English, even in their lowest distress of starvation and
sickness. So also did his son Mantauquas.

[ 256 ]

PLATE 78

Pocahontas
From a copy of the Booton Hall portrait, courtesy of
Mr. Fairfax Harrison

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

Captain John Smith made many expeditions of trade
and exploration among the rivers of Virginia and Mary-
land, during which he mapped the country with surprising
accuracy; he showed great tact in dealing with the Indians,
and great firmness in controlling the English. After two
years, however, sick and wounded, he returned to Eng-
land. His successor, Captain Argall, equally bold, but
without tact or scruple, treacherously seized Pocahontas
and held her at Jamestown as a hostage for claims against
Powhatan. While there she loved and married John Rolfe,
and bore him a son named Thomas Rolfe, from whom
several prominent Virginian families, including John
Randolph of Roanoke, trace descent. When Pocahontas
visited England with her husband and son, she was re-
ceived with much honor; but her romantic adventures
soon came to a tragic end. Just as she was about to set
sail for Virginia she was stricken with smallpox and died,
being then only twenty-two years of age.

The peaceable attitude of Powhatan lulled to rest
any fears of the colonists, so that by 1620 the Indians
were allowed to go freely into the settlements, and even
into the settlers’ houses, were employed as servants, and
had learned to use the English weapons. When Pow-
hatan died his brothers, Opitchapan and Opecancanough
in succession ruled in his stead. This last chief, far
from cherishing the friendly views of Powhatan, pre-
pared for the extirpation of the English invaders. His
plans were kept so secret, that, except for a warning
given by friendly Indians to the village of Jamestown,
no suspicion of his purpose was felt by the settlers.
Suddenly, on a concerted day and hour of April, 1622,
the Indians fell upon the unsuspecting colonists simul-
taneously from the Chesapeake to the farthest settle-
ments inland. A few of the English successfully de-
fended themselves, and Jamestown was saved by the
warning; but 347 of the whites were butchered.

[ 257]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

A grim revenge, not less bloodthirsty than the attack,
was taken by the survivors, breaking the power of the
Powhatan. The colony grew and prospered till it far
outnumbered the Indian population. Yet Opecancanough
nourished his hatred. At length, in 1644, when an old
man of nearly 100 years of age, a second time he fomented
a sudden massacre in which 300 English were slain.
Governor Berkeley took the field against him with a body
of horsemen, and at length captured the aged chief,
who was so emaciated and feeble as to require to be
carried in a litter, and even to need aid to open his eyes.
Opecancanough was taken to Jamestown and displayed
to the people. This he resented, and asking that his
eyelids be raised, he said sternly to his captors, “Had it
been Opecancanough’s fortune to take Sir William
Berkeley a prisoner, he would have disdained to make a
show of him.” A soldier who had lost relatives in the
massacre shot the aged chief in revenge. The Indians
were harried and never again in the tidewater section
of Virginia made a stand against the whites.

The Tuscarora, an Iroquoian tribe of North Carolina,
narrowly escaped a similar fate of persecution and ex-
tinction. The first authentic information concerning
this people is given by Lawson, sometime Surveyor
General of North Carolina, in his History of Carolina,
written about 1709 and published in 1718. He knew
these Indians well, having lived in close contact with
them for many years.

Although the Tuscarora were originally a peaceable
and industrious people, they were speedly brutalized
by the vices of the colonists with whom they came in
contact; their women were debauched by the whites and
both men and women were kidnapped and sold into
slavery. The colonists of North Carolina, like their
Puritan brethren of New England, did not concede to
the Indian any right to the soil; hence the lands of the
Tuscarora and of their Indian neighbors and allies were

[258 ]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

appropriated without thought of purchase. It is not
strange, therefore, that such conduct on the part of the
whites should eventually have awakened distrust and
jealousy in the minds of the erstwhile amiable Tusca-
rora, which, fomented by these and other grievances,
finally ripened into a hatred that led to resistance and
reprisal.

Perhaps the most lucid and condensed statement of
the wrongs suffered by the Tuscarora is contained in a
petition which they made to the Provincial Government
of Pennsylvania in 1710. They officially formulated a
number of proposals embodying their grievances and
their desire to have these adjusted or removed by the
conclusion of peace, and to this end they sent, through
another [roquoian tribe, the Conestoga (Susquehanna),
an embassy with these pacific overtures to the people and
government of Pennsylvania. The governor and pro-
vincial council dispatched two commissioners to meet this
embassy at Conestoga on June 8, 1710, where, in addition
to the Tuscarora emissaries, they found Civility and four
other Conestoga chiefs, and Opessa, the head chief of the
Shawnee. In the presence of these officials the Tuscarora
ambassadors delivered their proposals, attested by eight
wampum belts, at the same time informing the Pennsyl-
vania commissioners that these were sent as an overture
for the purpose of asking for a cessation of hostilities until
the following spring, when their chiefs and head men would
come in person “to sue for the peace they so much de-
sired.” By the first belt, the elder women and the
_ mothers besought the friendship of the Christian people,
the Indians, and the government of Pennsylvania, so
that they might fetch wood and water without risk of
danger. By the second, the children born and those
about to be born, implored for room to sport and play
without the fear of death or slavery. By the third, the
young men asked for the privilege of leaving their
towns, without the fear of death or slavery, to hunt for

[259]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

meat for their mothers, their children, and the aged ones.
By the fourth, the old men, the elders of the people,
asked for the consummation of a lasting peace, so that
the forest (the paths to other tribes) might be as safe for
them as their palisaded towns. By the fifth, the entire
tribe asked for a firm peace. By the sixth, the chiefs
asked for the establishment of a lasting peace with the
government, people, and Indians of Pennsylvania, where-
by they would be relieved from “those fearful appre-
hensions they have these several years felt.” By the
seventh, the Tuscarora begged for a “cessation from
murdering and taking them,” so that thereafter they
would not fear “‘a mouse, or anything that ruffles the
leaves.” By the eighth, the tribe, being strangers to
the people and government of Pennsylvania, asked for
an official path or means of communication between
them.

It was the statement of a tribe at bay, who desired to
remove to a more just and friendly government than that
whence they came. At this time there was no war
between them and the white people; there had been no
massacre by the Tuscarora, no threat of hostility on the
part of the Indians, yet to maintain peace and to avoid
the impending shedding of blood, they were even then
willing to forsake their homes. The petition not meet-
ing with a favorable reception by the commissioners
of Pennsylvania, the Conestoga chiefs present at the
conference determined to send these belts, brought by
the Tuscarora, to the Iroquois confederation. It was the
reception of the belts with their pitiful messages by the
Five Nations that eventually moved the latter to take
steps to shield and protect the Tuscarora.

Disappointed in their attempt to escape peacefully
from their persecutors, the Tuscarora sought revenge
by massacring about 130 of the colonists on September
22, 1711. Colonel Barnwell, sent by South Carolina
to the aid of North Carolina, drove the Tuscarora into

[ 260 |

ie 4 Y - 2 *
ebsodworis asibal —

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

meat for their mothers, their childven, ani the aged ones.
By the fourth, the old men, the elders, of the people,
asked for the consummation of 4 lasting peace, so that
the forest (the paths to other tribes) migit be as safe for
them as their palisaded towns. By the fifth, the entire
tribe asked for a firm meaee, By the sixth, the chiefs

asked for the Eatabiiey eget of a lasting peace. with the
government,. peopl and Indians of Pennsy!vania, where-
by they would | er from “those fearful appre-
hensions they have these several years felt.” By the
seventh, the Thscarora begged for a “cessation from
murdering att taking them,” so that thereafter they
woul iear “a mouse, ptagpyéhing that ruffles the
eat Gy the eighth, the tribe, being strangers to

ie eagle and gdndianyarrowheddgand:spebrheads, asked for
an official path or means of communication between
them.

It was the statement of a tribe at bay, who desired to
remove to a more just and friendly government than that
whence they came. At this time there was no war
between them and the white people; there had been no
massacre by the Tuscarora, no threat of hostility on the
part of the Indians, yet to maintain peace and to avoid
the impending- shedding of blood, they were even then
willing to forsake their homes. The petition not meet-
ing with a favorable reception by the commissioners
of Pasneaieete the Conestoga chiefs present at the
conference determined to send these belts, brought by
the Tuscarora, to the Iroquois confederation. It was the
reception of the belts with their pitiful messages by the
Five Nations that eventually hated the latter to take
steps to shield and protect the Tuscarora.

Disappointed in their attempt to escape peacefully
from their persecutors, the Tuscarora sought revenge
by massacring about 130 of the colonists on September
22, 1711. Colonel Barnwell, sene by South Carolina
to the aid of North Carolina, drove the Tuscarora into

[ 260 |

a
7

we ee 2 i

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

a palisaded town, defeated them, and offered them a
treaty of peace. This treaty the English later violated
by seizing some Indians and sending them away into
slavery. This was the beginning of the second war
between the Tuscarora and their allies and the people
of North Carolina. Aid’was again sent by South Car-
olina and the Tuscarora were again defeated.

After their second defeat at the hands of the English,
the Tuscarora resolved to accept the hospitality of
their kinsmen and began a migration to the north which
was not completed until nine years later. In 1722 the
last of the exiles were received into the “‘extended lodge”
of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who were thereafter
known as the Six Nations. The numbers of those who
remained in their homes gradually fell off till the tribe
died out in North Carolina altogether.

It is a xelief to turn from these tragic stories to the
history of the colonies of Pennsylvania and Georgia,
in both of which peace was long preserved by a mild
and scrupulously just treatment of the Indians. The
Quaker, William Penn, first proprietor in Pennsylvania,
lived among the Indians and learned their ways. In
founding his colony, although he held the territory as
owner under a grant from the English crown, he was
careful to make treaties with the Indians which consti-
tuted purchases of lands. These agreements, made
with suitable solemnity and recorded by the Indians in
their belts of wampum, were scrupulously kept on both
sides. Consequently the Pennsylvania colonists suf-
fered little or nothing from Indian raids for about seventy
years, while terrible petty wars were raging in Virginia
and New England. Indians helped white families with
food in winter time, and white children were left in Indian
care. The Quakers lived among them unarmed.

It was not until the great French and Indian War of
1755 that real trouble came to Pennsylvania. After
Braddock’s defeat organized bodies of French and

[ 261 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Indians harried the whole frontier of the colony, and
the usual horrors of scalping, burning, and massacre
were perpetrated by the Hurons, Shawnee, and other
Indian partisans of the French. This led to reprisals
by some of the colonists, who failed in many instances
to distinguish the peaceable from the hostile.

Georgia was colonized under the benevolent proprie-
torship of James Oglethorpe, a man who sought to
ameliorate the condition of the wretched by giving them
an opportunity in a New World. It was quite in his
character to make a just treaty with the Indians and
to keep it. Thus Georgia, too, for a long time enjoyed
peaceful relations with the red men.

