CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library E 77.E47 Red man and the white man in North Ameri 3 1924 028 719 007 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028719007 THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE MAN IN NORTH AMERICA THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE MAN IN NOETH AMEEICA FEOM ITS DISCOVERY TO THE PRESENT TIME BY GEORGE E. ELLIS BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1882 /^CORNELL UNIVERSITY \UjlRARV/ Copyright, 1882, By George E. Ellis. University Press: John "Wilson and Son, Cambridge. THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED TO FRANCIS PARKMAN, WHOSE GENIUS AND ATTAINMENTS; WHOSE PATIENT AND LABOKIOUS STUDIES FOE NEARLY TWO-SCORE TEAKS; WHOSE EXTENDED TRAVELS THROUGH THE WILDER PARTS OP THIS CONTINENT FOR PERSONAL INTERCOURSE WITH THE INDIANS ; AND WHOSE PBESBVERTNG RESEARCH THROUGH FOREIGN ARCHIVES, HAVE MADE HIM A MASTER OP THE GREAT THEME WHICH IJB HAS ALREADY ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN VOLUMES, — STILL AWAITING OTHERS, — COVERING THE PERIOD OP EXPLORATION, ENTERPRISE, AND DOMINION OF FRANCE IN NORTH AMERICA. PREFACE. The study and researcli given to the preparation of the contents of this volume have occupied much of the time of the writer for more than ten years. Portions of it, under titles indicated by those of its chapters, were the substance of a course of Lectures delivered between February 18 and March 28, 1879, before the Lowell Institute of Boston. I have been disinclined to present, in such a number and array of foot-notes as would have been necessary, all the sources of information, the author- ity for statements, or the grounds for opinions and conclusions on which I have relied. To have done this would have required something but little short of a complete bibliography of the copious and mul- tiform literature relating to our aborigines. What may be classed as the Public Documents illustrative of it are very voluminous, and are of course of the highest authority and value. General and local histories have from time to time given sometimes thorough, but often only superficial, attention to the Tin PREFACE. more important relations of this interesting theme, Travellers, tourists, hunters, explorers, scientific commissions, military officers, missionaries, traders, and those who have lived among the Indians many years, as captives taken in youth, have contributed volumes of great variety in style, contents, views, opinions, and judgments, all of them mutually il- lustrative, helpful, and instructive, though by no means in accord in their representations of the character and habits, condition, capacity, religion, and general development of the various tribes of the red men, at different periods and in different parts of the country. A single paragraph, sometimes a single sentence, in the following pages, is a digest or summary of facts, statements, or opinions, gath- ered from several volumes, after an attempt at a fair estimate of the fidelity and judgment of their authors. Considering how rich in material, inci- dent, and character the whole subject is for the literature of romance, it is surprising how little it has prompted of that character. Probably this is to be accounted to the stern reality in fact and record, which has disinclined writers and readers to idealize its actors and incidents. Indians, as subjects for romance, may engage a class of writers in an age to come. For the reason stated above for limiting the num- ber of foot-notes, I have given only such as authen- ticate the more important statements and sources PREFACE. ix of information indicated in the text of the volume. The opinions which I have ventured to express on contested points I must leave to be estimated for their weight or wisdom by different readers. Occasional repetitions in references to persons, incidents, or facts ma,y" be noticed in the following pages, as they present themselves in some different relations to periods or subjects under which the contents of the volume are disposed. Boston, June 1, 1882. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTORY. V ■ General Survey of the Subject. Pages 1-38. Origin of the Name Indian, 1. Archseology of the Continent, 4. In- dian Antiquities, 5. The New Continent, 7. Its Promises and its Illusions, 9. Wilderness Attractions, 11. The Boon to Humanity, 13. Grandeur and Extent, 15. Vanished Tribes, 17. The In- dian Nemesis, 19. Benefits and Wrongs from the EuropeanSi_21. Queen Isabella pleading for the Savages, 23. ^arly Efforts for the Indians, 25. The Children of Nature, 27. '^irst Relations be- tween the Races, 29 ^/Broken Promises, 31. "I^eady Pressure upon the Indians, 33. i^e Present " Indian Question," 35. The Fate of the Aborigines, 37. CHAPTER T. Spanish Discoverers and Invaders. Pages 39-84. Columbus's First Meeting with the Natives, 40. First Acts of Vio- lence, 42. The Colony of Navidad, 43. Its Fate, 45. Hostilities and Alliances with Natives, 47. The Hammock and the Hurri- cane, 49. Ruthless Spirit of the Invaders, 51. The Chuixh and Heathendom, 53. Las Casas, 54. Religion of Conquest, 55. Ra- pacity and Zeal, 57. The "Requisition," 59. The Natives as Heathen, 61y Enslaving of the Natives, 63. Cruelties and Out- rages, 65. ^Transportation of Indians as Slaves, 67. Destruction or Conversion, 69. The Dominican Friars, 71. Doctrines of Hell and Baptism, 73. i/ Human Sacrifices and Cannibalism, 75. Rav- ages of De Soto, 77. The Spaniards on the Pacific, 79. Priestly Methods, 81. The California Missions, 83. XU CONTENTS. CHAPTER n. The Indian. — His Origin, Numbers, Person, and Character. Pages 85-139. Archseology, 85. Communal Life, 87. Relative Place of the Savage, 89. Average Intelligence, 91. The Mound Builders, 93. Abo- riginal Population, 95. Resources of Life, 97^ Endowment of the Indian, 99. "Ijidian Character, 101. ^'Indian Qualities, 105. Cat- lin's Views of, 100. Major Campion's, 101. General Custer's Opinions and Estimate, 104-109. Lieutenant Dodge's Estimate, 109. Romantic Views, 111. Indian State and Royalty, 113. Dr. Palfrey's and Governor Arnold's Views, 114. Indian Languages, 117. Indian Vocabularies, 119. Ferocity of Savages, 121. Tor- turing of Prisoners, 123. A scene of Torture, 125. Indian Medi- cal Practice, 127. Health and Disease, 131. The " Suderie," 132. Disposal of the Dead, 133. Religion of the Indians, 136-139. CHAPTER III. The Indian in his Condition, Resources, and Surroundings. Pages 140-206. Limitations of Savagism, 141. The Savage a Child of Nature, 143. Conformed to Nature, 145. India ii Food an d Cookery, 147. Cos- tume and Dwelling, 149. The Medicine-BagpltSTT The Indian on the Water-Ways, 153-156. His Woods-Craft and Rovings, 157. Relationship to Animals, 159. Aboriginal Names, 161. The Indian Canoe, 165-168. The Moocason, 169. The Snow-Shoe, 171. The Indian in Winter, 173. His Cornfields, 175. Econ- omy, 177. Communication, 179. Interpreters, 181. Sign-Lan- guage, 183. Gambling, 185. Games and Amusements, 187. The Hunting- Season, 189. Superstitions, 191. A Warrior, 193. War- Parties, 195. The Gantlet and the Torture, 197. Tribal Govern- ment, 199. Chieftains and Orators, 201. The Indian " Pony," 203. The Pappooses, 205. Education, 206. V CHAPTER IV. Indian Tenure of Land as viewed bt European Invaders and Colonists. Pages 207-258. Our National Domain, 208. Land Titles, 209. Right by Conquest 211. Indian Possession, 213. Thinness of Population 215. In- dian Internecine Strifes, 217. Invasion, 219. Dispossessing the CONTENTS. xiii Natives, 221. Eights of Nomads, 223. Royal Grants, 225. Eu- ropean Claims, 227. Indians as Subjects, 229. Prerogatives of Civilization, 231. Over Barbarism, 233. Indians as "Vermin," 235. Scriptural Authority, 237. Plea for Possession, 239. In- dian Deeds, 341. "Vagueness of Indian Eights, 243. The Free Wilderness, 245. Remuneration to Indians, 247. C-R,ights as a Race, 249. Encroachments, 251. (^European Occupancy, 253. Conveyances by Indians, 255. ^Policy of our Government, 257. CHAPTER V. The French and the Indians. Pages 259-325. Mr. Parkman's Works on "New France," 259-262. The Spaniards in Florida, 263. French Fishing Voyages, 265. French and Span- iards, 267. The French in Florida, 269. English Slave-ships, 271. Contests in Florida, 273. De Gourguesin Florida, 275. French in Acadia, 277. Champlain in Quebec, 279. His Indian AUies and Foes, 281. French in Alabama, 283. French in Louisi- ana, 285. French Claims, 287. French Explorers, 289. Voya- geurs and Coureurs de Bois, 291. Frenchmen becoming Indians, 293. Traders in Canada, 295. Catholics and Huguenots, 297. Eecollets in Canada, 299. French Half-breeds, 301. The Iroquois, 303. Huguenots in Canada, .305. Influence of the Priests, 307.' Death of Father Ralle, 309., The Acadians, 311. Their Removal, 313. Their Dispersion, 315. French and Indian War, 317. Ces- sion to England, 319. Conspiracy of Pontiac, 321-325. CHAPTER VI. Colonial Relations vi^ith the Indians. Pages 326-367. New England \Colonists, 327. Permanent Colonists, 329. Sales of Land, 331. MWar of Race, 333. Purchase of Indian Titles, 335- 338. King Philip's War, 339. The Pequot War, 341. Sale of Arms to Indians, 343. Wars in Virginia, 345. Confederation of Colonies, 347. English Advances, 349. Forest Forts, 351. For- est Sieges, 353. Indian Barbarities, 355. Quakers in the War, 357. The Frontiers, 359. Military Roads and Posts, 361. Cap- tives in the Wilderness, 363. Indianized Whites, 365. Roamers and Settlers, 366, 367. XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. Missionary Efforts among the Indians. Pages 368-476. General Remarks on Missiou Aims and Efforts, 369. Different Esti- mates of the Work, 371. Discordant Teachings, 873. Salvation and Civilization, 375. The Gospel Message, 377. Differences of Method, 379. Perplexities of Doctrine, 381. An Indian Agnostic, 383. — Roman Catholic Missions, 385. The First Converts, 387. The Franciscan Friars, 389. The Training of the Jesuits, 391. The Jesuit "Relations," 393. The Jesuit in Residence, 395. Jesuit Instructions, 397. The Success of the Jesuits, 399. Devo- tion of the Jesuits, 401. Tragic Fate of Missionaries, 403. Jesuit Mission Stations, 405. Journal of a Jesuit, 407. Jesuit Altar Ornaments, 409. Training of Indian Neophytes, 411. Conference between Jesuit and Indian, 413, Jesuit Arguments, 415. Fate of the Huron Missions, 417. — Protestant Missions, 419. Delayed in Massachusetts, 421. Eliot and Mayhew, 423. Eliot learning the Indian Language, 425. The Indians in Training, 427. A Jesuit Diplomatist in Boston, 429. Reception of Druillettes, 431. He visits Eliot, 433. Eliot's Cautious Preparations, 435. Indian Town at Natick, 437. Seclusion of the Indians, 439. Eliot's Faith and Perseverance, 441. The Indians in Argument, 443. Indian Municipality, 445. Examination of Converts, 447. Eliot's ' Work in Translation, 449. His Indian Scholarship, 451. Written Indian Language, 453. Printing of Indian Bible, 455. Prospects of Success, 457. Calamitous Experiences, 459. Panic in Philip's War, 461. Removal of the Indians, 463. Partial Restoration, 465. Indians at Harvard College, 467. Severity of Puritan Dis- cipline, 469. Eliot's Successors, 471. Indians on the Columbia. 473. Moravian Missions, 475. CHAPTER Vin. Relations of Great Britain vfith the Indians. Pages 477-513. British America, 479-482. The Hudson Bay Company, 483-490. Rivalries in the Fur-Trade, 491. The Red River Settlement, 493. Savage Allies of Great Britain, 495. Savage Neutrals or Allies, 497. Bourgoyne's Use of Savages, 499. Washington's Apprehen- sions, 501. British Malignant Policy, 503. General Sullivan's Campaign, 505. Embarrassed Relations, 507. An Englishman at Vancouver, 509. Canadian Indian Commission, 511-513. CONTENTS. XT CHAPTER IX. The United States Government and the Indians. Pages 514-552. Congressional Policy, 515. Conduct toward the Natives, 517. Diffi- culties and Embarrassments, 519. Changing Conditions of the Problem, 521. Peace Medals for Chiefs, 623. Visits of Chiefs to Washington, 525. Wise and Helpful Measures, 527. Tecumseh's Confederacy, 529. The Massacre at Fort Mims, 531. Opinions of our Statesmen, 533. Baffled Statesmanship, 535. Inconstant Policy, 537. Treaties in the Forest, 539. Number and Terms of Treaties, 541. Validity of the Treaties, 543. Violated Pledges, 545. Spoils of the Black Hills, 547. Formalities of a Council, 549. Mistakes in Management, 551. CHAPTER X. Military and Peace Policy with the Indians. Pages 553-586. Present Relations with the Indians, 554. As Neighbors, 555. Pres- ent Embarrassments, 557. The Indian Bureau, 559. Strictures on the War Policy, 561. Faults of the Peace Commission, 563- 565. Conflicting Charges, 567. Wasted Benevolence, 569. Cost of Peace or War, 571. Compulsory Labor, 573. Modified Cove- nants, 575. Security through Improvements, 577. The Indian Territory, 579. Trespasses on Reservations, 581. Semi-Civilized Tribes, 583. Indian Communism, 585. CHAPTER XI. The Indians under Civilization- Pages 587-630. Drawbacks of Civilization, 589. Attractions of Savagery, 591. Arbi- trary Civilization, 593. Resistance to Civilization, 595. Nature and Conventionalism, 597. Enforced Civilization, 599. Stages of Progress, 601. Disappointments and Failures, 603. Reversion- ary Instincts, 605-608. Pleas for Savagery, 609. Indianized Whites, 611. White Captives adopted, 613. Indian Diplomacy, 615. Pleas against Civilization, 617. Civilization repudiated, 619. Forlorn Remnants of Tribes, 621. Semi-Civilization, 623. Domestic Animals as Civilizers, 625. Patient and Persistent Ef- forts, 627. A Ray of Hope, 629. INTRODUCTOEY. GENEEAL SURVEY OP THE , SUBJECT. " Wht do you, White Men, call us Indians ? " This was a question asked many times, on many occasions, in widely distant places, by the aborigines of this country, when they began to converse familiarly with the new comers from across the sea. The question was a very natural one under the circumstances. The name " Indians " was a strange one to those to whom it was thus assigned. They did not know themselves by the title. They had never heard the word till the white men addressed them by it. Courtesy, in a wilderness as well as amid civilized scenes, would have seemed to allow that when nameless strangers met to in- troduce themselves to each other, each party should have been at liberty to name himself. But the savage curiously inquired of the white man, " Why do you call us Indians ?" If, before giving an answer, the white man had asked, " What do you call yourselves ? " he too would have re- ceived but little satisfaction. It does not appear that our aborigines had any one comprehensive name, used among themselves, to designate their whole race on this continent. They contented themselves with tribal or local titles. Nor is it likely that every white man to whom the red man put the question, "Why do you call us Indians?" would or could have given the intelligible and true answer 1 Z INTRODUCTORY. to it. The name applied to the aborigines of this conti- nent perpetuates for all time the original illusion and lure under the prompting and impulse of which this continent was first brought to the knowledge of Europeans. There is myth, there is poetic legend, there may be something which looks like' testimony, about visits by dwellers on the Old World to this so called New World, before the historic voyages of Columbus and his Successors. But there is nothing which can stand the severest tests of evidence for those visits as matters of positive fact. At any rate, if there were such visits they bore no fruits, left no tokens of use or occupancy, and did not bring tlje dwellers on either hemisphere into intercourse. Nor did Columbus when on our soil, not even to the day of his death, know that he had opened a new continent, with a new race of men. The America that we know, as substantially two continents, — both of them together stretching to a greater length than Europe, Asia, and Africa, — floating between two vast oceans, was a realm that he never sought, nor ever dreamed of, nor knew that he had reached when he stood upon it. Columbus held this globe of earth to be much smaller than it is, — to be in fact of the size which it would have been if America and the Pacific Ocean had been left out of it. What he had sought for, after fourteen years of impor- tunate pleading for patronage from European monarchs, what he supposed he had found, as he lay upon his death- bed, was a sort of back-door entrance to the Indies. That gorgeous realm, — the slender positive knowledge of which to Europeans was heightened by all the inventiveness of hu- man fancy and all the glow and craving of greed, investing it with fabulous charms and glitter as a vast mine of gold and gems awaiting the spoiler, — had been opened vaguely and invitingly to here and there a land traveller and a ven- turous mariner, on its western edge. It was a long and perilous route to it, either by land or sea. Columbus be- lieved that by sailing westward upon the Atlantic he could NAME OP THE ABORIGINES. 3 strike it upon its rear coast, on its eastern shore. That is precisely what he thought he had done, first by touching some of its outlying islands, then on its main. And his constant questions on the spot were for Cathay, for the realm of Prester John, the treasures of Indian mines. He was looking, not for America, but for India. And he was, as he believed, not in a new world, but on an edge of the old familiar world. India it was to be all the way, and Lidia it was at the end. On his fourth and last voyage, Columbus wrote from Veragua, to Ferdinand and Isabella, that he was within nineteen days' land journey of the Gan- ges. And so everything on his way and at the end of his way took a name from the lure and illusion under which he won a higher renown of glory than he knew. The islands which he first reached became, as they are now, the West Indies. The royal council in Spain which man- aged, or rather mismanaged, all that came of the great enterprise, became " The Council for the Indies ; " and the aborigines on these superb domains of forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers were called, and, if ever they shall have all vanished away, will be known in history, as " Indians." It is to be noted, however, that .the French, who so soon after followed the Spaniards by voyages to the southern and northern bounds on the mainland of our domain, did not adopt or use the word " Indians " as a name for the aborigines. I do not recall a single case of its use by any of the French explorers. They uniformly spoke and wrote of the natives as "les Sauvages," — the savages. Occa- sionally a reference may be found in which a French writer will use the expression, " The Indians, as the English call the savages." Deferring to future discussion the leading topics which this large subject will present to us, as we follow up the subsequent relations between the people of the Old World and those of the New, we may occupy ourselves in these introductory pages with a general view of the field before of the unknown and the future. J^'or what were pu»siiui±i- ties then we have now realities. The most interesting and exciting questions now held under discussion about our abo- rigines are, whether the race is destined to absolute extinc- tion, and whether irresistible processes are working to that result. A modification of the opinion that such must needs be the fate of the red man suggests to us, that the only con- dition which will arrest that result is such a transformation of his habits, mode of life, and even of his nature, that those who in three or four generations may represent the stock, in pure or mixed descent, will have wholly parted with the original and distinctive characteristics of the race. If such an extinction of an aboriginal people is to be realized, their history ought to be well searched and attested before they pass away. Our knowledge of the natives of this continent must be taken strictly as beginning with the first contact with them by Columbus on the islands, and by himself and his fol- lowers on the main. Of the legendary and mythological Sagas of the alleged visit of the Northmen there is, as has been said, no contemporaneous record, and no extant monument or token. The one hundred and twenty white men who formed the company of Columbus were the me- dium for introducing the people of the Old World to those of the New. Columbus carried some of the natives to Spain on his first return voyage, and in 1508 the American savage was seen for the first time in Prance. Those who now represent the native race on this conti- nent are but little serviceable to the historian who seeks to investigate its antecedent state and fortunes. The funda- mental questions for the archasologist are, whether man is autochthonic or exotic here, and whether in ethnic unity or diversity. Agassiz told us that geologically this continent ■was the, first part of the globe fitted for human habitation^ ARCHEOLOGY OP THE CONTINENT. 6 and there are scientists who claim that the isthmus was the cradle of the world's civilization. But Sir John Lub- bock assures us that there are no physical or scientific tokens of human existence on the continent back of three thousand years. Of course it is not within the limited and appropriate design of these pages to enter into the substance and arguments of archaeological science, as it opens its rich and profoundly interesting, though bewildering, discussions of prehistoric times and people on this continent. A half century ago the mounds and other earthworks in the great Western valleys engaged a curious interest, as tokens of the presence of a more advanced and intelligent representation of human beings than were those who were found in occu- pancy of the soil, and who were wholly ignorant of the builders or purpose of those mysterious works. But within quite recent years a far richer, yet still no less baffling and hardly more communicative, field of inquiry, research, and scientific theorizing has been opened to archaeologists, and, strangely enough, on the mainland of the continent nearest to the islands first visited by the Spaniards. The pyramids and tombs of Egypt have found their rivals in the architec- tural remains of Palenque, in Chiapas, and in all the regions of the Isthmus and of Central America. It is claimed that these, and other tokens and relics associated with them, afford evidences of an ancient prehistoric civilization rival- ling that of Europe in the Middle Ages. The assumption falls as yet far short of proof. In the interest of historical and archffiological science, scholars are left only to the expres- sion of their murmurs and regrets that the first representa- tives of European civilization and intelligence, when opening a new world and an unknown stock of their own race to intercourse and inquiry, should have manifested not even an ordinary curiosity about those questions concerning the American' aborigines which modern inquirers pursue with such diligence. Soiae of these questions, we naturally infer, might have been relieved of a part of the mystery and 6 INTEODUCTOEY. obscurity which they have for us, had they drawn attention and investigation from the first and most intelligent of the Europeans who came into contact with the natives of the soil. But in this, as in so many other cases, it would have been easier to ask questions than to obtain satisfactory answers to them. It is utterly impossible for us now to reach anything more than proximate and conjectural esti- mates of the probable number of the aborigines, of their distribution over the continent, the density of the popula- tion in some favored spots, the extent of wholly lonely and uninhabited expanses, and the length of time during which any one tribe or confederacy of tribes had occupied the same regions. No satisfactory information is on record of anything more than the most trivial traditionary account of the fortunes of any tribe among them covering more than two generations previous to those then in life. Of course many of the questions which we are prompted to ask con- cerning the primitive and prehistoric races on this conti- nent, as if it were a fresh and wholly independent field of inquiry, are problems equally for the dwellers on the old continents themselves, with all their histories and monu- ments. The theory of the development or evolution of the human race from a lower order of animal is to be subjected to the same tests, illustrated by the same analogies, and met by the same arresting difficulties and challenges wherever specimens of that race are found. It is to be observed also that the first white comers here seem to have assumed what has ever since been substantially taken for granted, — that, though diversities of climate and of natural features and products over the breadth and length of the continent might result in differences of resource and advancement among various tribes, all the aborigines were essentially homoge- neous in type, character, and condition of life, f Let us for a moment seize and hold in our minds the gorgeous dream of wealth and glory by which this continent was opened to Europeans, and improve it by an added touch ASPECT OP THE NEW WORLD. 7, of fancy of our own. Suppose that this half of the earth, ocean-bounded, stretching from pole to pole, with all its wealth of material, its vast and mighty resources, its scenes and furnishings for the life, the activity, and the happi- ness of man, — suppose that, as concerned its human in- habitants, it had proved to be directly opposite to what it was. Suppose that it had been peopled by a superior race, advanced in civilization, refinement, art, culture, science, far at least, if not immeasurably, beyond the race whose curiosity and greed had for the first time bridged the way between them. It might have been so. Taking into view the general average civilization of Europe at that time, we know that it was but rude and rough, with many elements of barbarism, heavily burdened with ignorance and super- stition, and convulsed year by year by local and extended wars. It might well have been that, folded within the depths of this continent, a people under the training and development of centuries, protected and fostered rather than disadvantaged by lack of commerce and intercourse with other peoples, should have enjoyed and improved this realm as we do now. Instead of the hordes of wild and naked savages, cowering in the forests, living by the chase, burrowing in smoky and filthy cabins, without arts, letters, laws, or the signs or promise of any advance in their gener- ations, there might have been men and women enjoying and enriched by all that can adorn and elevate human exist- ence. And these, when the ships of curious and craving adventurers touched their shores, or strangers trespassed on their well guarded domains, might have had the will and the knowledge, the skill and the enginery of battle and defence, to repel the invaders, to sink them in the sea, or leave them to starvation, keeping the ocean cordon inviolate around them. One other element must come into our sup- position. It is that of religion. Whatever religion that race imagined for this continent might have had and be- lieved, however pure and elevating in its influence, how- S INTRODUCTORY. ever firmly and devoutly held, so that the proffer to change it for another would be scorned and utterly withstood, — if that religion had not been in name or symbol Christian, it would at once have decided what must be the relations be- tween the people and their visitors. As we shall see, the very axiom and conviction of right and duty for all Euro- pean discoverers of that day was that those of every race and clime who were outside of the fold of the Koman Church were heathen, uncovenanted and damned, and must come into it or perish. The fancy which I have ventured to suggest, — that the first European adventurers here might have found & conti- nent and people advanced above their own in intelligence, civilization, and all the ministering resources of life, — may find a semblance approximating to reality in the reception which has been accorded -to the Mongolians from China. Those immigrants have certainly found here a land prefer- able for their wants and uses above that wliich they have left. They certainly cannot congratulate themselves on the warmth of the welcome which they have received. In- terested parties, those whose individual gains in commerce or labor are served by these destitute and hungry and hum- ble people, — who thrive on stinted wages and refuse food, — have been pronounced public enemies for favoring the in- coming of the Chinese. Among those directly concerned in the exciting question there is a bitter controversy whether this Mongolian race shall make further increase on our con- tinent, and whether those already here shall not be driven out. It is easy by the imagination, helped by some ready statistics and calculations, to forecast deplorable conse- quences from such an unchecked immigration. We are told that there are more of wretched and starved millions of pop- ulation in China to-day than there are of all whites and Eu- ropeans in the. United States, and that, if the way were left open and free for them to come, with their habits of industry and thrift they would soon have predominance here. The THE ILLUSION OP THE DISCOVERERS. 9 future must provide for that, as for many other serious prob- lems, social and political. We can only comfort ourselves with the fact that this continent, especially under Anglo- Saxon sway, has shown a wonderful power of digestion and assimilation of various peoples and nationalities. We have digested a large part of Ireland, and a considerable portion of Germany, — not, however, without some symptoms of a social and political dyspepsia. Dutch, Swedes, Scandinar vians, French, Italians, have also furnished us -writh a stim- ulative and an alterative diet ; and we must leave to the wisest councillors of our nation to dispose of the Mongo- lian element. But, instead of finding in this New World a people in a measure advanced in civilization, and capable of defensive resistance to invasion, those who were the first of Euro- peans to introduce themselves to another division of their own human race encountered only such as we still call savages, or, at least, barbarians. Even long after the lands discovered on this side of the Atlantic were known to form a new continent, no longer a part of India or Asia, America was regarded as simply an interposed barrier on the course westerly from Europe to the fabled realm. Not for more than a hundred years fol- lowing upon the first voyage of Columbus was this conti- nent sought or occupied solely for the magnificent ends which it has been realizing for nearly three centuries. The continent was bound to open a water-course to India, — a new and shorter route to its wealth and wonders. That shortened route, which even to this day we have not given over seeking, was then a beguiling and constraining lure, which turned all considerate thought aside from the invit- ing shores and the inner depths of this splendid realm for toil and harvesting. The Spaniards pursued the search for that Indian highway near the south of the present bounds of our nation, and in so doing beheld the Pacific Sea, and opened California and Oregon. French, English, and Dutch 1^ 10 INTEOD0CTOEY. navigators have pounded at the barriers of Polar ice in the vain attempt to pierce a passage, and have left the names of capes and bays for their epitaphs. The Spaniards might still ply their cupidity in drawing out the treasures from the mines of their El Dorado in Mexico and Peru, and the efforts of the less greedy pioneer navigators from the other nations of Europe might still be spent upon finding a northern route opened for them to India. But at last the thrift and practical sagacity, chiefly of the English adventurers, began to rest upon the value and promise of this upper section of the continent for it- self alone. "Why go further? Why not stop here, and see what other forms of wealth and good beside gold and pearls may be found here?" These were questions then asked by those best able to answer them. From the mo- ment that the capabilities and the attractions of the new realm fixed the thoughts and engaged the energies of wise and earnest men, these fair expanses began to open them- selves — as, by a continuous course of adventure and explo- ration, they have been doing ever since — to the noblest uses of man. Nor from the first wiser, yet hardly chastened, view taken of them by those who looked on them for themselves alone, did they lack eyes and minds apprecia- tive of their grandeur, their beauty, and tlieir fascination. With almost the sole exceptions of the Pilgrims at Ply- mouth, who first beheld their bleak and sandy land-fall under the desolation of its wintry aspect, the first Euro- peans who came with a view to stay in some part of North America, visitors or colonists, so timed their voyages as to arrive at a destination or to skirt the shores in the beauty of the opening spring-time, the gay aspects of summer, or the golden glory of the autumn. The pages of their jour- nals gleam and glow with their enthusiastic pictures of the lovely aspects of Nature here, and the winning charms which beckoned them on to trace her from the shore through the river and the lake up into the recesses of THE JOY OP THE MAEINEE3. 11 meadow, forest, and mountain. As we read the quaint epitliets and the unskilled, though wonderfully expressive, terms and phrases — sometimes really gems of language — by which in short, strong touches they present the fea- tures of some new scene which first of civilized men they beheld, with all their senses quickened to joy, we become oblivious of the stern hardships and the ways of peril through which they had passed, and long that we too might share in the surprises and delights which they portray to us. After long and tempestuous voyages so unlike those by which wo pass like shuttles across the ocean, — stived together in cramped vessels, seldom much exceeding, often not reaching, half a hundred tons burden ; most generally with scurvy and ship-fever among them; weary of each other's company and the dreary monotony of days and nights, of storms and calms ; subsisting upon odious food and stagnant water, while in vain craving something fresh and green, — the signs of bank and shoals and drifting weeds betokened the end of their sea course. Their com- pass was bewildered : they had no charts. Then the small boat must be put to service, with its watchful crew, to sound the way on, to search for a passage, between reefs and rocks, with eyes ever open for each whitened tuft of water that crowned a breaker. Meanwhile they tell us of the fragrant breathings that came from the wooded and bushy shore, and how they drank in the odorous airs from sas- safras and piny groves, and how they filled their water- butts at fresh springs, and gathered from shrub or bough or root the rich, green, juicy fruit or berry so racy in its flavor to the landed seaman. And then their pages fairly sparkle with tales of the vine-clad trees, the fields strewed with the white blossoms of the strawberry, the aroma of the juices of pine and fir and juniper, and all the luxurious vesture and charms of a teeming virgin soil. Nor were they insensible to the solemnities of the primeval forests, the depths of their solitudes, the sombreness and 12 INTRODUCTORY. awe of their profound silence, broken only by the water-fallj the rushing deer, the rustling bough, the buzzing insect, the croaking frog. We shall soon read the charming descrip- tion which Columbus gave of the scene that first opened on the eyes of the Spaniards. The first adventurers, landing at the mouth of James River, in the very glory and gush of summer beauty in 1607, were in an ecstasy of exuberant delight at the scene, its sights and odors for the senses. The oysters, says George Percy, brother of the Duke of Northumberland, " lay on the ground as thick as stones, many with pearls in them ; the earth all flowing over with fair flowers of sundry colors and kinds, as though it had been in any garden or orchard in England ; the woods full of cedar and cypress trees, which issue out sweet gums like to balsam." And the veritable John Smith, whose prowess may cover his whole posterity by name, averred that " Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation." Governor Wintlirop, reaching our own rude coast in June, 1630, wrote : " We had so pleasant a sweet air as did much refresh us; and there came a smell off the shore like the smell of a garden." While our domain is arraying itself in the garb and finish of civilization, with its cities and manufactories, there is one of its ancient glories which our near posterity will never behold. It is that of the endless forest shad- owed with a deeper than a dim religious light, — a sombre and awful solitude, silent in the calm, but reverberating with Jllolian blasts in summer or winter tempests. What a boon was offered to humanity in the Old World when the veil that had hidden this New World was pierced and lifted! Here was opened for humanity a fresh, fair field, substantially we may say untried, untilled, unpene- trated, and, as the new comers chose to regard it, in larger part unpeopled. We who live upon it have not yet taken the inventory of our possessions; we know but little more THE BOON OP A NEW CONTINENT. IS than its surface, nor can we cast the horoscope of its fu- ture. This we do know, that while humanity was trying its experiments with rising and falling empires in the Old World, exhausting as it seemed the zest and the possibili- ties of life, jaded and weary and foul, and often sinking in despair, here was a hidden realm of virgin earth, of for- ests, lakes, rivers, and mountains, of fields and meadows, of mines and cataracts, with its secrets and marvels of grandeur and beauty, all glowing and beaming as with the alluring legend, " Try once more what you can do with, what you can make of, human life ! " It was as when one turns from a melancholy stroll in a decayed town or ruined city, with its crumbling and mouldering structures, its sewers choked with foulness, and its festering graveyards whose inscribed stones only vary the tale of woe and vanity and falsehood, and mounts a breezy hill in our fairest re- gions of yet lonely space, and gazes upon the prospect. Such was the boon and gift offered to humanity on the opening of this continent. Profoundly penetrating and solemn is the thought, that never again on this globe will this -transcendent privilege and proffer be repeated. We have got the whole, in all its parts. Australia has discour- aged the hope which beamed at its first welcome. Though it is the largest island on the globe, — itself a continent, — having an area of nearly three million square miles, only the skirts of its coasts appear to be profitable for cultivation, while the surveys of its interior, so far as they have with difficulty been made, reveal enormous deserts of sand and rock. We note that the British men of science, at the annual meetings of their Association, offer their measure- ments of the yet remaining capacities of the mines of coal and iron and other metals, and forecast the date when Eng- land must yield the power and glory of being the workshop of the world. It requires no abstruse mathematics to deal with the facts of a larger and more august problem. What shall men, in the steady increase of our race, do when all 14 INTRODUCTOEY. the desirable stretches of the habitable earth, on continent and island, are occupied? "We know how festering diseases and a devitalized blood track the long abode of a crowd of men in one spot ; we know how the life-stock in our cities is renewed by new comers from rural homes. "What resources will humanity have for its long future refreshment and puri- fication as it uses up, exhausts, and defiles its old scenes and seeks fresh fields and pastures new? The only meet answer we can give to that question is in the fidelity and economy with which we use man's last and largest continent. It is not admitted, however, that men are less vigorous in an old country than in a new one. "While we attribute to the length of their ages the decays of some Eastern people, Germany has not lost its power for producing men of noblest energy and talent, by any lapse of centuries. And it has even been affirmed that our race has physi- cally deteriorated since its transfer here. Notwithstanding the mystery which overhung the conti- nent on its discovery, it was from the first delighted in and gloried over as a land of infinite possibilities. The wealth and prosperity which have been wrought from it may not answer in kind or form to the fashionings of the exalted im- aginations of its hidden treasures, because there was a halo investing at first the vast unknown. It was at once found that everything here was on a magnificent scale of size and grandeur. "What the Old World from which the ad- venturers came had only in miniature, in toy shapes, this continent presented in sublime magnitudes. Its rivers were bays, its ponds were seas, and its lakes were oceans. "Where did the continent begin, and where did it end, and how was it to be opened ? The early comers listened to and repeated some legendary and monstrous stories of the sort of men which were to be found deep in these forests. Columbus saw mermaids in the sea. Jacques Cartier, in Canada, had heard of men with the convenient accom- plishment of living without a particle of any kind of food ; GRANDEUR AND STRETCH OP TERRITORY. 15 and Lafitau reported another sort of people whose heads,^ if they really had any, were snugly buried between their shoulders, and others still who had but one leg. This grand and majestic scale on which the objects and features of the continent were proportioned, gives a tone, of expanse and of unbounded, vaguely-defined locality in the designation of vast territories. Such terms as " the head-waters" of one or more rivers, or their valleys, or a " stretch " of plains, are used as if defining the range. for a pleasant walk, while months of toil and risk would be requisite for coursing them. One of the charms which will always invest the perusal of the journals of the old explorers, deep in the recesses of the continent, will be found in noting these large epithets of description and locality, and in comparing them with the reduced terms, the definite and detailed bounds and limits, by which we find it necessary to refer to them. The Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains represented once uniform and com- prehensive lines of elevation, longitudinally continuous and compacted as barrier walls. They are distributed now into irregular ranges, distinguished by peaks and valleys, while skill and fancy are tasked to give them titles. The new comers, however, knowing well what they came for and what they were in search of, very soon set upon the prizes for which they were seeking. It is curious to mark how, from the very first, different aims and objects, respectively characteristic of the Europeans of the three leading nationalities, were manifested and pursued here, and were followed down to our own times. The aim and greed of the Spaniard were for gold, silver, and pearls, the spoils of the heathen; not at all for laborious occupancy of 1 This learned writer in his " Moeurs des Sauvages Americains," gives us an engraved figure of one of these Acephales, as he calls them. The face and head, comfortably settled, as the breast, present quite a benignant expres- sion. The subject would be an impracticable one for the gibbet or guillotine. Planche, iii. 16 INTRODUCTOET. the soil. The Frenchman -was content with the fur-trade, in pursuit of which he needed the aid of the Indian, whom he was disposed therefore to treat with friendliness, and with whom he consorted on such equal terms as to be still represented, all over our north and west, by a race of half- breeds. The staple of the English stock, after some random ventures in Virginia, when they came to be represented by the Puritan element in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Con- necticut, though they had fallen upon the least kindly and the most rugged soil of the continent, accepted the condition of hard work and frugal ways, earning their living by cod- fish and corn. And that may be the reason why — the Spaniards having vanished with the age of gold, and the French with the wasteful fur-trade — the English, though the last comers, are the hard workers and the opulent on thisjand. ""^he red men will always have a tender, touching claim upon our sympathetic regrets in the fact that we succeed to their heritage. We fill the places from which they have vanished. The more enduring, the unchangeable features of the scenes of our life-time — the mountain, the valley, the river — are those which are forever identified with them. The changes and improvements which we have introduced are wholly ours, and would be simply indifferent or offensive to the wild forest rovers. However we may palliate or jus- tify, with reasons or from the stress of necessity, their re- moval from before us, we cannot forget that they were once here ; and that whatever was the sum or substance of the good of existence for them was found in the same aspects of Nature, under the same sun and moon and stars, on the same soil, as the same seasons passed over it, where we find our own. An ancient burial-ground, with its decaying memorials, does not lose the pathos of its suggestiveness for us in the reflection that the covered human dust is very ancient, and was of necessity deposited there. >' There are occasions and places when the regretful re- MEMORY OF VANISHED TRIBES. 17 membrances of a vanished race come upon us with a depth of sympathy so true that we love to yield to it. When, under the fairer auspices of Nature, in our vacation or holi- day moods, we visit spots in harmony with our ideals of the romance of savage life, we are easily beguiled into workings of remorse or pity for the wasted and extinct tribes who once roamed here before us. On the jnountain slopes, with their deep, wild coverts, never yet disturbed by the woodman's axe, and where wild creatures still linger in their haunts, we feel that a few of the native stock might still find a refuge. In the shaded valleys, coursed by bab- bling brooks or rushing rivulets, on the green and pebbly shores of tranquil lakes, into which push out the sedgy and wooded tongues of land, circled with creeping vines and the mild fragrance of the wild-flowers, — we should meet without surprise the dusky loiterers whose moccasoned feet might tread noiselessly before us. By the summer sea- side, on beach or cliff, where we pitch the canvas tent, in mimicry of the native wigwam, we may share in fancy the company of those to whom the scene on earth was the same three hundred years ago as it is to us to-day. Then, if ever, we are responsive to the feelings of compunction over the ' wrongs of the red men. We call them back as to their own outraged and stolen heritage. We reknit their un- tutored hearts to the scenes and objects which we feel they must have intensely enjoyed and loved, because they shared the human sensibilities which give to the sunlight and the breeze, to the lapping sea-wave and the aroma of the forest, their entrancing spell for us. The wealth of sen- timent in them, unrefined and untutored as it was, was of the endowment of their nature. It must all have gone in concentrated, appreciative strength, to spend itself within the narrow range of their emotional being. Among the more engaging subjects of interest and curiosity which within quite recent years have been discussed by our more philosophic students, and which we shall have to note fur- 2 18 INTRODUCTORY. tlier on, is the inquiry as to the range and degree of what we call mental development among savages generally, or in any particular portion of them favored by condition and op- portunity. On the whole it may be said that fuller obser- vation, closer intercourse, and a keener study of them have greatly qualified the first impressions and the first judg- ments of them as wholly imbruted, stolid, vacant in mind, inert, without food and exercise of thought. The very closeness of their relation to Nature, its aspects and pro- ducts, and the acuteness of their .powers of observation, nmst have quickened them into simple philosophers. jTlt is on record, and there it must remain, that to the first comers from Europe, at every point of our mainland and islands, the natives extended a kindly and gentle welcome. They offered freely the hospitality of the woods. Yet more : they looked on the whites with timid reverence and awe as superior beings, coming not so much from another region of this same earth as from some higher realm. It is to be confessed, moreover, that their visitors very soon broke the spell of their enchantment, and proved themselves human, with charms and potencies for working harm and woe. The white men cheaply parted with the marvel and glory with which the simple natives invested them, and be- came the objects of a dread which was simply horror. Ee- lations of hostility and rancor were at once established, in a superlative degree, by the Spaniards, in their ruthless raids upon the natives, to whom they made the basest returns for an overflow of kindness, whom they tasked and transported as slaves, and on whom they visited all the contempt of their own superstition and all the ingenuities of torture. The expresses and the telegraphs of the children of the woods transmitted through the continent, as effectively as do our modern devices, the mingled impressions of bewilder- ment and rage, and opened the since unvaried and inten- sij^ed distrust which the red man has of the white man. ,}•' We are often, sometimes very solemnly, forewarned of. THE INDIAN NEMESIS. 