The Spaniards, although their policy toward the
Indians was less relentless than that of the majority of
the English colonists, nevertheless had several notable
conflicts with the natives of the South and West. The
battle of Mavilla (in what is now southern Alabama),
October 15, 1540, between the Indians and the Spaniards
of De Soto’s army, has been described by the historian
Bancroft as probably the greatest Indian battle ever
fought within the United States. The Indians were
commanded by Tascalusa, a powerful chief of the Mobile
tribe, whose name signifies “Black Warrior.”

Tascalusa is described by the historians of the ex-
pedition, at his first meeting with De Soto, as very tall
and strongly built, symmetrical and handsome in ap-
pearance, with an air of haughty dignity, seated upon
a raised platform with his son beside him and his princi-
pal men around, one of whom held erect a sort of ban-
ner of deerskin curiously painted. His head was covered
with a turban in the fashion of the Gulf tribes, and over
his shoulders was thrown a feather mantle which reached
to his feet. He looked on with contempt at the eques-
trian exercises with which the Spaniards strove to 1m-
press him, and gave unwilling ear to their demands for
burden carriers and provisions, but when threatened

[ 262 |

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

by De Soto replied that he would send messengers ahead
to his principal town, Mavilla, to order all to be pre-
pared. Instead of this, however, he instructed the
messengers to call in all the fighting men of his tribe to
Mavilla, a stockaded town between the Alabama and
Tombigbee rivers, to attack the Spaniards.

On the arrival of the advance guard of Spaniards,
they unloaded their baggage in the public square, the
Indians being apparently friendly and receiving them
with a dance of welcome; but while this was going on
some of the soldiers noticed them concealing bundles of
bows and arrows under branches of trees, and on enter-
ing one of the houses the upper platforms near the roof
were found filled with armed warriors. De Soto, on
being warned, at once made preparations for defense and
sent for the chief, who refused to come. An attempt
to seize him precipitated the battle, in which the Span-
iards were at first driven out of the town, followed by
the Indians, who had freed the Indian burden carriers
of the Spaniards from their chains and given them bows
and arrows to use against the white men. In the open
country outside the town the Spaniards were able to use
their cavalry, and although the Indians desperately
opposed their naked bodies, with bow and arrow, to the
swords, long lances, and iron armor of the Spanish horse-
men for a whole day, the town was at last set on fire and
those who were not cut down outside were driven back
into the flames. Men, women, and children fought, and
many deliberately committed suicide when they saw
that the day was lost. Of about 580 Spaniards engaged,
some 20 were killed outright, and 150 wounded, de-
spite their horses and protective armor, besides which
they lost a number of horses, all their baggage, and some
200 pounds of pearls. De Soto himself was wounded and
his nephew was among the killed. The lowest estimate
of the Indian loss was 2,500 men, women, and children
killed. The fate of Tascalusa was never known, but

[ 263 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

the body of his son was found thrust through with a
lance.

The troubles of the Spaniards farther west in the
Pueblo country have already received attention. Once
the foreigners were installed in the region, the uprisings
of the Indians against them seem to have differed from
those in other parts of the continent in that their in-
spiration was as much religious as economic. The
Spaniards did not usurp the uninviting Pueblo lands nor
attempt to expel the owners. They did strive to gather
them into Holy Church, however, and to control their
civil lives. And so, much blood came to be spilled.

The leader of the great Pueblo revolt of 1680 was
Pope (pronounced Po-Pé), a celebrated Tewa medicine-
man of the pueblo of San Juan. He took up his headquar-
ters at Taos and began quietly to fan the flames of civil
and religious revolt, appealing for the restoration of the
old Pueblo life. This developed into a plot to murder
or drive from the country the 2,400 Spanish colonists
and priests. The plot quickly spread among the Pueblos,
meeting with enthusiasm as it went. August 13, 1680,
was the day set for the onslaught, and the news was
communicated by runners, even to the far-off Hopi in
Arizona, by means of a knotted string; but for some reason
the Piros of the lower Rio Grande were not invited to
join in the massacre. Every precaution was taken to
keep from the Spaniards all news of the proposed re-
volt; no woman was permitted to know of it, and, be-
cause suspected of treachery, Pope put his own brother-
in-law to death. Nevertheless the news leaked out,
and Pope’s only hope of success was to strike at once.
The blow came on August to. Four hundred Spanish
colonists, including 21 priests, were murdered, and
Santa Fé was besieged, its thousand inhabitants taking
refuge with governor Antonio de Otermin in the official
buildings. Here they remained until the 20th, when
a sortie made by 100 of the men resulted in the rout of

[ 264 |

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THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

the Indians, 200 being killed and 47 captured and hanged
in the plaza of the town. The following day the Span-
iards abandoned Santa Fé and began their long retreat
down the Rio Grande to El Paso.

Having accomplished this much, Pope set about to
realize the rest of his dream. Those who had been
baptized as Christians were washed with yucca suds;
the Spanish language and all baptismal names were
prohibited; where not already consumed by the burning
of the churches, all Christian objects were destroyed, and
everything done to restore the old order of things. This
project of obliterating everything Spanish from the life
and thought of the Indians met with the same enthusiasm
as that with which the plan of revolt had been received,
and for a time Pope, dressed in ceremonial garb as he went
from pueblo to pueblo, was everywhere received with
honor. His success, however, had been more than he
could stand. Assuming the réle of a despot, he put to
death those who refused to obey his commands, and
took the most beautiful women for himself and his cap-
tains. Then the old enemies of the Pueblos intervened—
drought, and the Apache and the Ute, who took advantage
of the absence of the Spaniards to resume their forays.
Internal dissension also arose. The Keresan tribes and
the Taos and Pecos people fought against the Tewa
and the Tano, and the latter deposed Pope on account
of his lordly demands, electing to his place Luis Tupati,
who ruled the Tewa and the Tano until 1688, when Pope
was again elected. He did not live to see his work de-
stroyed by the reconquest of the province by Vargas in
1692.

The English and the Dutch, the French and the Span-
ish, did not, of course, all pursue an identical policy to-
ward the Indians. Their several attitudes seem to
have agreed, however, in a common sense of superior-
ity over the red man. Perhaps the French came nearer to
accepting him on terms of personal equality than did

[ 265 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

the others, but if this is true it did not prevent the French
from crushing the Indian where the conquest of territory
or economic security necessitated it. Thus the history
of French settlement along the lower Mississippi reads
not unlike the history of English settlement in New
England or the Carolinas,—encroachments on the one
hand, creating friction which led to massacres on the
other, which in turn called for reprisals in the nature of
partial or complete extermination. The fate of the
Natchez tribe in the 18th century inspired two of the
great works of Chateaubriand, Les Natchez and Atala, and
has surrounded these Indians with a legendary aura.

The Natchez constituted the largest tribe on the lower
Mississippi, having an estimated strength of 4,500 souls
in 1650. A strongly centralized government distinguished
them from other tribes, as their head chief seems to have
had absolute power over the property and lives of his
subjects. According to an early historian, as soon as
anyone had the misfortune to displease him or his mother,
they ordered their guards to kill him. “Go and rid me
of that dog,” said they; and they were immediately
obeyed. On the chief’s death his wives committed sui-
cide and parents sacrificed children at his bier. Friction
which may have been inspired in part by English traders
from the Atlantic led to three wars with the French,
in 1716, 1722, and 1729. ‘The first two were minor affairs
involving some deaths and destruction of homes on both
sides, but they seem to have left bitterness which sought
only an excuse to find expression. A political blunder
committed by the French in exacting the head of one of
their principal Suns (chiefs), Old-hair, to avenge the out-
break of 1722, rankled in the breasts of the Natchez.

A brutal and inefficient French governor, Chopart,
brought on the final war by attempting to occupy the
site of the principal Natchez village as a private planta-
tion. The Indians decided that the only way to escape
French exactions was to destroy the French entirely, and

| 266 |

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

they secretly invited the Chickasaw and the Choctaw to
fall upon all the white settlements on the same day. In
order to strike their blows at the same time, each of the
parties to the conspiracy was given a bundle of sticks, one
of which was to be withdrawn and destroyed each day.
According to Swanton, in some manner one or two of
the sticks in the Natchez bundle were destroyed in ad-
dition to the ones abstracted by agreement, so that this
tribe struck their blow two days before the time agreed
upon. Probably either the great chief’s mother who was
friendly to the French, or “Stel-o-na, the beautiful
daughter of White Apple,” who loved a French officer,
abstracted the sticks.

Friendly Indians repeatedly warned Governor Chopart
of the impending attack, a service which he rewarded
by putting the informers in irons. On the day they
supposed was the right one the Natchez appeared at Fort
Rosalie and offered to dance for the entertainment of
some distinguished visitors lately arrived. At a given
signal they interrupted the dance to seize their firearms
and kill the garrison. Contemporary historians state that
the Natchez had too much contempt for Governor Chopart
to kill him themselves and had a slave club him to death.
A conservative estimate places the number of French
killed at 250 and prisoners captured at 150 children and
80 women, and the same number of negro slaves.

Disgruntled at the premature attack of the Natchez
and the failure of their own part of the program, the
Choctaw held out a hand for a large slice of French
plunder. When the Natchez failed to satisfy their
greed they turned traitor and joined forces with the whites
against their erstwhile allies. Eventually, the French
troops from New Orleans and elsewhere arrived with
the Choctaw to storm the Natchez in Fort Rosalie.
This part of the engagement came to an end with the
release by the Natchez of their prisoners in return for the
withdrawal of the French forces which permitted the

| 267 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Indians to escape. They abandoned their villages and
split into three sections, one of which was attacked by
the French in 1831, resulting in many killed and the cap-
ture of 450 who were sold into slavery in Santo Domingo.
A small section remained near their former homes and
were unmolested, while the third and largest group were
received by the Chickasaw and built a village near them
in northen Mississippi.

Almost from the beginning of French activity in north-
ern North America the settlers and the government of
New France came into more or less sympathetic contact
with several tribes of the country, thanks to the peaceful
efforts of the missionaries and the government’s desire
to use the natives as a bulwark against the power of the
English. Toher alliance with the Algonquian tribes of the
Great Lakes and the regions south and east of them,
including New France and Acadia, France owed in great
part her strength on this continent, while on the other
hand the confederacy of the Iroquois, the natural enemies
of the Algonquian peoples, contributed largely to her
overthrow.

The most celebrated of the Indian allies of the French
during their long struggle with the English in America
was Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, born about 1720, probably
on Maumee river, Ohio, about the mouth of the Auglaize.
Though his paternity is not positively established, it
seems likely that his father was an Ottawa chief and his
mother a Chippewa woman. J. Wimer says that as
early as 1746 he commanded the Indians—mostly Ottawa
—who defended Detroit against the attack of the northern
tribes. It is supposed he led the Ottawa and Chippewa
warriors at Braddock’s defeat. He first appears promi-
nently in history at his meeting with Maj. Robert Rogers,
in 1760, at the place where Cleveland, Ohio, now stands.
The British had dispatched this officer to take possession
of Detroit. Pontiac objected to the further invasion of
the territory, but, learning that the French had been

[ 268 |

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18 ALVId

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

defeated in Canada, consented to the surrender of Detroit
to the British and was the means of preventing an attack
on the latter by a body of Indians at the mouth of the
strait.

What gives him most prominence in history and forms
the chief episode of his life is the plan he devised for a
general uprising of the Indians and the destruction of the
forts and settlements of the British. For a time he
displayed a disposition to be on terms of friendship
with the British and consented to acknowledge King
George, but only as an “uncle,” not asa superior. Failing
to receive the recognition he considered his due as a great
sovereign, and being deceived by the rumor that the
French were preparing for the reconquest of their American
possessions, he resolved to put his scheme into operation.
He brought to his aid most of the tribes northwest of the
Ohio, and planned a sudden and simultaneous attack
on all the British posts on the Lakes—at St. Joseph,
Ouiatenon, Michilimackinac, and Detroit—as well as on
the Miami and Sandusky, and also an attack on the forts
at Niagara, Presque Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, and Fort
Pitt (Du Quesne). He reserved the capture of Detroit
for himself. The end of May, 1763, was the time set
for each tribe to attack the nearest fort and, after killing
the garrison, to fall on the adjacent settlements. In
short order the posts at Sandusky, St. Joseph, Miami
(Ft. Wayne), Ouiatenon, Michilimackinac, Presque Isle,
Le Boeuf, and Venango fell, and the garrison in most
cases suffered massacre; but the British successfully
defeated the main points, Detroit and Fort Pitt, and
forced the Indians to raise the siege. This was a severe
blow to Pontiac, but what finally crushed his hopes was
the receipt of a letter from M. Neyon, commander of
Fort Chartres, advising him to desist from further war-
fare, as peace had been concluded between France and
Great Britian. However, unwilling to abandon entirely
his hope of driving back the British, he attempted to

[ 269 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

incite the tribes along the Mississippi to join in another
effort. Unsuccessful in this, he finally made peace at
Detroit, August 17, 1765. In 1769 he attended a drink-
ing carousal at Cahokia, Illinois, where he was murdered
by a Kaskaskia Indian. Pontiac, if not fully the equal
of the great Tecumseh, stands closely second to him in
strength of mind and breadth of comprehension.

The history of the Government’s relations with the
Indians is a checkerboard of good and evil, errors of
intent and errors of mistaken kindness, mixed with
enlightened fairness. It could not probably have been
otherwise. In any case the net result has been to drive
the Indian off the unfenced land and corral him in reser-
vations, to wean him from the paths and faiths of his
race, and to make of him an “‘American.”

Soon after the Colonies had secured their independence,
they set about the “winning of the West,” a policy which
involved not only the acquisition of territory by purchase
and conquest from France, Spain, and Mexico, but like-
wise the conquest of the powerful Indian tribes who
roamed the plains and haunted the forests of the vast
region which lay beyond the original thirteen States.
The conflict brought out many notable Indian leaders,
men of intelligence, force and, of course, courage, who
would do honor to any people. Destiny sentenced them
to employ these qualities in behalf of a cause that could
not win, but in so doing she added the dignity of trag-
edy to their fame. Of none is this more true than of
Tecumseh, Shooting Star, celebrated chief and son of
chiefs of the Shawnee.

Tecumseh came inevitably by his implacable enmity
to the white invader. Born in 1768, the death of his
father followed shortly in the battle of Point Pleasant
in 1774. The Kentuckians destroyed his native village
of Piqua on Mad River, about six miles southwest of the
present Springfield, Ohio, in 1780. His guardian and
elder brother fell in battle with the whites on the Tenn-

(270)

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

essee frontier in 1788 or 1789. Still another brother
was killed by Tecumseh’s side at Wayne’s victory in
1794. While still a young man Tecumseh distinguished
himself in the border wars of the period, but was noted
also for his humane character, evinced by persuading
his tribe to discontinue the practice of torturing pris-
oners.

Together with his brother, Tenskwatawa the Prophet,
he was an ardent opponent of the advance of the white
man, and denied the right of the Government to make
land purchases from any single tribe, on the ground that
the territory, especially in the Ohio valley country,
belonged to all the tribes in common. On tthe refusal
of the Government to recognize this principle, he under-
took the formation of a great confederacy of all the
western and southern tribes for the purpose of holding
the Ohio river as the permanent boundary between the
two races. In pursuance of this object he or his agents
visited every tribe from Florida to the head of the Mis-
souri river. While Tecumseh was organizing the work
in the south, his plans were brought to disastrous over-
throw by the premature battle of Tippecanoe under the
direction of the Prophet, November 7, 1811.

On the breaking out of the War of 1812, Tecumseh
at once led his forces to the support of the British, and was
rewarded with a regular commission as brigadier-general,
having under his command some 2,000 warriors of the
allied tribes. He fought at Frenchtown, The Raisin,
Fort Meigs, and Fort Stephenson, and covered Proctor’s
retreat after Perry’s decisive victory on Lake Erie, until
declining to retreat farther, he compelled Proctor to make
a stand on the Thames River, near the present Chatham,
Ontario. In the bloody battle which ensued, the allied
British and Indians were completely defeated by Harrison,
Tecumseh himself falling in the front of his warriors,
October 5, 1813, being then in his forty-fifth year. With
a presentiment of death he had discarded his general’s

[271]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

uniform before the battle and dressed himself in his
Indian deerskin.

From all that is said of Tecumseh in contemporary
record, there is no reason to doubt the verdict of Trum-
bull that he was the most extraordinary Indian character
in United States history. There is no true portrait
of him in existence, the one commonly given as such in
Lossing’s “War of 1812,” and reproduced in Appleton’s
“Cyclopedia of American Biography” and Mooney’s
“Ghost Dance,” being a composite result based on a pencil
sketch made about 1812, on which were mounted his cap,
medal, and uniform.

In contrast to Tecumseh stands Pushmataha the man
who was largely responsible for the failure of Tecumseh’s
mission to the Choctaw in 1811, when he attempted to
persuade them to join in an uprising against the Amer-
icans. ‘This noted Choctaw, though he opposed the great
Shawnee Chief, presents by no means an unheroic figure.
Of unknown ancestry, he was born on Noxuba Creek in
Noxubee County, Mississippi, in 1764. The bravery
he manifested in war with the Osage gained for him a
chieftaincy before he had reached twenty.

During the War of 1812 most of the Choctaw became
friendly to the United States through the opposition of
Pushmataha and John Pitchlynn to a neutral course,
Pushmataha being alleged to have said, on the last day
of a ten day’s council: ““The Creeks were once our friends.
They have joined the English and we must now follow
different trails. When our fathers took the hand of
Washington, they told him the Choctaw would always
be friends of his nation, and Pushmataha can not be false
to their promises. I am now ready to fight against both
the English and the Creeks.” He was at the head of
500 warriors during the war, engaging in 24 fights and
serving under Jackson’s eye in the Pensacola campaign.
In 1813, with about 150 Choctaw warriors, he joined
General Claiborne and distinguished himself in the attack

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THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

and defeat of the Creeks under Weatherford at Kant-
chati, or Holy Ground, on the Alabama River, Alabama.
While aiding the United States troops he was so rigid
in his discipline that he soon succeeded in converting his
wild warriors into efficient soldiers, while for his energy in
fighting the Creeks and Seminole he became popularly
known to the whites as ““The Indian General.”

Pushmataha signed the treaties of November 16, 1805;
October 24, 1816; and October 18, 1820. In negotiating
the last treaty, at Doak’s Stand, “he displayed much
diplomacy and showed a business capacity equal to that
of General Jackson, against whom he was pitted, in
driving a sharp bargain.”” In 1824 he went to Washing-
ton to negotiate another treaty in behalf of his tribe.

Following a brief visit to Lafayette, then at the capital,
Pushmataha became ill and died within twenty-four
hours. In accordance with his request he was buried
with military honors, a procession of 2,000 persons,
military and civilian, accompanied by President Jackson,
following his remains to Congressional Cemetery. A
shaft bearing the following inscriptions was erected over
his grave: ““Pushmataha a Choctaw chief lies here. This
monument to his memory is erected by his brother chiefs
who were associated with him in a delegation from their
nation, in the year 1824, to the General Government of
the United States.” “‘Push-ma-taha was a warrior of
great distinction; he was wise in council; eloquent in
an extraordinary degree; and on all occasions, and under
all circumstances, the white man’s friend.” “He died in
Washington, on the 24th of December, 1824, of the croup,
in the 6oth year of his age.”” General Jackson frequently
expressed the opinion that Pushmataha was the greatest
and the bravest Indian he had every known, and John
Randolph of Roanoke, in pronouncing a eulogy on him
in the Senate, uttered the words regarding his wisdom,
his eloquence, and his friendship for the whites that after-
ward were inscribed on his monument.

[2731

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

He was deeply interested in the education of his people,
and it is said devoted $2,000 of his annuity for fifteen
years toward the support of the Choctaw school system.
As mingo of the Oklahannali, Pushmataha was succeeded
by Nittakechi, “Day-prolonger.” Several portraits of
Pushmataha are extant, including one in the Redwood
Library at Newport, Rhode Island. The first portrait,
painted by C. B. King at Washington in 1824, shortly
before Pushmataha’s death, was burned in the Smith-
sonian fire of 1865.

The Americans purchased the consolidation of prac-
tically every advance they made in the West by a war,
in addition to the constant border fighting and massacres.
Open war came usually as a climax to the guerrilla fighting
and represented the last stand of the Indians in a certain
area. The Black Hawk War, of 1832, was typical of these
forlorn outbursts. Added interest attaches to it because
of the participation in it of one Abraham Lincoln, Captain
of Illinois Volunteers.

This war took its name from Black Hawk, a subordinate
Chief of the Sauk and Fox Indians. Born at a Sauk
village at the mouth of the Rock River, Illinois, in 1767, he
distinguished himself as a warrior when only fifteen.
Four years later he led two hundred Sauk and Foxes in a
desperate engagement with an equal number of Osage,
destroying half of his opponents, killing five men and a
woman with his own hands. In a subsequent raid on the
Cherokee his party killed twenty-eight with a loss of but
seven. But the dead included his own father, who was
guardian of the tribal medicine, and his loss led Black
Hawk to refrain from war during the five years following
and to endeavor to increase his supernatural power.
At the end of that time he led an attack against the
Osage, destroyed a camp of forty lodges, with the ex-
ception of two women, and himself slew nine persons.
On a subsequent expedition against the Cherokee in
revenge for his father’s death he found only five enemies,

[ 274]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

four menandawoman. The latter he carried off, but the
men he released deeming it no honor to kill so few. Dur-
ing the War of 1812 he fought with the British.