19 the judgment which later times and loftier standards of right! than our own will pronounce upon our country for our treatment of the Indians. Occasionally, with prophetic burden, the stern seer into the future denounces a curse forever to rest upon this land, evoked by the silent, spectral forms of the vanished red men over whose hunting-grounds and graves in the hands of the spoiler no permanent bless- ing can ever be enjoyed. But, through any and all future time, : — when, if it should be so, the red race has vanished,, — two very different pleas in relief or vindication of the white man will be offered. We can anticipate those pleas, for they can be no other than are spoken earnestly and ur- gently in our own present time. One of them will urge, as it now urges, inevitable fate, irresistible destiny, as ap- pointing absolute extermination and extinction for a race of men either incapable of, or wilfully hostile to, civilization. The other plea of defence will rest in firmly and eloquently insisting that the wisd om and conscience of the white man were thwarted, by circumstan ce or inherent obstacles, in all the humane and earnest and costly work which he at- tempted for the good of the red man. In the broad sweep of historic retrospect, that has indeed been a direful and tragic work as regards the red man arid the white man which has been wrought on this continent ; sad and shocking it is, whether we contemplate it in the in- terests of a humane civilization, or in sympathy with the Indian. But with no intent to prejudice the whole issue, to plead for wrong, or to palliate iniquity, there are two stern facts of which we may remind ourselves. First: during the more than three centuries of struggle between Christian and heathen races on this continent, every wrong and outrage to humanity, all the woe and suffering involved in it, have been more than matched in the methods by which Bo-called Christians have dealt with each other in the Old World, by wars, massacres, persecutions, and all the en- ginery, of passion and folly, and hate and vengeance. . And, 20 INTRODUCTORY. second: if all the losses and inflictions — in pain, in actual visitations of every sort of distress and agony — could be summed up and brought into comparison, it would be found ithat the cost of getting possession of this continent has 'been and will yet be to the whites more exacting in toil and blood and in 'fjurchase-price than the defence of their heritage has been to the Indians. Sad and harrowing as has been the sanguinary conflict between a civilized and a barbarous race on this continent, how trivial has been the sum of its woes compared with those of contemporaneous passions on the other side of the ocean, in religious, civil, and dynastic wars, — wars of succession, seven years' wars, thirty years' wars, wars of the Netherlands, of the Fronde, of the League, of the Peninsula, of the Napoleons, of the Holy Alliance, of every European nation, — all Christian ! Yet if full vengeance settles the account of the wronged, vastly more in number of the whites than of the Indians, and by sterner and ghastlier methods of death, have fallen in the conflict. Nor has Christian civilization, in its re- straints upon the exercise of arbitrary and vengeful power by the strong against the weak, withstood, down to our own times, the grossest acts of oppression and outrage when na- tional or commercial aggrandizement or thrift was the ob- ject in view. When all the naval and military power and policy of Great Britain have been engaged to thrust opium down the throats of the Chinese at the point of the bayonet, and Sepoys have been blown from the mouth of cannon, we cannot deal with like enormities as stains upon merely thCfannals of the past. The relations between the red and the white men on this continent, from their very first contact to this present year, may be traced historically in two parallel lines, reproducing, repeating, and illustrating in a long series the same facts which characterize each of tliem. First, we have in a con- tinuous line a long series of avowed intentions, of sincere purposes, and of earnest, often heroic, designs, plans, and THE CONFLICT OP BENEFITS AND WE0N6S. 21 efforts to protect and benefit the savage ; to secure- his rights, to advance liis weKare, to humanize, civilize, and Christianize liim. Second, we have, in another unbroken but always steady series, a course of oppressive and cruel acts, of hostile encounters, of outrages, wars, and treacher- ous dealings, which have driven the savage from his succes- sive refuges on plain or mountain fastness, in forests or on lake shores, till it would seem as if this unintermitted har- assme^t must make certain his ultimate extinction. How this second course and series of oppressive, cruel, and exterminating measures got prevalence and sway, and has effectually triumphed over the really sincere purposes and professions, over the earnest and costly efforts made to protect and benefit the savage, it is the office of a faithful and candid historian to explain. Of covirse, it is of all things the most requisite that one should start on this inquiry in a spirit of perfect impar- tiality. Yet no one can pursue it far without yielding much or little to a bias that has prejudiced the inquiry for most who have engaged in it, and will be sure to present itself to all. That bias is the accepting what is called the in- evitable, in the form of a theory about races, which assumes or argues the utter impossibility that two races of men can exist in harmony and prosperity together. It is enough to say that this theory is in no case to be assumed, but must be tested and verified on each occasion that suggests it. As to these two parallel lines of facts which illustrate the relations between the red and the white man here, it may be observed that there is in our libraries and public archives a most voluminous collection of books and documents in which they are followed out. We have unnumbered jour- nals and narratives, relations of individuals who, antici- pating or sharing in each successive advance of frontier life, have written for us Indian chronicles. We have tales of adventure, stories of captives, reports of heroic missiona- ries, records of benevolent societies, and Government docu- 22 INTRODUCTORY. ments,— indeed, a perfect mass of partial and impartial guides. It is but just that an adequate and emphatic statement should he made of the avowedly good intentions and pur- poses, and of the really earnest and costly schemes and' ef- forts of the whites for the benefit of the aborigines from the very first intercourse between them. True, the insufficiency and failure of nearly all of these purposes and efforts, and the almost mocking futility of them when compared with the steady, grasping, and well-nigh exterminating progress of the whites over the continent, may seem to throw back upon these measures a character of insincerity and unre- ality. But it would be untrue, as well as unfair and un- charitable, so to judge. There were profound integrity, rectitude, and, strong resolve in many of the professions of commiseration and intended right dealing towards the Indians. Benevolent and manly hearts have beat in tender sympathy for them. Benevolence, in its single rills and in the generous flow of its gathered contributions^ has poured forth its kindly offices to them, and the sternly consecrated lives of patient and heroic men, roughened and perilled by all the dismal exigencies of the work, have been spent with the savages and for the savages, to secure for them the rights of humanity and the blessings of civiliiiation and pure religion. We may regard as mere empty forms the conditions and commands, looking towards the interests of the natives, in- troduced into the patents or charters with which the colo- nists from Europe were empowered to take possession of the country. We may ridicule the commissions and instruc- tions given to governors and magistrates as to the treatment of the Indians, of which so little came in practice. The la- bors of philanthropists, humanitarians, and missionaries in their single efforts, or in their associated benevolent organ- izations, drawing bounties from all Christendom to benefit the savages^ may sink into insignificance when compared ISABELLA PLEADS FOB ^THB SAVAGES. 23' with the cunning, the greed, the violence, the ruthless and unpitying vengeance, and the steady havoc of war which have made the red men yield all but their last refuges, on an almost boundless continent, to the white man. But none the less are there witnesses, memorials, and full confirma- tions of the fact that the Indian has had his friends and benefactors among the whites. Always, and with bright and gracious tributes for sincerity and gentle humanity, must the name of Isabella of Castile be reverently honored, because, while her own royal consort, her nobles, her people, and even many of her highest ecclesiastics, indifferent to the subject, — either from thoughtlessness over the first signs of a stupendous iniquity that was to follow, or from absorption in prospective ambitions or commercial inter- ests, — connived from the first in the enslavement, oppres- sion, and destruction of the natives of the New World, she was the first of women or of men to protest, as a Chris- tian, against any spoiling of the heathen. Nor was it from a mere feminine tenderness that she pleaded and wrote with such constraining earnestness that the children of Nature, as we shall soon read, described so engagingly by Columbus, should be treated with all the more of Christian love and mercy because, not being Christians, this was the only way to make them Christians. Of all European sovereigns, Isabella alone wrought from the dictation of the heart, and not with merely mocking formalities of profession in behalf of the savages. To the close of her life, in deep afflictions and in bodily sufferings, and in dictating her last wishes and commands, that saintly queen pleaded for gentle pity and for Christian equity and love in behalf of her subjects of a strange race. One of her ecclesiastics caught her spirit ; others of them gave their counsel for measures which thwarted her purposes. Tlie^President and Council of the Virginia Plantation in_;1606__ were! instructed "to kindly treat the savages ajid heathen people _ in those parts, and use all proper 24 j INTRODUCTORY. f means to draw them to the true service and knowledge of i God." "In the patent for Nova Scotia, in 1621, James I. speaks of the countries " either inhabited or occupied by. unbe- lievers, whom to convert to the Christian faith is a duty of great importance to the glory of God." In the charter of Massachusetts Bay, 1628, the colo- nists are warned to lead such good lives as "may win and invite the natives of the country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind, and the Cliristian faitli, — which in our royal intention and the adventurers' free profession is the principal end of this Plantation." In full accord with this royal form of instruction the Governor (Cradock) of the Bay Company, in 1629, writes to Endicott, its first resident officer here : " We trust you will not be unmindful of the main end of our Plantation, by endeavoring to bring the Indians to the knowledge of the Gospel ; which, that it may be the speedier and better effected, tlie earnest desire of our whole Company is, that you have a diligent and watchful eye over our own people, that they live unblamable and without reproof, and demean themselves justly and courteous towards the Indians, there- by to draw them to affect our persons and consequently our religion, — as also to endeavor to get some of their children to train up to reading and consequently to religion, whilst they are young : herein to young or old to omit no good op- portunity that may tend to bring them out of that woful state and condition they now are in, — in which case our pre- decessors in this our land sometimes were, and, but for the mercy and goodness of our God, miglat have continued to this day." Endicott was further instructed : " If any of the salvages pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, endeavor to purchase their tytle, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion." In the charter given by Charles II., in 1681, to William COLLEGES DESIGNED FOR THE NATIVES. ( 25 Penn, we read of the " commendable desire to reduce the savage natives by gentle and just manners to the love of civil_ society and the Christian religion." ,'' It is observable, however, that in these and many other •similar royal and public avowals and instructions as to the righful claims of the natives upon the colonists, but , little is said about remunerating the Indians or purchasing from them any territorial rights. It was always com- placently assumed that the whites might quietly take pos- session. Whatever then was the intent or the degree of sincerity of these royal instructions, they all rested upon the assumption that the invaders might rightfully override, by a claim of superiority, the tenure of barbarians on the soil. ft is noteworthy also, that, from the very earliest settle- /ment of the English colonists, the intent and effort to (benefit the natives took the ambitious form of providing for them schools and even colleges, in which they should enjoy the highest advantages of education with the whites. While the issue was as yet uncertain, whether the English j would maintain their hold as planters in Virginia, Sir I Edwin Sandys, as treasurer of the Company, proposed, I in 1619, to found a college in the colony for English and j Indian youth in common. He received an anonymous gift j of £500 for the education of Indian youth in English and • in the Christian religion. Other gifts were added, and the i prospect seemed promising and hopeful. By advice of the King and the Bishops £1,500 were collected in England. The Company appropriated for the purpose ten thousand acres of land at Henrico, near Eichmond. But the mas- sacre of the whites by the Indians, in 1622, soon after V a beginning had been made in the work, effectually an- VjuUled it. The first brick building on the grounds of Harvard bore the name of the Indian College. It was built by funds gathered in England. Its design was to furnish rooms 1^ 26 INTRODUCTORY. for twenty Indian youth, who, on a level with the English', might pursue a complete academic course,:for which they should be prepared by a " Dame's school," and by " Master Oorlet's Grammar School." The attempt was earnestly made and carried through its various stages, with but slender and wholly unsatisfactory results. That work of marvellous toil and holy zeal, Eliot's Indian Bible, was printed in that consecrated college hall. The excellent Robert Boyle and the beloved and gentle Bishop Berkeley both bore labors and sacrifices in planning colleges for the Indians, — alike in vain. Dartmouth College took its start as " Moors' Charity School for Indians," for the education of their youth and of missionaries to them. The motto on the college seal is Vox clamantis in Deserto. A very remarkable list is still preserved of subscriptions made in its behalf from two hundred places in Great Britain, chiefly gathered by the preaching there of an ordained Christian minister, Sampson Occum, an Indian. President Wheelock gave his devoted labors to the school and college, and once had twenty-one Indian boys under instruction. But the mis- sionaries sent forth from the college were not welcome or successful, and the whites soon monopolized the advantages of the institution. In each of these enterprises some ma- lign agency came in to thwart all well-intended purposes. In view of all these royal covenants and solemn avowals made in the interest of the red men, and of all these asso- ciated and individual efforts through costly outlays and devoted sacrifice to serve and help and save them, nx) one can fairly affirm that the European colonists from the be- ginning until now have failed to recognize tlie ordinary claims of a common humanity which the aborigines had upon them^We certainly have to take note of the fact /ftiat the best feelings and purposes towards the Indians / were cherished in anticipation of what would and ought to \ be the relations of the whites as Christians, when brought THE CHILDREN OP'NATUEE. 27 into intercourse with them. Closer acquaintanceship, inti- macy of intercourse, and indieed the results of the first friendly and helpful efforts of the whites, soon raised and strengthened a feeling of discouragement, which was very ready to justify itself when alienation and open hostility emhittered the relations of the races. The . conviction that it was very difficult to convert and civilize an Indian received from most of those who listened to its avowal the response that the labor was by no means compensated by the result. In other words, the strong persuasion was that the Indian was not worth converting. This was so manifestly allowed in the case of reprobates among the whites, as to sound like ja^xiom when said of the red men. " Men without knowledge of God or use of reason," is the royal description given of the Indians by Francis, in his commission to Roberval. The monarch does not appear to have been aware of the hopelessness of any effort to deal with those who in seeming only were men, while they lacked the endowment. whicli distinguishes man from the brute. He might, however, have qualified his description of the In- dian by affirming that it was the use, not the possession or the capacity, of reason which was wanting. Had he known some of those whom he thus described ; had he been left to their^guidaBce in the lakes and streams, the thickets and coverts of the wilderness, and noted their fertility of re- source, their ingenuity in emergencies, and the skill with whicirihey interpreted Nature, — he would have found at least that they had compensating faculties as well adapted to the conditions of their life as are the trained intellectual exercises of the masses of ordinary men. That monarch and his successors were well represented among tlie natives by those, whether priests or adventurers and traders, to whom we owe the best knowledge of the aborigines, in the early years of intercourse. The lack of reason, or even of its use, was not. the special defect of an Indian in the view of a Frenchman. 28 INTEODUCTORY. The fruitful subject of Christian missions to the Indians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, will be treated by itself. But brief reference must be made to the long, and up to this day continuous, series of efforts, beginning with the first European occupancy here, through incorporated and associated benevolent societies and fellowships ; through consecrated bequests of funds ; through public and private appeals generously answered ; and through the heroic and self-sacrificing labors and sufferings of individuals who have shrunk from no extremities of pain and trial, — all given to civilize and Christianize the aborigines of this soil and their representatives. The advocates in our days of the peace policy with the Indians may trace their line of descent through an honorable roll of predecessors. There are funds sacredly kept, the income of which is now, year by year, dis- tributed by the terms of old charters, and trusts, for the sec- ular and religious welfare of the Indians. Nor is it strictly true, as has often been said, that the Indians have no stand- ing in our courts. Though the standing which they have may be hardly distinguishable from that of wards, idiots, lunatics, and paupers, it has at least secured to them many individual and common rights, with penalties on such as wrong them. There are regions now in some of our oldest States which were set apart for Indian ownership and resi- dence in Colonial and Provincial times, with trust funds for their maintenance, independent of those which have been established by the national Government. Representatives of the race are still found in those places. To what experi- ences and results these few remnants of the aborigines on these spots have been brought, must be noticed further on Jn these pages. In the minds of some among us, who most regret and condemn the general dealing of our people and Government with the Indians, there floats an ideal conception of what might have been, and what should have been, the relations between the two races from the first up to this day, — relar THE INDIANS AND EUEOPEANS AS FEIEND3. 29 tions which would have withstood a giant injustice, and forbade countless atrocities, massacres, and wars. This con- ception, in the interest of right and reason and humanity, suggests that the stock and lineage of the original red men, with those of the colonizing white men, might easily have begun an amicable and helpful coexistence on this conti- nent, and shared the heritage ; and that they might, accord- ing to circumstances or their own wills, have become amal- gamated, or kept themselves distinct. And the relations between the English residents and the natives in their East Indian dependencies are pointed to as affording some sort of a parallel. By that facile method by which we often shape conditions which, as we assume, might have been and ought to have been realized, while we leave out of view the needful means for effecting them and the obstacles which interposed, we are apt to argue the case presented somewhat as follows : There was, and is, on this continent room enough for both races. The new comers were forlorn strangers, — guests. ^ The aborigines were kindly hosts to these poor wayfarers. They might have lived peacefully together and prospered, the stronger party always keeping the grateful memory of early obligations. Left to their natural ways and develop- ment, the whites might have occupied the seaboard and the factory streams, gradually extending into the interior ; the red men might have hid within the forest recesses, to con- serve any of the good qualities of their race, without con- tamination, and gradually with the adoption of improving influences from the whites. Then all would have been fair to-day between the races. We might have had some splendid and noble specimens of the red men in our Con- gress, — an improvement on some who are there now. Thus would have been realized the hope and prayer of the good old Canonicus, the first and fast friend of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, " That the English and my posterity shall live in love and peace together." 30 .' INTBODDCTOBY. Those who have most fondly painted this ideal of what might have been the relations between the two races on this continent, will even suggest what they regard as approxima- tions to it in the peaceful connections, with results of a com- mon prosperity, which have existed between colonists here from over the whole globe, with all languages and religions, with unlike habits and modes of life. It may be said that it is not yet too late to put this deferred experiment to a trial. Some proximate attempts have indeed been made to realize it, and are still in progress, — as, for instance, in reserved localities in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New York, where representa- tives of Indian tribes have remained in peaceful relations with the whites by covenants, as has been stated, formed far back in our Colonial and Provincial epochs. But to have made these fragmentary and special provisions a rule for general application over our whole domain, would have called for an exercise of wisdom and humanity such as has asserted itseK only since harsher methods had long been in practice, and penitential compunctions for them have pro- voked reproaches for the past. Even as the case stands now, while the humane sentiment of the age backed by the avowed purposes of the Government, — and something bet- ter than a mere feint of sincerity in effecting them, — are engaged to substitute peaceful and helpful measures in all our relations with what remains of the aboriginal stock, we are made to realize the difhculty of the process. It is enough to say that the Indians have lost, if indeed they ever had, the power of standing as an equal party with the whites in such an amicable arrangement, and must now accept such terms as may be dictated to them. Historical students and readers of generations now on the stage, as they turn over the early New England annals, will find their interest engaged by the antique seals, with quaint devices, which were adopted for the formal attestar tion of their records by the colonists of Plymouth and Mas- EUROPEANS AS HELPERS OP THE INDIANS. 31 sachusetts Bay. The seal of Plymoutli Colony, with the date 1620, presents on the quarterings of the shield four naked Indians, bowed on one knee, with forest trees around them. The seal is without a legend, but the savages each hold up what seems to be a blazing or a flaming heart, in petition or offering. We are without contemporary information as to the origin of this seal, the date of its adoption, or the in- tent of its device. But the noteworthy point for us is, that the seal, whatever it was meant to signify, was the inven- tion of the white man, not in any sense an expression of the desire of the savages, or a solicitation from them for the white man's coming here. Even more to the point are the device and legend on the seal of the Bay Colony. That was prepared and adopted in England, and sent over here, in silver, in 1629, with the first settlers. It represents a stalwart, muscular savage, naked, save as a few forest leaves shade him, standing among his pine-trees, an arrow in his right hand, a bow in the left, and on a scroll is inscribed, as coming from his lips, the Mace- donian cry to the Apostles, — " Come over and help us ! " It was an ingenious device of our fathers thus to represent the natives of the soil, in their forlorn state of bodily and spirit- ual nakedness and heathenism, plaintively appealing to the white man to come to their deliverance. The specimen In- dian on the seal, well fed and muscular, does not look as if he needed any help, except in the matter of apparel ; in that, indeed, liis need is urgent. So it is pleasant to read that the first Indian whom the Plymouth Pilgrims met, — Samo- set, — being in the costume of Nature, received from them the following articles of clothing, so far as they would go towards making up a respectable wardrobe : " A hat, a pair of stockings and shoes, a shirt, and a piece of cloth to tie about his-waist." If any of the native stock here in later years, when their race was all wasting away from our coast, had the skill to interpret the devices on. the colony seals, they must have 32 INTEODUCTOET. thought that the white man's "help" had been but sorrow for them. The Dutch colonists of New York were more frank, at least, in avowing the main object of their coming, for they chose a beaver for their shield seal. The deliberate judgment of that observing and thoughtful missionary Lafitau is summed up in these words : " The Indians have lost more by imitating our vices than they have gained by availing themselves of those arts which might have added to the comforts and conveniences of life." Yet among the many radical differences of judgment which have found expression by intelligent and competent observers, and which cover most of the matters of fact, with com- ments upon them, in the whole survey of the relations be- tween the whites and the Indians on this continent, we are to recognize this, namely, — the avowal of the opinion that the intrusion and agency of the whites have, on the whole, accrued to the benefit, the relief, the improvement of the native stock. It has been stoutly affirmed that no addi- tional havoc or horrors have attended the warfare of civil- ized men against the savages, beyond those which, with their rude weapons, their fiendish passions, and their ingenuities of torture, they had been for ages inflicting on each other. And it has been boldly argued, tliat, though civilization mastered the Indians rough-shod, it has dropped on its way reliefs, implements, favors, and influences which have mollified and reduced barbarism, and added resources to- wards lifting them from a mode of life hardly above that of brutes. It is within the life-period of the present generation that the whole development of the relations between the whites and the Indians — protracted through the preceding cen- turies — has been rapidly matured towards what is in imme- diate prospect as some decisive and final disposal of the issue. During those previous centuries, steady as has been the process of the displacement of the Indians, it was pur- sued under the supposed palliating condition that their re- THE PRESSURE UPON THE INDIANS. 33 moval,rby being crowded on to more remote refuges, was provided for by an undefined extent and wealth of western territory of like features to the regions from which they were driven ; and that in those unpenetrated depths of the continent they might for indefinite periods pursue their wonted habits of barbarous life, subsisting by the chase. So long as this resource was left, the full problem of the fate of the Indian did not press as now for immediate solution. While the superb valleys of the affluents of the Missouri, the Platte, the Red River, the Mackenzie, the Col- umbia, the Colorado, and the Sacramento were still untrav- ersed wildernesses, it seemed as if tribes which never made any fixed improvements of the soil essential to and consequent upon their tenure of it, might even prove gain- ers by moving on and taking their chances witli previous reamers over spaces large enough for them all. Circum- stances have hurried on the active working of new agencies with a rush of enterprises to what must be a forced, or a deliberately chosen and wise, conclusion. As soon as the continent was opened on the Pacific ocean, with a more vigorous ardor than the languid dalliance of the Spanish navigators, there began an era which was as foreboding to the savages as it was quickening to the whites. Other agen- cies, all vitalized with the spirit of modern zeal and schem- ing, directed by scientific as well as by adventurous aims, and kindled by a revival of the same passion for the pre- cious metals as that which blazed in the first discovery of the continent, accomplished in a score of years changes such as had been wrought before in no whole century. The dis- covery of rich mines and the search for more, the piercing advance of railways and telegraphs which came to meet each other in the centre of the continent, the occupancy of extensive ranches, the steady sweep onwards of emigrant trains turning the Indian trails into great highways, and the subtile instruments of Government engineers and ex- plorersy— all combined to convert what had been known as 8 34 INTRODUCTORY. the Great American Desert into regions as accurately sur- veyed and as adequately delineated on maps as are the feat- ures of land and water and geological formation of one of the old States. The single fact that within the last decade of years more than a million of buffaloes have been annu- ally slaughtered for their hides, the carcasses being left to the wolves, has been a significant token that the extinction of the game would come to be a constraining condition of the fate of the red man. Meanwhile, alike on the northern and on the southern borders of our national domain, the pressure of the same quickening and goading enterprises has contemporaneously aided to encircle the former limit- less range of the savages till they are, as it were, coralled in the centre of a circumscribed white occupancy. The break- ing of the monopoly of the Hudson Bay Company, which from its first charter not only discountenanced colonization, but jealously forbade even the exploration of the depths of the wilderness in order that they might be reserved for the traffic in fur-bearing animals, has given place to an eager rivalry in British enterprise in settling and improving its territory, aided by largesses for opening its own transcon- tinental railway. Simultaneously our own Indian Territory on the south — so solemnly covenanted to the exclusive occupancy of the five so-called civilized tribes, as well as to remnants of others under treaty — is threatened with a gridiron system of railways. The demands of civilized intercourse and of commercial and passenger traffic are made inexorable. Nor do the hundred and twenty-nine loosely bounded spaces marked on the latest maps as Res- ervations answer to their titles. They are but mocking securities against steady encroachments by individuals or companies of such as covet them ; and when the clash be- tween the greed of the white man and the covenanted rights of the Indian ripens into an open feud and expands into an armed collision, the Government is ever ready for any breach of its faith which may be accounted to the issue of THE PRESENT "INDIAN QUESTION." 85 civilization against barbarism. The Indian tribes in wliat we call our national domain are now in the centre of a cir- cle which is contracting its circumference all around them. Having passed through their successive relations of hosts, enemies, pensioners, and subjects of the white men, they are now the wards of the nation. The feeding, clotliing, and the attempted process of civilizing them by fixed resi- dence and labor, costly as the outlay is, is admitted on all sides to be less than the expense of fighting them. In this general survey of the chief subjects which will come before us for fuller observation as we open them for relation or discussion in dealing with our large theme, we have glanced at topics several of which might well, for their interest and importance, form the matter of many separate volumes, — as indeed they have done. Just at this time, under the title of the " Indian Question," our statesmen and philanthropists, our military men and our practical economists, have presented to them a subject of engrossing interest ; and there is a strong pressure for a resolute and decisive dealing with it. The history of the past is reverted to only for its rebukes and warnings. What is in general terms impersonated as tlie conscience of the nation, — as if asserting itself for the first time in its full and emphatic authority, or lifting itself free of all the embarrassments of expediency and policy, — insists that time and opportunity favor the application of absolute justice, with reparation so far as is possible for the past, and wise and kindly protec- tive benevolence at whatever cost for the future, in the relations between our Government and the remnant of the aborigines on our domain. But it is always difficult, if not impossible, to disengage an ancient grievance from its en- tail of follies, errors, and wrongs in the past, and to deal with it as if free of prejudiced and embarrassed conditions. In dealing witli the present Indian question, it comes to us perplexed and obstructed not only by previous mistakes, but also by existing and impracticable covenants. New 86 '■■■ INTRODUGTOKY. elements of complication are constantly presenting them- selves to perplex the original problem as to. what were to be the relations between a barbarous and a civilized people,' —the former being in a supposed rightful possession of terri- tory, while the latter, conscious of the power to secure and hold it, have found warrant for its exercise in arguments of natural reason or in interpreting the divine purposes. The substance and shape of the original problem have also been modified by physical and natural agencies, by the trial of experiments and the development of the resources of the country. A tribe, of Indians seemingly contented with a treaty stipulation assigning to them a vast expanse of ter- ritory, supposed to be adequate to their subsistence in their own mode of life, find their hunting grounds encompassed by the encroachments of the whites on their borders,' the game becoming scarce and threatening soon to disappear, while the old forest weapons lose their skill. So the In- dians ask for the arms and ammunition of the white men, and for supplies of life wliicli did not form conditions of the compact with them. They become restless on their reservations, even if not interfered with there. In the mean time enterprising white explorers come to the knowl- edge of the wealth in the streams and bowels of some of those reservations, and on the plea that ttiese. vast treasures were not known to exist when the mere wild land, was covenanted to a tribe, and that they were not in the bar- gain, and more than alLthat they are useless to the In- dians, the treaty is trifled with ; and the Government, which is not as strong as the people, is forced to be a party to a breach of faith. While, therefore, statesmanship and philanthropy are in our time forced to face the present Indian question as one for immediate disposal on urgent demands of wisdom and duty, of policy and of right, it is not strange that there should be a divergency of judgment, often manifested in clamor and discord and .passion, as to the method and FORECASTING THE PATE OP THE ABORIGINES. 37 course of action which will be practicable, effectual, and satisfactory. As, in dealing with realities and with human nature as it is, we have to recognize the facts which make up the whole of the conditions of any given problem to be dis- posed of, we have again to note, as directly and sharply bear- ing upon the present urgency of the Indian question, the fact already referred to, and to be in the sequel more delib^ erately considered, that there is another element besides-s^ statesmanship and philanthropy, which manifests itself not ( always in the discussion of, but in pronounced opinion and / In strong feeling concerning, this question. Of course it'' would be impossible to estimate the number or proportion of the people of our country who hold the opinion and who cherish the feeling now in view ; but we know that there are very many among us, and that they are very sturdy and unflinching in their conviction, who hold that the iron sway of mastery, the complete domination over ^ the Indians, even if their absolute extermination follows, is the only solution of the problem. While such a stern and relentless conviction as this underlies, it may be, the opinions of some members of Congress, of many of our leading military officers, and of agents and superintendents of Indian affairs, as well as of reckless and unprincipled frontiersmen and miners, it is easy to infer to yhat extent statesmanship and philanthropy will find their schemes baffled. There can be no doubt that this desperate fore- casting of the destiny of our aboriginal tribes has, latently or in avowal, swayed the minds of a vast number in each generation here, and has by no means been confined to those violent, merciless fighters and desperadoes who have done their utmost to carry out the presumed decree of fate. The Spanish invaders, as we shall see, assumed to be the agents of that destiny ; but none the less did Puritan ministers of New England find prophecy and divine aid in alliance with their own firelocks and swords in helping it on to fulfilment. So far as under the pressure of 88 INTEODUCTOEY. the Indian question to-day, the ultimate extinction of the Indian is with misgivings, regrets, or full and acquiescent persuasion, held to be its only solution, while the belief may embarrass and obstruct the wisest and most humane schemes, it can be forced into silence or falsified only when a protective, a benevolent, and a steadily effectual policy for the humane and rightful dealing with the Indians, in prolonged generations on this continent, is demonstrating its success. We are now prepared to rehearse, in its graphic and signally significant details, the occasion, the scene, the actors, and the consequences marking the first introduction of themselves by men of the Old "World to the wondering natives of this unveiled continent. CHAPTER I. SPANISH DISCOYERERS AND INVADERS. A LIVELY, indeed a dramatic, interest attaches to the occasion and the incidents which first brought together for recognition, for sight and intercourse, representatives of the human family that had been parted by oceans for un- known centuries. Neither of these branches of a common stock had knowledge of the other. There was to be a first meeting, as of strangers. In view of all the dismal and harrowing results which were to follow, burdening with tragedies of woe and cruelty the relations between the white man and the red man, especially those of the Span- , iards and the natives of the American islands, one might be tempted to wish that the ocean had been impassable. The more grateful, therefore, is it to recall the fact, that the very first contact and recognition between those of the Old World and the New, when the time had come that they were no longer to be deferred, present to us a sweet and lovely picture. Would that its charm and repose of simple peacefulness might have been the long perspective of the then following ages ! The great-hearted Admiral had kept his high resolve and hope through all the weary delays of his course over unknown seas, with panic-stricken and mutinous sailors. They might reckon over what part of the expanse of waters they had passed in their poor vessels, but knew not how much remained. But signs of land had appeared in sear B SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. weed, drift-wood, and birds, and a stick carved by tool. On the night of Thursday, Oct. 11, 1492, Columbus, stand- ing, near midnight, on the poop of his vessel, saw a mov- ing light, which afterwards proved, as he surmised, to be a torch, carried from one hut to another, on the island which he named San Salvador. On the next morning, clad in complete armor, with the baimer of Spain, his cap- tains around him, bearing the royal insignia of Ferdinand and Isabella, he landed on a spot which he says was fresh and fruitful like a garden full of trees. Tlie natives in simple amazement looked on, as they lined the shores and saw their mysterious visitors kneel with devout tears on the earth. And here is Columbus's report of his first impression from those whom he looked upon then as simply materials for making Christians : — f " Because they had much friendship for us, and because I knew they were people that would deliver themselves better to the Chris- tian faith, and be converted more through love than by , force^ I gave to some of them some colored caps, and some strings of glass beads for their necks, and many other things of little value, with which they were delighted, and wore so entirely ours that it was, a marvel to see. The same afterwards came swimming to the ships' ' boats where we were, and brought us parrots, cotton threads in balls,. darts, and many other things which we gave them, such as bells and small glass beads. In fine, they took and gave all of whatever they had with good-will. But it appeared to me they were a people very poor in everything. They went totally naked. They were well made, with very good faces, hair hke horse-hair, their color yellow, and they painted themselves ; without arms, save darts pointed with a fish's tooth. _Theyj)ught tojaakeJaith- ful servants and of good understanding, for I see that very quiekly they repeat all that is said to them; and I believe they would easily be converted to Christianity, for it appeared to me.ihat they had no creed." i 1 Navarrete, Col. vol. i. p. 21, as quoted by Arthur Helps, in "The Con- querois of the New World and their Bondsmen," vol. i. p. 105. THE GREETING OF THE STRANGERS. Assisted very kindly afterwards by one of the native chiefs, when one of his caravels had shoaled, he writes to their Majesties of the Indians: — " They are a loving, uncovetous people, so docile in all things that I assure your Highnesses I believe in aU the world there is not a Letter people or a better country. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest and the gentlest way of talking in the world, and always with a smile." ^ When the Protestant French colony, under Ribault, in 1562, entered the St. John River in Florida, they were impressed in a similarly enthusiastic way with the grace, simplicity, and natural cha,rms of the kindly savages whg received them w;ith full confidence and courtesy. Their journalist portrays the natives as in stature, shape, features, and manners manly, dignified, and agreeable. The women, well favored and modest, permitted no one " dishonestly to approach too near them ;" and "both men and women were so beautifully painted that the best painter of Europe could not amende it." The Spaniards and the French very soon found, and had long and sharp experience of the fact, that even these na- tives of the Southern isles and peninsula, who seem to have been of a more gentle and tractable spirit than those of the North, had in them latent passions which, when stung by oppression and outrage, could assert their fury. It is pleasant to note with emphasis the fact, that, in the conduct and course of his first voyage, Columbus having been ever anxious to secure that result, his intercourse with the natives was wholly peaceful. By his resolute discipline over a comparatively small number of men, by his regard for their safety, and his desire to reciprocate the gentle courtesy he had received from the children of Nature, who looked upon him and his followers as having veritably come -. 1 Navarrete; Col. vol. i. p. 21, as quoted by Arthur Helps, in "The Con- querors of the New. World and their. Bondsmen," vol. i. p. 105. , 42 SPANISH DISC0VERBB3 AND INVADERS. among them from the skies, he succeeded in repressing every insult and wrong, and for a time deferred violence and the shedding of blood. The first impres sion which the SpianLards, received of the inhabitants^ oLthQ&e_ialand§ liest visited was, that their^docihty and fenainijae-4ualitigs wholly disabled them even of resentment,. J.nA.'gould make all aggression on their part an impossibility. This impres- sion continued, and was for a time strengthened on the second voyage, opening other islands, — with an exception, however, soon to be stated. Those fair and luxuriant re- gions, free of wild beasts, spontaneously yielding the supplies of life to the indolent and happy natives, suggested the image of Paradise to the care-worn and passionate rovers from the Old World. It was natural that the un-orthodox fancy should present itself, even to the minds of ecclesias- tics, that these favored beings, though in human form, might possibly not be of the lineage of Adam, nor sharers in the primeval curse, as they seemed so innocent and guileless, and needed not to win their bread by the sweat of their brow. When the prow of Columbus was headed for his return to Spain, as he stopped on his way at the eastern end of Hispaniola, a party of the natives, whom he describes as armed and ferocious in aspect and treacherous in their manifestations, presented themselves on the shore and pro- voked hostilities. Here the first acts of violence occurred, and the first blood was shed on both sides. But Columbus, so far as he could understand the communications made to him in answer to his questions as to the regions where gold abounded, received information of other neighboring isl- ands, — afterwards known as the Caribbean, or Antilles, — where the natives were predatory, piratical, and warlike, invading their neighbors for slaughter and captives, and addicted to cannibalism. Of these more brave and sa,vage natives he was afterwards to have dire experience. We may therefore rest with the grateful conclusion, that the first intercourse between the representatives of the two THK ILLUSION OP COLUMBUS. 43 races began and ended in amity. Nor does it appear that those nine natives whom Columbus transported were taken against their will, or were treacherously kidnapped, as, more than a century later, were Indians on the New Eng- land coast by British freebooters. Before Columbus sailed on his return, one of his vessels having been shipwrecked on the western end of Hispaniola, the cacique of the natives of that district, Guacanagari, had shown him sympathy and kindness, offering him all friendly help. The spot was so lovely, and life seemed so attractive there, that the Admiral yielded to the wishes of many of his men that he would leave them as a colony on the shore, to pursue the objects of the discoverers. Ob- taining the consent and the promise of supplies from the cacique, Columbus, using portions of the wreck for the purpose, constructed a fort, and with explicit and dis- creet commands for caution, good discipline, and peaceful courses, he left in it thirty-nine men. The subsequent woes of the Admiral, and the opening of hostile rela- tions with the natives, are to be traced to this ill-omened experiment. The site of the colony was called Navidad, the Admiral having landed there on Christmas day. He returned to Spain with undiminished confidence in his visions of pre- cious wealth from the New World. His illusion that he was on the confines of India was confirmed in the chance similarity of sounds which fell upon his ears in the names of places. When the natives, pointing in the direction whence gold came, used the word " Cubanacan " (" the centre of Cuba"), it signified to the Admiral the Grand Khan. The island which they called " Cibao," and which really proved the richest in treasure, was this longed-for Cipango. When Columbus made his second visit to the Islands, it was with a company of fifteen hundred men, of every class and condition of life, clerical, noble, professional, and menial. 