By the treaty of November 3, 1804, concluded at St.
Louis, the Sauk and the Foxes had agreed to surrender
all their lands on the east side of the Mississippi, but
had been left undisturbed therein until the country should
be thrown open to settlement. After the conclusion of
the War of 1812, however, the stream of settlers pushed
westward once more and began to pour into the old Sauk
and Fox territory. The majority of the Sauk, including
the famous orator, Keokuk, bowing to the inevitable,
soon moved across the Mississippi into what is now Iowa;
but Black Hawk declined to leave, maintaining that
when he had signed the treaty of St. Louis he had been
deceived regarding its terms. At the same time he en-
tered into negotiations with the Winnebago, Potawatomi,
and Kickapoo to enlist them in concerted opposition to
the threatened aggressions.

By the year 1832 serious friction had developed. An
order to General Atkinson to demand from the Sauk and
the Foxes the chief members of a band who had massa-
cred some Menominee the year before, precipitated hos-
tilities. Black Hawk led a band estimated at 2,000, of
whom 500 were warriors. The undisciplined militia
proved ineffectual and Black Hawk turned loose his fol-
lowers on the frontier settlements. He attacked Apple
River fort, but was repulsed and fought a sanguinary
battle with Major Dement’s battalion. During the next
two months, volunteers and regulars harried the Indians
to cover, inflicting heavy casualties. The Sioux cut off
a good many and the Winnebago captured Black Hawk
and his principal warrior, Neapope, after the final rout
in August. Black Hawk was then sent East and confined
for more than a month at Fortress Monroe, Virginia,
when he was taken on a tour through the principal eastern
Cities, everywhere proving an object of the greatest in-

[275]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

terest. In 1837 he accompanied Keokuk on a second
trip to the East, after which he settled on the Des Moines
River near Iowaville, there to die on October 3, 1838.

The Sioux have written their name indelibly in the
bloody epic of the white man’s conquest of the West.
The present generation knows more of them, perhaps,
than of other tribes because their warlike activities came
nearer in time. Sitting Bull, who led the rebellion of 1876,
in which Custer was killed, is the best known, but Red
Cloud outranks him and all other Sioux chiefs in merit
and power. Red Cloud led the Oglala Teton Sioux of
Pine Ridge Reservation, the largest band of the Sioux na-
tion. His career extended over the better part of a cen-
tury, from 1822 to 1909. He was a member of the Snake
family, the most distinguished and forceful of his tribe,
and rose to prominence by his own force of character,
having no claim to hereditary chiefship. Red Cloud’s
father died of drunkenness brought about by the intro-
duction of unlimited liquor into the tribe.

When in 1865 the Government undertook to build a
road from Fort Laramie, Wyoming, on the North Platte,
by way of Powder River to the gold regions of Montana,
Red Cloud headed the opposition for his tribe, on the
ground that the influx of travel along the trail would de-
stroy the best remaining buffalo ground of the Indians.
The first small detachment of troops sent out to begin
construction work were intercepted by Red Cloud with
a large party of Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne, and held
practically as prisoners for more than two weeks, but
finally were allowed to proceed when it seemed to the
chief that they might be massacred by his young men. In
the fall of the same year commissioners were sent to
treat with the Oglala for permission to build the road,
but Red Cloud forbade the negotiations and refused to
attend the council.

On June 30, 1866, another council for the same purpose
was called at Fort Laramie, Red Cloud this time attend-

[276 |

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

ing and repeating his refusal to endanger the hunting
erounds of his people. While he was speaking, a strong
force of troops under General Carrington arrived, andon
being told, in reply to a question, that they had come to
build forts and open the road to Montana, he seized his
rifle and with a final defiant message left the council with
his entire following. Another protest to Carrington him-
self proving ineffectual, Red Cloud surrounded the troops
and working force at Fort Kearny with perhaps 2,000
warriors and harassed them so constantly that not even
a load of hay could be brought in from the prairie except
under the protection of a strong guard. On December
21, 1866, an entire detachment of eighty-one men under
Captain Fetterman was cut off and every man killed. On
August 1, 1867, another severe engagement occurred near
the post.

In all this time not a single wagon had been able to
pass over the road, and in 1868 another commission was
appointed to come to terms with Red Cloud, who de-
manded as an ultimatum the abandonment of the three
army posts in the region and of all further attempts to
open the Montana road. A treaty was finally made on
this basis, defining the limits of the Sioux country as
claimed by the Sioux, Red Cloud refusing to sign or even
to be present until the garrisons had actually been with-
drawn, thus winning a complete victory for the position
which he had taken from the beginning. He finally affixed
his signature at Fort Laramie, November 6, 1868. From
that date he seems to have kept his promise to live at
peace with the whites, although constantly resisting the
innovations of civilization. He took no active part in
the Sioux war of 1876, although he is accused of having
secretly aided and encouraged the hostiles. Being con-
vinced of the hopelessness of attempting to hold the Black
Hills after the discovery of gold in that region, he joined
in the agreement of cession in 1876. In the outbreak of
1890-91 also he remained quiet, being then an old man

[ 27 |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

and partially blind, and was even said to have been threat-
ened by the hostiles on account of his loyal attitude toward
the Government.

As a warrior Red Cloud stood first among his people,
claiming eighty coups or separate deeds of bravery in
battle. As a general and statesman he ranked equally
high, several times serving as a delegate to Washington.
His attitude was always that of a patriot from the Indian
standpoint. Unlike Indians generally, he had but one
wife, with whom he lived from early manhood. Person-
ally he is described by one well acquainted with him as a
most courtly chief and a natural-born gentleman, witha
bow as graceful as that of a Chesterfield. For some years
before his death he was blind and decrepit, and lived in a
house built for him by the Government.

Sitting Bull, born in 1834 and so a slightly younger
contemporary of Red Cloud, seems to have been less con-
structive in his quarrels with the whites. He inherited
from his father, a sub-chief, leadership of the Hunkpapa
Teton Sioux. When he was fourteen he accompanied his
father on the warpath against the Crows and counted his
first coup on the body of a fallen enemy. On the return of
the party his father made a feast, gave away many horses,
and announced that his son had won the right to be known
henceforth by his own name. He rapidly acquired influ-
ence in his own band, being especially skillful in the char-
acter of peacemaker. He took an active part in the
Plains wars of the ’60’s, and first became widely known to
the whites in 1866, when he led a memorable raid against
Fort Buford. Sitting Bull was on the warpath with his
band of followers from various tribes almost continuously
from 1869 to 1876, either raiding the frontier posts or
making war on the Crows or the Shoshoni, especially the
former. His autographic pictorial record in the Army
Medical Museum at Washington refers chiefly to contests
with the Crows and to horse stealing.

His refusal to return to a reservation in 1876 led General

[ 278 ]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

Sheridan to begin against him and his followers the cam-
paign which led to the surprise and annihilation of Custer’s
troop on Little Bighorn River, Montana, in June. During
this battle, in which 2,500 to 3,000 Indian warriors en-
gaged, Sitting Bull was in the hills “making medicine,”
and his accurate foretelling of the battle enabled him “‘to
come out of the affair with higher honor than he possessed
when he went into it” (McLaughlin). After this fight
the hostiles separated into two parties. Sitting Bull, in
command of the western party, was attacked by General
Miles and routed; a large number of his followers surren-
dered, but the remainder of the band, including Sitting
Bull himself, escaped to Canada. There they remained
until 1881, when he surrendered at Fort Buford, under
promise of amnesty, and was confined at Fort Randall
until 1883.

Although he had surrendered and gone upon a reserva-
tion, Sitting Bull continued unreconciled. It was through
his influence that the Sioux refused to sell their land in
1888; and it was at his camp at Standing Rock agency
and at his invitation that Kicking Bear organized the first
Ghost Dance on the reservation. The demand for his
arrest was followed by an attempt on the part of some of
his people to rescue him, during which he was shot and
killed by Sergeants Red Tomahawk and Bullhead of the
Indian police, December 15, 1890. His son, Crow Foot,
and several others, with six of the Indian police, were also
killed in the struggle.

Although a chief by inheritance, it was rather Sitting
Bull’s success as an organizer and his later reputation as
a sacred dreamer that brought him into prominence.
According to McLaughlin, “his accuracy of judgment,
knowledge of men, a student-like disposition to observe
natural phenomena, and a deep insight into affairs among
Indians and such white people as he came into contact
with, made his stock in trade, and he made ‘good medi-
cine!” He stood well among his own people, and was

[279]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

respected for his generosity, quiet disposition, and stead-
fast adherence to Indian ideals. He had two wives at
the time of his death (one of whom was known as Pretty
Plume), and was the father of nine children.

The recognition of the rights of his people which Red
Cloud, the Sioux, obtained by the intelligent use of force,
Standing Bear, the Ponca, obtained by a passive resist-
ance which won him the sympathy of the nation and
effected a change in Government policy toward the In-
dians. Little was known of Standing Bear, chief of the
Ponca, until the removal of his people from northern
Nebraska to Indian Territory, on the excuse that the res-
ervation confirmed to them by treaty had been included
in the land granted to the Sioux.

When the order for removal was given, January 16,
1877, Standing Bear strongly opposed it, but in February
he and nine other chiefs were taken South to choose a
reservation. They followed the official, but would not
select a place. Their wearisome journey brought them
to Arkansas City, Kansas, whence they asked to be taken
home. Being refused, they started back afoot, with a few
dollars among them and a blanket each. In forty days
they had walked 500 miles, reaching home April 2, to find
the official there unwilling to listen to protests and deter-
mined to remove the people. He called the military, and
the tribe, losing hope, abandoned their homes in May.
Standing Bear could get no response to his demand to
know why he and his people were arrested and treated as
criminals when they had done no wrong.

The change of climate brought great suffering to the
Ponca; within the year a third of the tribe had died and
most of the survivors were ill or disabled. A son of Stand-
ing Bear died. Craving to bury the lad at his old home,
the chief determined to defy restraint. He took the bones
of his son and with his immediate following turned north-
ward in January, 1879, and in March arrived destitute at
the Omaha Reservation. Asking to borrow land and seed,

[ 280 |

PLATE 83

tht Sites
mil amin. LoerPiaggh

“Saturioua, King of Florida in North America, in the act of going to
war.” About 1564. By Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, earliest
known painter of North American Indians. Courtesy of

Mr. David I. Bushnell, Junior

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

his request was granted, and the Ponca were about to put
in a crop when soldiers appeared with orders to arrest
Standing Bear and his party and return them to Indian
Territory. On their way they camped near Omaha, where
Standing Bear was interviewed by T. H. Tibbles, a news-
paper correspondent, and accounts of the grievances ap-
peared in the Omaha newspapers. The citizens became
actively interested and opened a church, where to a
crowded house the chief repeated his story. Messrs.
Poppleton and Webster proffered legal services to the
prisoners, and in their behalf took out a writ of habeas
corpus. ‘The United States denied the prisoners’ right
to the writ on the ground that they were “not persons
within the meaning of the law.” On April 18 Judge Dundy
decided that “an Indian is a person within the meaning
of the law of the United States,” and therefore had aright
to the writ when restrained in violation of law; that ‘‘no
rightful authority exists for removing by force any of the
prisoners to the Indian Territory,” and therefore “the
prisoners must be discharged from custody.”

Standing Bear and his band returned to northern Ne-
braska. In the winter of 1879-80, accompanied by Su-
sette La Flesche (“‘Bright Eyes”) and Francis La Flesche,
as interpreters, with T. H. Tibbles, Standing Bear visited
the cities of the East, where, by relating his story of wrongs
suffered, he won attention and sympathy. Many people
wrote to the President and to other executive officials of
the Government, and to members of Congress, protest-
ing against the unjust treatment of the Indians. In the
spring of 1880 the Senate appointed a committee to inves-
tigate the Ponca removal, the report of which confirmed
the story of Standing Bear, and a satisfactory adjustment
was effected. Better lands were given those Ponca who
chose to remain in Indian Territory; payment was made
to all who had lost property, and a home was provided
for Standing Bear and his followers at their old reservation.
Here, in September, 1908, after having been instrumental

P2sr |

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

in bringing about a change of Governmental policy
toward all Indians and their homes, the chief died at the
age of 79 and was buried among the hills overlooking the
village site of his ancestors.

The turbulent Indian element in the Southwest was
furnished by the Apache. Although they have been a
hostile people, not only to the whites but to other Indians,
since the Spaniards first made them known to history,
the most serious modern outbreaks seem to have been
due to mismanagement on the part of civil authorities.
The insurrection led by Cochise, a Chiricahua Apache
chief, illustrates this. Although constantly at war with
the Mexicans, he gave no trouble to the Americans until
after he went, in 1861, under a flag of truce, to the camp
of a party of soldiers to deny that his tribe had abducted
a white child. The denial angered the commanding
officer and he ordered the visiting chiefs seized and bound
because they would not confess. The troops killed one
and caught four; but Cochise, cutting through the side
of a tent, made his escape with three bullets in his body.
He began immediate hostilities to avenge his companions,
who were hanged by the Federal troops. The Indians
forced the troops to retreat and laid waste white settle-
ments in Arizona. Soon afterward the recall of the
troops to take part in the Civil War led to the abandon-
ment of the military posts. This convinced the Apache
that they need only fight to prevent Americans from
settling in their country. Cochise and Mangas Coloradas
defended Apache Pass in southeastern Arizona against the
Californians, who marched under General Carleton to
reopen communication between the Pacific Coast and the
East. The howitzers of the California volunteers put
the Apache to flight. When United States troops re-
turned to resume the occupancy of the country after the
close of the Civil War, a war of extermination was carried
on against the Apache. Cochise did not surrender till
September, 1871. When orders came to transfer his

[ 282 |

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

people from Cafiada Alamosa to the new Tularosa Reser-
vation, in New Mexico, he escaped with a band of 200
in the spring of 1872, and his example was followed by
600 others. After the Chiricahua Reservation was es-
tablished in Arizona, in the summer of 1872, he came in
and there died in peace, June 8, 1874.

The case of Geronimo, a medicine-man and prophet
of the Chiricahua Apache differed somewhat from that
of Cochise. He acquired notoriety through his opposi-
tion to the authorities and by systematic and sensational
advertising; he was born about 1834 at the headwaters
of the Gila River, New Mexico, near old Fort Tulerosa.
His father was Taklishim, ““The Gray One,” who was not
a chief, although his father (Geronimo’s grandfather)
assumed to be a chief without heredity or election. Gero-
nimo’s mother was known as Juana.

Taking astute advantage of the nearness of the Mexican
border, Geronimo repeatedly headed marauding bands of
Apache, now in Mexico, now in the United States. Several
times he was captured by troops and confined to the San
Carlos Reservation, but the Indians found causes of dis-
content, some relating to irrigation, others to restrictions
on the making of intoxicants. During 1884-85, Gero-
nimo gathered a band of hostiles, who terrorized the in-
habitants of southern Arizona and New Mexico, as well
as of Sonora and Chihuahua, in Mexico. General Crook
proceeded against them with instructions to capture or
destroy the chief and his followers. In March, 1886,
a truce was made, followed by a conference at which
the terms of surrender were agreed on; but Geronimo
and his followers having again fled to the Sierra Madre
across the Mexican frontier, and General Miles having
been placed in command, active operations were renewed
and their surrender was ultimately effected in the fol-
lowing August. The entire band, numbering about
340, including Geronimo and Nachi, the hereditary chief,
were deported as prisoners of war, first to Florida and

[ 283 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

later to Alabama, being finally settled at Fort Sill, Okla-
homa.

The West Coast produced at least one master military
leader in the person of Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez
Percés in the hostilities of 1877. His mother was a Nez
Percé, his father a Cayuse who received the name Joseph
from hig teacher, the missionary Spalding, the companion
of Dr. Whitman in his mission to the Idaho country in
the late thirties of the nineteenth century. Joseph was a
man of fine presence and impressive features. His
record stamps him as one of the most remarkable Indians
within the borders of the Union. The treaty of 1863,
by which the whites obtained a right to the Wallowa
Valley, the ancient home of Joseph’s band in northeastern
Oregon, was not recognized by Joseph and the Indians
sympathizing with him, who continued to dwell there in
spite of more and more frequent collisions between the
Indians and the whites. The removal of these Indians
to the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho, after the failure of a
commission the previous year, was proceeding to a peace-
ful settlement when outrageous acts on the part of the
white settlers caused the Nez Percés to break loose and
attack the settlements.

War was declared. After several engagements, in
which the whites lost severely, Joseph displayed remark-
able generalship in a retreat worthy to be remembered
with that of Xenophon’s ten thousand. In spite of the
fact that in front of him was Colonel Miles, behind,
General Howard, on his flank Colonel Sturgis and his
Indian scouts, Joseph brought his little band, incommoded
with women and children, to within fifty miles of the
Canadian border, their objective point, when they were
cut off by fresh troops in front and forced to surrender
conditionally on October 5, 1877. Not only the conduct
of the Nez Percés during this retreat of more than 1,000
miles, but also the military and tactical skill displayed by
their leader, won unstinted praise from their conquerors.

[ 284 ]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

The whites ignored the promises made to Joseph and
his people, removing them, 431 in number, to Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, and afterward to the Indian
Territory, where they remained for several years, always
yearning for the mountains and valleys of Idaho. In
1883, a party of thirty-three women and children received
permission to go back to their old home and were followed
the next year by 118 others. Joseph and the remaining
members of his band, however, numbering 150, were
not permitted to return to Idaho, but were sent to the
Colville Reservation, Washington. He lived to visit
President Roosevelt and General Miles at Washington
in March 1903, but died at Nespelim, on the Colville
Reservation, Washington, September 21, 1904. Accord-
ing to the Indian agent, he had become reconciled to
civilization in his last years, lending his aid in the educa-
tion of the children of his tribe, and discouraging gambling
and drunkenness.

While most of the Indian wars during the nineteenth
century took place in the West, one sporadic outbreak
in the East occurred in Florida. This was the Seminole
War of 1835, in which Osceola, or “Black Drink Crier,”
led the Indians. Born on Tallapoosa River, in the Creek
country, about 1803, Osceola was descended from a Scotch
grandfather. According to report, his features and com-
plexion betrayed the Caucasian strain. He was not a
chief by descent, nor, so far as is known, by formal elec-
tion, but took his place as leader and acknowledged
chieftain by reason of his abilities as a warrior and com-
mander during the memorable struggle of his people with
the United States. Secreting the women, children, and
old men of his tribe in the depths of a great swamp,
where the white troops were for a long time unable to
find them, Osceola turned his energy to the work of harass-
ing the Government forces. Major Dade and his de-
tachment, the first to attack him, were cut off, only two
or three wounded men escaping. Beginning with General

[ 285 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Gaines, one officer after another succeeded to command
of the army sent against this intrepid warrior and his
followers. ‘These were successively baffled, owing largely
to the physical difficulties to be overcome in the Seminole
country, until General Jesup, maddened by the public
cry for more energetic action, seized Osceola and his
attendants while holding a conference under a flag of
truce—an act condemned as inexcusable treachery by
the same public that had urged him on. The loss of
freedom, and brooding over the manner in which he had
been betrayed, broke the spirit of the youthful chief,
who died a prisoner in Fort Moultrie, Florida, in Jan-
uary, 1838. Not until 1926 did the Seminole tribe for-
mally accept peace with the United States.

Though circumstances forced the majority of great
Indian leaders into war, there were some among them who
pursued more peaceful paths to glory. Chief among
these stands Sequoya, the inventor of the Cherokee
alphabet, who was born in the Cherokee town of Taskigi,
Tennessee, about 1760, and died near San Fernando,
Tamaulipas, Mexico, in August, 1843. He was the son
of a white man and a Cherokee woman of mixed blood,
daughter of a chief in Echota, and grew up in the tribe
quite unacquainted with English or civilized arts. He
became a hunter and trader in furs. He also showed
ability as a craftsman in silverwork, and proved himself
an ingenious natural mechanic. His inventive powers
found chance for development in consequence of an ac-
cident that befell him while hunting and rendered him a
cripple for life.

The importance of the arts of writing and printing as
instruments and weapons of civilization began to impress
Sequoya in 1809, and. he studied, undismayed by the
discouragement and ridicule of his fellows, to elaborate
a system of writing suitable to the Cherokee language.
In 1821 he submitted his syllabary to the chief men of
the nation, and on their approval the Cherokee of all

[ 286 ]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

ages set about to learn it with such zeal that after a few
months thousands were able to read and write their
language. In 1822, Sequoya visited Arkansas to intro-
duce writing in the western division of the Cherokee,
among whom he took up his permanent abode in 1823.
Parts of the Bible were printed in Cherokee in 1824, and
in 1828 The Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly newspaper in
Cherokee and English, began to appear.

Sequoya was sent to Washington in 1828 as an envoy
of the Arkansas band in whose affairs he bore a con-
spicuous part, and when the eastern Cherokee joined
the old settlers in the West his influence and counsel
were potent in the organization of the reunited nation
in Indian Territory. When, in his declining years, he
withdrew from active political life, speculative ideals
once again possessed his mind. He visited tribes of
various stocks in a fruitless search for the elements of a
common speech and grammar. He sought also to trace
a lost band of the Cherokee that, according to tradition,
had crossed the Mississippi before the Revolution and
wandered to some mountainsin the West. While pursuing
this quest in the Mexican Sierras, he met his death.