44 SPANISH DISCO VEEERS AND INVADERS. There was a fleet of seventeen Tessels, laden with all: that was needed for use and luxury and defence for a prosperous colony, with all sorts of seeds and plants, with domestic animals and poultry, and, above all, with mules and horses, the marvel and terror of the natives, realizing to them the fable of the Centaur. Before visiting the colony which he had left at the fort, Columbus touched at Santa Cruz, one of the Antilles. Here he had a skirmish, blood being shed on both sides, with some of those Caribs, of whom he had heard such warning be- cause of their courage, ferocity, and predatory rovings. More terrible yet was their repute as cannibals. That beautiful island realm, which has borne successively the names of Hispaniola, St. Domingo, and Hayti, was to be the scene where disaster, sorrow, outrage, carnage, and every form and degree of oppression, cruelty, treachery, and atro- city were to introduce the tragic and revolting history, lengthened and crimsoned in the years to follow, of the re- lations between the Spaniards and the natives. The island in all that splendid archipelago, second in size only to Cuba, and richer and fairer than any other in the group, was esti- mated at its discovery, perhaps with some exaggeration, to have on its thirty thousand square miles a population^ of a million souls. Las Casas says the population had been 1,200,000. Though, as afterwards appeared, there had been feuds between the wilder mountain tribes and the more peaceful dwellers by the shores and in the valleys, all the chroniclers describe the natives as gentle and kindly, living an indolent, tranquil life, without care or labor, and present- ing an image of Arcadian simplicity. The invaders after- wards learned that the island was divided into five districts, under the same number of caciques. As has been said, the cacique or chieftain of the tribe in whose bounds the little colony with its citadel had been planted, had shown himself chivalrously courteous and friendly to the wrecked adventurers, and promised Golum- THE PIEST AGGEE8SI0N. 45 bus a loyal fidelity. When the Admiral anxiously but hopefully approached the spot, it was to confront a bitter disappointment. Tlie disaster which he had to contemplate was shrouded in a mystery which was never wholly cleared. Desolation and silence rested on the scene. HaA-oc and de- sertion everywhere showed their evidences, witliout reveal- ing the cause, the occasion, or the agents. Not a Spaniard survived on the spot, or ever was found to tell the story ; and the Admiral was left to surmise an explanation, with such jansatisfactory help as he afterwards liad from the natives. The inferences fully certified were, that the colonists, mostly of low cliaracter, had become restless, insubordinate, and lawless, had fallen into neglect of all prudence, and broken into discord. They liad scattered themselves among the natives, oppressing them, and indulging in the grossest licentiousness, thus provoking a revenge which had fatally acco mplished its work. With a heavy heart the Admiral faced the calamity. He soon selected a more healthful site for a town, whicli he called Isabella, to be occupied by the edifices and tilled fields of one thousand colonists, whose main and consuming passion was the search for gold. Co- lumbus sent back to Spain twelve of the vessels, retaining the other five. In these return vessels were men, women, and children captured on tlie Caribbean islands. It may liave been under the prompting of a humane purpose, how- ever dai'kened in its view of justice or expediency, that the Admiral, while sending over more than five liundred cap- tives, in a letter to their Majesties proposed for tlie future to transport to Spain an indefinite number of natives to be sold as slaves, — the blessing accruing to them of being instructed in Christianity and rescued from perdition, while the proceeds of their sale would relieve the enormous ex- pense of the enterprise to the royal treasury, and procure live-stock and other supplies for the colony. It is to be. observed that the first company of natives transported for sale as slaves were thought to be not un- 46 SPANISH DISCOVEREES AND INVADERS. fairly consigned to that fate on the ground that they were cannibals. It was preposterous to suppose that, having once been sold, they would be returned here as baptized Christians, for the purpose of aiding in the conversion of other Caribs. But afterwards large gangs of captives were committed to the same fate simply as " prisoners of war." Considerable debate was raised in the Spanish Council as to the rightfulness of this disposition of such a class of captives. But the final decision allowed it. It was on this fair island that the dreams and illusions which had so sweetly kindled and wrapped the imagina- tions of both races_alike, were broken and gave place to ghastly realities^ The savages ceased to regard their visi- tors as having swept down upon them from a pure heaven, , and if their theology had taken in the alternate realm of i destiny, would have traced them as fiends to the pit of all ; horrors. The Spaniards on their part came to a better knowledge of the Indian character in its spirit and capaci- I ties of passion. They found the natives cunning, ingenious in stratagem, and capable of duplicity and guile; bold and venturesome and courageous too in the arts of war, with javelins, sharpened spears, bows and arrows, and bucklers. They found also that the savages had a profound and by no means a puerile and inoperative religion of their own, far better in its impulses and practice than that of the reckless and dissolute marauders. Sickness, want reaching to near starvation, utter unwillingness to labor even for food, discontent, a rebellious spirit, bitter disappointment of hope, and the grossest indulgence of all foul passions, — all culminated in their effects at Isabella. When Columbus returned there from a cruise to Cuba, he found a state of open warfare between his coloiists and many of the native chiefs, who, goaded to desperation, had conspired to exter- minate the intruders. Columbus himself in March, 1495, took the field with his little army of infantry and cav- alry, and twenty of the fiercest blood-hounds, against a NATIVE ALLIES OP INVADERS. 47 body of the natives, perhaps over-estimated at a hundred thousand. Here for the first time, as an example to be followed alPl along the course of the hostilities between the Europeans of every nationality and the natives, we find the white men j artfully engaging the help as allies of one tribe of savages i against other hostile tribes, — a dismal aggravation of~aU the iniquities and atrocities of a wild warfare. In the subsequent swoops of Spanish marauders and invaders in South America and in Mexico, it is safe to affirm that there were instances in which the victory was won for them by their savage allies, numbering hundreds to each one of the foreign soldiery, without whose aid, with the consequent discord and despair which it caused .to the wild foe, the Spaniards would have been vanquished or starved. Co- lumbus availed himself of the former friendship of the cacique Guacanagari, to engage his tribe against the con- spiring chieftains ; and, by thus fomenting animosities among the enemy, won his triumph. The horse had been a most terrific spectacle to the natives ; but the blood- hound, who sprang with his unrelaxing fangs to the neck of his victim, and then disembowelled him, proved to be a deadlier instrumentality. The wild hordes quailed before their tormentors ; and after they had yielded in the palsy of an abject despair, they were allowed to make their peace only by submitting to a severe quarterly tribute to be paid to the Spanish crown. In this opening act of an ever deep- ening and lengthening tragedy, appeared the first in the line of successive nobles and patriots, of wise and great men, who have asserted themselves at intervals as organ- izers and heroes for the people of the woods, to resist the outrages of the white man. Caonabo was the lofty-souled patriot of Hispaniola. A captive with unsubdued and scornful spirit, he died on his voyage to Spain. In a voyage made by Alonzo de Ojeda from Seville, in 1499, — in which he was accompanied by the Florentine 48 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. merchant and navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, who % strange fortune has attached his name to the continent, — the expe- dition had a bloody encounter with the Caribs, taking many of them captives for the slave marts of Seville and Cadiz. Nicholas de Ovando, who was in command at Hispaniola while Columbus was in Spain, by his insubordinate, cruel, and oppressive course, baffled all the more humane purposes of the Admiral for any mild subjugation and rule of the natives. His savage cruelty and his desperate tyranny in working the mines and fields by the hard task-works of the Indians, whose slight constitutions unfitted them for any kind of toil, visited upon them a sum of horrors and of tor- tures. The apostolic Las Casas, himself a witness of these enormities and agonies, has described them in terms and images too revolting to be traced in their details. He says, "I saw them with my bodily, mortal eyes." Fam- ine, despair, and madness drove multitudes to self-destruc- tion, and mothers suffocated the infants at their breasts. Ovando closed the succession of his atrocities by a gene- ral massacre of natives and their chiefs, committed under the very basest arts of duplicity and treachery, while the unsuspecting victims were straining their confiding hospi- tality, with presents, wild games, dances, and songs, for his delight. The scene of the outrage was that exquisite re- gion, well-nigh a poetic and fairy realm, on the western coast and promontory of the island, then called Xaragua. Anacaona, the sister of its cacique, is described as a most lovely, intelligent, and kindly woman. She was the wife of that noble chieftain Caonabo, whose death as a captive on the way to Spain has just been mentioned. Pardoning the previous hostility of the Spaniards, who had made her a widow, she had manifested to the intruders on her do- mains the utmost forbearance and kindness. A pretence to justify the massacre was found in a secret report that she and her subjects were meditating that of the Spaniards. She herself was taken in chains to St.:Domingo, and thete THE HAMMOCK AND THE HURRICANE, /^49 hanged. Ovando founded a town near the scene of the massacre, to which he blasphemously gave the name of St. Mary of the true Peace I^ The five native chieftains of the districts of Hispaniola had now perished, and the island was desolate. Twelve years after his great discovery Columbus wrote to the Spanish monarchs : — "The Indians of Hispaniola were and are the riches of the island ; for it is they who cultivate and make the bread and the provisions for the Christians, who dig the gold from the mines, and perform all the offices and labors both of men and beasts. I am informed that six parts out of seven of the natives are dead, all through ill-treatment and inhumanity, — some by the sword, others by blows and cruel usage, others through hunger." ' To supply the actual needs of labor, after the devasta- tion and depopulation of the island, negro slaves were. sent to Hispaniola in 1505. Then, too, began another series of outrages in the forcible abduction and transfer, under the grossest deception, of natives of the Lucayan Islands. In five years forty thousand of these were kidnapped and trans- ported to Hispaniola. Two words, of widely contrasted significations and asso- ciations, have been adopted into our English speech from the language of the natives of that once happy island, — hammock, or Jiamac, designating the couch of listless repose, and hurricane, the sound of which aptly expresses the whirl- ing tornado of tempests and waves, and well offsets, in its symbol of Spanish havoc, the bed of peace and ease. Historians, by their use of the term, have consented to receive from the first Spanish knights-errant and marauders in the New World the respectable and colorless word Covr quest to define the method of their mastery of territory 1 " La villa de la vera Paz." A modem writer, Captain Southey ("His- tory of the West Indies,'" vol. i. p. 93), suggests, as a more appropriate name, Aceldama. The armorial shield of the town bears a dove with the olive branch, a rainbow, and a cross. ' Irving's Columbus, ii. 450. 4 50 SPANISH DISCOVEREES AND INVADERS. here. Stately volumes in our libraries bear the titles of Histories of the Conquest of Mexico, of Peru, etc. ; and their versions in other languages repeat the title. The de- scendants of the French and English colonists on this soil may congratulate themselves that that -word is appropriated exclusively to the Spanish freebooters. For, by -whatever method other nationalities obtained and hold territory here, it -was not first acquired by the intent of conquest, nor by that -way alone. The word conquest, by the Spaniards, is a very tame one to apply to the method of their rapacity and fiendish inhumanity, as they disembarked on these -vdrgin realms, and bore down upon its harmless native tribes as with the sweep of a vengeful malice and rage. Some other word of our capable language than conquest would more fitly define the riot and wreck, the greed and the diabolical cruelty, of those first invaders. And that more fitting word would need to be one of the most harrow- ing and appalling in its burden of outrages and woes. The campaigns of Cyrus, of Alexander, of Pompey, of Julius Cassar, of Titus and Vespasian, might shrink from being classed with the Spanish conquest of America ; and we should have to turn to the ferocities of Tamerlane, of Ghengis Khan, of the princes of India and Tartary, and of the brute men of Africa, for points of parallel with it. We must remember the training of centuries, through which not only the nobles, but also those of meanest rank fired with Spanish blood, had passed, and the full results of which exhibited themselves just at the period of the discov- ery of America. During six or more of those pre-vdous centuries the Spaniard had been a fighter for his own terri- tory and creed. By desperate valor and inhuman cruelty he had driven the Moor from the former, and had engaged all the fury of a heart-consuming bigotry in a most devout though craven superstition to impose the latter. Honest, painstaking industry for thrift and homely good had no attraction for the Spaniard. Nor would even enterprise SPIRIT OP DISCOVEEY AND OF RAPINE. 51 on land or sea have engaged him, had not its charms been heightened not only by the hope of easily attained wealth, but by opportunities of marauding adventure, and by vic- tims on whom he might flesh his sword in ruthless carnage. In less than four years after Columbus had landed on the island, hundreds of thousands of the natives — more than a third of its population — had been put to death. There seems to have been something aimless in this slaughter. It can hardly be said to have been even provoked in its primary indulgence ; and when the terrified and maddened natives were driven to resort to tlieir simple methods of defence or flight, there was a wanton brutality, a dia- bolical and mocking revel of atrocity, in the fierce and indiscriminate method of hunting them for havoc and tjaiure. / The spirit of discovery had, from its first stirring among the people of Southern Europe, been associated with the spirit of rapine and tyranny, and the enslavement of the jep ple whom it brought to light. The discovery, under Prmce Henry of Portugal, of the Canary Islands, put them as a matter of course under tribute to him. His naviga- tors then steadily coursed their way down the western coast of Africa. Cape Nam soon lost the significance of its name, " Not," as defining a limit for safe voyaging. Succes- sive adventurers, beginning their enterprises from about the year 1400, skirted the African coast further south, till 1486, when Bartholomew Diaz made his way over six thou- sand miles of ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, and turned the continent. Slaves became from the first an article of commerce for all these voyagers. It fell to Alexander VI., on application of Ferdinand and Isabella, to confer on their crowns all the lands in the "Indies" discovered and to be discovered. When what was thus given away under the name of the Indies proved to be a whole new continent, Francis I. of France, envy- ing the wealth which the Emperor Charles V. drew from 62 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. the New World, said he should like. " to see the clause in Adam's will which entitled his brothers of Castile and Portugal to divide the New World between them." A trifling fact as concerning this sweeping donation of a whole continent to Spaniards, as the discoverers, may not be unworthy of notice. Columbus had with him on his first voyage an Englishman and an Irishman. Unhappily for us they do not appear to have had any skill of pen to have served us as journalists of the voyage. But let us recognize them on the Spanisli caravels as being there to represent the shares which have fallen to Englishmen and Irishmen on this soil ; and, if we need the Pope's sanction to confirm our present territorial rights, let us find it in our ancestral claims through that valiant Englishman and his Hibernian companion. When, soon after Columbus's return from his first voy- age, the sovereigns applied to the court of Rome for an exclusive territorial title to the regions which their Admi- ral had discovered and might yet discover, they appear to have been persuaded that tliey had already secured that title by the fact of unveiling new lands in unknown seas. But influenced by jealousy of the Portuguese, who had already thus fortified their claims, they humbly asked the same sanction from his Holiness. Three successive bulls, issued in 1493, were intended to make the papal donation secure to all lands extending from the northern to the southern pole. The Portuguese at once challenged its act- ual and possible collision with their own prior rights. The other European sovereignties treated this exercise of the papal prerogative with utter indifference. Though they allowed nearly half a century to pass before they came into any direct rivalry with the Spaniards as they followed up their first enterprise, when French and English adventure entered on the track the Pope was not even appealed to as an arbiter. In 1611 two small Spanisli vessels made a feint of assaulting the miserable English colony in Virginia, but THE CHURCH VIEW OP HEATHENDOM. 63 gave over the enterprise under the belief that the colony Vfas ^coming to its own speedy end. f We must define to our minds as clearly as possible the fixed and positive conviction held by all Christendom at the era of transatlantic discovery, anticipatory of any act- ual knowledge of a new race or people, as to what should be the relation between • Christians and all other men and omen, wherever found and whatever their condition/ All who were not in the fold of the holy Roman Church were heathens. Heathen people had no natural rights, and could attain no rights even of a common humanity, but through baptism into the fold. The great Reformation ■^"Was^hen about stirring in its elemental work ; but as yet there had been "no outburst. It had asserted its energy and wrought out its radical changes in human belief and prac- tice, in season to have secured a most powerful influence in deciding the conditions under which what is now our national domain was actually settled by colonies of Euro- peans in the seventeenth century. But the era of discovery was when the old Church held an unbroken sway, and the Pope was the lord of Christendom. Protestants and Catho- lics, as we shall see, differed fundamentafly~as to their primary relations and duties towards -ou^-abocigiaes ; but the matter in many vital respects had been prejudiced by tii e cou rse of the first comers as Catholics. The assump- tion, helSTas a self-evidenttruth by the Roman Church, was that a state of heathenism imposed a disablement which impaired all human rights of property, liberty, and even of life ; while the possession of the true faith conferred au- thority of jurisdiction over all the earth, with the right to seize and hold all heathen territory, and to subjugate and exterminate all heathen people who would not or could not ;;J^ converted. As to what was meant by conversion, its means, methods, and evidences, the champion of the faith being. the sole judge and arbiter in the case, there would be little satisfaction inraising.any discussion. . However arjor 54 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. gant and complacent this assumption may seem to us, it had so culminated in its conclusion, had become so im- bedded in general belief, and was so unchallenged, that it was held as a self-evident truth. The Pope was the vice- gerent of God, and the depositary of supreme power over men. AH that we have had to rehearse of the relentless and shocking barbarities inflicted on our aborigines by Spanish invaders as disciples and champions of the Eoman Church, in their dealings with heathen, stands wholly free from any sectarian Protestant prejudices. All our knowledge on the subject is derived from the documents of the Spanish and Catholic writers. They tell their own story, in their own way. The earliest elaborate discussion of the fundamental question of the right of a Christian nation to make con- quest of a barbarous and idolatrous people, and to assume the mastery over them, was the result of the protest of that noble enthusiast and philanthropist, Las Casas, the great apostle to the Indies. His father had been one of Columbus's ship-mates in his first voyage. The first sen- timent of pity, which afterwards engaged the heart of Las Casas towards the natives for his whole following life, is thus pleasingly traced to its source. Among the captives taken to Spain by Columbus was a boy whom he had given to the father of Las Casas. The father had assigned this youth to his son, then a student at Salamanca. When Isa- bella had insisted that these captives should be returned, the youth was taken with them, much to the grief of Las Casas. He went with Ovando to Hispaniola in 1502, in his twenty-eighth year, and at once became the friend and champion of the natives against the dire and ruthless bar- barities and the shocking outrages, so inhuman and atro- cious, inflicted upon them by the Spaniards, as they slew them by thousands, after practising upon them the foulest treacheries, starving them, working them to death in the LAWFULNESS OP A WAR OP CONQUEST. 55 mines and pearl-fisheries, and in some places exterminat- ing them altogether. Las Casas, as his knowledge and experience gradually enlightened him, protested against the whole course of proceeding; and at last, by honest soul wisdom, reached a conclusion which led him to assail the root of the whole iniquity, and to deny the right of con- quest, with the inferences and conclusions drawn from the false assumption on that point. His heroic labors and his exposure to every form of peril and violence did not prevent his living with unimpaired vigor of mind to the age of ninety-two. In the first half of the sixteenth century he crossed the ocean at least a dozen times on errands to the Court of Spain, to seek for help in his kindly projects and to thwart the wiles of his enemies. The learned and famous Dr. Juan Sepulveda, correspond- ent of Erasmus and Cardinal Pole, and historiographer to the Emperor Charles V., appeared as the leading opponent of Las Casas. He wrote a treatise — " Democrates Secundus, sive de Justis Belli Causis " — maintaining the right of the Pope, as the vicegerent of Christ, and under him that of the kings of Spain, to make a conquest of the New World, and subjects of its inhabitants, for the purpose of their conversion. In 1550 the Emperor convoked a junta of theologians and others of the learned, to meet at Valladolid and debate the high and serious theme. The Council of the affairs of the Indies were present, and the junta made up fourteen persons. Sepulveda made his argument, and Las Casas re- plied, taking five days to read the substance of his treatise, called " Historia Apologetica." ^ The lawfulness of a war of Conquest against the natives of the New World (the conquest, of course, involving the obligation of conversion) was maintained by Sepulveda substantially on these four grounds : — 1. The grievous sinfulness of the Indians as idolaters, and against their own nature and the light of Nature. 66 SPANISH DISCOVEKERS AND INVADERS. 2. Their barbarousness, which made it proper and nece& sary that they should serve a refined people. 3. They must be subjugated in order that they might be brought under the True Faith. 4. The -weak among them needed protection from the cruelties of the strong, in cannibalism, and in being sacri- ficed to false gods. Sepulveda argued that more victims were sacrificed to the idols than fell in war, — which state- ment was doubtless false. If the sort of Christianity which our age at least believes in, as " full of mercy and of good fruits," was what was to follow on such a conquest of idolatrous barbarians, these reasons would not have been without weight. The authority of Scripture adduced by Sepulveda was from Deuter. xx. 10-15. Las Casas went deep in his final plea when he urged, in answer, that the cruel deeds related in the Jew- ish Scriptures were set before us " to be marvelled at and not imitated." ^ He also affirmed, as from his own experi- ence, that the work of conversion was better advanced by the gentle ways of peace and mercy than by the rage and havoc of war, especially with such mild and childlike na- tives. The apostle of love had to speak cautiously, with ecclesiastics before him and the Inquisition behind him, when he impugned the well-recognized assumption by the Church of the lawfulness of using force and cruelty in the interest of the true faith. As to the rights of the monarchs of Spain over " the Indies," he nobly pleaded that these were ' This single sentence, coining from the ingenuity of the gentle heart of Las Casas, puts him two centuries in advance of liis own age as a rationalizing interpreter of the Scriptures. It was a bold interpolation of his own to throw into the Hebrew text the suggestion that it was wi'itten to amaze, rather than to guide, subsequent generations. Sepulveda was right in his interpretation of the text for those who believed . in its divine, infallible authority. All the reason which sustained it as first used, applied to all like cases after- wards. The text, with inferences from it, as divine teaching — as also many other texts, especially this: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" — was ample warrant to many denominations of Christians in persecuting and cruel proceedings. RAPACITY AND RELIGIOUS ZEAL. 57 not the rights of mere tyrants because of physical strength and military power, but rights as Christians to do the na- tives good and to promote good government among them, especially after having drawn so much treasure from them. Las Casas, then seventy-six years of age, was judged to have gained the moral victory ; but the decision of the Junta was against him, though with a halting earnestness, as the mon- arch only forbade the circulation of Sepulveda's book in Mexico or the Indies. ^Some of the writings of Las Casas remain to this day in manuscript, under a jealous ecclesias- tical guardianship, accessible only to the privileged. In- deed, he himself appears to have directed such restrictions. Enough, however, is known of their revelations to explain their suppression. Some of the nuggets and dust of gold which Columbus took back with him on his first homeward voyage were made into a sacramental vessel for the " Host." The proportion of the coveted precious metal thus put to a consecrated use, compared to the freights of galleons and buUion-sliips after- wards turned to the riot of rapacity and luxury, may fairly be taken as significant of the relations between the avowed missionary intent of the great enterprise of discovery and the direful spirit of remorseless inhumanity in dealing with the natives of the new-found continent and islands. Of the nine of those natives whom Columbus carried to Barcelona, two youths received in baptism the names of Ferdinand and Prince John, his son, who stood as their sponsors. The others were sent to Seville for a Christian education, that they might return as missionaries to their own people. Twelve priests were transported for the same purpose, the noble Las Casas after his ordinatien, following as the best of them. In the royal instructions, dictated by the gentle heart of Isabella, the welfare and blessing of the natives were declared to be the main object of all the further efforts of Columbus. He was strictly charged to treat them ten- derly and lovingly, to deal with severity with any who might 58 SPANISH DISCOTERERS AND INVADERS. wrong them, and to convey to them the rich gifts sent to them by the sovereigns. The first greeting between the people of the Old and the New World, the white men and the red men, was exchanged by a company of one hundred and twenty rude and rebellious sailors, on the three small vessels of Colum- bus. The second company of adventurers embraced at least fifteen hundred, on seventeen vessels. Many of them were nobles and gentlemen; but these qualities do not imply the obligation of any higher restraint upon the pas- sions of greed and cruelty, as the titles borne by Spanish grandees answered on the roll of honor only to a scale of degrees in rapacity, license, and immunity. The defini- tion of the term " hidalgo " is said to be, " a son of some- body," — not, however, in the general sense that every human being has had a paternity, but that that somebody had a name. When the zeal and rapacity of Spanish hidalgos and great captains were stirred to a fever glow for further discovery and conquest of the Indies, the King Fernan- do and his daughter Juana, Queen of Castile and Leon, sought vainly to extend, by some show of responsibility, the semblance of humanity towards the wretched natives. The work of tyranny and devastation, which had begun at the islands, was now rapidly extended to the mainland, in the region where the northern and southern portions of the continent were united between the two great oceans. Vasco Nunez, on a predatory excursion from the Isthmus of Darien, had in September, 1513, climbed alone a moun- tain height, from which, so far as we know, he the first of all Europeans looked out upon the so-called South Sea, — the vast expanse of the Pacific, which takes in more than half the surface of the globe. The sublime and awing spectacle moved him to prostrate devotion and prayer by himself. He then summoned his followers to the same ecstasy of amazement, and to lift with him the Te Deum. THE "REQUISITION." 59 Afterward, reaching the sea at the Bay of San Miguel, he waded into the water, with sword and shield, and took pos- session of the whole ocean, with its islands, for the kings of Castile. To this noble and heroic Spaniard rightly ac- crued the glory, in 1516, of launching two well-equipped barks from the river Balsas, — the first keels of European navigators to plough the waters of the Pacific. And the feat which preceded this triumph was in full keeping with it ; for the timber of the vessels had been cut and framed on the Atlantic side of the continent, and the rigging and equipments had been transported with it by Spaniards, negroes, and Indians, with incredible toil, over the rough mountains and the oozy soil of the isthmus. The work of £Bj^*cr conquest was, by royal and ecclesi- astical instructions, to proceed under the guidance of a proclamation, which may safely be called the most extraor- dinary state document ever penned. Its whole purport, terms, and spirit are so astounding in the assumptions and in the impossible conditions which it involved, as well as in the utter futility of its proffers of humanity to the Indians, that it would provoke the ridicule and derision of readers of these days as if it were a comic travesty, did it not deal with such profoundly momentous matters. This document, in the form of instructions to the viceroys in the Indies, was prepared by a learned Spanish jurist, and bears the Latin title of " The Requisition." It was to be read as a proclamation, or a herald's announcement, by the com- mander as he invaded each Indian province for conquest, — an exception dispensing with this when the natives were supposed to be so-called cannibals. It recited the Bible narrative of the creation by God of the human pair; the unity and the dispersion of the race ; the lordship over this whole race and over all the earth, which the Almighty had given to St. Peter, and then to his successors the popes ; the donation made by the reigning pontiff of lordship over all the Indies to the monarchs of Spain ; and it called 60 SPANISH lilSCOTEEEBS AND INVADEHIS. upon tlie natives to follow the whole civilized world in paying obedience to and seeking the protection of the Church. If the natives comply with this appeal, they and their lands shall be secure, and they shall have " many privileges and exemptions " ! If they refuse, robbery and devastation shall spoil all their possessions, and they them- selves will be enslaved or killed. A marvellously strange document indeed ! It was to be read by mail-clad and mounted warriors, with their blood- hounds, to naked, unarmed savages. Who was to interpret to them its theology, its Bible terms, its ecclesiastical as- sumptions sind subtilties, and the reasons justifying its alternative of conditions ? This document is said to have been first read by the friars in the train of Ojeda, in his attack on the savages of Carthagena. ^ Furnished with this '^ Requisition," the great captain Pedrarias, Governor of Darien, with a strong armament, started on his " consecrated " enterprise. The sickening story is too harrowing and revolting for relation in all its dark and hideous details. No element of treachery, in- gratitude, ferocity, rapacity, or fiendishness is lacking in it. The torture, the fire, and the fangs of blood-hounds were put into service to extort the secret of treasures of gold and pearls ; and thousands and thousands of men, women, and children, whom the " Requisition " had pro- nounced members of God's one human family, were treated with a pitiless barbarity at which the heart shudders. The only palliating thought which offers itself, as we read the story, is that the Spanish invaders, themselves but par- tially civilized, and with but a mockery of Christianity as their religion, became actually dehumanized and bru- talized by the scenes and experiences around them, by a homeless and hazardous life on sea and land, under a burning sun, amid swamps and exposures, often starving, 1 Irving, who gives it in full in his Appendix of Documents, " Columbus," voL ii., applies to it the designation of a " curious manifesto." . . THE NATIVES AS DEVIL-WOESHIPPEES. 61 always lashed and maddened by the greed of gold and plunder. And if anything had been lacking to fill out the farcical absurdity and the comic drollery of the " Requi- sition," it is found in the fact, that, so far from an attemj^t being made by any preparatory warning to interpret it or to convey its significance to a threatened and doomed Indian cliieftain, the invaders, planning secret midnight attacks on the unsuspecting natives, would go through the form of mumbling over the jumble of theology and non- sense as they were hiding in the woods, all by themselves. And this grimly comic element in the affair seems to have been appreciated, on one occasion at least, by two caciques of the province of Genu, when the paper was in substance commmiicated to them by an invading captain, — the lawyer Enciso. The chiefs assented to what was said about the one supreme God, the Creator and Lord of all things ; but " as to what was said about the Pope being lord of all the universe in the place of God, and of his giving tlie land of the Indies to the King of Castile, the Pope must have been drunk when he did it, for he gave what was not his ; and that the king who had asked such a gift must be a madman in asking for what belonged to others." They added, that if he wanted the land he must come and take it, and they would put his head on a stake. An aggrava- tion of the superstitious frenzy against the poor heathen was found in the surmise that tliey actually worshipped the Devil. On the return of Columbus from his second voy- age, in 1496, he had in his train some fancifullj'^ bedizened native chiefs, on whose head-gear and belts were wrought figures and grotesque emblems, some of which were re- garded as showing the Devil in his own proper likeness, others as in the guise of a cat or owl. Even the good friend of Columbus, the curate Bernaldez, interpreted the symbols as those under which their uncanny deity appeared to them visibly. In the interest of the claims of tlie Roman Church to a 62 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. heritage on this continent, an article by the Paulist Father Hecker in the " Catholic World," for July, 1879, makes the following statement: — " The discovery of the western continent was eminently a reli- gious enterprise. The motive which animated Columbus, in com- mon with the Franciscan prior (his patron Perez) and Isabella the Catholic, was the bui'ning desire to carry the blessings of the Christian faith to the inhabitants of a new continent ; and it was the inspiration of this idea which brought a new world to light. Sometimes missionaries were slain, but the fearless soldiers of the cross continued unceasingly their work of converting the natives and bringing them into the fold of Christ." Strangely enough do such sentences of a modern convert read, as a comment upon the actual deeds of the Spanish crusaders, as related exclusively by Catholic writers. When Columbus sailed in the spring of 1498, on his third voyage, the disasters and discontents which had been thoroughly reported in Spain as having visited their miser- ies on the island colony, had substituted disgust for the former enthusiasm for sharing in the enterprise. The Ad- miral himself proposed that his new complement of men should be largely composed of convicts. Bitterly did he and the natives rue this experiment of the importation of men some of whom had judicially lost their ears. It was with such material on his arrival at Hispaniola, where he found a full riot of mutiny and disorder, that Columbus had recourse to the system of repartimientos, — a device which quickened and instigated many new forms of barbarous iniquity against the natives. This system was one by which vast tracts of land were assigned to the most desperate in their revolt, with the right to compel the labor of bands of the natives. One Spaniard thus became the irresponsible and arbitrary master of, it might be, hundreds of natives. These, of course, were but slaves. They had never needed and had never used anything answering to what we call bodily labor, or task-work, as their generous ENSLAVING OP THE NATIVES. 08 and luxuriant gi-oves and fields teemed with all that was requisite for their subsistence. Under the mastery and the goading of the Spaniard they bent their backs to digging in the mines, to tillage in the fields to supply a wasteful indul- gence, and to the carrying of heavy burdens. As retain- ers of their opijressors they were also trained to warfare, and bound to do a hateful service in raids against their own former friendly fellows. Mr. Parkman ^ rightly says that the spirit of Spanish en- terprise in America is expressed in the following address of Dr. Pedro de Santander, to the King, in 1557, of the expedition of De Soto : — " It is lawful that your Majesty, like a good shepherd, appointed by the hand of the Eternal Father, should tend and lead out your sheep, since the Holy Spirit has shown spreading pastures where- on are feeding lost sheep, which have been snatched away by the dragon, the Demon. These pastures are the New "World, wherein is comprised Florida, now in possession of the Demon ; and here he makes himself adored and revered. This is the Land of Promise possessed by idolaters, the Amorite, Amalekite, Moabite, Canaan- ite. This is the land promised by the Eternal Father to the Faith- ful, since we are commanded by God in the Holy Scriptures to take it from them, being idolaters, and, by reason of their idolatry and sin, to put them all to the knife, leaving no living thing save maidens and children, their cities robbed and sacked, their walls and houses levelled to the earth." The writer, however, leaves open the opportunity for securing many slaves. In pleadings like this, no previous measure or limitation of effort or time is indicated for attempts at conversion, and we are left to infer that the supposed futility of them warranted anticipating them by death, and so making the doom of the heathen sure. In accordance with that rule of equity and reason which enjoins, that, when we judge or rehearse the actions and methods of men of other generations and circumstances 1 Pioneers of France, p. 13. 64 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. and creeds, we should set them in their own time and accept the sincerity of their believing or purposing in qualification of our condemnation of them, we must allow even the bloody devastators of the New World to explain to us their convictions and motives. Their age was one in which the Church whicli represented Christianity was most lofty and unchallenged in its claims, most ruthless in the sweep of its pretensions, and most utterly destitute and un- censcious in its appreciation of the spirit of the gospel. /A heathen was a child of the Devil, not of God ; his certain j and everlasting doom was in the pit of torments ; he had i no rights here or hereafter. The Christian, sure of heaven as he was, was all the more a rightful claimant to the earth ' and everything upon it ; his own blessed lot and privilege in- 'li^olved no obligation of pity or mercy for the heathen. The. ' Spaniards — from their monarch down to the humblest of their colonists — never made purchase of or paid price for a single foot of land on our continent or islands as Pro- testants did, whatever may have been the fairness or the meanness of their bargains. The right of conquest was supreme for the invaders : the opportunity of baptism was full payment to the natives. Conquest of heathendom and heathens was something even more sacred than a right: it was transcendently a solemn duty. " The earth is the Lord's ; " He is its rightful owner, ruler, and disposer ; the Pope is His vicegerent ; the children of the one fold are his champions. True, the heathen whom the Spaniards en- countered were idolaters, and some of them were believed to offer human sacrifices ; the invaders frequently saw the mutilated remains of victims from those foul altars.^ Speaking of the brutish superstitions and the human sacri- fices found among the Aztecs, Prescott adds these words : "The debasing institutions of the Aztecs furnish the best 1 It has been charitably suggested that limbs and other fragments of hu- man bodies seen in some of the native cabins may have been the remains of relatives intended for affectiouate preservation. CRUEL DEALING WITH THE NATIVES. 65 apology for their conquest." Popocatapetl yielded its sul- phur to Cortes in replenishing his ammunition. But it does not appear that any deepening shade of the state of heathenism heightened in the breast of a child of the Church the right or duty of conquest. There could be no worse state than that of a heathen ; no greater, no less degree in his condemnation. Every infliction, horror, or agony visited upon his body was a stretch and an in- genuity of mercy to him, because intended (even if not effectual) for the saving of his soul. If he could only be baptized before he died, he owed an unspeakable debt to any one who, by whatever cruelty, terminated his life. But if after all this cruelty he died unbaptized, that was his misfortune. The history of Spanish discovery, explor^'j tion, and colonization, so far as it concerns the relations! of the invaders with the natives, is at every stage of it] marked by ruthless and atrocious cruelties, by outrages and enormities of iniquity, over the perusal of which the ' heart sickens. Those who crave a knowledge of them jg^ the detail must seek it in the too faithful — we can hardly, in this connection, use the pure terms "truthful" and "candid" — historical narratives. There is no good use to come of the rehearsal of them. One whose painful task has required of him to trace in the records that story of torturous horror, can hardly fail to wish that those records had never been written, or that they had perished, had lost their awful skill of forever perpetuating the story of man's inhumanity to man, and had become as mute as the heart-pangs and the once quivering nerves of the vic- tims that have been resolved into peaceful dust. Indeed, so faithfully was tlie cui'ious skill of the graver engaged to illustrate the brutal enormities of these conquests, that, without reading a line of tlie text of many of these vol- umes, one may learn more than he craves of their contents simply from their illustrations. After reading those sweet words and phrases in whicb 66 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. Columbus portrays to their Majesties the gentle and kindly creatures who welcomed the mysterious white visitors to their island shores, it is but a long and varied racking of all our sensibilities to follow the course of the invaders. There was no possible deed, or trick, or artifice of bar- barity, ingratitude, treachery, and cunning and despicable fraud, which the invaders scrupled to practise on those nude and simple children of Nature. Steel-clad warriors, a single score of them, would overmatch thousands of those poor savages when they were driven to any show of re- sistance. The horse on which the warrior was mounted was to the Indian a more terrific monster than Milton has fashioned from all the shapes of demons for his hellish phalanxes ; and it was the horse, not the man upon it, which secured to Cortes the conquest of Mexico. The fiei'ce Spanish blood-hound, also, comes into the horrid warfare to track the wretched victims of greed through the swamps and mountain thickets. The only gleam of mercy, the only arresting hush from agony, that relieves the later narratives, is when we come for moments upon the men- tion of the name of Las Casas, the great Spanish apostle of the Indians, with his rebuking word. If, amid the horrors and atrocities connected with the successive Spanish conquests on our islands and continent, anything could add a sharper and more distressing outrage to the story, this would be found in the apparently utter insensibility to their own cruelty and irreverence in which the Spaniards attached the holiest names and. epithets to the places where their acts were often the most fiendish, — names borne by many of those places to this day. The sacred title of the Trinity ; the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ; the sweet roll of epithets — of love, pity, mercy, and sorrow — for the Virgin Mother ; the names of prophets, apostles, and evangelists, of saints and mar- tyrs, of holy days and sacraments, — are strewn all over the islands, bays, coasts, and rivers of our southern conti- SHIP-LOADS OP SLAVES TRANSPORTED. 67 nent, and generally there is with them a frightful legend. Columbus, writing to the monarchs in 1498, estimates that, " in the name of the sacred Trinity," the Spanish markets may be supplied with such and such numbers of slaves. Las Casas writes that on one occasion the Spaniards hanged thirteen Indians " in honor and reverence of Christ, our Lord, and his twelve apostles." After a dire slaughter of the Lidians, in his first encounter with them at Tabasco, Cortes enjoined a solemn religious ceremonial, with cross and chant and mass and Te Deum, and named the bloody spot "Saint Mary of Victory." He wrote that the odds had been so immense against him " that Heaven must have fought on his side." Las Casas dryly adds, that " this was the first preaching of the gospel by Cortes in New Spain." Columbus, with all his nobleness of soul, has left no exam- ple set by him, and no protest, for withstanding or rebuking tlie spirit of his countrymen. On the contrary, his own leading and example marked the course followed by his sons and all his successors, — Ovando, Ojeda, Nicuesa, En- ciso, Vasco Nunez, Pedrarias, Pizarro, and Cortes. Ojeda always wore, concealed on his person, an amulet or charm of the Holy Virgin, which he firmly believed was his infal- lible protection under all risks on sea and land, in private brawls and desperate battles. On his first return voyage Columbus, as has been mentioned, took home with him, as the first-fruits of a new slave race, nine Indians. They were compensated by being secured against future woe by Christian baptism. One of them dying soon after the cere- mony was, we are told, " the first of his race to enter heaven." On various pretences Columbus sent to Spain many ship-loads of slaves. It was only on the third of his four voyages, in 1498, that he touched the mainland of the continent, at Paria, near the Isthmus of Darien ; and then followed in succession the work of so-called discovery, which opened either division of the continent to the same worse than barbarous havoc of rapacity and fiendishness. 