The Indian of today has small need for a native alpha-
bet. The rising generation, like the children of European
immigrants, prefer as a rule to acquire the English lan-
guage and to forget their native tongue. The Govern-
ment provides a sound English education for its wards
on the reservations. Unfortunately it has not yet sup-
plied an adequate field for the exercise of the intellectual
faculties thus developed.

The presence of the red men in our midst constitutes,
indeed, a problem less menacing but scarcely less per-
plexing than in colonial times. Education has long been
regarded as its only solution, but so far the tendency
to confuse education with mere “book learning’ has
limited its applicability to the needs of the Indian. Even
in colonial days, benevolent spirits like Roger Williams,

[ 287 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
John Eliot, and Eleazer Whitlock, in New England, and a

few like-minded scholars in the southern colonies, sought
to educate and to Christianize the natives, with a view
to making them peaceful and useful neighbors and ulti-
mately incorporating them into the citizenship of America.
To this end a number of institutions of learning were
established. Harvard, Dartmouth, and the College of
William and Mary all began, in whole or in part, as col-
leges for Indian youths. The royal charter of Dartmouth
College (1769) specifically states that it is to be “for the
education and instruction of youths of the Indian tribes
in this land,” and “‘for civilizing and Christianizing the
children of pagans.” That of Harvard looked to “the
education of the English and Indian youth in knowledge
and godliness.” The success of these deliberately planned
educational institutions for the benefit of the Indian was
slight indeed, as shown by the record of Harvard, which
during the colonial period had but one Indian graduate,
Caleb Cheeshateauniuck, of whom scarcely more than
his unpronounceable name is known.

The ever westward march of pioneers involved, as we
have seen, the tribes of the Great Plains and later those
of the Rockies and the West Coast in the struggle between
the races. After white supremacy was assured and the
destiny of the Colonies was merged in the destiny of the
United States, it became the policy of the Government
to confine the remnants of the tribes to reservations.
In return for lands abandoned the Indians received large
sums of money, but owing to their lack of business knowl-
edge profited little by the transaction.

In spite of the dishonesty and injustice which are
apparently inseparable from the reservation system, it
seemed the only practicable plan by which the Indians
might be provided with homes and with land for cultiva-
tion and at the same time kept under the control of the
Government. The policy had already been followed in
Canada under both the French and English, and also

[ 288 |

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THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

to some extent in the Colonies. It was adopted by the
United States in 1786. The setting apart of the reser-
vations by solemn treaty was later modified by Congress
and simplified from time to time, being finally placed in
the control of the President, who now has the power of
making such allotments of land by executive order.

In accordance with a plan, adopted at an early date,
of removing all eastern tribes to reservations west of the
Mississippi, a large territory, including the present Okla-
homa and the greater portion of what is now Kansas,
was set apart under the name “Indian Territory” as
a permanent home for the tribes to be removed from
the settled portions of the United States. Most of the
northern portion of the territory was acquired by treaty
purchase from the Osage and the Kansa. A series of
treaties was then inaugurated by which, before the close of
1840, almost all the principal eastern tribes and tribal rem-
nants had been removed to the Indian Territory, the five
important southern tribes—Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw,
Chickasaw, and Seminole—being guaranteed autonomy
under the style of ‘“‘Nations.” By subsequent legisla-
tion Kansas was detached from the Territory, most of
the emigrant tribes within the bounds of Kansas being
again removed to new reservations south of the boundary
line. By other and later treaties lands within the same
Territory were assigned to the actual native tribes—
Kiowa, Comanche, Wichita, Cheyenne, etc.—whose
claims had been entirely overlooked in the first negotia-
tions, which considered only the Osage and Kansa along
the eastern border. Other tribes were brought in at
various periods from Texas, Nebraska, and farther
north, to which were added, as prisoners of war, The
Modoc of California (1873), the Nez Percés of Oregon
and Idaho (1878), and the Chiricahua Apache of Arizona
(1889), until the Indian population of the Territory
comprised some forty officially recognized tribes. There

[ 289 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

are also some small State reservations in Maine, New
York, Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas.

The Government was now faced with the problem of
the education of its wards. The aborigines of North
America had their own systems of education through
which children were instructed in their coming labors
and obligations, embracing not only the whole round of
economic pursuits—hunting, fishing, handicraft, agricul-
ture, and household work—but speech, fine art, customs,
etiquette, social obligations, and tribal lore. By uncon-
scious absorption and by constant teaching the boy and
girl became the accomplished man and woman.

The Eskimo, for instance, exercised the greatest care
in the education of their girls and boys, setting them
dificult problems in canoeing, sledding, and hunting,
showing them how to solve them, and asking boys how
they would meet a given emergency. But everywhere
there existed the closest association, for education, of
parents with children, who learned the names and uses

of things in nature. From earliest youth they played
at serious business, girls attending to household duties,
boys following men’s pursuits. Children were furnished
with appropriate toys; they became little basket makers,
weavers, potters, water carriers, cooks, archers,’ stone
workers, watchers of crops and flocks, the range of in-
struction being limited only by tribal custom. In a sim-
ilar manner the intangible properties of the tribe were
communicated to them—its customs, laws, beliefs, its
traditional and mythic lore.

On the coming of the whites, a new era of secular ed-
ucation, designed and undesigned, began. All the natives,
young and old, were pupils, and all the whites who came
in contact with them were instructors, whether purposely
or through the influence of their example and patronage.
The undesigned instruction can not be measured, but its
effect was profound. The Indian passed at once into
the iron age; the stone period, except in ceremony, was at

[ 290 ]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

an end. So radical was the change in the eastern tribes
that it is difficult now to illustrate their true life in museum
collections.

After the establishment of the United States Govern-
ment the following Christian bodies either instituted
secular day and boarding schools among the Indians or
continued those already in existence, and these schools
have borne a large part in Indian education: Roman
Catholic and Moravian, from colonial times; Friends
(Orthodox), 1795; Baptist, 1807; American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Congregational),
1810; Episcopal, 1815; Methodist Episcopal, 1816;
Presbyterian (North), 1833; Old School Presbyterian,
1837; Methodist Episcopal (South), 1844; Congrega-
tional American Missionary Association, 1846; Reformed
Dutch, 1857; Presbyterian (South), 1857; Friends (Hick-
site), 1869; United Presbyterian, 1869; Unitarian, 1886.
Miss Alice C. Fletcher affirms that the missionary labors
among the Indians have been as largely educational as
religious. Until 1870 all Government aid for educational
purposes passed through the hands of the missionaries.

A committee on Indian affairs was appointed in the
Continental Congress, July 12, 1775, with General
Schuyler as chairman, and in the following year a stand-
ing committee was created. Money was voted to sup-
port Indian students at Dartmouth and Princeton col-
leges. From the creation of the War Department in
1789, Indian affairs remained in the hands of its Secre-
tary until 1849, when the Department of the Interior
was established and the Indian Bureau transferred to it.
General Knox, Washington’s Secretary of War, urged
industrial education, and the President agreed with him.
In his message of 1801 President Adams noted the suc-
cess of continued efforts to introduce among the Indians
modern implements and methods of agriculture and the
domestic arts.

The first petition of an Indian for schools among his

[ 291 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

tribe was made by David Folsom, a Choctaw, in 1816.
The Ottawa, in the treaty of 1817, and in their address
to President Monroe in 1822, stipulated for industrial
and literary education. In 181g Congress made a first
appropriation of $10,000 for Indian education, the super-
intendents and agents to be nominated by the President.
In 1823 there were twenty-one schools receiving Govern-
ment aid, and the number was increased to thirty-eight
in 1825. The first contract school was established on
the Tulalip Reservation, Washington, in 1869, but not
until 1873 were Government schools proper provided.
At first only day schools existed; later boarding schools
were established on the reservations, and finally remote
from them. The training in all these schools aimed to
bring the Indians nearer to civilized life, with a view to
ultimate citizenship.

In recent years the policy of the Government has
tended toward the division in severalty among the
Indian proprietors of the tribal reservations. Many of
the tribes have reached so high a grade of civilization
as to render this practicable. In such cases the Indian
rapidly merges into the citizen of the United States and
ceases to be a separated element.

By the act of June 2, 1924, all Indians within United
States territory, not previously citizens, were made so.
During the World War the Indians were very forward
in patriotic enterprises. About 10,000 served in the
armed forces of the United States, nearly three quarters
of them being volunteers. Others served in Red Cross
and other war work. The Indian soldiers generally
were attached to white organizations, and as a rule were
highly commended by their officers.

An interesting picture of Indian progress is given by
the following figures:

Iolr 1925
Indian population in United States.... 322,715 349,595
Children’ eligible to’school, ..2..¢)s.01.'- 63,411 T7507
Children attending school............ 395397 67,438

PLATE 85

“Public granary” of the Florida Indians. From Toe Le ca
1564

A fortified Indian town in Florida. From Le Moyne, 1564

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

The Government itself maintains nearly 300 schools
for Indians, but about 34,000 of their children are en-
rolled in the public schools of the various States. Many
Indians are students at State universities and other
institutions of learning, qualifying for various profes-
sions. Others have already attained eminence.

The transition from the Stone Age to the Age of Elec-
tricity which the Indians have been forced to make so
rapidly has necessarily been accompanied by many
evils. It has been already pointed out that contact
with the white man’s civilization, particularly those
phases to be found in frontier life, tended to debase and
demoralize the natives. The forced removal from their
old haunts and homes, the necessary change in their
manner of life, the abandonment of their old and tried
traditions for the white man’s unknown God, all this
sudden uprooting and transplanting could not but bring
many a heavy grief, especially to the hearts of the older
people, who found “a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is re-
membering happier things.” Then, too, they reaped
a doleful harvest of disease and death, which for a time
threatened their very existence.

Slow as the betterment of these conditions must be,
it is confidently to be looked for. The old order is in-
evitably passing and with it will go also the reservation
system with its iniquities and makeshift policies. The
Indian must eventually merge, with other racial ele-
ments, into that hypothetical and cosmopolitan being,
the American of the future.

[ 293 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
REFERENCES

Bancrort, Georce. History of the United States. Vols.
1-xI. Boston, 1838-75.

Bancroft, Husert Howe. The works of. Vols. 1-
xxx1x. San Francisco, 1886-go.

BaANDELIER, ADOLPH F. Historical introduction to studies
among the sedentary Indians of New Mexico. Papers
Archaeol. Inst. Amer. (Amer. Ser.) Vol. 1. Boston,
1881.

— Documentary history of the Zufi Tribe. J. Amer.
Ethnol. Archaeol. Vol. 3, 1892.

Barrett, S. M., editor. Geronimo’s story of his life.
New York, 1906.