68 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. Mines of the precious metals, gems and pearls — even more than food and water when they were on the edge of death — were the consuming cravings of the Spaniard. If a single token of such treasure was seen to sparkle or to gleam on the person of a savage, the secret of its source must be wrung from him ; he must point the way to the mine ; he must toil there to work it. Visions floated be- fore the dreams of the invaders of spots where the soil was made of virgin gold and silver, of palaces built of those metals, of kitchen utensils and working tools fash- ioned from them. The poor natives, in their desperation, over and over again intermitted their simple husbandry on their own soil, in their own support, with the childish thought that they could starve the Spaniards and compel them to go home. There is an element of confusion in the history, for all modern readers, in the number of Span- ish officials, with long, hard, high-sounding titles, among whom were distributed inconsistent functions, rival pre- rogatives of place and jurisdiction, with their jealousies, each having his partisans before the Council of the Indies and at the Spanish court. And these were not only haughty grandees and hidalgos, but adventurers of an ordinary type, from a land in which even the peasants had the spirit and port of gentlemen. Yet to relieve, if possible, this dismal justification of the right and duty of the conquest of the heathen, we must make emphatic the verbal statement, — and, our charity must add, the intent, — that conversion to the true faith and fold must be the accompaniment and crown of conquest. If the heathen should perish by the million in the savagery of the pro- cess which was designed for their conversion, this acci- dent did not prejudice the rightness and holiness of the intent. The conquerors meant to impart to the poor be- nighted creatures an unspeakable deliverance and bless- ing ; but Satan had the start of them, and claimed his own. When, after an atrocious course of rapine, ti-each- THE STRONG AGAINST THE WEAK. 69 ery, and ferocity by the invaders, the Inca Atahualpa was in the power of the Spaniards, his sentence was to be brought to death by fire. This was mercifully com- muted to death by the bowstring, on the victim's con- senting to be baptized. To be baptized! In the — devout shall we call it? — con- viction of priest and believer, baptism signified conversion. True, men cannot impart what they have not themselves ; and as baptism was about the whole of Christianity of which the ruthless invaders had the knowledge or the advantage, the rite signified the imparting the full benefit of the gospel of Christ to the heathen, as it did to those born in a Christian land. In closing this rehearsal of the tragic and hideous story of the first opening of intercourse by Europeans, as repre- sented by the Spaniards, with the natives of this continent, it would be a relief if a single gleam of light or mercy could be thrown across the distressing narrative. Our authorities are exclusively Spanish writers, many of them ecclesiastics. There is a series of similar relations await- ing our review, all of them stained with wrong and cruelty ; and those of them which are associated with Puritan sav- agery, and even with the perfidy and meanness of our own republican Government, have many points of likeness to that which we have been reading. Nor do such harrowing episodes in history stand alone by themselves, or throw their shadows only over ages that are past. The brutal oppression of the weak by the strong finds its most signal illustrations in the annals of so-called Christian nations. Great Britain up to our own time, substituting the claims of civilization and of free intercourse for trade for those which the Spaniards advanced for the " holy faith," has committed like atrocities in every quarter of the globe. Every feeble people and race, with degrees of civilization or barbarism, has had to yield to her compulsion for in- tercourse beyond their own wish and need; and she has 70 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. scoured the seas and penetrated deserts to find victims of her mania for civilizing the world. But the Spaniards, as they were the first in the wrong, so they were beyond all approach of rivalry in the sum and method of their de- vastating and aimless havoc of frenzied and satanic passion against the least warlike and the most inoffensive of all our native tribes. If historic fidelity and candor in the use of our authorities would allow, it would cheer alike reader and writer if this direful record of slaughter and torture of a defenceless people had been at least, if not effectually, with- stood by a steady protest, not merely from a single ecclesi- astic, but by a considerable number of those who professed that the mainspring of the enterprise was the conversion of the natives. Instead of this relief, however, we do not need to pause long in our moralizing over the story to find that the most repulsive and shocking element in it is the per- sistent obtrusion, the even blasphemous reiteration, of a religious motive of the Conquest. The Jesuit Father, Char- levoix, who wrote a history of St. Domingo as well as of New Prance, gives in the latter work the following as one of the motives which prompted his historical labors : — " I have resolved to undertake this work in the desire to make known the mercies of the Lord and the triumph of religion over that small number of the elect, predestined before all ages, amid so many savage tribes, which till the French entered their country had lain buried in the thickest darkness of infidelity." ^ There was reason for this pious motive on the part of the historian who had to relate the zeal, devotion, and to themselves the satisfactory and rewarding success of his brother missionaries in New Prance. But he has noth- ing of the kind to tell us of Christian missionaries in St. Domingo before the work of devastation and depopula- tion had been completed. The natives were found by the Spaniards in a peaceful, contented, and, so to speak, in- l Charlevoix's New France, Shea's translation, vol. i. p. 103. THE DOMINICAN FEIARS. 71 iiocent condition. There were from the first some among the Spanish invaders, besides ecclesiastics, wlio were men of gentle blood and of education. They called themselves Christians. All their references to their ".sacred faith," their most " holy church," are profoundly reverential, and they exult over their privileges as its children. The free- booters and desperadoes among them, even the worst of them, did hold in dread the anathemas of the Church. The most and the least craven of them shrunk with terror from the denial of its sacraments in life and death. Why was the Church so utterly powerless and palsied then, in the exercise of a sway such as it has never had since that age ? True, the ecclesiastics among the invaders were at first very few, and many of the marauding parties may not have been accompanied by a single ghostly adviser. But those ma- rauders knew, as did the priests, that their terrific creed doomed the natives dying unbaptized to an awful woe ; and yet they were not withheld from a wanton anticipation of it by visiting upon them a promiscuous slaughter. Small as might have been among them the number of those whom Charlevoix calls " the predestined elect," there was no arrest of the work of slaughter sufiicient to satisfy the condition of baptism. In 1509, Diego, a son of the Admiral, came over as Gov- ernor of St. Domingo. He was followed, the next year, by a company of a dozen or more Dominican friars, earnest, resolute men, in poverty and heroic fidelity. A humble monastery was provided to shelter them. With an un- daunted courage they resolved to rebuke, and in the name of all that was just and holy to protest against, the enormi- ties of the Spanish desperadoes and the whole course of cruelty towards the natives. They put forward one of their number, Brother Antonio Montesino, who in a Sunday ser- mon addressed a great crowd of hearers of the principal persons of St. Domingo. His piercing rebukes and his scorching invectives, unsparing in their directness of ad- 72 SPANISH DISCOVEEEKS AND INVADERS. dress to the gross culprits before him, made them writhe in passion. He told them that Moors and Turks had a chance better than their own for salvation. To their plea that they could not dispense with the toil and service of the natives for all menial and laborious work, he bade them to do it themselves, with their own wives and children. The blood of the Spaiiiards was maddened by these " delirious things " uttered by the bold monk ; his life was threatened, and it was expected that, under compulsion, he would re- tract his defiant sermon on the next Sunday. Instead of doing so, he but repeated and intensified his daring re- bukes, and frankly warned his hearers that the Dominicans would refuse the sacraments to any who were guilty of op- pressing the natives. That the Church and its priests had a power, which before this might have been used in terror if not to large effect, is proved by the fact that the monk was unharmed ; while his scathed hearers, the chief in the Island, determined to send a protest against his alarming preaching to the Spanish monarch. Strangely enough too, they chose for the errand a Franciscan monk, Alonzo de Espinal, while the Dominicans commissioned the heroic preacher to represent their side at the Court. The agent of the colonists got the start for a hearing, found strong supporters in his plea for those who had sent him, and by his artful statement of the danger of impending ruin to the colony he had induced the king to engage the head of the Dominican order in Spain in a complaint against the preacher. It was only after meeting and overcoming many obstacles and much resistance that Father Antonio obtained access and a hearing at Court. But his noble earnestness was not wholly without effect. Thus were the colonists and the natives represented by priest against priest. The king took the usual course of referring the controversy to a junta, composed of some of his council and of theolo- gians. But little that accrued to the relief or benefit of the natives came from the conference, from the measures which THE DOCTRINES OP HELL AND BAPTISM. 73 it recommended, or from the consequent orders of the king. The natives must be made to consent to be converted ; they must work for their masters ; they must be kindly treated, and after a fashion miglit receive something to be called wages. The most grateful result from the mission of the two priests representing the two sides of a bitter strife was that the Dominican, by his grace and skill of heart and zeal in private conferences, earnest and continued, completely won over to sympathy and co-operation with him his Fran- ciscan brother. The natives, however, had become thoroughly alienated \ by hatred and dread from the Spaniards, and kept aloof/'' from them. What indeed had these Spaniards, with tlf§ proffer of their "holy faith," to tempt and draw to them these children of Nature ? What of help or blessing, of human pity and tenderness, came from them ? Yet tlieX more the natives shunned their tormentors, and sought to \ keep as far as possible from them, their aversion was ac- j counted as only an obdurate resistance to being converted. / .When Cortes, in his second expedition, was preparing for his siege of Montezuma's capital, he issued to his sol- diers a paper of elaborate instructions. In this he said "conversion" was the great aim which made his enter- prise a holy one, and that " without it the war would be manifestly unjust, and every acquisition made by it a robbery." In the enlightenment and free-thinking of our own age, which have relieved it from what are regarded as the bugbear superstitions and dreads fostered by the old priest- craft, there are many who will frankly say that the easy method offered to the heathen by which they might escape the fearful doom of hell, was just as rational as was the teaching them that they were really under such a doom. The doctrine of hell, and the rite of baptism as the symbol of full salvation from it, were well adjusted to each other, — both being irrational, superstitious, and child- 74 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. ish, the one offsetting the other. The natives certainly had not the slightest conception whatever that because they were brought into existence outside the Christian fold, or for any other reason, they were all destined to endless miseries and torments hereafter ; and probably they had as vague an appreciation of the doctrine as they had of the method of relief from the fate to which it as- signed them. Roger Williams, in one of those flashings of his keener insight which anticipated as axioms what it cost persecu- tors and formalists many years of painful and baffled ef- fort to learn as proved truths, while on a visit to England in 1643, wrote and left for publication there a little tract with the title, " Christenings make not Christians ; Or a brief Discourse concerning that name Heathen, commonly given to the Indians. As also concerning that great point of their conversion." ^ In this tract the writer, referring to the Spanish and French religious dealings with the na- tives, says : — " If the reports (yea some of their own Historians) he true, what monstrous and most inhumane conversions have they made ! — bap- tizing thousands, yea ten thousands, of the poors Natives ; sometimes by wiles and subtle devices, sometimes by force, compelling them to submit to that which they understood neither before nor after their monstrous Christning of them." The claim has been set up, and to a certain extent al- lowed, that the Mexicans and Aztecs may be regarded as having reached a stage of actual civilization. It is scarcely probable that the obscurity which invests our prehistoric times and people will ever be removed. The theme and 1 This tract, known only by quotations referring to it, was long supposed to have heen irrecoverably lost, no copy of it being known as in existence. A copy was accidentally discovered, uncatalogued, in the British Museum in 1880, by that most diligent, indefatigable, and thoroughly furnished literaiy antiquarian, Dr. Henry Martyn Dexter, and haa been reprinted in Providence, E. I., 1881. HUMAN SACRIFICES AND CANNIBALISM. 75 field offer very tempting, and to sonae extent rewarding, subjects for curious research and ingenious theory. But the theories crumble like the relics which we handle. The claim of having attained a state of civilization can be sus- tained for the Mexicans only by resting on the unsatisfac- tory plea that there is no sharp, positive line or point which divides barbarism from civilization. Prescott says that the civilization of Mexico was equivalent to that of England under Alfred, and similar to that of ancient and modern Egypt. The basis of this estimate is, that the Mexicans had made an advance on a nomadic life as hunters, and were fixed cultivators of the soil, raising corn, cotton, and vegetables, with skilled manufactures, with adobe dwell- ings, with hieroglyphical records for their annals ; and that they showed architectural skill, as also ingenuity in a method of irrigating their fields. After making due allowance for the pure fictions and the proved exaggerations of the early Spanish chroniclers, all that seems certified to us about the husbandry and manufactures, the palatial and ceremonial pomp, and the forms of law among the Mexicans, would not set them be- yond that state which, when speaking of Orientals, we call barbaric. It can hardly be allowed that a people are in any appre- ciable stage of civilization who offer human sacrifices and eat human flesh. Nor does it much relieve the matter to suggest that the latter hideous practice did not indicate a cannibal relish for such viands, but was simply incident to the previous religious ceremonial of offering human victims in sacrifice. The evidence seems sufficient that human flesh was a marketable commodity in Mexico, hav- ing a place with other food at the shambles; and that dainty dishes of it were daily served among the hundred courses on Montezuma's table. Peter Martyr tells us how " the hellish butchers," as he calls them, prepared it. The blood of infants was used in the composition of sacrifi- 76 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. cial cakes : some of these were once sent as a propitiatory- offering to Cortes. It may be urged that even these prac- tices do not bar a claim to a stage of civilization, if we still allow the term where superstition about God and cruelty towards men match the most foul and atrocious practices of savages. There are not lacking in our voluminous literature on this subject- — representing, as it , does, the diversity of opinions and judgments passed on the methods of the Spanish invaders, as presented in different aspects — plead- ings reducing or palliating the atrocities which to us seem unrelieved, as springing from a ruthless cruelty. Hum- boldt says that we must allow in them for other and less mean passions than rapacity and fanaticism. Tracing these passions and others associated with them to their springs, they may be found to have arisen, and to have been inten- sified in their indulgence, by what we may call — though we can but vaguely define it — the chivalric spirit of the peo- ple and the age. This spirit — associated with crusades and religious wars, with the embittered hate of Moslems and Jews, with daring and reckless enterprises of adven- ture, with utter fearlessness in risking one's own limbs and life, and with a burning emulation of achievement through prowess and desperate endeavor — was transferred from its old, familiar, and comparativel}'^ exhausted fields to wholly new scenes, materials, and opportunities. These seem to have presented to the Spaniards no incitements to mental activity, to curious inquiries as to the antecedents of their new surroundings, to speculative or scientific inves- tigations. All these intellectual instigations and processes, which have been so sedulously and ingeniously exercised under the quickening influences of the modern expansion of intelligence, had no attraction for those of such inert and undeveloped natures as marked the heterogeneous companies of adventurers flocking here with untrained principles and under the spell of the wildest impulses. DE SOTO'S RAVAGES. 77 The simple natives of the valleys and the mountaihs were regarded as game for the hunt. Had these natives been of a sturdier stock, — heroic, defiant, and resolved, and able from the first to contest each step and to resent each wrong of the invaders, — the game would at least have been lifted above a mere hunt as for foxes and rabbits to the more serious enterprise of an encomiter with buffaloes, panthers, and grizzly bears. The tameness and defence- lessness of the natives seem even to have become incite- ments to the Spaniards for a wanton sport of outrage upon them. There were master minds among the invaders, — men temporarily at least invested with powers, by com- missions and instructions from their sovereigns, to exercise authority in the interests of wisdom and humanity. But their jealousies and the intrigues of their enemies at the court were constantly disabling and displacing them ; so that there was here no grasp of control, no sternness of law and obedience. The progress of the same kind of conquest by the Span- iards who first came into contact with the savages in the southern portion of our present domain, was attended by the same outrages and barbarities which marked its begin- nings. De Soto had received his training for the opening and conquest of the regions of Alabama, Georgia, and Mis- sissippi, while a youth under Pizarro, in Peru. On his return the Spanish court made him governor of Cuba, and Adelantado, or provincial governor, of Florida. On arriv- ing in Florida, in May, 1539, his first business was to cap- ture some natives as slaves, pack-carriers, and guides. He found great help as an interpreter in a Spaniard, Juan Ortiz, who, having been captured by the Indians from the com- pany under Narvaez, in 1528, had been living among them. De Soto had about a thousand followers, soldiers in full armor, with cutlasses and fire-arms, one cannon, two hun- dred and thirteen horses, greyhounds and blood-hounds, handcuffs, neck-collars, and chains for captives, all sorts 78 SPANISH DISCOVEEEES AND INVADERS. of equipments and workmen, swine and poultry, priests, monks, and altar furniture. He had learned in Peru just what appliances were necessary for hounding and torment- ing savages. But he had a rough and fierce experience in Florida. The natives were numerous, bold, and enraged by the memory of the barbarities of Narvaez. Yet he was, as a matter of course, successful. He soon captured In- dians enough to carry his baggage and to do the menial work of his camps, as goaded slaves. He steadily hewed on his plundering way, with an expedition to Pensacola and an invasion of Georgia. Though he received kind treatment and warm hospitality from many chiefs and their tribes, he villanously repaid it by all manner of das- tardly outrages, led on and maddened by the hope of mineral treasures, and indulging in abominable debauch- eries. After having been generously entertained for thirty days where now stands the town of Rome, he proceeded to ravage the neighboring country. With Indians as his bur- den carriers, he entered Alabama, in July, 1540, where the natives had then their first sight of white men and horses. The pestiferous miasmas of those fair and fruitful regions proved very fatal to the Europeans, and the swamps, mos- quitoes, and alligators would have overborne the fortitude and resolve oX the invaders but for the passion for wealth that lured them on. The enslaved natives had to carry on litters many sick, in addition to their other burdens. De Soto had brought with him from Florida five hundred of the natives, men and women, chained and under guard. As any of these sickened or died, their places were sup- plied by fresh captives from bands of the Indians who ventured to face him. The simple and bewildered natives soon lost all the dread and awe with which they would have continued to venerate the strangers, as they saw them not only reduced by common human weaknesses, but exhibiting their odious character as robbers, thieves, assassins, and cruel desperadoes. The Spaniards visited THE SPANIARDS ON THE PACIFIC. 79 the vilest outrages upon those who treated them with the most deference and friendliness. Making their way to Mobile, the mailed scoundrels were .withstood by the brave but unprotected natives, who were overborne by horrible carnage. A battle which lasted for nine hours proved severe in its results upon the Spaniards. Eighty-two of them were killed, with forty-five of their horses. All their camp equipage, stores, insti'uments, medicines, and sacra- mental furniture were burned. Of the savages five or six hundred were slain. After similar progress and ravages De Soto reached the bank of the Mississippi, where, worn out by excitement, effort, and disease, he died, in May, 1542; and his body was sunk by night in the turbid stream. His successor in command, with a remnant of three hun- dred and twenty men of the splendid army of one thousand, — their array humiliated and reduced to starvation, — leav- ing five hundred of his Indian slaves and taking with him one hundred, put together some wretched rafts, and floating down the river landed again at Tampa Bay, after four years of reckless and devastating wandering through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Arkansas territory. Tlie natives had been terribly reduced in numbers, except in Georgia. The Muscogees, previously living in tlie Ohio Val- ley, moved down soon after to Alabama, incorporating with them remnants of northern tribes which had been ravaged by the IroC[uois and Hurons. It is to this miscellaneous gathering from fragments of adopted and conquered tribes that the English, when first penetrating the country, gave the name of " Creeks," from the number of streams which course it. The Spaniards were the first of Europeans to come into contact with the natives on our Pacific coast. While Piz- arro, after crossing the Isthmus, went southward, and with heroic perseverance against all bafflings discovered Peru, in 1527, and made his " Conquest " of it in 1532, another 80 SPANISH DISCOVEEERS AND INVADERS. party -went northward. The further lure was the dis- covery of the Spice Islands. A station for supplies was established at Panama. Gil Gonzalez claimed the whole country of Nicaragua, whose coast he visited. The Span- iards claim special success and benefit for the natives from their mission and civilizing work among them in California, when entered by Cabrillo, in 1542. Their mission work, however, did not begin till near the close of the seventeenth century. This mission work was begun by the Jesuits, and was pursued by them till the general expulsion of the order from the Spanish dominions. The Franciscans succeeded them, and then the Dominicans. Alexander Forbes, in his "History of California," gives from the work of Father Vene- gas, and from his own observations, very interesting ac- counts of the condition and results of the Spanish missions. The field was a stern and hard one, but it had been heroi- cally worked. There were sixteen stations there in 1767, when the Jesuits were expelled. The funds for the mis- sions were invested in farms in Mexico. We may here anticipate a statement, to be more fully ad- vanced on later pages, that the Roman Catholic missions among the Indians, from the very first down to our own times, have been far more successful in accomplishing the aims and results which they have had in view, than have been those of any or of all the denominations of Protestants. But those aims and expected results have been most widely unlike, if not in full contrast, as had in view and labored for by Catholics and Protestants. In notliing concerning the theology or the government and discipline of those severed parties of the Christian fold, is the difference between them so broad or so deep as in the fundamental variance of their respective views as to tlie essential requisite for the conver- sion and Christianization of an American savage. Devout and heroic priests of the Eoman Church, sharing the sweet and humane spirit of Las Casas, soon came hither from Spain on their consecrated missions, and according to their PRIESTLY METHODS WITH THE INDIAN. 81 light in the exercise of their office, their interpretation of the Christian Gospel, and in loyalty to holy Church, they spent their lives, in perfect self-abnegation, through perils and stern sacrifices, in efforts to win the savages into the saving fold. It seems to us that what they were content to aim for would have been most easy of accomplishment; that the method which they adopted and the result which was to give them full satisfaction were such as might have been read- ily realized, especially when we consider the docility of the race of savages who were the first subjects of their efforts. They did not task in any way the understandings of the na- tives, nor provoke them to curious and perplexing exerci- ses. They started with the positive autliority, conveyed in simple, direct assertion, without explanation or argument, of the few fundamental doctrines of the Church ; asking only, and fully content with, assent to them, however faint might be the apprehension of them by the neophytes, and however vacant or bewildered the mind which was to assimilate from them ideas or convictions. These pro- cesses of the understanding might be expected to follow after, if they were naturally and healthfully prompted, in the Christian development of the savage ; but implicit ac- ceptance of the elementary lessons was all that was ex- acted. The Creed and the Lord's Prayer were tauglit tliem ■ by rote, first in Latin or Spanish, and as soon as possible interpreted in their own tongues. Then the altar service of the Church, with such gestures and observances as it required, with the help of candles, pictures, emblems, and processions for interpreting and aiding it, constituted the main part of what was exacted as the practice of Christian piety. The wild habits, customs, mode of life, and relations to each other of the savages were interfered with as little as possible. The rite of baptism sealed tlie salvation of the subject of it, whether infant or adult, and there was haste rather than delay in granting the boon. All the hard task-work of the Protestant missionary, to convey didactic 6 82 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. instruction, to implant ideas, to stir mental activity, to ex- plain doctrines, to open arguments, was dispensed with by the priest of the Roman Church. The Protestant could not take the first step in the conversion of a native without advancing it upon a previous stage in the process of civili- zation. His only medium was the mind, without any help from objective teaching by ritual, picture, or observance, or any aid from sense. The hopeful convert for the Protes- tant was considered as making difficult progress in his dis- cipleship just to the degree in which he changed the whole manner and habit of his life. In general it may be said that the Franciscan and the Jesuit Fathers have found satisfaction in their mission work among the American aborigines. They set for them- selves an aim, with methods and conditions for securing it; and though these, being conformed to the theory of the Roman Church, may seem altogether inadequate as viewed by Protestants, they were the rule for its priests, and the result has stood to them for success. In the judgment of Protestants, however, without any sharp indulgence of a sectarian spirit, it is to be affirmed, that, even if all the priests had been wise and faithful in their offices, this would not relieve the invasion and administration of the Spaniards in America from the se-' vere reproach of a most unchristian treatment of the natives. The fidelity of the priests, taken in connection with the wilful recklessness of the soldiers and marauders, would but serve to confirm in the minds of Protestants a conviction which has many other tokens to warrant it, — that in the Roman, system the Church is the priest- hood, the laity being only a constituency and a following. Had the disciples of the Church no responsibility in the matter ? We have to look to the theocratical commonwealth estab- lished by the Jesuits in Paraguay, with its military appli- ances and fortresses, its rigidity of discipline, and its minute THE CAUPORNIA MISSIONS. 83 oversight of all the incidents and experiences of the daily life of the natives, for an illustration of the ideal of mission work as entertained by the priests of that period. The Jesuit commonwealth stands in strange contrast with the Pmitan theocracy of Massachusetts, and it would be a curious study to draw out that contrast in particulars as covering matters of faith and rules of life. Our views of the extreme austerity and bigotry of the Puritan discipline as enforced among themselves by a company of English Protestants, would find quite another field for their exer- cise in tracing the method of priestly control over a gene- rally docile and inert people, who were to be isolated on their peninsular domain from all intercourse with the open world. The Fathers in the California missions had for the most part to feed and clothe their converts, to arrest their no- madic life, and, as the soil was light, to bring in the means of subsistence. The population of Lower California pre- sented to Porbes, in 1835, a curious mixture of the progeny of European seamen, Spanish Creoles, and Indians. The writer says the missionaries had the finest fields and cli- mate, the fairest opportunities, and the most facile subjects. But while he extols their sincerity and devotion, the results of their labors were to him doleful and dreary enough. " Most of the missions," he says, " are in a wretched con- dition, and the Indians — poor and helpless slaves, both in body and mind — have no knowledge and no will but those of the Friars." The word domesticated, as applied to ani- mals, is more applicable to them than the word civilized. In 1833 about twenty thousand natives were connected with the missions, and soldiers were needed at every sta- tion. The Indians were lazy and helpless slaves, fed and flogged to compel their attendance on the Mass, and besotted by superstition. When California was joined to the Union, it was esti- mated, — doubtless, extravagantly, — that there were in 84 SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS. its bounds one hundred thousand Indians, and that a fifth part of tliese were more or less connected witli tlie mis- sions, partially civilized, jobbing, begging, stealing, labor- ing on the farms of Europeans, gambling and drinking, and generally in stages of improvidence, dissoluteness, and imbecility. The wild Indians in the gold-bearing regions were ruthlessly dealt with by adventurers, explorers, and miners. After futile efforts by Congress by appropriations througli commissioners and agents, — of which the Indians were wickedly defrauded, being only the more ingeniously wronged, — in 1853 tracts of twenty-five thousand acres were defined as Reservations for them. The hope was to secure, by the aid of resident guardians and advisers, and on a larger scale, all that had been good in the farming and missionary methods of the Spaniards. It would have been gratifying to our national pride, if, in closing the review of the harrowing history of the dealings of the Spaniards with the original tribes on our present domain, we could say truly, that the transfer of respon- sibility to our own Government had essentially modified or improved the condition of those representatives of the native stock which had, for three centuries, been under the ecclesiastical and colonial charge of the royal successors of Ferdinand and Isabella. CHAPTER n. THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, PERSON, AND CHARACTER. It would have been but reasonable to have expected that the opening of an inhabited continent — more than half the land surface of the globe — to the intelligent curiosity of the representatives of the civilization of the Old World, would have contributed largely to the sum and the ele- ments of our knowledge of the origin and liistory of our human race. Anything that was to be learned of aborig- inal life here would have been invaluable to the archaeol- ogist, and might have served towards solving the problems yet left unfathomed by all the skill of science and all the monumental relics on the other continents. Whether either of these halves of the globe had originally received its hu- man inhabitants from the other half, or had been stocked each by its independent ancestry, an unknown lapse of ages had transpired without intercourse between them. We might have looked at least for the means of deciding this alternative of unity or diversity in the origin of our race. The means for that decision would have been sought in traditions aiid tokens of a primitive kinship and history, while any radical and heterogeneous characteristics run- ning through the inhabitants of either half of the globe would have brought their unity of origin under serious question. Regrets have often been expressed that this question was not at once made the subject of keenly in- telligent investigation by the first Europeans in their inter- 86 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. course with the aborigines. It is taken for granted that the opportunity would have favored the acquisition of some positive and helpful knowledge which has since failed. It is very doubtful, however, whether the lapse of the last four centuries has really deepened what was then the obscurity that covered these inquiries. What are supposed to be the oldest crania and other human relics on the continent generally crumble to dust when exposed to light and air. One of our archaeologists tells us that some bones of the mastodon, antedating the age of the Mound Builders, when excavated from a peat-swamp, yielded gelatinous matter for constituting a rich soup.^ But there are no such juices left here in the relics of primeval man. It was only after long intervals of time that different longitudinal and latitu- dinal sections of this nortliern half of our continent were reached by white men. About a century intervened be- tween the first intercourse of the Spaniards with the south- ern tribes and that of the French with the northern tribes. Cabeza de Vaca, of the company of Narvaez, is accredited as the first European who stood on the banks of the Missis- sippi, and crossed the continent from sea to sea, in 1528. The Sieur Nicolet was the first of Frenchmen who, in 1639, reached the waters of that river from the north. The first pueblo captured in Mexico by Cortes was in 1520. Corona- do's expedition against the " Seven Cities of Cibola" was in 1540. Some Village Indians in New Mexico are tliought to be in the present occupancy of tlie adobe houses of their predecessors at the Conquest. This term, " Village In- dians," is expressive of a distinction gradually coming to the knowledge of the wliites between sedentaiy and roving tribes of the aborigines. Our information is very scanty as to the characteristics of difference, in gross and in detail, between various tribes of Indians originally, and imme- diately subsequent to their first intercourse with the whites. We know but little of the conditions of proximity, relation- 1 Foster's Pre- Historic Races, p. 370. INDIAN COMMUNAL LIFE. 87 ship, and necessity which drew tliem into fellowships, with common interests among themselves, called by us " tribes " or to what extent alliances existed among them for peace and war. There were needful limitations in the size of those fellowships, imposed by the conditions of their ex- istence. The Natchez and Arkansas tribes are regarded as among the most advanced of those of our northern section when first known to Europeans. The late Lewis H. Morgan, partly through the inter- pretation of facts, and partly with the inferences from a reasonable theory, has contributed valuable aid to our un- derstanding of aboriginal life. He maintains that their household life was constructed on the communal system, uniting affiliated families as a gens. When the Five Na- tions, or Iroquois, inhabiting central New York, were first visited by Europeans, they were found to be gathered in family groups of twenty, forty, or even larger households, all literally under one roof. A " Long House," constructed strongly and for permanency of wood and bark, with a continuous passage through the middle, one door of en- trance, provision for the necessary number of fires, and partitions dividing the area, was the common home it might \ be even of a hundred or more persons. The inmates shared together the yield of the harvest and the hunt. Starting from this well-certified fact, Mr. Morgan proceeds to draw reasonable inferences that this communal system for life, for affiliated families or companies of the aborigines, — gen- erally, and indeed universally, except where circumstances might have withstood it, — prevailed among them. It was once supposed that the extensive adobe structures in New Mexico and in Central America — with their walled en- closures unpierced in the lower story by door or window, and terraced by two, three, or more stories reared upon them, to which access was gained by ladders — wore the remains of the palatial residences of chiefs and caciques, and that they were then surrounded with clusters of more 88 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. humble abodes, making villages for the tribes. These, being of frail structure, had left no vestige. But these supposed palatial residences are now believed to have an- swered to the Long Houses of the Iroquois, and to have been of communal use, — some of them capable of accom- modating from five to eight hundred families. It is a fur- ther easy inference from the starting point of fact, to affirm that the " dirt lodges " of the Mandans, the caves of the Cliff Dwellers, and the Mounds of our western valleys bear witness to the same communal mode of life of our abo- rigines. It is supposed that those mounds of earth — a substitute for stone where it was not available for the pur- pose — were simply the base for the erection over them of dwellings of wood or bark, which have perished. This theory also suggests and favors a method for distinguish- ing several stages or types in savage life, between extreme barbarism and approximations towards civilization. It would simply embarrass the mainly narrative purpose of this volume to attempt here any elaborate or even concise statement of the distribution, classification, organization, and designation by names or localities of our aboriginal tribes. Such information — not by any means always accordant ■ — as special inquirers and writers on these in- tricate and perplexed themes have furnished, is easily acces- sible in our abounding literature of the subject. Very few of the names originally attached by the first Europeans here to the tribes earliest known to them are now in use. The same tribes were known by different appellations as- signed to them by the French, the Dutch, and the English. There has been a steady increase of appellations for bands and tribes, as the whites have extended their intercourse and relations with them. Within the last two or three decades each year has added new titles on the lists of the Eeports of the Indian Commissioners. Some of the earliest known tribes — as the Pamunkeys of Virginia, the Lenape of Pennsylvania, the Narragansetts, the Mohi- PLACE OF THE SAVAGE IN HUMANITY. 89 cans, the Pequots, and the Nipmucks of New England have become extinct, or such surviving remnants of their stock as may exist liave been merged in other tribes ; what there are of the Lenape are now known as Delawares. The same processes of the absorption or extinction of tribal names, which began among the aborigines on the sea-coast, have followed the extension of invasions and settlements through the whole breadth of the continent. One tribe has adopted the remnant of one or more other tribes, giving to them its own name, or appropriating a new one. Many of tlie original and of the existing tribes were and are known by an alias. Such titles as the Nez-Perces, the Gros-Ventres, and the Diggers speak for themselves as conferred upon, not assumed by, those who bear them. Remnants of seventeen tribes, collected from Oregon and Northern California, are consolidated in the Grande Ronde agency in Oregon. Such matters as are of chief impor- tance and interest on these points will present themselves in subsequent pages. "What is the relative place on the scale of humanity to be assigned to the average North American Indian ? Cer- tainly, not near the top of that scale ; as certainly, not at the foot of it. The scale is a full and varied one. We know far better than our ancestors knew, at the time when they first saw our .aborigines, how many links there are on the chain of a common humanity. The anatomy of the skeleton, the outlines of the form, and tlie possession of any ray of that intelligence which we distinguish from instinct in animals, — these are in general the certificates of ,a claim for men over brutes. In assigning a place on the human scale to any tribe or race of human beings, we must first have defined to ourselves the specimens which mark its highest and its lowest. Nor in either case must we accept an ideal as a specimen. The loftiest definition ever given of the being called man is in the Scripture sen- tence, that he is but " a little lower than the angels, and is. 90 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. crowned with glory and honor." The greatest of poets has expanded this liigh strain : " What a piece of work is a man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a God ! " But we have to say, using one of the trickeries of language of our time, " There are men, and there are men." If we should search for the lowest specimen of humanity to offset the topmost one, whether ideal or real, we should by no means find that lowest specimen in an average North American Indian. Stanley would furnish us from the interior of Africa lower grades than have ever been classified before. The archi- pelagoes of the Pacific, especially the Fijian, revealed tlie lowest known to us. In one point of view, from Mr. Dar- win's position, it would seem as if the evolution theory might prove itself from the fact that there are really no " missing links " in the gradations from brute to man. Yet, not so. The line between liuman beings and brute creatures may be blurred ; but it is not obliterated or un- traceable. This, however, is certain, — that there are now hordes and tribes and groups of such beings as we have nevertheless to call human, which present to us man far, far below the average type of the North American savage when he first came to the knowledge of Europeans. Tlie full, fair product of a civilized human being is the result of all possible favoring circumstances of place, op- portunity, and advantage in a long lapse of time. Some Englisli essayist has dropped what he would call the clever remark, that it takes a hundred years to work up a perfect, smooth, grassy lawn, and three hundred years to breed a lady or a gentleman. After the same manner we may say that it has taken six thousand historic years to produce a race of humanized, civilized, and thoroughly developed men and women ; and that the process is not yet complete. It might be argued that, two or three thousand years be- hind us, the refining influences of intelligence and culture Q THE AVERAGE OV INTELLIGENCE. 91 and high art had carried a classic people beyond our pres- ent stage in one range of civilization : and allowances would also need to be made for arrests and reversionary processes in the advance of a progressive race caused by conquest, by change of masters, and by the risks attending emigration to new countries. Yet there is no question but that we overestimate the average of intelligence in the ordinary human stock. We take our standard at too higli a level. The mass of men and women, even in a favored and generally advanced community, are'not so well fur- nished in mind or wisdom as we assume that they are or ought to be. The " common sense " which in compliment to the large majority we suppose to be in possession and use by them, is often missed where we expected to find it. The credulity, the narrowness of view, the facility with which they yield themselves to stark delusions and to appeals to their ignorance and prejudice, often warn us against setting so high as we do the average human intel- ligence. As a general thing we expect and demand too much of our fellow-men, seeing that they are what they are and as they are. The clear-headed and practical sage. Dr. Franklin, observing in one of his long journeys abroad the shiftlessness, thriftlessness, and bungling of a number of persons on whose ways his searching eyes glanced, wrote down this rather caustic remark : " I am persuaded that a very large number of men and women would have got along much better if they had been furnished with a good, respectable instinct — like animals, birds, and insects — in- stead of with the intelligence of which they boast so much, but of which they make so little use." Acute writers who have wrought upon the theme have confessed themselves unable to draw at any point a sharp dividing line, or to define any one single trait, quality, or condition which shall distinguish between a state of civiliza- tion and a state of barbarism or savagery. Our latest science, alike archaeological and speculative. 92 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. fails to give us positive knowledge about the origin of the red man and his relation to the other races of human beings on the other continents. Lack of knowledge stimu- lates guessing and theorizing: for these the range is as free as ever. The theories are so varied and conflicting that one becomes confused and wearied with them to such a degree as to be impatient of rehearsing them. The favor- ite view of the Protestants, especially of our Puritan an- cestors — in their love of the old Hebrew Scriptures — was that the Indians were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel, whom. Cotton Mather suggested, Satan might have inveigled hither to get them away from the tinkle of the gospel bells. It was under the prompting of this idea, which was largely and learnedly argued, that the Puritans quickened their zeal to reclaim and convert the savages. Many ingenious attempts have been made to trace among the Indians usages and institutions akin to those of the Mosaic law. The French Jesuit missionaries, not being especially partial to the Old Testament, did not lay stress on this motive for converting the savages. Roger "Wil- liams in his day could write, " From Adam and Noah that they spring, it is granted on all hands." But all do not grant that now. So free and wild has been the guessing on the origin and kinship of the Indian race, that resem- blances have been alleged to exist, in their crania and fea- tures, with the Tartars, the Celts, the Chinese, Australa- sians, Romans, and Carthaginians. This is truly a large range for aliases and an alibi. There is somewhat of the grotesque in the aspect of a European intruder, of another stock, coming from across the sea, meeting the native red men, regarding them as an impertinence or an anomaly, and putting the question, " Who are you ? Where did you come from?" The Indian rightly thought that it was for him to put and for the white man to answer the query. The Indian regards himself as a perfectly natural person where he is and as he is ; a product and a possessor, not a THE MOUND BUILDERS. 93 waif nor a " come-by-chance." Their own account of them- selves was that they were indigenous, — true aborigines. With this now agree the conclusions of wise and judicious authorities. Dr. S. G. Morton, writing of the ''Aboriginal Race of North America," says : " Our conclusion, long ago adduced from a patient examination of facts, is, that tlie American race is essentially separate and peculiar, wliether we regard it in its pliysical, its moral, or its intellectual relations. To us there are no direct or obvious links be- tween the people of the Old World and the New." It is generally admitted that there is more similarity between the Indians over all North America than there is among the inhabitants of Europe. Agassiz regarded it as proved that this is the oldest of the continents. If so, the burden is now shifted to Europeans, Asiatics, and Africans to account for themselves as offspring, wanderers, vagabonds, or exiles. The Mound Builders form the heroes of much ingenious speculation. So far, little has come of it but relics of crude pottery. Loskiel, the Moravian missionary, speaks very liglitly of these puzzling relics. Referring to what the Indians told him, of traditions of former more frequent and ferocious wars — some hereditary — among them, he writes : — " The ruins of former towns are still visible, and several mounds of earth show evident proofs that they were raised by men. They were hollow, having an opening at the top, by which the Indians let down their women and children, whenever an enemy approached, and, placing themselves around, defended them vigorously. For this purpose they placed a number of stones and blocks on the top of the mound, which they rolled down against the assailants. The killed, in large numbers, were buried in a hole. The antiquity of these graves is known by the large trees upon them." ' After the Indians are all gone, we may perhaps be able to tell whence they came. I History of the Mission of the United Brethren to the Indians of North America, p. 141. 94 THE INDIAN. HIS OEIGIN, NUMBEKS, ETC. An equally perplexing and distracting inquiry -with that of the origin of the Indians has now become another question, as to the number of them when the country was reached and occupied by Europeans. Of course, this ques- tion was not intelligently asked by the first whites who came here, though they yentured, all at random, upon guesses and estimates. Those who entered upon the continent at differ- ent points naturally drew widely contrasted inferences on the subject, according as they encountered what they call " swarms" of the natives, on island or mainland, or passed long reaches of territory wholly tenantless. It is only within the last dozen years that rigid and ra- tional tests have been applied to the statements and tradi- tions which have found their admission into our histories, as to tlie probable numbers of the native race on this conti- nent when it was opened to Europeans. Wholly conjectural as the estimates were, the measure of the extravagance or the fancy introduced into them depended upon, the range or license indulged in by those who ventured to make them. The admission is now yielded, without exception or qualifi- cation, by all intelligent authorities, that the number of the natives in each of the best-known tribes, and their whole number on the continent at the time of its discovery have been vastly overestimated. All the Spanish chroniclers were mere romancers on this point. The soldier Baron La Hontan was a specimen of the same class among the French. John Smith, of Virginia, who tells us that that country produced pearl, coral, and metallic copper, and that the natives planted and harvested three crops of corn in five months, also multiplies the numbers of the Pamunkeys, to exalt the state of their " emperor" Powhatan. Our own artist, Catlin, allowed his imagination to create some six- teen millions of Indians as once roaming here, when it is more than doubtful if a single million were ever living at the same time on the soil. Hispaniola, or Little Spain, the name given by Columbus ORIGINAL INDIAN POPULATION. 95 to the present Hayti, or St. Domingo, has as before stated an area of about thirty thousand square miles, — or more than half the area of England and Wales. "When first discovered. Las Casas says that it sustained three million Indians; he afterwards sets the number at 1,200,000. The Licentiate Zuazo, however, estimated them at 1,130,000. In 1508, when Passamonte came, he put them at seventy thousand. The Governor, Diego Columbus, estimated the number at forty thousand. Albuquerque, in 1514, counted them as between thirteen and fourteen thousand. This was a vast deduction from three millions in a score of years. We can give the Spaniards the benefit of our charity in denying their own statement, that in less than forty years they had destroyed fifteen millions of the natives, while we also dis- trust the story that Montezuma led three million warriors. We know the claim of the Jesuits to have converted nine millions of natives in Mexico, in a score of years, to be a pure fiction. Such random counts as these have no value, inasmuch as the evident exaggeration is characteristic of the extravagant spirit of all the Spanish expectations and accounts of their experience. The practical matter of interest in the estimate of the probable number of Indians on this continent, on the arrival of the Europeans, concerns us as it bears on the current belief, universally held till within a few years, substantially covering these three assumptions : (1) That there was then a vast number of Indians here, to be counted in millions ; (2) That this original population has been steadily and rapidly wasting away ; and (3) That this decay is the re- sult of the destroying influence coming from the whites, either in demoralization or by war. These three assump- tions are now largely, if not universally, discredited. In direct denial of them, it is now affirmed, with evidence offered in proof, that the number of the Indians here was quite below the old estimates ; that there are substantially as many on the continent now as there were on the arrival 96 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. of the white men ; and that their own habits of life, and internecine feuds, have been as destructive as the influence of the Europeans. In fact, the former overestimates of the numbers in some tribes, and of the aboriginal race, are now thought to have been as wild if not as poetical and vision- ary as the Indian traditions of their origin and mythical ancestry. In the lack of any accredited facts drawn from anything resembling a census, — and no attempt at such a process was made till after the middle of this century, — we have mainly to rely upon two helpful considerations for estimating the number of the aborigines at any given time on any particular locality. The first is, the effect of their constant warfare among themselves in reducing their num- ber; and, second, the capacity of the soil, its woods and waters, for sustaining a more or less compact population by productive labor on tilled fields, or by the chase. Both these consicj'orations would naturally lead us to infer that there was no such steady increase of population as com- monly occurs in peaceful life in a civilized and industrious community. We are besides to take into view the fact, well authenticated, that plagues, contagious and epidemical diseases, were frequent and wide in their visitations, and occasionally effected a well-nigh complete extinction of one or more tribes devastated by them. It is significant, that, in every case in which careful and patient research or inquiry have been brought into intelli- gent use in estimating the number of one or more Indian tribes, and of the whole Indian population, previous calcu- lations, guessings, and inferences on the subject have been found to be exaggerations. The only associated groups of tribes with which our acquaintance and knowledge have been continuous from the beginning is the Iroquois, who have been in intimate intercourse with the Dutch, the French, and the English for more than two hundred and fifty years. Sir William Johnson, the best informed of all interested in their number, placed it in 1763 at 11,650. We AMERICAN INDIANS AND SCOTCH HIGHLANDERS. 97 have no certainty that at any previous time they really ex- ceeded this count, though La Hontan and others multiplied it almost ten times. The old Iroquois were represented in 1876-77 hy seven thousand in the United States, and the same number in Canada. The number is the same to- day. The so-called, civilized tribes in the Indian Terri- tory, as counted in 1809, were 12,395. The Indian Bureau in 1876 immbered them at twenty-one thousand. They have doubled in forty years. The Indians who have fared the worst in decrease of numbers have been those of Cali- fornia and Oregon. If we seek in a general view of the mode of life and re- sources of the red men, in some favored localities, to find any radical disadvantage or disablement which put them below all communities of the whites which we call civilized, we can readily convince ourselves of our error by compar- ing the state of our Indians at the time of the settlement of this continent with that of communities of whites in Europe at the same time. Mr. Lecky in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of his " History of England in the Eighteenth Century " condenses from his authorities such a view of the condition of the common people in Ireland and the High- lands of Scotland a century and a half ago, as puts them to a disadvantage, merely as to the means and resources of subsistence, in comparison with North American Indians. The people, wildly ruled in clans, were thieves and cattle- lifters, kidnappers of men and children to be sold as slaves ; they were ferocious barbarians, besotted with the darkest ignorance and the grossest and gloomiest super- stitions ; they scratched the earth with a crooked piece of wood for a plough, and a bush attached to the tail of a horse for a harrow, wholly dispensing with a harness; their food was milk and oatmeal mixed with blood drawn from a living cow; their cookery, their cabins were re- voltingly filthy, causing disgusting cutaneous diseases; they boiled their beef in the hide, roasted fowls in their 7 98 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. feathers, and plucked the wool from the sheep instead of shearing it. The relative position or grade, on the human scale, of any tribe or race of men — much like that of any one man among his fellows — is to be measured by the sum and range of their capacities, and the degree of their self- improvement by the use of means, resources, and appli- ances within their reach. And the capacities of men are also to be estimated by the extent to which they actually avail themselves of these means, appliances, and resources ; finding in native impulse and energy, quickness of wit, restlessness of feeling, the spur of progress ; casting about them for reliefs, helps, betterments of their condition. We classify nations by the direction in which they have trained and advanced one or another of the abilities and aptitudes of our manifold nature. In the Greeks, the direction of it was in artistic, poetic, and philosophic cul- ture, the genius for which is expressed in their wonderful language ; in the Romans, it was an organizing faculty, working in the range of law in all its departments ; in Ger- many, research, scholarship, jurisprudence ; in Italy, aes- thetic, for poetry, painting, and music ; in France, a mix- ture of use and ornament, — the packages in which certain cosmetics, etc., are done up being more ingenious than their contents ; in the English, it is general utilitarianism, with strength, thoroughness, and skill ; in the Irish, it is a cheerful willingiiess for hard, patient, laborious, disagree- able work, without mental restlessness. We know how we, especially, are indebted to the faithful toil of the Irish race ; yet I cannot recall a single invention, or discovery in art or science, ever made by an Irishman. If one would have before him a full demonstration of the adroit and acute inventiveness and ingenuity of the Yankee race, let him spend a week or a month — there will be full employ- ment for it — in the Patent Office at Washington, among reapers, thrashers, and winnowers, cotton mules, cooking THE ENDOWMENT OP THE INDIAN. 99 stoves, apple parers and sausage machines, and needle threaders and sewing machines. Now our aborigines present to us these singular con- ditions : having a fine physique, vigor of body, acuteness of senses, few demoralizing habits, good natural under- standings, and living under a stimulating and healthful, not enervating climate, on good soil, they were nevertheless torpid, unaroused, unambitious, idle, listless, indifferent to everything but hunting and fighting. Of the metals, fibres, chemical activities all around them they made al- most no use. No step of progress, no sign of betterment, showed itself among them. For all the evidence within our reach attests to us that there was among the savages no token of that discontent or yearning which is the incen- tive to change for the better. In dealing with our whole subject under its successive themes, we shall have many occasions to present the Indian under a variety of characters and aspects. A few general notes of observation may come in here. The fascinating description which Columbus wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella of the first savages that came within his view has already been repeated here. Coming to a later time and to a way of judging them which we can better appreciate, we take a sentence from Roger Will- iams, who had as long and close and curious an inter- course with the Indians as any white man, and who had an intelligent and discerning spirit. He wrote thus : " For the temper of the brain in quick apprehensions and discern- ing judgements (to say no more), the most High Sovereign God and Creator hath not made them inferior to Euro- peans." This relates to the higher endowment of the Indian. For his form and grace, his bearing and de- meanor, let us take a few sentences from the enthusiast George Catlin, who lived eight years (1832-1840) with such Indians as we have now, visited forty-eight of their tribes, and painted in oil five hundred canvases of por- 100 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. traits and scenes among them. He says: "The North American Indian in his native state is an hospitable, hon- est, faithful, brave, warlike, cruel, revengeful, relentless, yet honorable, contemplative, and religious being." While freely stating their defects and enormities, Catlin adds: " I have lived with thousands and ten thousands of these knights of the forest, whose whole lives are lives of chivalry, and whose daily feats with their naked limbs might vie with those of the Grecian youth in the beautiful rivalry of the Olympian games." Their passion for stealing horses, Catlin ascribes to their having been trained to regard the act as a virtue. The artist says he has often seen six, eight, or ten hundred Indians engaged in their animating ball-playing, with five or six times the number of men, women, and children looking on. " And I pronounce such a scene — with its hundreds of Nature's most beautiful models, denuded, and painted of various colors, running and leaping into the air, in all the most extravagant and varied forms, in the desperate struggles for the ball — a school for the painter or sculptor equal to any of those which ever inspired the hand of the artist in the Olympian games or the Eoman forum." He adds, that they have learned their worst vices from the contamination of the whites, but that they find a full equivalent in nature and freedom for all the harassments of civilization, and make an intelligent estimate of the relative advantages of either state of man. " They are noble fellows, noblemen and gentlemen. . . . I have met with so many acts of kindness and hospitality at the hands of the poor Indian, that I feel bound, when I can do it, to render what excuse I can for a people who are dying with broken hearts, and never can speak in the civil- ized world in their own defence. . . . Nature has no nobler specimen of man or beast than the Indian and the buffalo." Catlin pleads with equal earnestness for the man and' the beast, and suggests for his own monument a grand national park to preserve both from extermination. There ESTIMATES OP INDIAN CHAKACTER. 101 is a fine appreciation here of the intimate relation of de- pendence and a link in destiny, at least as concerns vast numbers of the old hunting tribes and the beast which fur- nished them pastime and subsistence. 1 have quoted these evidentlj' overdrawn pictures of Cat- lin while fully aware of his deficiencies as an observer, and of his imrestrained enthusiasm in description. His rich- ness of fancy was offset by lack of judgment. He writes more like a child than a well-balanced man. Major J. S. Campion, in his " Life on the Frontier," i shows himself a most intelligent and discriminating ob- server of Indian life and character, of which he had large experience. He says : — " That there is a radical mental difference between the races is as certain as that there are physical ones. The dog and wolf — as we are told mankind had — may have had one pair of ances- tors j but the dog is naturally a domestic animal : so is the white man, and so are some of the American tribes. The wolf still is, he always will be, a savage ; so has been, so always wUl be, the Apache. The philanthropist sees no apparent reason why, with proper culture, the Apache should not become a useful member of society. I see no apparent reason why the woK should not become as domestic as the dog; but he won't. The reason is a mental difference. Therein is the root of endless misunderstand- ings, of mutual injustice, between the races. But if the earth was made for man to increase and multiply thereon, and have posses- sion, as it requires a greater number of square miles to support one Apache than a square mile will support of civilized families, his extinction is justified by the inevitable logic of the fitness of things. He cannot be developed into a civilized man : he must give place to him. Circumstances and early training will sometimes make a white boy into a first-rate savage ; but that is no argument to prove the converse, — only a case of reversion. Our remote ancestors were painted savages. The cleverest collie is a descendant of dogs that lived like wolves and foxes. Every country has, perhaps, had its true wild men, — tribes incapable of civilization : some couu- 1 London ed., 187S, ]>. 355 et scq. 102 THE INDIAN. HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. tries have them yet. Every country, sooner or later, has its civil- ized races, — sometimes historically known to be immigrant ones, sometimes presuma^bly of an equal antiquity of location to the wild ones near them. Mexico is a case in point. The conquistadores found in that country an ancient, highly developed, apparently in- digenous civilization, with a most complex system of government and taxation, an established state-religion, a thorough organization of classes, an elaborate school of manners and etiquette, — a civili- zation in some respects superior to their own ; and in the same country wild, nearly naked savage tribes, equally indigenous, — the Apaches of then and to-day. Time, soil, climate, natural re- sources, had been equal to them all, and behold the difference of result ! It was a case of indigenes capable of self-development and not capable. . . . Savagery is civilization's childhood." These kindly and generous and paradoxical, if also en- thusiastic, estimates of the average North American savage may fairly be quoted and emphasized, because they are so I'are in our voluminous Indian literature. Of quite an- other tone and strain is the vast bulk of all that has been written about the natives, — certainly by the pens of Eng- lishmen from their iirst contact here. With a vague intent to regard the savages pitifully and to treat them kindly, our ancestors here — very soon, and largely through their own misdealing, and for the rest under the stress of cir- cumstances — came to hate and loathe the Indian, and to view him and to speak of him as a most hideous and de- graded creature. The Indian was to them "the scum of humanity," "the offscouring of the earth." When the savage who bore the title of King Philip, and who planned and led the most devastating — well-nigh exterminating — war ever waged between the white and red men on our soil, was drawn out of the miry swamp in which he had been slain. Captain Church, his conqueror, said, " He was a dole- ful great naked, dirty beast." This, too, of an Indian mon- arch ! And yet it was of a neighbor chieftain, lyanough, of the same race, — from whom the town of Hyannis takes its name, and whose bones are preserved in a cabinet in the ESTIMATES OP INDIAN CHARACTER. 103 Pilgrim Hall at Ply moutli, — that the early chronicler Mourt wrote, that he was " very personable, gentle, courte- ous, and fair-conditioned ; indeed, not like a savage, save for his attire," — probably the lack of it. Governor Winslow wrote to a friend in England : " We have found the Indi- ans very faithful to their covenants of peace with us, very loving and ready to pleasure us. We go with them in some cases fifty miles into the country, and walk as safely and peaceably in the woods as in the highways of England. We entertain them familiarly in our houses, and they are friendly in bestowing their venison upon us. They are a people without religion, yet very trusty, quick of appre- hension, humorous, and just." And Winslow's friend, Robert Cushman, wrote : "To us they have been like lambs, — so kind, so trusty, and so submissive that many Chris- tians are not so kind and sincere." When the Sachem Chicatabot visited Boston in 1631, we read that, " being in English clothes, the Governor (Winthrop) set him at his own table, where lie behaved himself as an English gentleman." A few more estimates of Indian personality and charac- ter, as made in our own time, may serve to acquaint us with the wide diversity of judgment which has from the first found strong expression, and then we may attempt to account for this discordance of view. The chivalrous and heroic General Custer may be regarded as a typical authority among military men for his estimate of Indian character. He knew the Indian well in war and peace. He had made the savage the object of an intelligent and closely and keenly observant study. He was one of the most conspicuous victims of Indian warfare. Though the General is classed as among the most effective "Indian fighters," and came to his early death at their hands in a fearful massacre, he was a man of a humane and kindly heart. In his " Life on the Plains," referring to the ro- mantic, gentle, and winning view which Cooper and other 104 THE INDIAN. — HIS OEIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. romaucers have given of the ludiaii, as so misleading and wholly fanciful, he says : — The Indian, "where we are compelled to meet with him, — in his native village, on the war-path, and when raiding upon our frontier settlements and lines of travel, — forfeits his claim to the appellation of the 'noble red man.' We see him as he is, and, so far as all knowledge goes, as he ever has been, — a savage in every sense of the word; not worse, perhaps, than his white brother would be similarly born and bred, but one whose cruel and ferocious nature far exceeds that of any wild beast of the desert. That this is true, no one who has been brought into intimate contact with the wild tribes will deny. Perhaps there are some who, as members of peace commissions, or as wandering agents of some benevolent society, may have visited these tribes, or attended with them at councils held for some pacific purpose, and who by passing through the villages of the Indian while at peace may imagine their oppor- tunities for judging of the Indian nature all that could be desired ; but the Indian, while he can seldom be accused of indulging in a great variety of wardrobe, can be said to have a character capable of adapting itself to almost every occasion. He has one character — perhaps his most serviceable one — which he preserves carefully, and only airs it when making his appeal to the Government or its agents, for arms, ammunition, and license to employ them. This character is invariably paraded, and often with telling effeot, when the motive is a peaceful one. Prominent chiefs invited to visit Washington invariably don this character, and in their 'talks' with the ' Great Father ' and other less prominent personages they successfully contrive to exhibit but this one phase. Seeing them under these or similar circumstances only, it is not surprising that by many the Indian is looked upon as a simple-minded ' son of JSTature,' desiring nothing beyond the privilege of roaming and hunt- ing over the vast unsettled wilds of the West, inheriting and assert- ing but few native rights, and never trespassing upon the rights of others. This view is equally erroneous with that which regards the Indian as a creature possessing the human form, but divested of all other attributes of humanity, and whose traits of character, habits, modes of life, disposition, and savage customs disqualify him from the exercise of all rights and privileges, even those per- taining to Hfe itself. Taking him as we find him, at peace or at QUALITIES OP THE INDIAN. 105 war, at home or abroad, waiving all prejudices and laying aside all partiality, we will [shall] discover in the Indian a subject for thoughtful study and investigation. In him we will [shall] find the representative of a race whose origin is, and promises to be, a subject forever wrapped in mystery ; a race incapable of being judged by the rules or laws applicable to any other known race of men ; one between which and civilization there seems to have existed from time immemorial a determined and unceasing warfare, — a hostility so deep-seated and inbred with the Indian character, that in the exceptional instances where the modes and habits of civilization have been reluctantly adopted, it has been at the sacri- fice of power and influence as a tribe, and the more serious loss of health, vigor, and courage as individuals." " Inseparable from the Indian character, wherever he is to be met with, is his remarkable taciturnity, his deep dissimulation, the perseverance with which he follows his plans of revenge or con- quest, his concealment and apparent lack of curiosity, his stoical courage when in the power of his enemies, his cunning, his caution, and last, but not least, the wonderful power and subtlety of his senses. In studying the Indian character, while shocked and dis- gusted by many of his traits and customs, I find much to be ad- mired, and stQl more of deep and unvarying interest. To me Indian life, with its attendant ceremonies, mysteries, and forms, is a book of unceasing interest. Grant that some of its pages are fright- ful, and if possible to be avoided ; yet the attraction is none the weaker. Study him, fight him, civilize him if you can ; he remains still the object of your curiosity, a type of man pecuHar and unde- fined, subjecting himself to no known law of civilization, contend- ing determinedly against all efforts to win him from his chosen mode of life. He stands in the group of nations solitary and re- served, seeking alliance with none, mistrusting and opposing the advances of all. Civilization may and should do much for him, but it can never civilize him. A few instances to the contrary may be quoted, but these are susceptible of explanation. No tribe en- joying its accustomed freedom has ever been induced to adopt^ a civilized mode of life, — or, as they express it, to follow the white man's road. At various times certain tribes have forsaken the pleasures of the chase and the excitement of the war-path for the more quiet life to be found on the ' reservation.' Was this course adopted voluntarily and from preference f Was it because the 106 THE INDIAN. — HIS OEIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. Indian chose the ways of his white brother, rather than those in which ]ie had heen bom and bred 1 In no single instance has this been true." Custer proceeds to argue that a few tribes, wasted and exhausted by wars with other tribes and the whites, and by contact with civilization and disease, and unable to cope with more powerful tribes which are always overbearing and domineering, must cither become the vassals and tribu- taries of their enemies, or reluctantly accept the alternative of a sham conformity with the whites. He says : — Tlie tribe must " give up its accustomed haunts, its wild mode of life, and nestle down under the protecting arm of its former enemy, the white man, and try, however feebly, to adopt his manner of life. In making this change the Indian has to sacrifice all that is dear to his heart ; he abandons the only mode of life in which he can be a warrior and win triumphs and honors worthy to be sought after ; and in taking up the pursuits of the white man he does that which he has always been taught from his earliest infancy to regard as de- grading to his manhood, — to labor, to work for his daily bread ; an avocation suitable only for squaws. . . . " To those who advocate the apphoation of the laws of civiliza- tion to the Indian, it might be a profitable study to investigate the effect which such application produces upon the strength of the tribe as expressed in numbers. Looking at him as the fearless hunter, the matchless horseman and warrior of the Plains, where Nature placed him, and contrasting him with the reservation In- dian, who is supposed to be revelling in the delightful comforts and luxuries of an enlightened condition, but who in reahty is grovel- ling in beggary, bereft of many of the qualities which in his wild state tended to render him noble, and heir to a combination of vices partly his own, partly bequeathed to him from the pale face, — one is forced, even against desire, to conclude that there is an unending antagonism between the Indian nature and that with which his well-meaning white brother would endow him. Nature intended him for a savage state ; every instinct, every impulse of his soul inclines him to it. The white race might fall into a bar- barous state, and afterwards, subjected to the influence of civiliza- QUALITIES OP THE INDIAN. 107 tion, be reclaimed and prosper. Not so the Indian. He cannot be biniself and be civilized; be fades away and dies. Cultivation such as the white man would give him deprives him of his iden- tity. Education, strange as it may appear, seems to weaken rather than strengthen his intellect." In confirmation of this last statement, Custer affirms that the gift of forest eloquence is lost under civilization. He asks : — " Where do we find any specimens of educated Indian eloquence comparing with that of such native, untutored orators as Tecumseh, Osceola, Eed-Jacket, and Logan, or Eed-Cloud, or Satanta? . . . " My firm conviction, based upon an intimate and thorough an- alysis of the habits, traits of cliaracter, and natural instinct of the Indian, and strengthened and supported by the almost unanimous opinion of all persons who have made the Indian problem a study, — and have studied it, not from a distance, but in immediate contact with all the facts bearing thereupou, — is that the Indian cannot be elevated to that great level where he can be induced to adopt any policy or mode of life varying from those to which he has ever been accustomed by any method of teaching, argument, reasoning, or coaxing which is not preceded and followed closely in reserve by a superior physical force. In other words, the Indian is capable of recognizing no controlling influence but that of stern arbitrary power. . . . " And yet there are those who argue that the Indian with all his lack of moral privileges is so superior to the white race as to be capable of being controlled in his savage traits and customs, and induced to lead a proper life, simply by being politely requested to do so." '■ Let us quote a passage from another intelligent ob- server of Indian life, also an accomplished officer of the army of the United States. The extract has a touch of romance about it, as it presents a child of Nature of the other sex : — 1 My Life on the Plains ; or, Personal Experiences with Indians. By General G. A. Custer, V. S. A. 1876. Pages 11, 16, 102, et seq. 108 THE INDIAN.^ HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. " Wheu a youiig man, — new to the plains, with a heart full of romance, and head stored with Cooper's and others' fictions of ' beautiful Indian maidens,' — I was on the escort of General S., commanding the Department, on a long scout, or reconnoissance, through Texas. One day, when camped near what afterwards be- came Fort Belknap, we were visited by a then prominent chief of the Northern Comanches, Pa-ha-yu-lca, who brought with him a few warriors and his family, — several wives and one daughter. The daughter was a vision of loveliness, apparently about fourteen, but ripened by the southern sun to perfect womanhood. Eather below the medium height, her form was slight and lithe, though rounded into the utmost symmetry. Her features were regular, lips and teeth simply perfection, eyes black, bright and sparkling with fun, and the whole countenance beaming with good humor and bewitching coquetry. A tightly-fitting tunic of the softest buckskin, beautifully embroidered with porcupine quills, reaching half way between the hip and the knee, set ofi' to admiration her rounded form. The bottom of the tunic was a eontuiuous fringe of thin buckskin strings, from each of which dangled a little silver bell, not larger than the cup of a small acorn. Her lower limbs were encased in elaborately fringed leggings, and her little feet in beaded moccasons of elaborate pattern. Her beautiful hair was plaited down her back and adorned with huge silver buckles. The parting of her hair was carefully marked with vermilion paint, and a long gold or brass chain was twisted carelessly about her hair and neck. What wonder if, with one look, I literally tumbled into love ? She saw my admiration, and with the innate coquetry of the sex in every clime and of every people, met my eager glances with a thousand winning airs and graces. We could not speak ; but love has a language of its own. I haunted that Indian camp-fire. Neither duty nor hunger could tear me away ; and it was only when the Indians retired for the night that I could return to my own tent and blankets to toss and dream of this vision of paradise. Next morning with the sun I was again with my fascination. The General gave the Indians a beef. Some time after, a warrior came and spoke to the girl. Kising from her seat, she gave me a look oi invitation to accompany her. Proceeding a few yards into a little glade, we came to several Indians standing around the slaughtered beef, which was turned on its back and the stomach split open. Taking a knife from one of the men, my ' beautiful Indian maiden' MILITARY OFFICERS ON THE INDIAN. 109 plunged her lovely hand and rounded arm into the bowels of the beast, and found and cut off some eight or ten feet of the ' marrow gut.' Winding it about her arm, she stepped on one side, and, giving the entrail a shake, inserted one end in her beautiful mouth. Looking at me with ineffable content and happiness expressed in her beaming countenance, she slowly, and without apparent mastica- tion, swallowed the whole disgusting mass. I returned sadly to my tent, my ideal shattered, my love gone ; and I need hardly add that this one Indian love-affair has satisfied my whole life." ^ The military gentlemen, honored officers of our army, from whose works I have drawn these extracts, are well en- titled to be regarded as representatives in good judgment, and as speaking from abundant knowledge and experience, of their own profession in that strong conflict of opinion which we must recognize in later pages between it and the advocates of an exclusive peace-policy with the In- dians. General Custer and Colonel Dodge, humane and well-balanced men, present to us in harrowing descriptions and with all too vivid illustrations the atrocities of Indian warfare. The former tells the story of such tragedies as the " Philip Kearney Massacre " and the " Kidder Massa- cre." Eemembering that he fell in the flower of his years, — after his patriotic career and eminent services to his country, — in a deadly and equally overwhelming disaster, we give just weight to his testimony. Clearly, and for reasons which he states with full force, he did not believe that the Indian could be lifted into the state of civilization, refinement, and full humanity. But we must not by antici- pation prejudice this great issue. In the abounding literature which we have gathered and are to leave to posterity, concerning the red man and his experiences with the white man, there is a large variety of stern and sober history, of poetry and romance, of en- gaging and instructive, of repulsive and revolting matter, 1 The Plains of the Great West and their Inhabitants. By Kichard Irving Dodge, Lieut. -Colonel U. S. A. New York. 1877. Pages 342-=43. 110 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. fact and fiction, boasting and lament, stately volumes of legislative, cabinet, and war bureaus, and pages filled with contemplative and serious wisdom. In reading, for infor- mation or pleasure, a selection from this mass of books and documents, we have to remind ourselves that white men have dealt with, visited, and treated the Indians in very different ways and for very different ends and purposes, and so have formed very different opinions and made very dif- ferent reports of them. Thus, besides the poets who give us their dreams and fancies of Indians and Indian life, our informants and authorities about them comprise this wide category, — travellers, tourists, and adventurous pleasure- seekers among the Indians, traders with them, missionaries to them, military officers watching or fighting with them. Government superintendents or agents for their help and protection, and settlers upon the successive frontier lines. We may well expect to find not only variety and variance, but discordance, and wholly incongruous and inconsistent repre- sentations of Indians and Indian life, coming from such miscellaneous authorities. One who proposes to make a thorough study of the Indian as known to the white man, will find it helpful to divide all the enormous mass of litera- ture on the subject under six very distinct classes, — guided by this simple suggestion, that different persons coming into contact with the Indians, for very different purposes, on dif- ferent errands, and under different relations, see them differ- ently, use them differently, and so report them differently. First come the poems, — works of pure fiction and fancy, written in every case by those who never had any intercourse whatever with the wild men, and which always mislead, though the romance may please us. Second, those who have lived on the frontiers, amid Indian raids and captivi- ties, massacres, butcheries, and tortures ; who know the Indian yell, his hideous visage, and his tomahawk. Third, the missionary, who has his point of view, and makes his report. Fourth, the Indian or Government agent, who ROMANTIC VIEWS OP THE INDIAN. HI often, not always, — for there have been honorable and noble exceptions, — finds himself the only honest man among a crew of rascals and knaves, and who guards against their swindling him by swindling them. Fifth, the army officer, who has to follow the trail of the ambushed foe, and to do the fighting. And, lastly, there are annually numerous wild rovers, pleasure tourists, hunters, noblemen from abroad, who go to the Plains to chase the buffalo. These have a free and happy time with the Indians, being companionable and lavishly generous. When the Duke Alexis, by President Grant's order, was accompanied by General Custer in his rush over the wild plains, he of course had a good time, and thought the Indians noble fellows. Of course the Indian, his life and surroundings, are favor- ite themes of romance. These have been already wrought into the fancies and charms of poetry. Such uses they will serve more richly in the future. The less we see and know of real Indians, the easier will it be to make and read poems about them. The themes of epics will yet be found in them, and distinctive American literature for time to come will draw inspiration, eloquence, and fascination from the heroes and the fortunes, it may be, of a vanished race, — vanished with the primeval forests and the wild game. And poetry and romance have their license. Stern history, however, has got the start of them, and will always be able to tell the true story in sober prose. Cooper's novels, the poems and ballads of Campbell, Longfellow, Whittier, and others will secure to romance the holding of its own with the traditions of truth. Whittier, in his preface to his " Mogg Megone," naively says, that in portraying the Indian character he has followed, as closely as his story would admit, the rough but natural delineations of Church, Mayhew, Charlevoix, and Roger Williams (that is, of those who had actual knowledge and converse with the Indians) ; and, in so doing, he has " necessarily discarded much of the 112 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUJIBERS, ETC. romance which poets and novelists have thrown around the ill-fated red man." Of course common-sense, after all, must be trusted on such themes to draw the line not only between opinions and theories, but even in the statement and interpretation of facts, as they come from romancers, sentimentalists, idealists, and philanthropists, or from literal, practical, matter-of-fact persons, speaking from experience. The familiar line, hackneyed by frequent quotation, — " "When wild in woods the noble savage ran,'' — would have a difPerent meaning according to the circum- stances under which one happened to meet him, — whether he was running to you or from you. " The stoic of the woods, the man without a tear," as a poet has drawn him, was after all, like most of us, a many-sided being. Much wise and well-balanced judgment, poised fairly, has been uttered of the savage in this sentence : " His virtues do not reach our standard, and his vices exceed our standard." It seems to have been with the Indians, as Tacitus says it was with our German ancestors, that one half of their time was spent in hunting and war, and the other half in sloth and play. Two constraining reflections must always guide our thoughts about them. However degraded, they had the divine endowment from Him — as Southey says — " Who in the lowest depths of heing framed The imperishable mind." Again, the Indians are a people with a history but without a historian. The Jesuit Father Lafitau, a man of great learning in classic lore, and a most intelligent, can- did, and discerning observer of savage life, published in 1724 the fruits of his patient investigations in two stately quartos, abundantly illustrated with engravings. The title of his work, — "Mceurs des Sauvages Am^ricains, Com- pardes aux Mceurs des Premiers Temps," — expresses the INDIAN STATE AND ROYALTY. 113 method by which he has treated his theme. Believing the savages to have shared in the disaster of the "fall" of our first human parents, he finds among them the traces of an original revelation, with its corruptions and steady deterio- ration ; and he illustrates all their customs by parallelisms from classic history and the usages prevailing among other barbarous peoples. He follows this illustrative method through all the ideas, superstitions, observances, feasts, sacrifices, and bacchanalian orgies of the savages, as hav- ing an intimate affinity with those of other peoples of our fallen race in all ancient times. Still, he is very indig- nant with the romancing Baron La Hontan and others, who, " seeing among the savages neither temple, altars, idols., nor regular worship, very unadvisedly concluded that their spirits did not go further than their senses ; and too lightly pronounced that, living as the beasts without "knowledge of another life, they paid no divine honor to anything visible or invisible, made their God of their belly, and bounded all their happiness within the present life." Doubtless one misleading element of our notions of the red men, as they first appear in our history, comes from the early use of the names, the titles, and the state of royalty as attached to forest chieftains, the formalities and etiquette to be observed with them. This is the more strange, as those who first used such high terms of language had known real potentates and real courts, and were well aware that such were characterized by personal cleanliness and by an ex- cess of apparel and draperies rather than by an entire lack of them. Good Eoger Williams frankly tells us about the filthy, smoky dens and the vermin-covered per- sons of the natives, and of their disgusting food and hab- its, wholly unconscious of common decency. Yet even he freely scatters about the titles of king, queen, and prince, of court and state, among them. The element of the incon- gruous and the ridiculous in this is well brought out when from worthy old John Smith in Virginia, downwards, we 114 THE INDIAN. HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. have the titles and the state offset by literal descriptions in plain English, and sometimes by "cuts and etchings" on his pages. Indian names with an English alias present this incongruousness, thus: "The chieftain Munashum, alias Nimrod." The romantic story of Pocahontas, as it developed so luxuriously from its original germ in the successive narrations of the same incident by the "Ad- miral," is sadly reduced by comparing the different edi- tions of his narrative. From this point of view it is interesting to compare some pages of two of our most able and faithful New EJngland historians, writing at the same time and on the same themes, : — Dr. Palfrey, in his " History of New England," and Governor Arnold, in his " History of Rhode Island." It is suggestive and really amusing to note what contrasted views, tones, and ways of speaking of and representing the aborigines of New England are characteristic of those writers. Dr. Palfrey regards them, their habits, and man- ners with absolute disgust. To him they were little above vermin, — abject, wretched, filthy, treacherous, perfidious, and fiendish. For them existence had but a questionable value. He scorned the attempt to invest them with ro- mance, and ridiculed the attributing to them the qualities of barbaric forest state and royalty. Governor Arnold, however, fondly loved to retain the old romance of the noble and kingly savage, with his wild-wood court, his councillors and cabinet, his wilderness chivalry, with the free, pure air around him, and the abounding lakes and streams, suggesting at least their uses for frequent and ef- fective ablutions. In keeping with these, — their divergent appreciation of the same phenomena, — Dr. Palfrey sets before us the squalor and wretchedness of the Indians, their shiftlessness and incapacity, their improvidence, beastliness, and forlorn debasement ; while Governor Ar- nold dwells bewitchingly upon their grand manhood, their constancy, magnanimity, and dignity. When the friendly INDIAN STATE AND EOYALTY. 116 chief -Massasoit was suffering with a fever and was un- der the hands of his powwows, Palfrey and Arnold both describe a visit made to him by Winslow and Hopkins, of Plymouth. Arnold says the monarch received his Pu- ritan visitors at "his seat" at Mount Hope. Palfrey says that the "monarch," with his vermin-covered bear-skin, had no food to offer the envoys, that their lodging in his "stye" was of the most comfortless description, and that they had a distressing experience of the poverty and filth of Indian hospitality. More remarkable still is the con- trast of estimate between the two historians of the re- ligion of these same Indians. Arnold says : " Here we find the doctrine of the immortality of the soul enter- tained by a barbarous race, who affirmed that they re- ceived it from their ancestors. They were ignorant of revelation ; yet here was Plato's great problem solved in the American wilderness, and believed by all the abo- rigines of the "West." ^ But Dr. Palfrey writes : " The New England savage was not the person to have discov- ered what the vast reach of thought of Plato and Cicero could not attain." ^ It is but proper to add, that these works being in press at the same time, the writers were not controverting each other. Yet there was a touch of nobleness in the words of the royal chief Miantonomo, accepting the dignity which the English ascribed to him. When, in King Philip's war, Miantonomo and another sachem, with some chief council- lors, had been taken prisoners at Potuxit, a squad of com- mon Englishmen put him under question. The " Old In- dian Chronicle " ^ tells us: " The said Miantonomo's carriage was strangely proud and lofty. Being examined why he did foment that war, he would make no other reply to any interrogatories but this : ' That he was born a prince, and 1 Arnold's History of Rhode Island, vol. i. p. 78. 2 Palfrey's History of New England, vol. i. p. 49. 8 Page 231. 116 THE INDIAN. HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. if princes came to speak with him he would answer ; bitt none present being such, he thought himself obliged, in honor, to hold his tongue and not hold discourse with such persons below his birth and quality.' " Practically, however, the truth must be told, that, in spite of all the epithets of royalty and state which our own Puri- tan ancestors connected with the Indians, as a matter of fact they very soon came to regard and treat the savages as a kind of vermin of the woods, combining all the offen- sive and hideous qualities and subtleties of snakes, wolves, bears, wild-cats, skunks, and panthers, with a bloodthirsti- ness and ferocity exceeding them all. This was the estimate of the noble Indian by those who had heard his yells and felt his tomahawk in actual conflict. The subject of the languages spoken by our aborigines is too comprehensive and intricate a one for discussion here. Our authorities differ widely on this theme, as to the number of the vocabularies, which of them are languages, which are dialects, their constructions, root-terms, inflections, etc. They used very long words, with affixes and suffixes of many syllables, and of many letters, especially consonants, in each syllable. Cotton Mather said some of their words had been growing ever since the confusion of tongues at Babel. It must have required some intellectual vigor and a grasp of memory in Indian children to master their speech. It is doubtful if any affinity can be detected in their vocab- ularies or in the structure of their languages with those of any other continent of tlie globe. As might be expected,- their languages are rich and copious as relating to common life and common things, objects, matters of sense, but very deficient and scant for the processes and expression of mental and spiritual activity, conceptions, and abstractions. For instance, the speech of the Delawares was found to have ten very different names for a bear, according to age, sex, etc. The limited resources of their speech explain to us the rhetorical and figurative character of Indian elo- INDIAN LANGUAGES. 