Bartram, WitiiaM. ‘Travels through North and South
Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the
Cherokee country, the extensive territories of the
Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the country
of the Choctaws., Philadelphia, 1791.

Drake, SaMuEt G, Indian biography, containing the lives
of more than two hundred Indian Chiefs. Boston, 1832.

Hanpsook oF American Inprans Nortu or Mexico.
Edited by Frederick Webb Hodge. In two parts.
Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 30, Part 1, 1907; Part 2, IgIo.

Harrot, THomas. A briefe and true report of the new
found land of Virginia. Francfort, 1590. (Same.
New York, 1871.)

—— Narrative of the first English plantation of Virginia.
1588 and 15go. (Reprint. London, 1893.)

Hennepin, Lours. Description de la Louisiane nouvelle-
ment découverte au sud oiiest de la Nouvelle France.
Paris, 1683. (Same, trans. by John G. Shea. New
York, 1880.)

— Anew discovery of a vast country in America extend-
ing above four thousand miles between New France
and New Mexico. London, 1698. (Same. 2 vols.
Chicago, 1903.)

[ 294 ]

THE INDIANS IN HISTORY

Marquette, Jacques. Discovery of some new countries
and nations in northern America. London, 1698.
ParRKMAN, Francis. France and England in North

America. Vols. 1-vim. Boston, 1867-92.

—— History of the conspiracy of Pontiac. Boston, 1868.

—— La Salle and the discovery of the Great West. 12th
ed. Boston, 1883.

RooseveELt, THEODORE. The winning of the West. Vols.
1-u. New York, 1889.

ScHootcrAFT, Henry R. Historical and statistical in-
formation, respecting the history, condition and pros-
pects of the Indian tribes of the United States.
Parts 1-v1. Philadelphia, 1851-57.

SmiTH, Joun. The generall historie of Virginia, New
England, and the Summer Iles. (Vol. m of the True
Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captaine
John Smith.) Richmond, 1819.

SPANISH EXPLORERS IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STArTESs.
[Narratives of de Vaca and Castafieda edited by
Frederick W. Hodge. Narrative of de Soto edited by
Theodore H. Lewis.] New York, 1907.

Swanton, Joun R. Indian tribes of the lower Missis-
sippi Valley. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 43. Wash-
ington, IgII.

—— Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neigh-
bors. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 73. Washington,
1922.

[295 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

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[ 296 |

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[ 297 |

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[ 298 |

INDIAN STOCKS AND TRIBES

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[ 299 ]

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

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INDEX

Acoma pueblo, 113, 115, 117
Acorns as food, 194, 195, 202
Adornment, 23, 24, 56, 121, 160-
N62, 1755/1760, 177, Tot, 160,
188, 200
Agriculture, 72, 73, 80, 115, 139;
152, 175, 195, 203
Algonkin Indians, 70, 71
Algonquian family, 4, 268
tribes, alliance with French, 268
Altars, 30
Angakut of Eskimo, 58, 60
Apache Indians, 144, 145, 282
Chiricahua, struggle against
Americans, 282
Arikara Indians, 157
Arrows, 77
Ash ghosts of Pomo Indians, 185
Athapascan family, 4, 144, 175,
198
tribes, 70
Atotarho, 87

Baby frame of Iroquois, 78

Balsas see Rafts

Bandelier, A. F., on estufas, 111
on pre-Pueblo period, 139
Pueblo dress, 111

Bark, uses of, 22, 153, 181, 205

Bartram, J., on Iroquois Federal
Council, 89

Basket Makers, 139

Basketry, 23, 78,179, 182, ‘196,
203, 206, 213

Beadwork, 23, 92
Bible, Eliot’s Indian translation
of, 18
Bibliography, 9, 36, 69, 104, 142,
Black drink, 25
Black Drink Crier see Osceola
Black Hawk, 274
Black Warrior see Tascalusa
Blankets as money, 208
of Chilkat Indians, 212
Blood-feud, 203
Boas, F., on Central Eskimo, 38
on North Pacific tribes, 205
Kwakiutl, 207, 208
Boats, 64, 158, 176, 212
Buffalo, 144, 147
hunt of Sioux, 148
Bull-boats, 158
Bullroarer, 30
Burial customs
tribes, 176
of Mandan, 159

of California

Caddoan family, 4, 157
California tribes, 175-205
adornment, 175, 176, 177, 181,
186, 188, 200
basketry, 179, 182, 196, 203
boats, 176, 179, 193
ceremonials, 178, 183, 197
hunting methods, 194, 200
mythology, 198
religious beliefs, 178, 187, 197
shamans, 189
shell money, 185, 187, 188

[ 301 ]

INDEX

California tribes (Cont.)
social organization, 176, 180
sweat houses, 182, 192, 193
use of Jimson weed, 176
war customs, 177, 190
women, 189
Calumet, 31
Cannibalism, 58, 72, 86, 88, 101
Canoes, birch-bark, 77
dug-out, 193, 210, 212
plank, 179
skin, 64
Carolina tea, 25
Carvings of Eskimo, 54
of North Pacific tribes, 205, 210
Casas Grandes, 145
Castafieda on capture of Cibola,
108
on Plains Indians, 147
Catlin, George, 157
on Mah-to-toh-pa, 162
Mandan, 159, 160, 161
Cave dwellings, 138
Cayuga tribe, 71, 84
Ceremonials, 97, I21, 124, 134,
FSA, 1717; BOS ogy, 207
20
Cherokee alphabet, 18, 286
language, 286
myths, 218, 220
Children of Eskimo, 62, 63
of Iroquois, 101
Omaha, 154
Pueblos, 112
Chilkat Indians, blankets of, 212
Chumash Indians, 179
Cibola, 107, 108, 127
Clans of Iroquois, 83, 84
Cliff dwellers, 110, 137
dwellings, 137
Clothing of California tribes, 175,
177,191, 186AG1y 169
of Eskimo, 50, 66
Iroquois, 75

Clothing of Mandan, 162
of Pueblos, 111
Sioux, 146
Zuni, T21, 124
Cochise, 282
Cochiti pueblo, 111
Colden, C., on Iroquois food hab-
its, 74
on Iroquois oratory, 90, 91
Connecticut, Colony of, and
Indians, 253
“Coppers” as money, 208
Corn, Indian, see Maize

Corn Mountain see Thunder
Mountain

Coronado, Francisco Vasquez de,
107

Cradles, sitting type, 184
Cree syllabary, 18
Crosses, 32
Culture areas, 34
Cushing, F. H., 119-126
on Zufii, 119, 124, 125, 126

D
Dakota see Sioux
Dandies, 161
Deganawida, 84
De‘haé™hiyawa”’kho”, myth of,

98
Delight Makers of Queres, 122
Dentalium money of California
tribes, 187
Dieguefio Indians, 176
Dinné tribes, 70
Disease, treatment of, 60, 79, 190
Djigonsasen, 87
Dogs of Eskimo, 46, 52, 53
of Plains Indians, 146, 147
Drums, 56, 122
Dry paintings, 29, 135
E
Earth lodges, 66, 153, .159
Eliot’s Bible, 18

[ 302 ]

INDEX

Eskimo, 38

adornment, 56

angakut, 58, 60

boats, 64

carvings, 54.

Central, 39

dogs, 46, 52, 53

drums, 56

festivals, 56, 66

fire-drill, 43

hunting methods, 44, 47, 63, 64,

lamps, 43

marriage customs, 57, 62

moral traits, 57

myths, 58, 216

picture writing, 54

religious beliefs, 29, 58

sewing implements, 50

singing house, 56

taboos, 60

treatment of disease, 60

use of skins as money, 55

Western, 66

women, 59, 52, 54) 55
Esquimauan family, 4
Estevan, 107
Estufas see Kivas
Europeans, _ attitude

Indians, 252

toward

Families, linguistic, 4
Feathers, uses of, 23, 24
Federal Council of Iroquois, 88,
89, 92
Fetishes, 33
Fewkes, J. W., 134
Fire-drill of Eskimo, 43
of Iroquois, 78
Fire God of Hopi Indians, 135
Fire-making, 43, 185
Fishing methods, 66, 78, 194
Five Nations, The, see Iroquois

Fletcher and La Flesche on Omaha
habitations, 153
Food, 24, 25
of Apache, 145
California tribes, 176, 177,
193, 201, 202
Eskimo, 44, 52, 54
Iroquois, 74, 99
North Pacific tribes, 206
Plains Indians, 147
Pueblos, 115
Four Bears see Mah-to-toh-pa
French, attitude toward Indians,
265, 268
French and Indian War, 261, 268

Gentes, 156, 176

Georgia, Colony of, and Indians,
262

Geronimo, 283

Ghost dance, 185

Girls’ ceremonies, 178

Goddard, P. E., on blood-feud,
204

on Hupa, 201, 204

Guksu rites, 185, 186 .

Guzman, Nufio de, expedition of,
107

Habitations of California tribes,
1755 070,/ TOT) 191, 109
of Eskimo, 40, 64, 66
Iroquois, 72
Navaho, 144
North Pacific Tribes, 209, 211
Plains Indians, 146, 147, 153,
159
Pueblos, 110, 111, 113, 116,
132, 137, 138
Hahluigak ceremony, 185, 186
Haida Indians, 210
myth of, 240

[ 303 |

INDEX

Hale, H., on Condoling Council,
93> 97
on Iroquois character, 102
Hawik’uh, capture of, by Span-
iards, 108
Heriot, G., on dress of Iroquois, 75
Hero Twins, myth of, 126
Hewitt, J. N. B., on Federal Coun-
cil, 88
on Iroquois myths, 98
Peach-stone game, 98
Requickening Address, 95
Skanawati, 93
Hiawatha, 86
“Hiawatha” of Longfellow, 86
quotation from, 17
Hogans of Navaho, 144
Hopi Indians, 130-137
Horses, acquisition of, by Indians,
144, 146
Hostilities between Indians and
Europeans, 251
Hrdli¢ka, A., on origin of Ameri-
can Indians, 2, 3
Hunting methods, 44, 47, 63, 64,
66, 77, 148, 194, 200, 206
Hupa Indians, 187, 199-205
Hurons, 70, 71

Ilex vomitoria, uses of, 25
Implements, 21, 22, 50, 194, 195
Indian Territory, 289
Indian Wars in Connecticut, 253
in Florida, 285
Great Lakes region, 268
Gulf States, 266
North Carolina, 260
Pennsylvania, 261
Southwest, 264, 282
Virginia, 257
West, 270, 276, 284
Indians, American, origin of, 2, 3
North American, attitude to-
ward Europeans, 250

Indians, North American, (Cozt.)
education, 287, 290
languages, 13
linguistic families, 4
present status, 292