117 quence, so abounding in images, pictures, and symbols. It was this paucity of words and expressions suited to their use in moral and religious teachings that greatly impeded the work of missionaries among the savages. Doubtless, in many of the Treaty Councils with them speeches have been very erroneously conveyed, and covenants greatly mystified. Of the power and graces of Indian oratory the evidences and the illustrations are abundant. The famous speech of Logan, even if apocryphal, is ranked among the gems of eloquence. When his fellow-chief Cornstock, in Cresap's war, 1774, held his interview with Lord Dunmore, Colonel WUson, who was present, thus describes the scene : — " When Cornstock arose, lie was in nowise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, without stammering or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks while addressing Governor Dunmore were truly grand and majestic, yet graceful and attractive. I have heard the first orators in Virginia, — Patrick Henry and Richard Lee ; but never have I heard one whose powers of de- livery surpassed those of Cornstock." Among tlie efforts of labor and zeal which have been spent by Europeans — generally, too, in unselfish and self- sacrificing toils — for the benefit of the Indians, might well be mentioned with special emphasis the task-work given to the acquisition and comparison of Indian vocabularies, for purposes of speech, instruction, and translation. It is one • thing to give oneself to the study of a difficult language for the sake of being able to master the treasures of literature which it may contain. It is quite another thing to catch the words and modulations, the breathings and gruntings of a spoken tongue without alphabet or symbol, to reduce it to written forms, and to make it a vehicle for presenting the literature of other languages. It is curious to note that the earliest Europeans who undertook to put into writing the first Indian words which they heard, seem to have aimed to crowd 118 THE INDIAN. HIS ORIGIN, NTJMBEES, ETC. into them as many letters as possible. The first mention of a word of the Dakota or Sioux language in a European book is said to be one which Hennepin wrote in his Jour- nal, on his being taken by a war-party on the Upper Mis- sissippi. The savages were angry at seeing him read his breviary, and fiercely spoke a word which Hennepin writes Ouahanehe! This word now appears in the Da- kota vocabulary as Wakan-de, meaning magical, or super- natural. ^ In the earliest intercourse between the Europeans and the Indians, a medium was established between them by meet- ing each other in speech and in sign-language, as we should say, half way. Father Lafitau has, with his usual intelli- gence, described the process as follows : — " When two peoples who speak languages so widely unlike as those of the Iroquois and the French come together for the ends of traffic, or for mutual service in defence, they are compelled, equally on either side, to approach each in the other's language, in order to make themselves understood. This is difficult enough in the begin- ning ; but at last, with a little practice, they come to communicate their thoughts, partly by gestures and partly by some corrupt words which belong to neither language, because they are mere blunder- ings, and compose a discourse without rhyme or reason. Still, by practice, fixed significations are assigned to these terms, and they serve the end proposed by them. Thus is formed a language or jargon of scant authority in the dictionary and confined only to intercourse. The Frenchman thinks he is using the language of the savages, the savage that he is speaking that of the French, and they understand enough to serve their needs. During the first months of my stay at Sault-Saint-Loiiis the savages used this jargon to me, supposing that, being a Frenchman, I ought to understand it. But I understood so little of it, that, when I began to apprehend a little more clearjy the principles of their natural speech, I was obliged to ask them to speak as they do to each other, and I then entered much better into their thoughts." ^ 1 Collections of Minnesota Historical Society, i. 308. 2 Moeurs des Sauvages, vol. ii. p. 475-76. LABOR ON INDIAN V0CABULAEIE8. 119 The Father remarks, however, that though the savages had so many different languages, they had nearly the same range of mind and view, the same style of thought, and the same modes for expressing themselves. Their languages had a dearth of such terms as the missionaries needed to use in conveying to them religious lessons and abstract truths. This difl&culty the Father says was not surmounted by missionaries who had lived among the savages for very many years, and who candidly confessed, that though their disciples perfectly understood them on other subjects, they could not satisfy themselves that their religious instruction was really apprehended. Fettered and obstructed by such disabling conditions, we can perhaps appreciate the almost overwhelming difficulties of the task by which missionaries among the Indians have sought to construct vocabularies of the various native tongues for the purpose of mastering forms of speech, not merely for holding common intercourse with them, but for con- veying to them the knowledge of the truths of revealed religion, instruction in spiritual things, in virtues, in tran- scendaut verities, and in ecclesiastical obedience. References to further experiences of toil and ill success in this devoted work will engage our attention under another subject in this volume. Our imaginations hardly need any quickening or stimulating to bring before us the patient forms of the old missionaries, as in such hours as they could rescue from the tumults and annoyances of Indian village life, they crawled into their lonely lodges, and, when paper was too precious a luxury for such use, took their prepared sec- tions of birch-bark, and, with ink extemporized from forest juice or moistened charcoals, essayed to construct a vocabu- lary of a savage dialect. Vast numbers of these tentative essays in a rude philology have perished. Primers, prayers. Church offices, the Pater Noster, the Creed, and the Com- mandments have, after a fashion, been set forth in these vocabularies in sounds which have long since died on the 120 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NITMBEES, ETC. air. Enough of them remain, in manuscript and print, to bear testimony to us of tlie zeal and love which were poui'ed into them, and to make us grieve again over the penalty of the " Confusion of Tongues." In the light of our best means of knowledge of the past, with what we infer from fact, and our observations of the present, as regards the aborigines of our continent, proba- bly we should not widely err in resting in this conclusion, — that the North American Indian, when first seen and known by Europeans, stood about midway upon the scale of hu- manity, as then divided and filled over our globe by grada- tions of beings belonging to our race. Perhaps we should place the Indian somewhat favorably this side of the middle of that scale. Certainly there were two hundred years ago, and probably there are to-day, as many representatives of our common humanity standing below him as above him. This statement is intended to cover general conditions, stage of development, possession and exercise of human faculties, resources of life, appliances, social relations, and the common experiences of existence. We have not to go very far back in the centuries, to find for our own ancestors naked and painted men and women, J burrowing in caves, without fields or flocks, and living by the chance growths of Nature. It has been pertly said that " the European is but a whitewashed savage ; " and many among civilized scenes have lost both the external and the internal tokens of a release from barbarism. There is one special and painful matter — most harrow- ing if it were pursued into details — to which we must give some place in forming our estimate of the nature and char- acter of the Indian : it is the hideous and revolting cruelty manifested in his savagism. The scalping-knife is the sym- bol of the Indian warrior, as the sword and the rifle are of the rank and file of the civilized soldier. But there is something to us supremely hideous in the use of the scalping-knife and its companion weapon, the tomahawk. The practice of THE PEEOCITY OP THE SAVAGE. 121 scalping a victim seems to have been universal among our aborigines. It has been a matter of question whether the practice was original with and peculiar to them. It has been affirmed that the wild hordes of Huns scalped their victims. Lafitau finds parallelisms of the practice among the pagans of the Old World. Niles, in his " History of French and Indian Wars," makes, I think, the utterly un- warranted assertion that the French initiated the Indians into the habit. But they do not appear to have needed any teaching from civilized men in this or in any other shape or ingenuity of excessive and needless cruelty. They took to it and delighted in it as of the prompting of nature and instinct, and it became, if we may so use the word, a part of their religion. Now what type of nature or character is indicated in this mastering and ferocious passion for infhcting muti- lations and torture on helpless victims ? The scalp was seized and preserved as a trophy. It was worn as a per- sonal ornament. The number of scalps which a warrior could count as taken by his own hand marked as it were the degrees of honor and renown which he had reached and won, as degrees are graded in our lodges and commanderies of Masonic orders. Before they had edged tools of metal, the savage skill had sharpened stones or fish-bones so that they would sever the skin of the top-lock, whether of man, woman, or child. The dismal trophy would be stretched upon a wicker frame, tanned, and dried ; and, after being a part of the ensigns displayed in his lodge, and worn as a trinket, it was buried with the warrior in his grave as a sort of Charon's penny for the fee on his voyage to the other shore. Several trustworthy persons, most familiar by long and intimate converse with the red men, have testified that the Indians have a very suggestive super- stition on this subject, though there is no evidence that it is universal among them. They are said to believe that if a body — whether of white or red man, friend or foe — is 122" THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBEES, ETC. deprived of the scalp-lock before burial, the soul that ani- mated the body is forbidden all entrance upon the Happy Hunting Grounds, all share in the life hereafter. In con- firmation of this, we are told of the eagerness shown by the Indian warrior to obtain the scalp of the slain, as if it in- sured for him the greater excommunication; and also of the risks which they will run to reclaim the bodies of their fallen friends on the battle-field, to save them from the fatal knife. But whether we regard the scalping-knife as the in- strument of a wanton cruelty, or as darkly associated with a revengeful superstition, in either view of it, it is the sym- bol of the barbarity of savagism. There are two passing hints to be dropped on this matter, if so be that any one may regard them as relieving its hor- ror. First, the Indian warrior magnanimously dressed and elevated the crowning tuft of hair on his own head, so as to make it every way convenient to the clutch and knife of his enemy. Second, we must admit — shall we say, to our shame ? — that the white man, after he had become skilled in the ways of Indian warfare, did not scruple to adopt the red man's practice of scalping the dead. There are official papers preserved on our State files, in which our magis- trates offered bounties for Indian scalps to their own sol- diers and to our red allies ; and these papers show a tariff of prices for the tuft from the head of a man, a wo- man, or a child. The bounty for a scalp to a regular sol- dier was ten pounds ; to a volunteer, twenty pounds ; to patrol parties, fifty pounds. More than all, these bounties were claimed, paid, and receipted. An heroic woman of New Hampshire, Hannah Dustin, received payment for ten, which she had taken off with her own hand. More notewor- thy still is the fact, that while the benevolent and pacific William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, had declared the person of an Indian " sacred," never to be harmed, his own grandson, when succeeding to the government, in the stress of Indian warfare, offered, in 1764, iu a proclamation, TORTURING OF VICTIMS. 123 this tariff of prices for Indian scalps : for a male scalp, 1134; for that of a boy under ten, $130; for that of a female, |50. All that we can say of this self-degradation of the white man — civilized, Christian — to the barbarism of the red man is, that he was swift to learn and imitate all ill examples ; and that he adopted scalping simply as one of the elements of wilderness warfare, like the lurking in ambushed thickets and ravines, and skulking behind a tree when firing his piece. Again: shrinking from harrowing details, but for fidelity of view recognizing the truth, we must take note also of the hellish ingenuities practised by the savages in the mutilation and torture of the bodies of their victims and prisoners. All the taught skill which the anatomist can acquire with the scalpel, in dealing with the human body, could not have helped the Indian in his methods of drawiag out, prolonging, and intensifying the pangs and agonies of his helpless foe. He seems to have known by instinct and by practice where were the quick points of keenest sensation, the order in which the nerves would quiver most torturingly, where fire would twinge the muscle, and how he might sap the life-currents so that they would most delay the blessing of unconsciousness. The preliminaries of the stake were found in the fun and revelry provided for the squaws and the pappoo- ses, when the destined victim ran the gantlet, with its mocking jeers and its showering blows. We can well credit the repeated assertions of exposed frontier fight- ers and soldiers, that it is a habit among them to re- serve the last charge of their rifles, or a secret pocket pistol, that they may terminate their own life when they know the game is over with them, to escape the dread fate. If it will at all relieve the savage of the charge of utter inhumanity in this respect, it should be mentioned that it is a part of his education to prepare himself to en- 124 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. dure as much of physical torture as he himself inflicts. Lafitau writes: — " This heroism is real, and is born of a grand and noble cour- age. That which we admire in the martyrs of the primitive Church, and which in them was the work of grace and miracle, is nature in the savages, and comes from the vigor of their spirit. The Indians seem to prepare themselves for this from the most tender age. Their children have been observed to press their naked arms against each other, and put burning cinders be- tween them, defying each other's fortitude in bearing the pain. I myself saw a child of five or six years old, who, having been severely burnt by some boiling water accidentally thrown upon it, sang its death-song with the most extraordinary constancy every time they dressed the sores, although suffering the most severe pain." ^ To this is to be added the profound admiration, as for a consummate virtue, which they have for a tortured warrior whose nerves do not flinch under his agonies, and who raises cheerily the paean of his scornful tri- umph. It does not appear that any one of the Jesuit Fathers who have admiringly related, in all their horri- fying details, this more than Spartan firmness and defi- ance of the savages under protracted tortures, had sug- gested to himself the thought that the terrors of hell, which he regarded as the most potent agency in the work of conversion, might have at least but a qualified dread for those who could thus triumph over agonies inflicted by their fellow-men. All unconscious as the savages were that such a doom awaited them, or that they had done anything to expose themselves to it, the most sceptical and philosophic among them may have resolved to meet it if they must, and to find their comfort as some Chris- tian people, unawed by the terrific threat, have avowed that they should do, in a stout confidence that the doom was unjust. 1 Moeurs des Sauvages, vol. ii. p. 280. CANNIBALISM AND SAVAGERY. 125 These barbarous ingenuities of torture by the savages, however relieved in endurance by the training which had fitted them to bear as well as to inflict them, were wrapped in intenser horror for all Christian eyes when the bodies of the sufferers, after life had been driven from its last refuge, were embowelled and severed by the tormentors, and then committed by the squaws to the caldrons for a fiendish banquet. We may leave untranslated the words of Lafitau concerning the savages and a victim : " Ne lui donnent point d' autre sepulture que leur ventre." ^ That such distressing scenes should have come under the eyes of Europeans calling themselves Christians, with- out engaging their sternest rebuke and prohibition, is to us hardly conceivable. But what shall we say about a trained connivance with them ? Baron La Hontan, often a dubious but sometimes a trust- worthy authority, gives the following contemporary narra- tive of a scene at Quebec, of which it would appear that he was an eye-witness. It was an episode of that war- fare, equally ferocious on both sides, waged between the French and the Iroquois. In the beginning of the year 1692, Frontenac had sent out one hundred and fifty men under Chevalier Beaucour, with fifty friendly savages, who in an encounter with a party of sixty Iroquois had killed all of them but twelve, who were brought as prisoners to Quebec : — " After they arrived, M. Frontenac did very judiciously con- demn two of the wickedest of the company to be burnt alive with a slow fire. This sentence extremely terrified the governor's lady and the Jesuits. The lady used all manner of supplication to pro- cure a moderation of the terrible sentence ; but the judge was inexorable, and the Jesuits employed all their eloquence in vain upon this occasion. The governor answered them, ' That it was absolutely necessary to make some terrible examples of severity to frighten the Iroquois ; that since these barbarians burnt almost all the French who had the misfortune to fall into their hands, they 1 Vol. ii. p. 279. 126 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. must be treated after the same manner; because the indulgence which had hitherto been shown them seemed to authorize them to invade our plantations, and so much the rather to do it because they run no other hazard than that of being taken and well kept at their masters' houses : but, when they should understand that the French caused them to be burnt, they would have a care for the future how they advanced with so much boldness to the very gates of our cities : and, in fine, that the sentence of death being past, these two wretches must prepare to take a journey into the other world.' This obstinacy appeared surprising in M. Frontenac, who but a little before had favored the escape of three or four per- sons liable to the sentence of death, upon the importunate prayer of madame the governess ; but, though she redoubled her earnest supplications, she could not alter his firm resolution as to these two wretches. The Jesuits were thereupon sent to baptize them, and oblige them to acknowledge the Trinity and the Incarnation, and to represent to them the joys of paradise and the torments of hell, within the space of eight or ten hours. This was a very bold way of treating these great mysteries j and to endeavor to make the Iroquois understand them so quickly was to expose them to their laughter. Whether they took these truths for songs, I do not know; but from the minute they were acquainted with this fatal news they sent back these good fathers without ever hearing them ; and then they began to sing the song of death, according to the custom of the savages. Some charitable person having thrown a knife to them in prison, he who had the least courage of the two thrust it into his breast, and died of the wound immediately. Some young Hurons of Lorette, between fourteen and fifteen years of age, came to seize the other and carry him away to Cape Dia- mond, where notice was given to prepare a great pile of wood. He ran to death with a greater iTnconcernedness than Socrates would have done. During the time of execution he sung continually, ' That he was a warrior, brave and undaunted ; that the most cruel kind of death could not shock his courage ; that no torments could extort from him any cries ; that his companion was a coward for having killed himself through the fear of torment ; and, lastly, that if he was burnt he had this comfort, that he had treated many French and Hurons after the same manner.' " ^ 1 Voyages de La Hontan, vol. i. p. 233 (ed. 1709). INDIAN MEDICAL PRACTICE. 127 La Hontan proceeds to describe, in shocking details, the torments inflicted upon the victim, protracted through three hours, -with all the ingenuities of fiendishness, through roasting and maiming, member by member, without draw- ing forth a tear or sigh or groan, or interrupting his strain of triumphant song. The Huron youth were the tor- mentors. By a hint or order from Madame Prontenac, a Huron gave the victim a finishing blow with a club, while La Hontan had already turned away from a spectacle which, he says, he had often to witness. There is full truth in the words of Lafitau, that, " when the French and the English have been naturalized among the savages, they adopt readily all that is bad in their manners and customs without taking the good, so as to become viler than they. The savages know very well how to reproach us for this ; and the charge is so true that we do not know how to answer them." ^ One may easily account for those barbarous traits in the man of the wilderness, which we are wont to refer to his deprivation of all civilizing influences, by tracing them to the savagism latent in humanity, and which is ever ready to assert itself when the restraints and helps of a surround- ing and mastering social oversight are evaded or forgotten. We are familiar with a form of quackery among us, as adopted by resident or travelling practitioners, who adver- tise themselves as Indian doctors or doctresses, and who profess to deal with the roots and herbs of the woods. That these simple natural products furnished to our use have their specific virtues, healthful and curative, common science and experience have fully proved. The essential part of the knowledge and use of these drugs of the field and of the forest very soon becomes the common folk-lore of simple people, as it did in the families of our first white colonists all over the country. And as there are progress and development in all such means and uses, and a finding 1 Moeurs, etc., vol. ii. p. 290. 128 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. of new virtues in everything, there may doubtless be re- vealed specifics, panaceas perhaps, in now neglected roots and lierbs. But the aim and lure of quacks — white persons or col- ored — who announce a practice after the manner and skill of the Indians, are to induce a belief in some occult knowl- edge or methods about the treatment of disease by simples acquired from the natives. Of course it is well understood that such pretensions are of the very essence of charlatanry, and are successful only with the ignorant and the credu- lous. But behind these pretences, and as furnishing what- ever ground there may be for them, is a very interesting matter of inquiry ; about which, however, it is not easy to reach a satisfactory conclusion, because our authorities are quite at variance in their statements and opinions. The Indian doctors, conjurers, or medicine-men were called by the French jongleurs, by the English powwows. Hakluyt describes them as " great majicians, great soothsayers, call- ers of divils, priests who serve instead of phisitions and chyrurgions." These native practitioners appear through all our Indian history and in every tril)e, including those with which we have most recently been brought into inter- course, under the twofold character of conjuring priests and dispensers of medical agencies. Under either aspect, if they did not assume, they had ascribed to them, the quality of a supernatural agency. More or less of trickery and of real sanitary skill may have manifested themselves in individuals according to the make-up of each one's own mental or moral composition, or the intelligence and shrewdness of his constituency of patients. Some of these patients in the hands of real conjurers passed through a herculean treatment worse than any known disease. In the mean time the jongleur himself had to submib to the severest drafts upon his own vitality, — his strength of nerve, his powers of self-contortion, his feats of skill, and the strain upon his vocal organs in hideous yellings. It INDIAN ROOTS AND HERBS. 129 must have often been a wonder that either the doctor Or the patient survived. There are those whose testimony has gone to f'ivor the belief that the Indian doctors, as a class, hpjd really a wonderful natural skill in the treatment of diseases, and especially in surgery ; that they knew and made excellent use of the medicinal properties — emetic, drastic, and pur- gative, tonic and laxative, sudatory; emollient, antiseptic, anJBsthetic, and antifebrile — of roots and herbs and barks, and that the course and residts of their practice would compare favorably with those of our best scientific prac- titioners. Intelligent observers who have known the na- tives well, and have lived with them for years in their wild state, report to us most inconsistently and diversely on this subject. The weight of trustworthy testimony, however, reduces any claim in behalf of the natives for medical skill to a very slender substance, and the large majority of witnesses pronounce the claim absurd and wholly unfounded, while they describe the processes and material of Indian medical practice as monstrous, revolt- ing, fraudulent, and utterly ineffectual, when not abso- lutely mischievous and fatal. In a volume published in 1823, under the title of " Manners and Customs of seve- ral Indian Tribes,"— purporting to be written by John D. Hunter, kidnapped from white parents when he was a child, and living among the Indians many years, till he was old enough to make his escape, — we have a most elaborate Materia Medica, giving us the common and the botanical names of a great variety of roots and herbs, as used by the Indians for specifics. The tribes to whom he ascribes a systematic practice of this sort, — which would do credit, in the main, to the profession among us,— were the Osages and the Kansas. He attri- butes to the Indian practitioners great skill, and to their simples much virtue. There were two marked peculiari- ties among them, which would be novelties to us: first, 130 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. the- T)ractice was unpaid, wholly gratuitous; and, second, the dostors tried to effect some cures by taking the medi- cines tli^mselves instead of giving them to their patients. Unfortunately, however, the good faith of Mr. Hunter, as an author, ic in doubt and question. His personal his- tory and credit are clouded, whatever be the value of his statements. There are, however, authentic statements of real service derived from some simple medical appliances of the na- tives. When Cartier, in his second voyage up the St. Lawrence, in 1535, wintered on the St. Charles, near Que- bec, his forlorn company, buried in ice and snow, was nearly reduced to extinction by the scurvy in its most malignant form. Twenty-five of the party perished, and not' half-a-dozen were left in health. In his despair of all succor, even from the Virgin and the Saints, an Indian who had recovered from the disease directed his attention to an evergreen, probably the spruce, a strong decoction from which had wrought his cure, and the free use of which restored the health of the wretched sufferers. Many of the Jesuit Fathers, in their lone- ly residence with Indian tribes, were withheld by scru- ples from seeking acquaintance or familiarity with the Medicamenta of the Indians. They observed that the Indians were jealous of any such curiosity on their part, and, on the other hand, they were cautious about giving any countenance to Indian charms and super- stitions. Our authorities are equally discordant as to the physi- cal robustness, the general healthfulness, and freedom from many diseases which characterized the aborigines. The Jesuit Fathers, however, — whose intercourse with the natives was earliest, most extended, most intimate and constant, and who are trustworthy in such state- ments, — repeatedly assert that the Indians were wholly free of many of the most annoying and painful and lin- THE INDIAN IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 131 gering maladies visited upon civilized men. As to the affirmation frequently made by them, that they never saw a dwarf, a hunchback, or otherwise deformed or na- tive cripple among the savages, the statement might be parried by the supposition that infants born under such disadvantages might not be allowed to live. The intel- ligent and cautious Lafitau is a good authority within the wide range of his observation and inquiry. He tells us that the severe bodily exercises of the savages, their travels, and the simplicity of their food exempted them from many of the maladies which attend an easy, indo- lent, and luxurious life, with the use of salt and spices and ragouts, and all the refinements and delicacies that minister to gluttony, tickle the taste, impair the appe- tite, and undermine health. The savages, with light nourishment, hardened by their trampings, though tak- ing little care against the rigorous extremes of heat and cold, are still strong and robust, with a soft skin and pure blood, " less salt and more balsamic than ours." " One does not see among them the deformed from birth ; they are not subject to gout or gravel, to apo- plexy or sudden death ; and perhaps they may not have knowledge of the small-pox, the scurvy, the measles, and most of the other epidemic diseases, except through in- tercourse with Europeans." Still, Lafitau says that they are human in their subjection to diseases, and have some especial ones of their own, — such as scrofulous maladies, caused, he says, by the crudity of the waters, and by snow-water. The exposure of their chests makes them liable to phthisis, of which the most of them die. Many of them reach an extreme old age. " I have seen at my mission a squaw who had before her children of her cliil- dren, down to the fifth generation." ^ There is abundant and according testimony that the na- tives had great success in the treatment of flesh wounds, 1 Moeurs des Sauvages, etc., vol. ii. p. 360. 132 THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. and in some surgical operations. Indeed many competent witnesses assure us that their skill surpassed that of trained practitioners, and instances are given of their successful treatment of desperate cases among the whites, as well as among their own people where the European surgeon had been baffled. This native skill was of high service, as the Indians suffered, in their mode of life, more from wounds, bruises, and fractures than from internal maladies. The purity of their blood and the simplicity of their food favored an easy recuperation from injuries, and they took great pains to exclude the air from festering flesh. The signal triumph of native medical skill was in their conceiving and availing themselves of that seemingly para- doxical method of alternation between the extremes of heat and cold in the treatment of a patient which has been adopted by civilized Europeans and Americans, and credited to the Turks. The " suderie," the "sweat-box," or the "vapor bath" are the names attached to a method of treatment which, with trifling modifications and adaptations required by dif- ferent circumstances, was the principal sanitary reliance of the natives over this whole continent, with the possible ex- ception of the Esquimaux. In an emergency, an Indian who had recourse to this method when suffering a malady might serve himself alone. Many who were prostrated and enfeebled by fever or cramped by rheumatism have been known to do this, by drawing on their own energies. It was desirable, however, that a patient should have one or more assistants in the treatment. A low hut, lodge, or cabin of bark or skins was constructed near to the water of lake or river. It was made very tight, with no orifice or air-hole save that through which the patient wholly naked crept into it, and which was then closed. Upon heaps of coal and heated stones water was suddenly poured, rapidly generating steam, which penetrated into every pore of the patient, nearly exhausting him into liquidation. In DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 183 this condition he -would then rush out, or be carried, to plunge into an icy stream or lake, or to roll in the snow. The operation was repeated, if necessary, on one or more succeeding days. It must have been prevailingly success- ful, or the native philosophy would have discredited and abandoned it. It seems to have been eminently adapted to insure a decisive result, either in killing or curing. If true science can ratify its method, its success or immunity is accounted for. Otherwise we must learn from it an- other lesson as to the capacities of endurance in the human organism. A revolting subject, often brought under discussion and led on to widely contrasted decisions by historians and in- qiiirers, has kept under debate the question whether that foul scourge, the penalty of sensual vice, now so prevalent here among the aborigines, was indigenous or introduced by Europeans. It has borne the titles of the French dis- ease, the Italian disease, and the Indian disease. It is un- derstood that our most able archaological investigators have effectually settled the question that the disease had its victims — as is proved by the condition of human bones — on this continent previous to the voyages of Columbus. It is by no means of universal prevalence among the In- dian tribes, for while some few have been reduced by it to a most distressing condition, others have had no blight from it, or but very limited inflictions from it. The manner in which the natives disposed of their dead, with more or less of sensitiveness and mourning in observ- ances, and of superstition in their beliefs, and a continued regard for the resting-places, would of itself furnish the subject of an extended essay. Among the various tribes, and in some tribes at different periods, there was much range of diversity in these matters ; and as in these regards the ways and feelings, the methods and observances of un- civilized men are very like in their variety and associations to those of civilized men, the subject is not of a character 134 THE INDIAN. HIS ORIGIN, NUMBEES, ETC. for particular dealing with it. Our common sympathetic references to the natives of the vanished and the vanishing trihes, attribute to the aborigines a lingering and profound attachment to the burial-places of their ancestors. That this sentiment has been intensely strong in some of the tribes is proved by the fact, that, when either by volun- tary or forced removals they leave their old homes for new ones, they have reverently gathered up the bones of their kindred to be taken with them. The commemorative rites and festivals of some of the tribes draw them to their burial-grounds for lament and song, and to rehearse the achievements of their departed braves. The most ancient of these burial-places afford inviting fields for the explora- tions of the archaeologists, though little has been yielded up by them to increase or modify our knowledge or views about the Indian sepulchral rites as ever having been essen- tially different from what they have been in recent times. Burial in upright, or sitting, or recumbent postures in the ground, or a disposal with coverings of skins on trees, scaf- folds, or platforms, or in an old canoe, indicating a pur- pose of removal of the bones ; the placing of weapons, tro- phies, and articles of apparel or food near the defunct ; the marking, protecting, and respecting the resting-place, — are perpetuated among the aborigines now from pre-historic times. The first impression which Europeans received from con- tact and intercourse with the aborigines, and which they reported in tjieir earliest narratives and descriptions, was that they had no religion whatever, — that their minds were a blank on all 'religious subjects. The French mon- arch came to the conclusion that they had no souls. The epithet " heathen," applied by all Europeans to the Indians, was a term which covered alike the lack of any religion and the belief of any other than a true one. But extended and familiar intercourse soon proved to the Europeans that the natives were by no means without what served them for RELIGION OF THE INDIANS. 135 a religion, and what filled the place and exercised the pro- found and august power over them which the purest and loftiest form of religion has and effects for the most ad- vanced human being. Whether the sort of religion which the red men were found to have and to recognize were in the white man's view better or worse than no religion, was a matter for difference of opinion. But the red man's heart and thought were by no means empty or unengaged on the spells and mysteries, the shadows and the revealings, asso- ciated with religion. He who humbly and devoutly holds what represents the very loftiest, purest, and most spiritual form of religion in its tenets, its conceptions, and believings may be grateful if he can intelligently assure himself that any considerable portion of his creed or hope is adequate to the subject of it, — is free from superstition, credulity, limitation of view, imperfection of thought. Of tliose component elements of religion which awe and enthrall thought, which exercise the imagination, which quicken hopes, which strike dread, and which compel offerings, exercises, and real sacrifices, the Indian unmistakably showed that he was the possessor and the subject. In Eastern realms the monarch or chief was the priest of his tribe or people. It was not so here. The office of priest — magician, sorcerer, as the Europeans regarded it — was here filled by the doctor, the physician for bodily ills. In the idea which underlies this combination of functions, we certainly can find something likely to win our approval. The physician of the body was the minister of sacred rites to the Indian, and the chief of the tribe was both his pa- tient and disciple. Certainly Christians, remembering the touch of healing and the word of power combined in their Master, must favorably regard the custom among our Indi- ans in uniting the functions of the "powwow," or en- chanter, with those of the medicine-man. True, the incantations and the professional ministrations of the Indian functionary may have been barbarous and 136 THE INDIAN. HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. monstrous, — of the essence of quackery, without the con- scious intent of it ; they may even have been as our devout fathers viewed them, — really diabolical : but they were rudely earnest, intensely practical, and substantially sin- cere. " Indian ceremonies," says Major Campion, an in- telligent observer of them, " are not funny, they are not ridiculous ; they are wild, fierce, and earnest, ofttimes cruel and blood-thirsty. They are semi-religious rites, — not celebrated in a perfunctory way, by a salaried pagan priesthood ; but are the solemn, earnest exercises of grim, determined savages." It is hardly probable that any one in converse with what is left of the Indian race and tribes would now say that they were without religion, or that such religion as they have was of harmful rather than of good influence over them. Their religion is the product of all the elements, conditions, and surroundings of their life. It has its fierce and hideous, and also its gentle and winning, influences over them. We are learning lessons from the contact and comparisons of various religions and of those who profess them, in the spirit of contpntion or harmony, in real or in sham discipleship ; and, of these lessons recently learned by us, the Indian has the benefit in tolerance and -in char- ity. In the closest friendships and intimacies of social and domestic life, under the highest civilization and refinement, we are made to realize that religion furnishes the material for division, alienation, and obstruction of sympathies ; simply because not only its deepest processes, but also its infinite richness of materials for speculation, preference, and fond and clinging vision and trust, are strictly the secrets of each individual breast. The lonely Indian — roaming the woods, occupied with his dreams and fancies, wondering over the panorama of earth and heaven, and facing his lot in life and death — had his " spiritual exer- cises." He could not impart them, neither could they lightly be trifled with. We have learned that the best CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHEN RELIGION. 137 and most effective part of religion is not that which is characteristic and peculiar to one, but that which is com- mon to them all. The severest trial to which a religion can be subjected is in the effort to displace by it and to substitute it for another. We shall have to recognize, further on, many interesting facts bearing upon this point. The excellent and accomplished Lafitau exercised a discernment and a candor in forming and expressing his news upon the re- ligious range, character, intelligence, and susceptibility of the aborigines, in which he was not followed by all of his brethren. He recognized not only the exceeding difficulty found in the imperfect vehicle of language, but the more perplexing and embarrassing obstruction offered in the lack of mental furnishing for all the processes of reason- ing and spiritual conception in the savage. It was almost provokingly characteristic of these really irresponsive pu- pils, that, though they would assent spontaneously and as if with full appreciation and approval to some lesson or ♦assertion of their teacher, their minds were utterly desti- tute of any answering idea. They caught no more of meaning from it than they would have appropriated from a page of the most abstruse mathematical or algebraical formulas. When, in rare cases, they did apprehend a gleam of some doctrinal teaching or religious lesson from the missionary which was in direct antagonism with a be- lief or opinion of their own, they could stand on the defen- sive and decline what, though it might be very good for the white man's religion, was not suited for the Indian. Tliat was indeed an astounding and appalling announce- ment which the missionary made the starting-point of his instruction to them, — that in their natural state they were under the doom of an awful and unending subjection to unutterable woe after this life, and that the only relation which the Great Spirit then sustained to them was as wait- ing for their passing from this troubled existence that he 138' THE INDIAN. — HIS ORIGIN, NUMBERS, ETC. might visit upon them his wrath forever. The doctrine, if apprehended at all, was dulled in its impression by the amazement which paralyzed their ability really to grasp it. It might have been grimly submitted to as relieved by the suggestion — giving the comfort of ,companionship to misery — that they would share the terrible doom in the fellowship of their own race. And there were many reasons and occa- sions which strongly disposed the red man to long for a wide distance and a complete severance of associations from the white man, as well for the unknown hereafter as here on earth. If in the vigorous intellectual stretch of the rea- soning powers of some of the more gifted of the savages the hideous doctrine was really brought within the grasp of the understanding, the ability to ponder it would be likely to be accompanied by some keen speculation as to its rea- sonableness, truthfidness, and authority. There were shrewd and ingenious individuals among those whom the missionaries sought to convert, as the lat- ter have left on record, who very naively took refuge from this and from other unattractive or perplexing instruc-* tions by insisting that all these lessons and warnings might be very true and good as parts of the white men's religion, who, if they had not a God of their own, had some very peculiar means of knowing things kept secret from the Indian. This ingenious refuge in recognizing and arguing, — as among the many fundamental differences between the white men and the red men, in their knowl- edge, privileges, opportunities, and consequent duties, — that there might well be a very broad distinction between the religions suited to their respective conditions, very often presents itself in related conversations of some of the more acute savages with the missionaries. That the savages had a religion of their own — what we call the religion of Nature — would find assurance in the single fact of their irresponsiveness and indocility under any merely dogmatical or doctrinal teachings, apart from THE INDIAN AS A CONVERT. 139 such simple ritual and formal observance as the Romau Catholic priests exacted of them. There were occasions on which gifted and earnest individuals among the na- tives poured out a strain of simple, kindling eloquence in expatiating upon the grand and exalted truths of their own religion, of its special adaptation to themselves and the conditions of their own lives, the aspects of earth and sky under which they met the experiences of exist- ence, and the kindly care of Providence for them in sup- plying all their needs through natural products and the services of their humble kindred among the animals. Probably the fact held good in its application in de- grees to all the native tribes under the teaching of the missionaries, which is signally illustrated in the case of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico ; namely, that while yielding a seemingly ready compliance with the observ- ances required of them by their priestly teachers, they retained in deeper impressions and with undiminished at- tachment the tenets of their ancestral religion. They cer- •tainly do in privacy or fellowship cherish their old rites and festivals in connection with a reverence for fire, for the sun, for periodical recognitions of the seasons in their ancient calendar, and for commemorating the departed generations of their race. Here nature and training, so often in strong antagonism with each other, seem to be brought into harmonious working together. It is the ut- most result which can be looked for from the most hope- ful teaching of religion to adult savage people. Should not that result, or even approximations to it, be regarded as the reward of wise zeal and effort? CHAPTER III. THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECES, AND SUEEOUNDINGS. We have abundant and trustworthy means for informing ourselves of the qualities of character, the exterior life, the resources, employments, and practical capacities of the abo- riginal tribes during the whole period since the first com- ing' here of Europeans. The intercourse has always been close and continuous between the races ; and though the relations in which they have stood to each other have been prevailingly hostile, there have been occasional and agree- able exceptions to this rule. As has already been said, though the Indians have a history profoundly interesting, especially in its tragic elements, they have no historian of their own race. The few and quite unsatisfactory speci- mens which we have of their way of telling their own story and fortunes for the record, are to be gathered from speeches delivered by some of their chiefs, in review of their history, at great councils with the whites; and we have to accept these as they have come through the medium of interpreters more or less intelligent, honest, and qualified for the office. Occasionally, too, we have had from whites who, as captives in their eaily youth, have lived long with the natives and been adopted by them, and also from some of their own youths who have been educated at our schools and colleges, what may serve as the Indian's own way of communicating to us the fortunes and experiences of his race. For the most part, however, — as in the case of the LIMITATIONS OP SAVAGISM. 141 painter and the lion, -wliere the artist alone could represent both sides of the contest, — the history of our Indian tribes comes from the pen of their conquerors. For many and obvious reasons we have to regret what we must regard as a gap in our literature, caused by the lack of any native contributions to it. As we shall have to note in later pages of this volume, there have been a few master minds, both in reasoning and oratory, among the Indians. From more than one of tliese we have evidence of a capacity and acute- uess of thought exercised upon the comparative attractions and advantages of a barbarous or a civilized life; cogent arguments for the right of Indians to follow their own pre- ferences and habits ; and plaintive laments over the mis- eries and the woes inflicted by the white man upon those whom the Divine Being had set in their own free domains, with all that could minister to their need and happiness. Eousseau was but a tame and artificial pleader for the im- munities and joys of a state of Nature for man, when com- pared with some of these aboriginal specimens of it. Yet we need hardly feel that we lack any information which it is desirable and interesting for us to have con- cerning the habits, mode of life, resources, and experi- ences of our aboriginal tribes. Allowing, too, for the fact already recognized, that our abounding literature on the general subject is composed of contributions from a large variety of writers, in capacity and in principles, who in their intercourse with the natives, having had widely differ- ent relations with them, and widely different ends in view, have seen and reported them differently, we have all the means for a full and fair representation of aboriginal life. A state of savagery, however extensive the regions covered by it, and however diverse in local climatic in- fluences and productions parts of it may be, will generally reduce nearly to uniformity the condition and habits of life of those who share it. In civilized lands, countries bordering on each other — neighboring counties, cantons, or 142 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOURCBS, ETC. departments — will exhibit a wonderful variety in the fea- tures, tlie dialects, the costumes, the domestic usages and the employments of the people. The range for all such diversities is restricted for the life even of semi-barbarians. There seems always to have been, as there is now, far more in common as regards all the resources and habits of life among American Indians, certainly in the northern parts of the continent, than there were of local and circum- stantial diversities. We can indeed discern among various tribes, when compared with each other, the effects upon them of greater ease or difficulty in obtaining sustenance, of more or less of providence in storing up food, of degrees of ferocity in warfare, and evidences of skill, industry, and art spent upon their weapons and utensils. There were those who lived chiefly on maize and roots ; others who gave no labor to the cultivation of the soil, but sub- sisted wholly by the chase; and others still, on the Pacific coast, and upon its vast rivers, whose diet was of the pro- digious supplies of fish, fresh or dried. Of any differences among the savages arising from degrees of mental develop- ment we need to make small account. This uniformity in the resources, methods, and experi- ences of the lives of the savages facilitates such a general account and description of their occupations, habits, and condition as is required for record in our own or in com- ing times. Not that these annals are merely "short and simple," like those of the poor, but that they are uniform, repeating with slight variations similar narrations and incidents. After all, the savage is best known, understood, and de- scribed by his surroundings. He is the child and companion of Nature, its product and its willing subject. The word " savage " is from the root of the beautiful word silva. He is a child and denizen of the woods ; the forest, the lake- shore, the river are his nursery, his playthings, his range for life and joy. When, even from a long and weary jour- THE SAVAGE A CHILD OP NATURE. 143 ney, he can reach a sight of the salt ocean, the sight ex- hilarates him, and the odor of the dank kelp invigorates him. Aptly has it been said, — " Man is one world, and hath another to attend him." There is a sympathy and a responsive relation between the senses and the mind of a wild man and the aspects and aptitudes of Nature around him. As man develops his own higher powers. Nature changes steadily in these aspects and aptitudes for him.' The savage conforms and adapts himself to Nature. Never does he indulge one fretting thought or feeling about its ways, or move a muscle or effort against it. He lives in tranquil subjection to Nature, and dies as her autumn fruits and leaves fall on her bosom. But every stage and step and process of development for civilization puts man out of harmony and into antagonism with Nature. He re- sists and thwarts and fights Nature. For his own uses he changes all natural features and objects. He clears away the forests, kills its beasts, dams its streams, levels its lulls, raises its valleys, blasts its rocks, tunnels its moun- tains. The Indian hears of these doings of the white man, or looks on, amazed, for he does none of them. Respect, or fear, or satisfaction, or indolent acquiescence, disposes him to accord with Nature, or to leave her as she is. It is admitted that only civilized and cultivated man ap- preciates grand and beautiful objects, using his mind, soul, and taste to engage with simple senses upon them. The beauty and grandeur and glory of natural scenery — of a horizon notched by mountain tops, of floating clouds with their varying shadows, of the gorgeousness of the tinted foliage — do not appeal to a vacant mind or to a rude sen- sibility. But the savage mind was not a blank towards! Nature, nor merely in a state of listlessness. As the sav- age was in accord with Nature, he was in perfect sympathy with it, and held free intercourse with it. The energy and activity of thought which civilized man gives to brooding and restless questioning and speculation, went with the In- 144 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. dian to feed some forest musings, some sylvan imaginings, and to furnish him the material of dreams and omens which entered into the traditions of his tribe and traced or clouded its history. A large part of the life of a sav- age was in solitariness, and except whence knew himself to be exposed to risks from lurking foes he was never lonely, timid, or suspicious. He relied on, his own resources of strength, patience, and security. He could find a suffi- cient couch on the mossy grass, on a heap of green boughs, or in a burrow under the snow. If he did not acquire the instinct of a beast for scenting water at a distance, he was a skilled observer of all the signs which would aid him to find it. The inclination of the tops of the trees, showing the direction of the prevailing winds, and the thickening of the bark on the nortli side of them served him for a compass even in the depths of the forest and under a clouded and starless sky. No length of distance or obstacles in a day's tramping oppressed him with a fatigue that did not yield to a night's repose. However dampened and soaked with pro- tracted rains or with wintry snow might be the trees and foliage of his route, he could always gather some fungi, or dry or decayed wood, for lighting a fire. He would men,tally divide the spaces of a journey of hundreds of miles into equal parts without the help of any sign-post, and would reach his destination or return to his starting-point, as he had purposed to dq, at the rise or the set of the sun. In all this he conformed and adapted himself to the ways and the methods of Nature. The trails through the deep forest were common to him and the beast. The deer and the buffalo made his turnpikes. The Indians took for granted that the earth on which they were born was bound to afford them full sustenance, as it did to the animals, without any labor of their own ; except such effort as they spent, like white men, in pas- time, hunting or fishing. Every exertion that had the look of exacting toil was to them unwelcome, menial, and de- THE SAVAGE CONFORMING TO NATURE. 145 grading ; they assigned all such work to their squaws, who were their beasts of burden, who put together the materials of their lodges, fetched wood and water, cooked the food, carried their pappooses and household goods on their shoul- ders, and flayed the beasts of the hunt and cured their skins. The white man as a warrior always had the respect of the savage, but drew only his wonder or contempt when seen in any industrious occupation. Trusting thus in the fostering care of Nature, the Indians were content with its furnished resources or supplies, whether for a moment these were full or scant. They would gorge themselves to repletion, like the beasts, when they had an abundance, and would endure with marvellous fortitude the sharp pangs of hunger to the verge of starvation. Doubtless it is to this earthward kinship and compliance with Nature in the savage that we are to ascribe his utter unconsciousness of and indifference to what we call offen- sive and revolting to the senses, — foul odors, uncleanli- ness, filth, vermin, parasites, etc. Regarding himself as akin to the elements, the soil, and the creatures around him, the savage did not recognize what we call dirt. Dirt has been well defined as valuable matter out of place. But the savage did not regard dirt as ever out of place, — whether on his person, his apparel, in his foul lodge, or in his scant utensils and his food. Consequently to him there was no such thing as dirt. He would eat with gusto frogs, toads, snakes, and decomposing animal remains just as he took them from the ground ; and his first delicious repast from the game which he killed — large or small, beast, fish, or fowl — was from its raw, quivering entrails and its warm blood. The ordinary functions and processes of his organism were exactly like those which he recog- nized in animals : obedience to their impulses and necessi- ties was as unrestrained as was the use of the lungs and the voice in breathing and speaking. The relief of nature was as seemly a process as was that of satisfying it : pri- 10 146 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. vacy was not prompted in either case. The crowded wig- wam did not admit of diffidence, modesty, or concealment in exercising the functions of nature. Anything like fas- tidiousness, delicacy, or squeamishness, was not only for- eign to the sayage, but was utterly inconceivable and inexplicable to him when exhibited by the white man. The Jesuit Fathers domiciled with the savages, with that exquisite tact and self-control by which they uniformly sought to conciliate and attach to them the subjects of their patient toils, very soon learned to conceal all their anti- pathies and qualms amid the untidiness, the filth, and the indecencies of an Indian wigwam. Suffocated with the vile odors of their surroundings, the vapors of the kettle, and the close-packed humanity ; tormented by vermin, their eyes scorched and blinded by the smoke, with children and dogs crawling over them by night, — these gentlemen and schol- ars from France adapted themselves to the situation; to them certainly an unnatural one, though to the natives it presented no annoyance, no discomfort. Occasionally, for a long fixed residence at a mission, the priest would set up a separate cabin for himself. But this was rather that he might have a place of retirement for study and devotion, than to exhibit his distaste for the domestic life of his disciples. For him there was really no escaping from conformity to Indian manners as regards food and its preparation. He was limited to their larders, as he carried with him into the wilderness none of the luxuries of civilization ; content only to transport the materials and symbols of the mass, with paper for his reports to his superiors. The first implements which the savages were most eager to obtain from the whites were hatchets and metal ket- tles. The latter were at once used as substitutes for the vessels of unglazed pottery, or closely woven wicker, or hollowed wooden receptacles, wliich had previously been in use. Though much of the food of the natives was pre- INDIAN POOD AND COOKERY. ' 147 pared by being laid upon the coals or roasted on a stake, the larger part of it required to be stewed in heated water. As their own vessels, though often called caldrons, would not bear exposure to the fire or a dry heat, an ingenious alternative was resorted to. The clay or wooden vessel was filled with water, into which were thrown stones brought to a glowing heat in a clear fire close at hand. The pro- cess was repeated, if necessary, as the stones were removed and renewed. Into this water were cast the materials of a repast. They were often most incongruous ; for the In- dians delighted in a mess, a pot-pourri, though no skill or regard was spent upon selection or adaptation to the palate. In a banquet prepared by savage allies of the Eng- lish after a bloody and protracted conflict with the French and their red allies, some of the English soldiers, though well-nigh famished, lost their craving at the sight of a Frenchman's hand floating in the stew. The conglomera- tion of heterogeneous articles of food in the Indian's kettle was simply another act of conformity with Nature ; as not what they ate, but the eating enough of anything, was their chief object, and it was the stomach, not the palate, which they had to satisfy. It is curious to note that down to quite recent years in New England, in the families of husbandmen, domestic usage approximated to this Indian habit, — vegetables, pastry, and meat (fresh or salt) being cooked in one kettle, served on one great platter, and dis- pensed after the same miscellaneous fashion. At their great feasts, with a profusion of viands which might have served the Indians for successive distinct courses, the same medley method for cooking in caldrons all manner of fish, flesh, and fowls, dogs, deer's meat, buffalo, skunks, raccoons, etc., with maize, and various roots, pumpkins, squashes, beans, and peas, was the approved style of festivity, with variations more from necessity than of preference. Gene- rally the family had but one meal in common through the day. But each member of it was at liberty to eat when 148 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECES, ETC. and as often and as much as he pleased, if there was an}-- thing left in the larder. Often a hungry sleeper would rise at night to satisfy his craving. The chance stroller or guest was always made welcome to M'hat the lodge con- tained, and was first served. When the ears of Indian corn were in the milk they afforded a rich repast, either as eaten from the stalk or roasted before an extemporized fire. As the natives did not use salt, either at their meals or in preserving meats or fish, they availed themselves of the sun's heat, the air, and fire, to dry any surplus of such food gathered when it was abundant among them. Some of the abounding salts of the prairies have impurities which impair their preservative qualities. Often, however, as the natives were generally improvident, or, still in con- formity with Nature, trusted that each day would provide for itself as to " what they should eat," they were reduced to extreme need. They bore the pangs of hunger with stiff, uncomplaining patience and philosophy, passing many nights and days without sustenance. In their utmost straits they would eat roots, bark, buds, and the skins of their own mantles and moccasons. In the western valleys Nature produced in luxuriant abundance a large variety of succulent and edible roots, and expanses of wild rice. As a last resort, reliance might be placed upon the somewhat stingy nutrition found in what is known as tripe de roche, — a sort of mossy mushroom which covers some of the damp rocks. When this was cooked with scraps of any kind of meat, or marrow bones, it was quite satisfying. Their own dogs, and in times of famine their ponies, are essential parts of the banquets of the Indians. In the matter of apparel the Indian put himself into the same harmony with the promptings of Nature. He wore clothing, not as a covering or concealment, but for convenience, comfort, and necessity under the weather. He felt most at his ease when wholly free of it ; nor was INDIAN COSTUME AND DWELLING. 149 it from the want of abundant materials needing but slight help from hand-labor. The hide of the buffalo, and the skins of the deer, the beaver, and the smaller animals fur- nished him with loose or with close-fitting mantles. His feet and legs needed protection while he was tramping over rocks or through the bushes with their prongs and briers. Not till reaching j^ears of maturity were the children of either sex subjected to the incumbrances of clothing ; and in general the breech-cloth for men and a half-skirt for women served for all except state occasions. The more elaborate garments now seen among the aborigines owe more or less of their skill and ornaments to materials ob- tained from the whites, such as needles, beads, cords, silks, and bits of metal, though the Indian was by no means stinted in his own resources for a gala day. His well- dressed robes, soft and pliable, cured and tanned with or without the fur, wrought with porcupine quills and the feathers of birds, and his necklaces of bears' claws, the plumage of the eagle, and other devices, set him off in good forest guise. For extra adornment, or to add to his fierceness in some of his games, festivals, war, or scalp dances, he would add to his array, besides paint, the horns or the skins of the heads of some of his relations, — the bison, the bear, the deer, or the owl. The aborigines, whether sedentary or roving, constructed their abodes for single families — wigwams, tepees, or lodges — by natural rules and for natural uses. They might have learned their art from the beaver. Where anything of lengthened or permanent habitation was looked for, more of solidity and thoroughness was given to them. Barks or skins, according to the abundance or ease with which they were to be procured, served equally well for the fabric. A few poles, planted as stakes in the circumference of a circle, brought together at the top, with an orifice for the smoke, a hole in the centre for the fire, bunks raised on bushes or skins, and a platform or shelf for storing im- 150 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RBSOUECES, ETC. plements or superfluities, answered all necessities. Gene- rally the men gathered the materials while the squaws put them together. When these lodges were numerous they were sometimes arranged as in lanes, and surrounded with palisadoes. On removing from one place to another, if the materials of the lodge were worth the labor, or were not to be readily replaced, the squaws bore the burden of their parts. What they could not carry on their shoulders they attached at the further end of some of the poles, confining the other end to their waists, while they dragged the skins and utensils. Where the Indians now have ponies they use this style of an extemporized barrow. An indispensable article of the outfit of every male In- dian is what is known by the whites as the " medicine-bag." This cherished possession has an intimate connection with the superstitions of the aborigines, reference to which will soon be made. To the eye of an indifferent observer this "medicine-bag" serves the use of a pocket or a satchel, to receive certain light articles of use and convenience on an emergency. It is much more than that to an Indian. The term " medicine," as current among the natives through the continent, in its equivalents in all their languages and dialects, carries with it all the associations which the word has for civilized people, and far more mysterious ones be- side. The treatment of disease by the conjurers, jongleurs, or " pow-wows " among the natives, as has been before noted, is believed to be more or less of a magical art. So, every process and means connected with it is associated for the Indian with some quality of mystery and charm. " Medi- cine," therefore, becomes to them a term mixed with re- ligious, superstitious, and marvellous significance. Every object that startles them by its ingenuity, its show of skill, its wonderful properties, — like a burning-glass, a watch, a clock, a compass, or a bell, as well as any drug, — is to them " medicine." The carefully guarded and cherished receptacle, always THE MEDICINE-BAG. 151 jealously watched over by its owner, which the whites and the Indians now alike called the " medicine-bag," combines all the qualities of a Jewish phylactery, a New Zealander's fetich, and the amulet or charm of a superstitious devotee. The " bag" is generally made in the form of a pouch, of the skin of some small animal, carefully prepared, and its con- tents are the secrets of its owner. Among these contents may be the usual miscellaneous articles of a pocket ; with scraps of tobacco, the pipe, and the materials for kindling a fire. But the sacred thing in the receptacle is some scrap or relic — it may be a tooth, a bone, a claw, a stone, or some rude device with the totem or tribal designation of the owner — which is to him as a protecting amulet, a medium of prayer or worship, connected with his private supersti- tions or dreams. The Indian communes with this myste- rious symbol when alone ; he trusts to its protection on a journey and in emergencies, and he clings to it in all the frenzies of the battle. To lose this special treasure of his "medicine-bag" would cause to its owner inexpressible and overwhelming sorrow and dismay ; he would apprehend all possible calamities as likely to befall him. Sometimes when the whites have pried into these secret bags, the con- tents have been found hideous and disgusting. To the owner they are his most sacred possession. Not more fondly and devoutly did the Spanish marauder cling to his amulet of the Holy Virgin, than did the savage to this guardian of his spirit. The concentrated and sharpened use of a few of the mental faculties threw the whole force of mind of an In- dian into the directions most engaged in the restricted exigencies of his condition. He had less volume and less range of mind than a civilized man, but more sagacity, skill, and directness in the use of what he possessed, — as a man deprived of one or more of his senses stimulates those left to him. It was soon noticed, however, that the white man, with a larger active-fund and capital of brain than the 152 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, BESOURCES, ETC. savage, after a chance to learn his ways, could far more easily appropriate the keen and sagacious qualities of the Indian than the Indian could avail himself of the culti- vated and expanded faculties and ingenuities of the pale- face. The European would not at first trust himself in the woods without a compass. The Indian despised the contemptible little index. But the white man was not long in acquiring the Indian's craft in all forest weather-signs and trail-marks. General Braddock allowed whole ranks and files of orderly marching English soldiers to be picked off one by one by ambushed Indians, skulking in the bushes of a ravine. But the white man soon learned how to do this bush-fighting behind tree or stump ; and as the Indian, seeing the flash of the rifle, if not struck by the ball, would instantly rush upon his victim before he could reload, the white man would have a substitute by his side, or two guns. Doubtless there has been some exaggeration in the pic- turesque and fanciful relations of the almost preternatural skill and cunning of the Indian, when with all his faculties alive and strained, in caution or suspicion, he exhibits a craft in the woods, on the trail, or in circumventing his enemies, beyond anything of the same kind whicli the white man can attain by ingenuity and practice. In the woods, amid decaying leaves, on the moss or the grass, or on the lichen of the rocks, the Indian will detect the marks of any feet that have passed over it. He will divine whether the marks are recent, or the number of days which have elapsed since they were pressed, the number of the com- pany, and the direction and sometimes the object of their course. True, the same skill in detection is offset by the same ingenuity in concealment or deception. Sometimes the moccasons or shoes of one or more skulking persons will be reversed on the feet as if to mislead the pursuer in his search. Sometimes a single person will multiply his own foot-prints, or a portion of a party will carry others on THE WATER-WAYS OF THE CONTINENT. 153 their backs, or a water-course will be forded at an angle to throw the pursuer off the track. The game is a keen one when those on both sides are well matched. And how fitted for his uses and his accordance and sym- pathy with Nature were the surroundings and conditions of the Indian's life ! This magnificent domain of earth, water, and sky was his. Here was no desert; seldom a spot inhospitable to an Indian so far as to forbid at least his passage through it. The lake-surface of our own Northwest, with its borderings, is of larger area than the whole European continent. We take in hand one of the latest maps of the United States, that we may trace the course and linkings of its railways. By sections, in the brains of single Indians, and as a whole among their various tribes, there once existed, without map or draft, quite another but as complete and accurate a delineation of previous thoroughfares all over this continent, in its length and breadth, and quite as well suited to previous uses as are our iron highways. The maps which we have now, covering our whole national domain, have been provided at Government expense, as the reachings out of power and enterprise have made necessary. They are the results of patient and laborious exploration with the help of skilled engineers. Take one of those maps, leave all the land sur- face in blank to represent the original condition of things, and you will have a reticulated system of threading nerves, fibrous and ganglionic, of the lakes and water-courses, which seem to have been disposed as streams and basins respectively to renew and interchange their waters in vigo- rous and healthful circulation. The waters are generally clear and pure, save as the swelling freshets of the spring tear away the rich mould of their shores and tangle them with huge uprooted trees. One of the main rivers gathers contributions it may be from hundreds of different rills and streams, just as, by a reversed process, a branch of a ma- jestic tree, standing isolated from a forest which might 154 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOUECES, ETC. cramp it, sends its sap into boughs and twigs, and through them into each leaf. When the smooth downward flow of one of these streams was broken by falls the Indian would boldly shoot them, unless the water was shallow or the rocks were too many and rugged. The lakes, ranging from inland seas to ponds, are fed by trickling streams, rivulets, and brooks, pouring in their con- tributions it may be from three points of the compass, and they find their outlet by rivers running to the fourth point; The mouth of each river leads it into another larger stream, whose tributaries connect another series of lakes and brooks and rivulets. The portages, or carrying-places between these water-courses, may be only a few rods for land-travel ; very rarely do they stretch to a half score of miles. The sedgy, reedy swamps, the cascades and cataracts must also be circumvented by portages. Study carefully one of those skeleton maps of this vast continent, giving only these expanses of water and the broad and attenuated streams, as you would a town or State map showing the highways of the country: you will marvel at the grandeur, the beauty, the ingenuity,' and, in these practical days we must add, the convenience of the arrangement. The white man soon learned to follow these water-highways for curiosity or traffic ; but he made first rude and then improved drafts of them on paper for those who should follow him. The red men carried in their heads and minds all this elaborate reticulation of our continent ; and so they trav- ersed it by land and water, when they had occasion to do so, for thousands of miles, with but trifling deflexions from a straight course. Just as our railroads have their junc- tions and their branches, so the water-highways of the In- dian afforded many central stations, with a large liberty for diverting the course. One of the most remarkable of these Avater-basins for extent of communication is Lake Winni- peg in the Northwest, 270 miles in length, and 80 in its broadest width. ■ It is fed by almost innumerable streams, WATER HIGHWAYS OF THE CONTINENT. 155 some of them quite large, and is the source of as many- more that flow from it. Its central position on the conti- nent makes it, as it were, a grand junction for routes to the Atlantic and the Pacific. Every bend in a stream, every widening or contracting of the channel, every bay of a lake, every swamp, hillock, grove, or barren spot, had a name kept in use by successive voyagers. When the gatherings of furs or game, or other spoils of the woods, exceeded the capacity of the canoe, the surplus would be committed to a cache, carefully prepared in the rocks or the earth, secured from the beasts, and so skilfully indicated in its exact locality for the eye of the owner that he was never at fault to find it on his return way, or to direct another to the depositary. Where there was no fear of an enemy, the voyager would bring his canoe to land at night, draw it upon beach or shore, turn it over him for a roof in foul weather, prepare his evening meal generally from extemporized resources, and start afresh in the early hours of the morrow. Though for many purposes of hunting and trapping partnership was desirable, many an Indian in his solitaiy way would be absent for months from his lodge on his private business. What pure poetry or stern prose, of adventure or peril as we may view it, invested the life of the Indian in his converse with Nature, as he threaded these watercourses, — having for his guiding compass, sure and unerring for his way, his own wilderness instinct! Whole stretches of the native forest offered scarce any obstruction as he threaded his course alone, — or in companies marched, as we say, in Indian file over the crispy or velvet moss. But he would have to climb at times over the prostrate giant trunks, in which he would sink gently up to the waist in the red mould of sweet decay. Where storms and tempests had swept over the scene, two or three score trees might have fallen to each survivor that rose in majesty over them. And then what delicious ministrations there were to a creature so largely organized for simple sensa- 156 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOCBCES, EfC. tioiis, ill his course by da}^ and his couch of moss or hem- lock by night ! The draught from the cold, pure spring ; the juicy berry, the grape cluster, the extemporized meal from the game brought down by his arrow or taken in his snare; the fragrance of that mysterious earth-smell in the spring- time, after the scentlessness of the forest in winter; the mingling of the damp ooze from the decay of leaves and mossy trunks with the sweet bloom of swelling buds, — these were the luxuries of the wilderness. The Indian, in the lack of help from any artificial edu- cational processes, gathered his wood-craft and his skill from two sources. His main reliance was ever on his own individual observation, the training of his own senses, the increasing and improving of his own personal expe- rience. Beyond this he was helped in anticipating such acquisitions, or in extending his knowledge, by the free communication from his elders of facts and phenomena beyond his immediate ken. While hours of listless in- dolence, of sleep, or dull taciturnity might pass among a group, or in the lodge, or the open camp, there were fre- quent occasions for free and lively gossip, for relations of experience and adventure, and for keeping alive tradition- ary lore by renewed repetition. It was in this way that the legends of the tribes were transmitted ; and these doubtless had for those most interested in them a signifi- cance and dignity which we try in vain to find in such fragmentary and trivial relations as have come to us. The natural and the supernatural made for the Indian one con- tinuous, blended, and homogeneous aspect of things and events. He made no distinction between them ; still less did he divide them by any sharp line. He thus anticipated one of the results reached by many of speculative mind in our own time, in recognizing the impossibility of parting fact and phenomena respectively between the natural and the supernatural. It was thus that the Indians became such experts in the SUMMER EOVTNGS. 157 •ways and workings of Nature, -vrhich gave them all their tuition and training. They kept themselves close to it, and regarded themselves as simply a part of it. They could describe to a stranger merely by signs, without lan- guage, the face and features of a region ; its growths and its game ; its hills and valleys ; its rivers, swamps, lakes, and mountains ; its water-ways and its portages. Adapting themselves to the slow wits of the white man, who needed illustrative help for guidance, they would take a piece of bark, and with a tracing of charcoal or bears' grease they would indicate his way with more exactness than our school-children get from their maps and geographies. A more or less rapid motion of the fingers or feet would sig- nify easy or fast travel by day ; and the head inclined on the hand, with closed eyes, would describe the rest of the night : thus denoting the number of days for a journey. The Indian, too, had variety in his life. He anticipated many of our people in having two residences in the course of the year, without paying taxes in either of them. He made, once a year at least, a long tramp, for change of scene and food. If far inland, he sought the border of a great lake, or climbed a mountain. If he could reach it, he sought the roaring seashore, and had his tent on the beach. There is some conflict of testimony as to whether the abstinence from salt was universally, as we know it was largely, prevalent among our aborigines. The Indians at the West observed that the deer in the spring season gathered to any salt-licks that might be near their ranges, and seemed greatly to enjoy the alterative waters. Seeing the white or gray crystals of the condiment which, as the result of evaporation, lay round the shores of lakes or springs, they could hardly have refrained from tasting them. They seem never to have resorted to the artificial processes of evaporation. It would appear from the general testimony that the Indians did not use salt with their ordi- nary diet, nor employ it as a pickle, though when it was 158 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. near them they might occasionally have recourse to it as a medicine. But they did universally depend upon that annual alternation of their residence just referred to, which for them served as an interchange of city and country ; and this, too, independently of their tramps on the war- path or the hunt. Those of the tribes were most favored who had ready access to the ocean shores, especially to the greater variety of fish in the briny waters, and those larger products of the sea which yielded blubber and more service- able bones. There were many other significant and ingenious tokens and devices by which our native races put themselves into sympathetic relations with Natiire around them, and with natural objects, — scenery, animals, and birds, — as if they were themselves vital parts of the same organism, its ele- ments and products. The names which they took for them- selves and gave to their children and to each other illus- trate this statement. The names borne by Indians, though so fantastic and not euphonious to us, are generally far more appropriate and characteristic than those in use among civilized people. Nature, its aspects and objects, were drawn upon by the red men for names of groups and individuals, often with admirable aptness. These names of theirs have in many cases become vulgarized to us, as gro- tesque and disagreeable ; for the most part, however, they are simply meaningless, fragments of a wild jargon. Not so with those who bore them. The name assigned to a child was given in view of some trait or feature in him which suggested a natural scene or object, or instinctive prompting; or it had reference to some quality which it was hoped he might develop, or in which he was to be trained. We all recognize the appropriateness of the des- ignation, made familiar to us by Walter Scott, by which a clan in a peculiarly foggy region of the Highlands were known as " Children of the Mist." So in every feature of a natural landscape, — mountain, hill, meadow, valley, RELATIONSHIP TO ANIMALS. 159 grove, forest, swamp, river, brook, torrent, or bog, and also in every animal, bird, insect, or reptile; in the instru- ments of war and of the chase ; in all fruits and products, branches, twigs, and leaves ; in rain, snow, fog, lightning, and thunder ; in the sun, in the phases of the moon, and in the starry constellations, — the Indian found his vocabu- lary for names. This method helped their memories, and also served as a sort of index of characters. Custom and privilege always allowed to the young Indian the right to change his name as he grew to maturity ; to take the title by which he would be known as a brave from any exploit, achievement, or aim which he could associate with him- self. Nothing in these names indicated parentage or fam- ily relationship ; nor does there appear to have been any rule of gender in their use which restricted them respec- tively to males or females. The renderings which are given of them seem to have more significance as inter- preted in the French than in the English language. The observing and reflecting powers of the Indians were trained to remarkable concentration and acuteness, as they were exercised upon natural objects, signs, and phe- nomena. They were skilled in all weather signs ; so they valued least of all, among the white man's trinkets and gewgaws, the pocket compass, for they had a better in their native sagacity. They marked accurately the phases of the moon, or " the night sun," the ante and post me- ridian of the day; and they gave to the months names from Nature's signs and aspects, from animals, crops, and fruits, far more expressive than our own. A most vivid illustration of the sympathetic relation into which an Indian put himself with Nature, was the consequent relation into which he put himself with the animal creation. All wild creatures had some tie of kin- ship to him. Beavers and bears especially were a sort of cousins-german. He shared the terms, conditions, and means of life with animals, being in some things only 160 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. their superior. The beaver worked much harder than the Indian, for he had to build a dain as well as a lodge, and to gnaw down trees, and carry mud for mortar ; and the beaver's lodge was cleanlier than the red man's, and well stocked for winter's food. The Indian was content to live on food similar to the animal's, and to get it in a similar way, — by strength or guile. He was content to learn his best practical wisdom from animals, and then to outwit them from their free teaching by exercising a keener faculty of his own. His knowledge of their hab- its and instincts, gathered from patient, watchful study and keen observation, surpassed that which we can get from the most accurate and interesting books on natural history. And when the Indian had made himself an adept in all the shifts and devices and all the sly and subtle artifices of animals, in self-protection, or to hide their holes or to cover their tracks, he had only to exer- cise a little more cunning in his trick to circumvent them. He was housed and fed and clothed precisely as were these animals ; and, like them, he was often gorged by food or pinched by starvation. And while the Indian knew his own way by. forest, lake, and river, he was careful to mark it, for reference for others, by naming every feature and object of it. He had a name for every region and for each part of it ; for every rill and spring, every summit, swamp, meadow, waterfall, bay, and promontory. The most intelligent ex- plorers among us have often remarked upon the exquisite taste and fitness of the names which the Indians attached to every spot and scene of the country, — as Athabasca, " the Meeting-place of Many Waters ; " Minnehaha, "Laugh- ing Waters;" Minnesota, " Sky-tinted Water." Often has the regret been strongly expressed over all parts of our country that there has not been more of ef- fort, pains, and consent to preserve more extensively the aboriginal names of localities, of rivers, lakes, mountains, ABORIGINAL NAMES OP PLACES. l61 and cataracts, of hill-tops, glens, and valleys, through the continent. Wherever this has been done it is a matter of gratification to the taste and sentiment of our day. Of the six New England States, only two — Massachusetts and Connecticut — bear their original titles. The new States and Territories of the West, and some of our grandest rivers and lakes, are favored in this respect. Most fitly do some of the scenes richly wrought into the romantic stories of French missionaries and explorers — Marquette, Allouez, Hennepin, La Salle, and others — retain their memories. The greatest of our cataracts per- petuates, in the roar of its waters, the sonorous melody of its aboriginal name. It is to be regretted, however, that as it was on St. Anthony's day that Hennepin dis- covered the western cascade, he should have displaced for that title the Indian name of the " Palling Waters of the Mississippi." Worse yet was the rejection of the beautiful name Horicon,i borne by the fairest of our lakes, allowed to do honor to an English king (George). It may be that, under some aesthetic enthusiasm assert- ing itself among us, there may be a general consent to restore the Indian nomenclature over our country for me- morial or penitential purposes. Mount Desert was once " Pemetie." Another very curious and interesting token of the rela- tions into which the Indians put themselves with the ani- mals, as their kindred, if not their Darwinian progenitors, is found in their choice of symbols from the creatures with which they were familiar, as the totems, or badge-marks, of their tribes and families. At first sight these totem- iMr. Parkmati, in his "Jesuits in North America" (p. 219), gives ns an interesting note on the original name of Lake George, which, he says, was not Horicon, — that word being merely a misprint on an old Latin map for " Hori- coni;" that is, "Iroconi," or "Iroquois." The first of Europeans who saw the lake was Father Jogues, in 1646, who called it " Lac St. Sacrament," from: the day in his calendar when he beheld it. Mr. Parkman says that Cooper had no sufficient historical foundation for the name " Horicon." 11 162 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. marks seem to us simply an element of rude, natural bar- barism ; but they mean more to us the more closely we study them. And there is another thing to be said about them; for there is an affinity, strange and unexplained, between these forest totem-symbols and some of the proud escutcheon-bearings of monarchs and nobles, states and empires, in the old civilized world. A simple prejudice or habit of association of our own makes us ridicule in the savage what awes or flatters us among white men. The totems of the Indian tribes were the bear, the beaver, the wolf, the tortoise, the squirrel, etc. The emblems were generally — not always, however — rudely sketched and gro- tesque. But the design and purpose of them were exactly the same as of similar devices in proud Christian nations ; for example, England's unicorn and lion, Scotland's thistle, Ireland's shamrock, the fleur-de-lis and the cock of the Frenchman, the bear of Russia and of the canton Berne, the double-headed eagle of Austria, etc. And if we should follow the comparison down through the shields, the armo- rial bearings, the escutcheons and coats of arms of nobles and private families, with all their absurd devices and figurings, — perhaps Indian pride and ingenuity might find more countenance. Indeed, the roguish 'and waggish La Hontan — who so scandalized the French Jesuits by his awful truth-telling that he has been unfairly depreciated, though doubtless often sagacious and trustworthy — heads a chapter of his racy volumes on French Canada with the ti- tle, " The Heraldry, or the Coats of Arms, of the Savages." This he illustrates with lively etchings of tribal symbols, — the beaver, the wolf, the bear, etc., so fitting to wilderness and forest men. The " coat of arms " of the kings of Mex- ico was an eagle griping in his talons a jaguar. It was a pity that they could not have put life into the emblem in their treatment of their Spanish tormentors. In the ingenuity that has been spent in tracing tokens of a former relationship between the people of the Old THE INDIAN IN PULL DRESS. 163 World and the New, it is remarkable that so little recog- nition has been made of the affinity between totems and coats of arms. Something similar is to be said about the costume, the ceremonial adornment, the got-up finery and ornaments, of the red man. Here he exhibits some strange imitations, approximations at least to those of the white man. True, the costume of the Indian was for the most part simply that with which he came into the world. But here again we find an accord with Nature. The Indian, as already noted, did not go naked because he could not procure clothing, but because he preferred freedom of limb and motion. As has been said, he had but a scant sense of shame, modesty, or decency : he took himself as Nature had made him. If he wanted covering — as he did and had — in the winter, he had but to transfer the skins of his brother animals to his own shoulders, often naively apolo- gizing to the animals for doing so. At times he would smear his body with clay or paint, to ward off heat, cold, and insects. There seems a long distance between their forest garb on state occasions and the gold, the lace, and brocades of court pageantry. But let us look a little closer at the mat- ter, and compare aims and the means for reaching them. The Indians sometimes, no doubt, wished to appear fine and grand, like other people. They availed themselves of such ornaments and trinkets as they could get. They had not our range of commerce for stuffs, shawls, laces, ostrich feathers, jewels, etc. ; they had not access to our shops and modistes : but they did the best they could. The deer- skin, the leggings, the pouch, were richly dressed and em- broidered with shells, fibrous roots, and porcupine quills ; they mounted the feather and the plume, and had ,for ear- rings and necklaces the bear's claw and the snake's rattle. But few of them bored the cartilage of the nose for a pen- dant. The young and the old squaws, when coming into 164 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RBSOUBCBS, ETC. or gracefully retiriiig from society, had but a limited range compared with our ladies for the choice of cosmetics ; but they turned to account such as were within reach, — bears' grease and vermilion. They were content with the hair that grew on their own heads, and they wholly dispensed with corsets and paddings. Their parade, in strange fea- thers and skins with hanging tails, their boring of the nose sometimes, as well as generally the ears, for rings, and their magniloquent titles and stately forms appear grotesque to us. But how very much in such matters depends upon association and use ! Do not the curious garb and ever-changing and sometimes unattractive and uncomfortable fashions and ornaments of women, in the most refined circles of life, furnish matter of fun and rail- lery — not always in secret — for the other sex? In this country, in all our public ceremonial's, inaugurations, etc., we have found it possible to dispense with crowns, sceptres, maces, and other insignia, with judges' wigs and all liveries. But foreign courts and shows and forms retain them all as essential or expedient ; they go with the grifiins and vampires and phoenixes of the Old World still. Foreigners in attendance among us on great state occasions, like the inauguration of a President of the nation, are often dis- agreeably impressed with the entire disuse of the costumes and emblems familiar to them at home. Our Indians also did the best they could, with their orders of the collar, the fleece, and the garter. The slashed doublets of cavaliers, the hooped or trailed skirt of the lady and her face patched with court-plaster, the ermine of the judge, the curled wig of the barrister, the rod of the tipstaff and the beadle, the sword of state and the black or white wand of the master of ceremonies, the woolsack and seal-wallet of the chancellor and the staff of the drum-major, — all manifest the richer and more abundant material for farce and cere- monial of the white man, not a more elevated and emiobled nature. THE INDIAN CANOE. 