Instruments, ceremonial, 28, 30,

31
musical, 80, 121, 122

Inuit see Eskimo

{roquoian family, 4, 258
myths, 218, 222
tribes, 71

Iroquois, 71-105
agriculture, 72, 73, 80
baby frame, 78
basketry, 78
beadwork, 92
cannibalism, 72, 86, 88, 101
ceremonies, 97
Condoling Council, 93, 95, 97
hostility to French, 268
hunting methods, 77
League, 81, 84, 88, 95, 103
long-house, 72
marriage customs, 82, IOI
moral traits, 102
musical instruments, 80
myths, 98, 222
ohwachira, 82
oratory, 90, 91
oyaron, 156
phratries, 84
power, 81, 89
pump drill, 78
religious beliefs, 27, 98
sacrifice, 29
social organization, 81
textile art, 78
treatment of disease, 79
wampum, 88, 92
war customs, 72, 99
White Dog Festival, 97
women, 73, 75, 81, 82

Ives, J. C., on Mishongnovi, 131

[ 304 ]

INDEX

Jenness, D.,on modern Eskimo, 39
“Jesuit Relations,” on disease, 79
on Iroquois, 72
New France, 71
Jimson weed, use of, by California
tribes, 176, 178
Jones, L. F., on totemism, 213

Joseph, Chief, 284

Ka’ka of Zufi, 124, 128
Karok Indians, 187, 198
legends of, 236, 238
Katcinas of the Hopi, 134
Keresan Indians see Queres
Kidder, A. V.,on Basket Makers,
139
on pre-Pueblo period, 139
Pueblo civilization, 140
King Philip, 253
King Philip’s War, 253
Kivas of pueblos, 111, 134
Koshare see Delight Makers
Kroeber, A. L., on girls’ ceremony,
178
on Pomo, 178, 182, 184, 186
Yurok, 188, 189
Kwakiutl Indians, 206-210

lif

Lamps of Eskimo, 43
Languages of Iroquois, 91
of North American Indians, 13,

North Pacific tribes, 206

Pueblos, 10g
League see Iroquois
Legends, Myths and, 216-248
Linguistic families, 4
Long-house of Iroquois, 72
Luisefio Indians, 177
Lummis, C. F., on Acoma, 114

on Apache, 145, 146

McGee, W J, on Siouan Indians,
148
Mah-to-toh-pa, costume of, 162
exploits of, 165
Maize, preparation of, 74, 115
Maldonado, Fray Lucas, 118
Mandan Indians, 157-172
Marcos de Nizza, Fray, 107
Marriage customs, 57, 62, 82, 1o1,
157, 188
Masawu, 135
Mavilla, battle of, 262, 263
Maximilian, Prince of Weid, 157
on Mandan Indians, 158
Mesa Encantada, legend of, 115
Metacom see King Philip
Metals known to Indians, 21
Metates, 115, 179
Michelson, T., on Indian lan-
guages, 13
Mindeleff, V., on Walpi, 131, 132
Mishongnovi pueblo, 131
Mission Indians of California, 176,
177; 179
Mohave Indians, 175, 176
Mohawk tribe, 71
clans of, 83
Money, substitutes for, 55, 88,
185, 187, 188, 208
Mooney, J., on fetishes, 33
Moorehead, W. K., on pre-Pueblo
period, 139
Moqui see Hopi
Morgan, L.H., on Iroquoisdress, 76
on Iroquois pottery, 81
wampum belts, 92
Muskhogean family, 4
Myths and legends, 216-248
The adventures of Ictinike
(Sioux), 233
The birth of Sin (Haida), 240
The coyote dancing with the
stars (Karok), 238

[ 305 |

INDEX

Myths and Legends (Cont.}
Creation myth (Iroquois), 222
Fable of the animals (Karok),
236

The first fire (Cherokee), 220

How the world was made
(Cherokee), 218

Ictinike and the buzzard (Sioux),
235

Notes on Tlingit legends, 242

The sacred pole (Omaha), 232

Sedna and the fulmar (Eskimo),
216

The son of the Wolf Chief
(Tlingit), 243

The trial of lovers (Zufii), 225

N
Nanabozho, 85

Narraganset Indians,
against English, 253
Narvaez, Pamfilo de, expedition
of, 107
Natchez tribe, struggle against
French, 266
Navaho Indians, 144
Nez Percés, struggle
Americans, 284
“Nith song” of Eskimo, 61
North Carolina, Colony of, atti-
tude toward Indians, 258
and Tuscarora, 260
North Pacific tribes, 205-214
canoes, 212
carvings, 206
hunting methods, 206
mythology, 211
potlatch festivals, 207
present status, 214
substitutes for money, 208

Ohwachira of Iroquois, 82
Omaha tribe, 153-157

struggle

against

Ofiate, Juan de, 117

Oneida tribe, 71, 84
Onondaga tribe, 71, 84, 87, 92
Opecancanough, 256, 257, 258
Oraibi pueblo, 131

Oratory of Iroquois, 90, 91
Orenda of Iroquois, 27

Osage tribe, 153

Osceola, 285

Oyaron of Iroquois, 156

Paint, uses of, 23

Parkman, F., on buffalo hunt, 148

Peace-pipe, 31

Pecos pueblo, 139

Pennsylvania, Colony of, and
Indians, 261

Pequot Indians, extermination of,

253
Petroff, I., ‘Sign Dialogue,” 10
Phratries of Iroquois, 84
Pictographs, 17
Picture writing, 17, 54, 165
Pima Indians, culture of, 145, 148
Pipes, 315,157; 189; 1955 208
Pitchlynn, John, 272
Plains Indians, 146-174
boats, 158
legend, 232
uses of buffalo, 146, 147
uses of calumet, 31
Plank houses, 191, 201, 211
Pocahontas, 256, 257
Pomo Indians, 180-187
Ponca Indians, struggle against
Americans, 280
Pontiac, 268
Pope, 264
Population, Indian, of California,
180
of North America, 5, 7
Pueblo area, 108, 109
Porcupine quills, use of, 23

[ 306 ]

INDEX

Potlatch, 207
Pottery; 23, 31, 138, 158
Powers, Stephen, on Pomoheaven,
187
Powhatan, 254, 256
Powhatan Indians, _ struggle
against English, 257, 258
Prayer-sticks, 28
Priesthoods of Kwakiutl, 210
of Zufi, 122, 128
Prophet, the, see Tenskwatawa
Pueblo area, population of, 108,
10g
Bonito, 138
civilization, evolution of, 139
Pueblo Indians, 109-143
agriculture, 115
ceremonial instruments, 28, 30,
31
ceremonials, 134
conquest by Spaniards, 108,
117, 129
languages, 10g
legend, 225
pottery, 138
rebellion against Spaniards, 264
religious beliefs, 109
women, I12, 113, 115, 116
Pueblos, ancient, 111, 112, 138
construction of, 112, 114, 132,

33
furnishings of, 116
Pushmataha, 272

Queres Indians, 111-118, 122
Quivira, 109

Rafts of California tribes, 176, 182
Ramirez, Fray Juan, 118

Rattles, 80, 121

Red Cloud, 276

Religious beliefs, 28, 29, 33, 34,
58, 98, 109, 126, 155, 178, 187,

Oye
Reservation system, 288

S
Sacrifice, 29
Sagamité, 74
Salishan family, 4
Sand paintings, 29, 135, 178
Sauk and Fox Indians, struggle
against Americans, 274
Seals, Eskimo methods of hunting,
44, 47, 63, 64
Sedna, myth of, 58, 216
Seminole War, 285
Seneca tribe, 71, 84
Sequoya, 18, 286
Seven Chiefs, Council of, among
Omaha, 156
Cities, The, 107, 108, 127, 128
Shamans, 27, 189
Shawnee, struggle against Ameri-
cans, 270
Shell beads, 92
money of California tribes, 185
Shooting Star see Tecumseh
Shoshonean family, 4, 130, 175,
177, 178
Sichumnoyi pueblo, 131
Sign dialogue, 10
languages, 10
Siouan family, 4, 146, 157
Sioux Indians, 146, 148, 276
Sipapu, 126
Sitting Bull, 276, 278
Six Nations, The, 1o1, 261
Skanawati, 92
Sky God of Hopi Indians, 136
Slavery among California tribes,
189
among North Pacific tribes, 207
Smith, Captain John, 256
Snake Dance of Hopi Indians, 134,
136

[ 307 ]

INDEX

Snow house, construction of, 40
furnishings of, 42
Social life of California tribes, 176,
180, 189, 203
of Eskimo, 52-57, 61
Iroquois, 81, 101
Kwakiutl, 206
Omaha, 156
Zufil, 127
Spaniards, conquest of Pueblos
by, 108, 117, 129
explorations of, 106
in Acoma, 117
in Southwest, 264
policy toward Indians, 106, 109,
262
Standing Bear, 280
Stefansson, V., on Arctic weather,
67, 68
on Eskimo, 38, 49, 59, 62
Eskimo dogs, 47
Stephen see Estevan
Stocks and tribes, tabulation of,
296, 300
Stone-age culture, 19
Swan, J. G., on North Pacific
tribes, 211
Swastika, significance of, 32
Sweat-houses, 26, 182, 192

Taboos of Eskimo, 60
Tanoan family, 131
Taos pueblo, 131
Tascalusa, 262
Tecumseh, 270
Tenskwatawa the Prophet, 271
Tents of Eskimo, 64

of Plains Indians, 146, 147
Tewa Indians, 131
Textile art, 23, 66, 78, 144
Thunder bird, 211
Thunder Mountain, 118, 128
Tipis, 152

Tippecanoe, battle of, 271

Tlingit Indians, 211-213

Tobacco, 25, 55; 195, 203

Toloache religion, 178

Totemism of Tlingit, 213

Totem poles, 211

Totems, 156, 210

Travois, 158

Tribes, Stocks and, tabulation of,
296-300

“Turk,” The, 109

Tuscarora Indians, adoption by
Iroquois, 261

struggle against English, 258

United States, policy
Indians, 270, 288, 292

toward

Vaca, Cabeza de, 107
Vargas, Diego de, 118
Virginia, Colony of, and Indians,
2 BY!
W

Walpi pueblo, 131
Wamkish of California tribes, 177
Wampanoag Indians, extermina-
tion of, 253
Wampum as legal tender, 88
records, 92, 259, 261
War customs of California tribes,
177, 199
of Iroquois, 73, 99
Wébashna ceremony of Omaha,
155
West Coast tribes, 175-215
basketry of, 206
culture of, 205
myths and legends of, 236, 238,
240, 242, 243
White Dog Festival of Iroquois,
97

[ 308 ]

INDEX

Wissler, C., on culture areas, 34 ng
on stone industry, Ig Yuma Indians, 175
Women as shamans, 189 Yurok Indians, 187-199

occupations of, 158, 189, 203
status of, 50, 73, 83, 157 Z
Written language, substitutes for, Zaldivar, Juan de, 117
16, 92 Zufi Indians, 108, 118-130

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