166 And as for high-sounding titles, where among our abo- rigines shall we outmatch those of "August," or "Most Christian Majesty," and their "High Mightinesses " of Hol- land? What effrontery would be shown by a European tradesman who should presume to dun a Continental petty prince, whose title is " His Most Serene Highness " ! What more of significance is there in the Emperor of China as- suming his title from the whole heaven, than in the Indian chieftain's contenting himself with appropriating a half- moon? The Canoe, the Moccason, the Snow-Shoe, and the Wig- wam, — these four words suggest to us the most charac- teristic and distinctive objects identified with the Indian and his life. They mark the quality of his inventiveness aud the measure of his skill in adapting himself to his con- ditions, and in turning to use the materials at his hand. Stress, too, is to be laid on this fact, — that these four de- vices of the American savage were original inventions of his own, and that he has learned nothing from the white man which has helped him to improve upon them, so per- fect are they in themselves. What the horse is to the Arab, the dog to the Esqui- maux, and the camel to the traveller across the desert, the canoe was and is to the Indian. It was most admirably adapted to the two requisite uses which it must serve, — for it was to meet two exigencies, and in no other case of a vehicle invented by man have the two conditions been realized. The canoe was intended both for carrying its owner and for being carried by him. Incidentally, also, it served a third use, affording a temporary roof or covert from tliQ sun and storm by day or night on land. The In- dian ventured far out into the open water of our bays, as he ventured in calm weather to cross our sea-like lakes in this frail bark. But its chief and constant and most apt service was for the Indian's transport with his furs and commodities, as he traversed the cm'iously veined and re- 166- THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. ticulated region which has been described as the -wonder- ful feature of our continent. The proportion which the water-ways bore to land-travel for the routes which the Indian traversed, was at least nine parts out of ten. The lake-shore was skirted, the swamp was cunningly threaded, the river channel was boldly followed, the rapids were shot and leaped, and the mazy stream of shallows and sand-bars was patiently traced in all its sinuosities by the frail skiff. True, the Indian canoe seemed to need an Indian for its most facile use and its safest guidance. The best position for tlie occupant was to lie flat on his back if he trusted to floating, or to rest still on bended knees if he plied the single paddle with strokes on either side. All uneasy, rest- less motions, all jerks and sidelings were at the risk of passenger, canoe, and freight. Count Frontenac, when first as Governor of Canada for Louis XIV. he began his ex- perience as a voyager with the natives, expressed in strong terms his disgust at the cramped and listless position to which he was confined in the birch canoe ; and the Jesuit missionaries, the most patient and heroic of all Europeans as they met every cross and hardship, were very slowly wonted to it. They give us many piteous narrative touclies of the constant risks and the need of a steady eye and of a stiff uniformity of position in the buoyant but tick- lish vehicle of transport. When they had in it their own precious sacramental vessels, they needed an ever nervous watchfulness against disaster. Till the passengers had learned to adapt themselves to the exacting conditions, their timidity and anxiety furnished a constant source of ridicule and banter to their native pilots. The merriment was loud and unsympathizing when the passenger tipped himself in- to the waters, still or foaming, unless at the same time he swamped the canoe with a valuable cargo. Yet when the uses and the craft needed for them were fully appreciated and acquired by French voyageurs, the canoe in their hands became a more favorite and facile thing than it was to the THE BIRCHEN BARK. 167 Indian. When we read of La Salle as contriving to trans- port an anvil, as well as the essentials of a forge and many of the heavy and bulky materials for building a vessel, from Quebec to the mouth of the Illinois River in one or more canoes, we put a high estimate upon the capacity of the craft, as also of the paddlers. The shore of lake or river afforded the ready means in bark and pitch for repair- ing damages if the canoe sprang aleak, or was bruised or perforated by a sharp rock. But the lighter the bark was when on its own element it carried its owner, the more easy was its burden when in turn it had to be borne on his own back or shoulder over a stretch of the tangled forest, or round the rough rocks of a cascade, by the portages. Its freight would be trans- ported on one transit, itself by ano'ther, or by several succes- sive trampings. The canoe as a product of wilderness art and ingenuity is to be judged not only by its own adapta- tions, but also by the resources at hand for materials and the scanty tools available for its construction and repair. Some curious conflicts of testimony as to the ventures and discoveries of early navigators along our coasts and into our bays depend upon tlie accounts given us of the style and material of the skiffs seen in use by the natives, — whether they were birch canoes, or so-called "dug-outs." The birchen boats were always preferred by the Indian where the trees furnished the bark, as most readily fash- ioned, the most light and strong, and the most easily re- paired. The laminations of the bark, of any size and thick- ness desired, were bended around a simple frame-work of light and stiff slits of any hard wood well seasoned; they were firmly bound and held by fibrous roots and animal sin- ews, and made impervious to water by a compound of pitch and grease. A fracture or leak was, as just stated, at once repaired by pulling the canoe to the shore or the beach and drawing on the stores of the woods. Fitly does Longfellow give to it life and motion in his picturing lines : — 168 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOURCES, ETC. " And the forest life is in it, — All its mystery and its magic, All the tightness of the birch-tree. All the toughness of the cedar, AH the larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn. Like a yellow water-lily." It was desirable that a canoe should be fashioned with as large strips of bark as possible, to reduce the number of joints uniting them. These joints were originally sewed with long fibres from the roots of the spruce-tree. One or more transverse bars kept the craft in shape. The bow and stern turned sharply upwards. It was usual to lift the canoe from the water at night, and as often as was con- venient during stoppages by day, to give it a chance to dry, as the bark readily absorbs water, increasing its weight. For two hundred years canoes of great carrying capacity, for many tons of freight and many paddlers and passengers, have been in use by the employes of the Hudson Bay Com- pany, and are known as Canots du Nord. The steerage of these vessels through the rapids is a critical and exciting work. The chief responsibility is with the bowsman, really the captain, who sharply gives his directions by words and gestures to the paddlers in the middle and the steersman in the stern. Sometimes in smooth waters, with a moderate wind, a sail is availed of. The management and naviga^ tion, with a valuable load, require the utmost caution of all concerned to keep the balance, as the only way to " trim the ship." Where the materials for the birchen fabric — varying as it would in size for one or for fifty human passen- gers and their goods — were not to be found, nor its less facile substitutes, elm or oak bark, the Indian had an alternative craft. By the help of fire and his stone axe he would bring down a giant tree from the for- est, and sever a section of the trunk of desired length, THE INDIAN MOCCASON. 169 with regard to proportions of width and depth. This sohd butt he would then split with wedges, and by burn- ing and gouging would hollow it out, reducing the sides and bottom to the utmost thinness consistent with buoy- ancy and security. This was the " dug-out." And this, as well as the birchen canoe, admitted of gay ornament or of frightful and hideous devices, in carving and paint- ing, as a vessel of war, according to the taste and skill of the artist. Nor were the skill and cunning of the In- dian exhausted in these two serviceable styles of water- craft. With a single buffalo or deer skin, or with seve- ral of them stitched together and stretched over a frame of osiers, he would readily extemporize a conveyance through the waters for one or many. As readily, too, from the trunks or branches of prostrate trees would he improvise a sea-worthy raft. The moccason, also, in name and device, was original with the North American Indian, and, without being patented, holds the ground as — for him, and, we might add, for many of us — the most fitting, convenient, and healthful foot-gear. The dressed or tanned hide of the deer furnished its upper and lower leather ; a small bone of a fish, or one near the ankle-joint of the deer, pro- vided the needle, and the sinews the thread, for sewing. The seam was behind the heel and over the foot, instead of, as in our fabrics, at the sole or bottom. The mocca- son was made of one piece of skin. Unlike our heavy boots, it did not impede the perspiration of the foot, and it saved the Indian from corns and bunions. The wearer was not apt to take cold, as by a leak in a shoe or boot. It was easily dried, and easily mended. It was equally adapted by its smoothness for treading upon the tender bottom of a canoe, and, by its pliancy and elasticity, for coursing forest paths or climbing rocks. In the rougher regions of the Northwest, and especially for the uses of the " voyageurs, the trappers, and the cour- 170 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. eurs de Bois" in the service of the various fur-trading companies, some more substantial fabrics for apparel and travel than those of the natives were necessarily intro- duced. These combined materials and processes brought from Europe with those which were indigenous, just as knives and firearms and metal vessels, shared with abo- riginal implements an equal place. Warm under-apparel and capotes for covering head and ears, though not in fa- vor with the natives, were essential to the whites, till, as was generally soon realized, the roughest of them became Indians. The form and style of the moccason were re- tained, while it was made so large as to admit of being drawn over several pairs of stockings, — needful in the ex- treme severities of the weather and in deep snows. Strings of dogs, harnessed singly or by couples, attached to slight- built sledges and carioles, transported loads of goods into the country and took out of it returns of peltry. These dog-trains required skilled drivers, as they were generally fretful and rebellious under such forced service. A pas- senger rolled in furs might ride with the load, but the driver must go behind or by the side of the train on foot, and often an assistant was required to precede it to tram- ple down the snow. Never were emphatic words — a jar- gon of French, which language contributed the oaths and imprecations — more constantly in use than by the drivers of these dog-trains. The snow-shoe, as the winter supplement to or accom- paniment of the moccason, enabled the Indian to go upon the war-path or to chase down the beleaguered game when the earth was covered with its fleecy mantle piled in moun- tain drifts. This simple device exercised the wilderness skill of its inventor and tested practically his apt intelli- gence to apply materials", proportions, and disposals of parts and measurements, in ways which science cannot mend. It resembled in shape a miniature skiff, two feet or more in length and more than a foot in breadth, pointed 5 THE SNOW-SHOE. 171 at the toe, and running back with elliptical sides to a square in the rear. The frame was slight but strong, of some well-seasoned wood, like the handles of a large bas- ket. A network of sinewy thongs was united with the frame, for bearing on the snow without heavy pressure, releasing the snow as the foot was lifted. It was con- fined to the foot behind by a cord tied over the instep, so that the heel could readily act freely in rising and resting. A small loop near the point of the shoe received the toes, and retained the shoe on the foot. Of course the whole pressure of the weight of the body came upon the front of the foot and over the line of junction of the toes. The more rapidly the wearer walked or ran, the easier was it for him to bear this light burden, and the less did he sink into the drift. When the snow-surface was glazed by ice, the simple moccason was preferable as a covering, and the snow-shoes were carried upon the back. Only practice could give facility and comfort in the use of this native invention for travel, without which a struggling wanderer would often sink to his neck at every attempt to step forward. The Indian would go ' like a deer when thus shod. But piteous are the entries in the journals of many white adventurers when in the company of savages on the route ; the alternative was be- fore them either of giving over in the tramp, or suffering sharply till they had " caught the hang" of the snow- shoe. Chilblains were but the slightest part of the inflic- tion. The constant friction of the tie over the instep and of the loop over the toes galled the flesh, and the oozing and freezing blood were sorry concomitants for the travel- ler. Glad was he when the stint appointed for the day's journey was ended, and resting in the camp, though roof- less and with a cordon of snow, he could soothe and dress his stinging extremities. Yet even then he had to con- template a renewal of his journey before the morrow's daylight, with the increase of his sufferings. The Indian 172 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECES, ETC. wasted no commiseration on such tyros, well knowing that there was but one way of permanent relief, and that that would come through endurance and patient practice. Sometimes, when there was but a thin coating of ice over the snow, which by yielding lacerated the flesh of travel- lers — man or beast — by edges sharp as glass, it was usual to bind strips of skin or fur round the legs of the dogs, and thus give them shoes. Little needs to be added to what has been already said about the wigwams or lodges of the aborigines. These, where they were constructed for anything like permanency of habitation, might be made comfortable, bating only the annoyances of smoke, vermin, and untidiness, — which, however, to the Indian were hardly an abatement of com- fort. "When a war-party or the necessity of hunting for daily supplies did not call the master of the lodge away, but left him an interval of domestic leisure, he divided his time between eating, sleeping, and working upon his simple tackle and implements. Where there was a group of such lodges in a village, the men would have their coteries by themselves ; while the squaws, when not engaged upon the family food or apparel, would find a congenial resource in gossip. The practice of polygamy, though universally al- lowable, seems to have been indulged in only in the small minority of households. There was nothing to prevent a man from having as many wives as he had means to pur- chase from their parents, and was able to maintain. The usual risks incidental to married life, especially where there were duplicated or multiplied demands upon the care and attention of a husband, were of course in some in- stances realized. But all testimony accords in assuring us that there was no more, if not really less, of discord in an Indian lodge, even with this provocative occasion for it, than in the homes of all the degrees of civilized people. Doubtless there were seasons, especially in the northern regions of the country, when in the grip of a lengthened HIS WINTER EXPERIENCES. 173 winter — buried in mountain heaps of snow, whirled by the wild blasts, and scant or wholly destitute even of the least nutritive food — life in the wigwam for a solitary person or a family combined all the miseries of a dismal and dreary existence. The Indian's self-mastery and philosophy bore him through these dark extremes of his experience. The bear was hibernating; the deer had sought the thickest woods ; the beaver's lodge was fast bound in ice ; and even the fish in the streams were not longer to be reached by the gleam of torches or tempted by an air-hole through the thick covering of hard and soft snow. There was not a bird in the air. The weary season wore away : and when the spring came — as it does in those northern realms — with a rushing cheer and vigor, the spell was broken ; for Nature provided bountifully for her children when she was released from her own bondage. ^ The prevailing view and representation of the habits of the aborigines is that they were wasteful and improvident as to provision for their own most common needs of sus- tenance; and that in consequence there was a period in every year, in the extremities of winter, when they were hopelessly annoyed by the pangs of hunger, — often to the extremities of starvation. And this was said to be the case, not from the absolute conditions and necessities and exigencies of their way of life, but from sheer indolence, recklessness, and an utter incompetency in forethought and prudence. There may be a general accordance with fact and observation in this view, but it needs qualifica- tion ; very large and very significant exceptions are found to it in many cases. Of course the Indian's habits as to thrift and providence in providing for his needs put him most strongly in contrast with those of the first white settlers on his lands. The wise and laborious Northern colonists, in foresight of a stern winter, built their log- cabins strong and tight, with chimneys to carry off the smoke. They provided cellars banked against the pene- 174 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. trating frost, where they stored their vegetables and kept their tubs of salted meat. They raised their wood-piles nigh at hand, and very soon had shelters for domestic cattle, — goats, cows, pigs, — and for poultry. The Indian had resources within his reach which he only in small part improved. He had no salt for pickling, and could only smoke and dry his surplus meat or fish. His native vegetables were peas, beans, melons, squashes, pumpkins, gourds, maize ; the forest yielded in abundance juicy ber- ries, some succulent roots and grasses and grapes, as well as game; and the ocean shore, lakes, and rivers gave up their finny spoils. White men on the frontiers have con- trived to live, and after a fashion luxuriously, on these resources. The Indian, also, had his feasts upon them, but not wholly to the exclusion of fasts. Gathering details from a wide and varied list of early authorities about their way of life and habits in these respects, we can make rather a favorable show for them. It seems evident that white men learned from the Indian the process of making sugar from the sap of the maple-tree, and also the medi- cinal virtues of several roots and herbs. The natives, as before stated, unquestionably anticipated their white vis- itors in their sudatory treatment of the sick, after the fashion of our modern Turkish baths ; though Lafitau finds the process and contrivance in the old classic world, as he traces so many parallels there with things supposed to be peculiar to our aborigines. They buried heaps of their ripe maize, or Indian corn, in pits, or packed it high on scaffold- ings, and a skilful squaw could make a variety of dishes from this substantial grain. In fact, it would appear that the early European colonists, in all their widely separated harboring places on the whole stretch of our sea-coast, were indebted to the surplus maize which the Indians had in store, to save them, on one or another exigency, from starvation. When Jacques Oartier first ascended the St. Lawrence, HIS LARGE CORNFIELDS. 175 in 1534, he says the Indians gave him great qiiantities of good food and palatable bread. The next year when lie was taken by them to their village, Hochelaga, now the site of Montreal, he describes far-stretching fields covered with ripening maize, — probably one of the last crops of that soon after war-havocked region. The early Jesuit missionaries all write of well-culti- vated fields cared for by the natives ; who pursued tlie same course as our frontiersmen have followed ever since, — girdling and then burning the trees, leaving the stumps to decay, grubbing up bushes, and then planting. Sagard, a RecoUet missionary in 1625, gives a very particular account of the Hurons as dividing their lands into lots which were well cultivated. The first act of the Plymouth Pilgrims in the extreme needs of their first winter here was a trespass upon the contents of a pit of corn buried by the Indians, though they afterwards made payment for what they appropriated. The friendly natives taught the Plymouth people how " to set corn," — that is, to plant the kernels of maize, which was a strange grain to them. The beautiful streams, the Town Brook and the Jones River, poured in in the spring- time, in season for planting, immense shoals of alewives. One or two of these fish were put with the kernels into each drill, and served for an enriching manure. A brook running in from the Mystic, near the classic grounds of Hai'vard College, still bears the name of Alewife Brook. The first white settlers found the natives drawing from it a fertilizer for a wide extent of their planting grounds. The Pilgrims very often sent their shallops to the coast of Maine to buy corn of the Indians. When the first settlers of Con- necticut were once in dread of famine, they sent up the river from Hartford and Windsor to Pocumtock, now Deer- field, and the river Indians brought down to them fifty canoe-loads of corn. In Governor Endicott's raid on the natives in Block Island, mention is made of two hundred 176 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECES, ETC. acres of " stately fields of corn " which were destroyed by the whites. In the frequent and destructive onsets made by the French, with Huron allies, against the Iroquois or New York Indians and their beautiful fields, marvellously large garners of corn were burned, in fruitless attempts to starve the natives, who had supplies for two years in store. The party under General Sullivan, in his Indian expedition in 1779, saw with surprise the evidences of thrift among the Iroquois, and noted not only vast quantities of maize and vegetables, but old apple-orchards, the stock of which must have been obtained from the French or Dutch. In the campaigns of Generals Harmer and St. Clair beyond the Ohio, after the close of the Revolutionary war, we read of the destruction of vast fields of corn in the river bottoms, belonging to the Miamis. The early French missionaries describe the more thrifty of the natives with whom they first became acquainted, — the Abenakis, around the Penobscot and in northern New Hampshire, — as industrious and prosperous. They had fixed palisaded villages and substantial bark-cabins. Their ornaments were rings, necklaces, bracelets, and belts skil- fully wrought with shells and stones. They had fertile and well-tilled fields of maize and other vegetables, planted in June and harvested in August. Further west the wild game was in abundance, different kinds of it alternating in differ- ent seasons. Enormous flocks of fowl made their spring and autumn migrations, offering a rich variety. It would appear, that, according as the natural crops or products of various parts of the country admitted of preservation by any artificial process within the skill of the Indian, they were stored for use. The maize was the most substantial and the easiest for culture and preservation, through heat and cold. A quart of the kernels roasted and pounded, to be as needed mixed in water, with or without being boiled, committed by the Indian to his pouch, would serve him for a long journey. It was usual for the squaws to dry large HIS ECONOMY. 177 quantities of summer berries, and to renew the juices in them by mixing them in cooking with flesh food. So far from agreeing with the general judgment about the wastefulness and improvidence of tlie Indians, there are intelligent persons who have lived among them, observ- ant of their ways, who have given strong statements of quite other qualities of theirs, especially in some of the Western tribes. Indeed, their economy and thrift have in some matters been set in censorious contrast with the reck- lessness of the whites. For example, in some recent years there is evidence that at least a million buffaloes on the Western plains have annually been slaughtered by whites and Indians in the way of trade, merely for their hides and tongues, — the carcasses being wantonly left to poison the air for many miles, and to fatten wolves and coyotes. Be- fore this greed of traffic came in, the economical natives made a good use of every part of a single buffalo, killing only such as they could thus improve. The flesh, either fresh or dried, was for food. The skins were dressed with all of the white man's skill, though by different processes, as were those of other animals, either to remove or to pre- serve the hair. They were well oiled and dried and made pliant. These skins were variously employed for blankets, lodge-covers, and beds, for temporary boats, for saddles, lassos, and thongs. The horns were wrought into ladles and spoons ; the brains furnished a material which had a virtue in the process of tanning ; the bones were converted into saddle-trees, war-clubs, and scrapers ; the marrow into choice fat ; the sinews into bow-strings and thread ; the feet and hoofs into glue ; the hair was twisted for ropes and halters. So that the Indians left nothing of the car- cass — as do the whites — to feed the ravenous and unprofit- able packs of prowlers. Nor did the Indians generally kill the buffalo at a season when his flesh was not in keeping for food, or his hide for dressing. There were also preferred delicacies of the wilderness. 12 178 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECES, ETC. well known to and highly appreciated by the Indian. Among these were the buffalo's tongue and hump, the elk's nose, the beaver's tail, and the bear's paws. Of the cookery of the squaws it may not be well to give any more particulars than those on a previous page. Doubt- less it was and is unappetizing, repulsive, revolting often, especially when the process was watched and the mate- rials in the kettle were known. But wilderness food and wilderness appetites went together ; and the kitchen, even a French one, is not for the eye a good provocative for the dining-table. Headers who are versed in the voluminous and highly interesting literature of the Hudson's Bay Company, the narratives of the Arctic and Northwest voyagers and ex- plorers, the adventures of fur-traders, trappers, etc., know well how an article called " pemmican " appears in them all as a commodity for subsistence and traffic. This highly nutritive, compact, and every way mos;fc convenient and serviceable kind of food, for preservation and trans- portation, might rightfully be patented by the Western and the Northern Indians. It was invented by them, and by them it is most skilfully and scientifically prepared. The flesh of the buffalo, the deer, the bear, or the elk is shredded off by the squaws, dried in the sun to retain its juices (two days of favorable weather are sufficient), pounded fine, and then packed in sacks made of the skins of the legs of the animals, stripped off without being cut lengthwise. The lean meat, without salt, is then covered from the air by pouring the fat upon it. The propor- tions are forty pounds of fat to fifty of lean ; and some- times, when the articles are at hand, there will be mixed in the compound five pounds of berries and five of maple sugar. This may not make the most palatable of viands, but it is admirably adapted for the uses which enormous quantities of it have served alike for men and their sledge- dogs. INTERCOMMUNICATION BY LANGUAGE. 179 The diversity of languages among our aborigines, already referred to, and the relations between the roots of their words, their vocabularies, and grammatical construc- tions have been the subjects of a vast amount of inquiry and discussion. The least learned and the most learned have contributed about equally to such information as we have on these subjects. Illiterate white men resid- ing with the Indians as traders or agents, or sharing with them the camp, the hunt, or the war-path, have been forced to become linguists; and in some cases they have quickened their intelligence and sharpened their faculties to learn what they might about languages or dialects which, in their inflections and constructions, dif- fer radically from all those in use among civilized men. With the single exception of that of an ingenious scholar among the Cherokees, no attempt, so far as we know, has ever been made by the natives on the whole stretch of this continent, from north to south, to con- struct a written language, — not even in the simplest phonetic characters. All has been left to sound and in- tonation. The tablets and scrolls inscribed or painted with symbols and hieroglyphics by the Aztecs to pre- serve the chronicles of the people, as described to us by the Spanish invaders, and as appears from the speci- mens of them still extant, were in no sense linguistic or phonetic transcripts or representations. The prepon- derance of evidence seems to favor the inference that ages ago more or less of intercourse was maintained be- tween the aborigines, all the way through the continent from the Missouri to Mexico and Peru. This, however, seems to have ceased before the time of European discov- eries. Certain it is — whether from devastating inter- nal wars, from the difficulties of extended intercourse, from natural barriers, or the interposition of large spaces of vacant wilderness — there was then almost a total lack of intercommunication between widely separated 180 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECBS, ETC. tribes. The variety of languages and dialects was so great, that, in the lack of a common tongue, the Indians could hold but little communication by speech. Cer- tainly the original tribes have been more mixed and con- fused together since they have been scattered, reduced, and driven from their original homes by the whites. But this fact does not appear to have availed towards aiding them to understand each other's speech. The penalty visited upon our whole race, in the confusion of tongues at Babel, has inflicted its full share on our Indians. General Custer, rehearsing his experience among South- ern and Western tribes in our own days, says : — " Almost every tribe possesses a language peculiarly its own ; and what seems remarkable is the fact, that, no matter how long or how intimately two tribes may be associated with each other, they each preserve and employ their own language ; and individuals of one tribe rarely become versed in the spoken language of the other, all intercommunication being carried on either by interpreters, or in the universal sign-language. This is noticeably true of Cheyennes and Arapahoes, — two tribes which for years have lived Lu close proximity to each other, and who are so strongly bound together, offensively and defensively, as to make common cause against the enemies of either, particularly against the white man. These tribes encamp together, hunt together, and make war together ; yet but a comparatively small number of either can speak fluently the lan- guage of the other. I remember to have had an interview at one time with a number of prominent chiefs belonging to five different tribes, — the Cheyennes, Kiowas, Osages, Kaws, and Apaches. In communicating with them, it was necessary for my language to be interpreted into each of the five Indian tongues, no representatives of any two of the tribes being able to understand the language of each other." De Soto, in his invasion of Florida, Georgia, and Ala- bama, — as we have noted, — had valuable service from Juan Ortiz, as an interpreter, in 1639 and onwards. Ortiz had, eleven years before, been captured by the Indians, in INDIAN INTERPRETERS. 181 the expedition of Narvaez, and tlien had lived for those years among them. But he could speak only the Ploridian language ; and we are told, that, in a council or talk with a company of natives of the Chickasaws, the Georgians, the Coosas, and the Mobilians, he had to address himself to a Chickasaw who knew the Floridian, while he passed the words to a Georgian, and the Georgian to a Coosan, the Coosan to a Mobilian, and the Mobilian to a Chickasaw; and so for each reply the process was inverted. The exigencies imposed by the variety and the peculiar qualities of the Indian languages, have from the first com- ing hither of Europeans made the of&ce of interpreters a prime necessity. Circumstances have facilitated the ap- pearance from time to time of a class of men with very different degrees of fitness for that office. One is puzzled to imagine how the early navigators who reached and landed on these coasts, and had transient converse with the natives, managed to hold such intelligible intercourse with them as is reported in their narratives. It must have been by signs and gestures. The second set of voyagers and visitors here occasionally found some help in commu- nicating with the savages through one or another waif who had been kidnapped and kept on board the vessel of a pre- vious comer to the coast. In a few cases such kidnapped savages had been taken to Europe for a while, and then brought back, — like Samoset, the Pilgrims' friend at Ply- mouth, and those transported from Acadia and Canada by the French explorers, to be soon referred to. This was a natural and indeed a necessary resource of the Euro- peans ; not requiring any violence or cruelty, if properly explained, and affording the only possibility for facilitating intercourse. The European navigators could generally ob- tain willing Indian passengers for visiting Europe. The necessity of the case soon furnished the skill of in- terpretation so far as immediately required. It is obser- vable, however, that all effective and really intelligible 182 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECBS, ETC. intercourse, beyond the command of a few words of ordi- nary range, which has been reached between red men and white men, has been by the white man's learning the language of the red man. The missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, when their work was most fresh and ear- nest and hopeful, gave themselves with devoted zeal to a mastery of the Indian tongues for instruction and preach- ing. For the lowest forms and uses of intercourse, — as in contention and traffic and barter, — it was comparatively easy for a savage and a European to learn how to quarrel with each other, to cheat and be cheated; but when it came to the higher ends of intercourse, — in instruction, — the white man found his task to lie in mastering such resources as the Indian had for the communication of thought, and in supplying or devising methods or words for conveying ideas, suggestions, and lessons to an Indian on objects and themes wholly new to him. New England in its early years furnished several examples of whites who preached with great facility in the Indian tongue, while the fact has been mentioned that the first funds of Dart- mouth College were largely raised by an Indian preaching in Great Britain. A most apt and curious device, in almost universal use among the Indians, and showing an amazing acuteness and vivacity of mind in them, is their power to communicate with each other, with full intelligence, by sign and gestures and symbols. Very many white experts agree in describ- ing to us the wonders and the perfection of this sign-lan- guage. In the multiplicity and variety of their own native tongues and dialects, as they roamed abroad, it would have been utterly impossible for those of different tribes to have held any intelligible communication by words : they would have been as deaf-mutes, had it not been for a similar con- ventional sign-language. This had no resemblance what- ever to the taught finger-alphabet used by deaf-mutes; it was wholly of gesture and symbol. Shakspeare — who has INDIAN SIGN-LANGUAGE, 183 images, phrases, and descriptions for everythiag — admi- rably sets it forth : — " I cannot too much muse, Such shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing (Although they want the use of tongue) a kind Of excellent dumb discourse. " i Indians of most widely separated tribes can understand each other and amuse each other, in perfect silence, with- out a single word, — though with an occasional grunt, — in giving long and minute relations and descriptions, and in telliag funny tales. They will impart the length of a jour- ney, on horse or foot ; the number of days and nights ; de- scribe the route, and countless particulars. A semicircular motion of the hand from horizon to horizon marks a day ; the head reclined on the hand, a night ; the finger pointed to space in the sky on either side of the zenith, the hour in the day ; fingers astride and galloping signify riding, another motion walking rapidly or slowly ; the palm of the hand passed smoothly down the face and body describes one of the fair sex ; one finger straightly pointed means a true speech ; two fingers forked means a snake-tongue, or a lie ; a fore-finger raised to the ear means, " I have heard," or "I approve ;" the back of the hand on the ear, " I did not hear," or " I believe ;" the hand laid flat on the lips and then raised, means a prayer or an oath. And this sign- language served as a basis or a guide for such symbolic or hieroglyphic writing as the Indians had. When General Custer was in retirement for a season at Fort Leavenworth, he made a study of the sign-language and became a great proficient in it, so as at times afterward to dispense with an interpreter. Professor J. W. Powell, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institute, has for several years been engaged on the most systematic attempt and method that have as yet been devised for the study of Indian languages, in their affinities and variances of 1 Tempest, iii. 3. 184 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECES, ETC. vocabulary and constructio'n. He has sent forth an elabo- rate syllabus, with blanks and directions for filling them, to guide the inquiries of intelligent residents among the Indians, hoping to receive a very comprehensive body of returns. Colonel Mallory, U. S. A., is an adept in the sign- language, and has made valuable contributions upon it. The human need and craving for fun, jollity, and amuse- ment found their gratification among the aborigines in means and expressions in full consistency with their nature and condition. True, we should not look for a prevailing mirthfulness and hilarity among such a race of savages as occupied this continent. It is said that young camels are the only animals that never frisk, sport, or gambol in the spring of their existence; and the fact is referred to as a forecast of the sombreness of their cheerless service as soon as they are able to bear a burden and to tread the dry desert. So we associate with our Indians in their native state apathy, reserve, gloom, and suUenness of temper in- consistent with mirthfulness, abandon, and any spring of joy in fun and revelry. There is much that warrants this general view; for even the sports of the Indians, as we shall see, have a grimness and severity of aspect and method in full keeping with their prevailing characteris- tics. But there are exceptional individuals, occasions, and manifestations. Even without any concert of a company among them for a set purpose of play or revelry, there is an impulse in them for any easy and ready method for relieving the monotony or the seriousness of their experi- ence. When only two or a small group of them are rest- ing in their trampings or lounging indolently about their lodges, they will chaff and banter each other for anything that can be turned to ridicule, though seldom to the extent of provoking resentment. The Indians are much addicted to practical joking, ready to play off a funny or an annoying trick on each other, raising a roar and boisterous response for its success. There is large opportunity for this in the INDIANS GREAT GAMBLERS. 185 freedom of wild life, the exposure of the person, the lia- bility to mishaps and accidents, and especially when any weaknesses like cowardice or boastfulness, or a vaunting of exploits — which is one of the indulgences most habitual to an Indian — enables a companion to turn the laugh upon him. Only the slightest reference possible is to be made to a subject which, if presented in the details for which our In- dian literature affords such abundant materials, would turn the eyes of most readers from the page before them. One of the most painful and repulsive characteristics of savage life, in its debasing influences, — contrasting most sharply with all the resources for employing time and thought, and adding softening and refining charms to society under civil- ization, — is the free license for impurity and measureless immorality. The obscenity of the savages is unchecked in its revolting and disgusting exhibitions. Sensuality seeks no covert. If the Indian languages are wholly destitute, as we are told, of words of profanity and blasphemy, there is no lack of terms in them, as neither is there of signs, symbols, and acts in open day, for the foulest display of indecency and beastliness. The Indians are universally persistent and greedy gam- blers. This one vice, at least, they did not learn from the whites. It was native among them in its practice, and they throw into it an earnestness and a passion rarely mani- fested so intensely and widely among white men. For the most part, gaming is confined to the males ; but squaws are fond of catching a sly hour and place for it when the eyes of their masters are withdrawn. The squaws themselves are not infrequently the stake between the players, for there is nothing of value to the Indian which he will not put at hazard. This passion may indicate a longing for relief from the tediousness of that supine and listless in- dolence which the Indian indulges when not hunting or fighting. But as this utter vacancy and torpidness is also 186 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECBS, ETC. a fond passion of his, the impulse for gaming, which over- masters it, must be something stronger and more goading. The playing-cards of the white men are greedily seized upon by such of the savages — and they are very many on the frontiers, in California and Oregon and in Washington Territory — as have caught the art of their use from sea- men and miners. Nor is the Indian confined in playing with them to the distinctive games common to the white men. They serve him well through his own ingenuity within a large range for chance, though they would not probably in his own hands derive much service for calcu- lation and skill. Doubtless he knows well how to turn them to account for "tricks that are dark." His own methods and implements for gaming are to white men either trivial or uninteresting, though sometimes exciting. Sleight-of-hand, agility, velocity of movement, a quick eye, and supple muscles in manipulating the sticks or stones of his simple inventory serve his purpose. The working of intense excitement and passion, and the complete concen- tration of all his faculties in gaming show how absorbing is the occupation to himself. Feats of strength and agility, running, lifting, archery, pitching the quoit, and practis- ing contortions, athletics, and difficult poises of the body give him a wide range for exercise with one or more companions. Beyond these private methods for occupying idle hours or finding stimulus and excitement in the ordinary run of life, the natives fairly rival the civilized races in the number and variety of their jubilant, festive, and com- memorative occasions, independently of those connected with warfare. There were and are general similarities in the occasions for merriment, games, and periodical festivals of commemoration, among the tribes all over the continent. But there are many such that are spe- cial and distinctive of single tribes or of a group of tribes. There is not much that is interesting or attractive for INDIAN GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS. 187 relation in either class of them for us. Violent bodily exercise in almost superhuman strainings of nerve and muscle; yellings and howlings, accompanied with rattles and drums ; gormandizings on their rude and miscella- neous viands, the dog-feast having the pre-eminence ; run- ning for a goal ; pitching a bar ; driving a ball by parties on divided sides, whose heated rivalry when they are huddled in close struggles barely keeps the distinction between play and mortal combat, and occasionally a con- test similar to that of the prize-ring among the whites, — these constitute the more stirring and festive gayeties of the Indians. More calm and dignified observances there are, connected with periodical and distinctive festivals among various tribes. A happy occasion is found by some at the season when the green corn is in the milk : the sweetness and simplicity of the repast would seem to engage the gentler sentiments. There is much resemblance also to the New England Thanksgiving in the pleasant rec- ognition of the maize harvesting, the squaws doing the ingathering; while the husking, and the "trailing" or braiding of the ears in strings by the inner husk was an amusement for both sexes and all ages. Graver still, and often with subdued manifestations, were certain lugu- brious occasions of fasting and lamenting connected with commemorations of their ancestors and relatives, or the re-disposal of the remains of their dead. Though these occasions generally ended in a breaking of the fast, there were often in them true solemnity, thoughtfulness, and right sentiments. If we can separate from all these occa- sions the drawbacks incident to the wildness and rough- ness of the mode of life, the untutored tastes, the poverty of material, and the hold of tradition with its arbitrary requisitions on the minds of the savages, we shall con- clude that the ends which they had in view were as nearly compassed in their festivities as are the intents of civil- ized people in their most elaborate materials and methods 188 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. of amusement, relaxation, or observance. Cruelty in some form was apt to intrude itself even upon the amusements of the savages. Where this was excluded, the whites who have been observers of these spectacles — even of some which are jealously reserved from the eyes of strangers — have reported them as often pleasing for their vivacity, from the evidently keen enjoyment of them, and for their grateful relief from the monotony of a grovelling life. Oc- casionally a gifted genius among the savages, filled with the traditions and skilfully turning to account the super- stitions of his tribe, with all the spirit and imagination, though lacking the metric and rhythmic art, of the poet, would engage for hours the rapt attention of his hushed auditors, as in his generation he was made the repository, for transmission, of their legendary lore. The preparations for the hunt and the return from it when it had been successful — with exception only of the going and the return of war-parties — were the most noisy and demonstrative occasions of Indian life. The skilled watching of the signs of the seasons, with their keen ob- servance of the periodicity which rules in all the phe- nomena of Nature, and the reports of their scouts sent only in one or two directions, gave them due notice of the day when the beasts or the fowl — " who know their ap- pointed times" — were ready to be turned to the uses of their more privileged kindred the red men. Their wea- pons and foot-gear were ready. The squaws were to ac- company them to flay the victims and to secure the meat. The night or the day before the start, some simple observ- ances were held to secure propitious omens. The older braves consulted the secrets of their " medicine-bags," and the youths who were to make their first trial of early manhood were like dogs in the leash. The hunters knew where to go, how to creep in noiseless secrecy, and when to raise the shout. They had agreed whether they were to rush in free coursing upon their game, either to outrun THE HUNTINQ-SEASON. 189 them or to strike a panic among them, or whether to sur- round them and drive them into a circle, or to some pit or precipice or snare. They did not pause a moment, where the animals were tempting in number, to secure any one of them which a hunter had struck down or se- verely crippled. Each hunter knew his own arrow, or, if armed with a gun, the direction of his bullet ; and when the wild scrimmage was over there was no dispute or rivalry, as each selected his own spoils. Care was had, if possible, to gather enough for a gluttonous feast on their return to their lodges, and for the season's store. With the scrupulous economy before referred to, so long as the natives had not learned wastefulness from the whites, they put every fragment of the animal to some good use. More than in any other demand upon their strength or dignity, the male savages were ready, on the occasion of a return from the hunt, to share the burden of the squaws. Sometimes, if the game had led them to a con- siderable distance from their lodges, it was necessary to cache, or bury in concealment, all that they were unable to convey, returning for it at their leisure. It was only at a special season of the year that different species of game were in good flesh, and that the fleeces of the animals were in proper condition for preserving the hides or skins. The ranges of the different species of game — the buffalo, the moose, the caribou, the mountain sheep, the elk, the otter — were sometimes limited. The bear, the deer, the beaver, and several smaller creatures were widely distri- buted. The more dependent any tribe was upon hunt- ing, rather than upon other food, the more wild were its habits and the more robust its physique. But life among these men of the woods and streams had its dark side, — dismal and appalling in its dreads and sufferings. Not to these untutored men, women, and chil- dren, more than to the civilized, was existence relieved from real or from imaginary and artificial woes. The In- 190 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESODECES, ETC. dians, through the whole continent and under all variety of circumstances, were and are the victims of enfeebling and distressing superstitions. These are associated with the most serious and the most trifling incidents of their lives. They find dark omens and forebodings not only in events, but even in their own random thoughts. Dreams have a deeper, a more serious, a more potent influence over them than do any occurrences and experiences of the noon- day light. They brood for hours of keen and anxious musing over the interpretation of any vision of a night, — its counsel, command, or warning to them. It is in their dreams that their own guiding or guardian spirit comes to them. His own revered and familiar fetich, or especial companion for life, comes to each of the youth passing on to manhood, in some special dream connected with his period of retirement and fasting, as he is in training for a brave. It may come through the shape of some animal or bird, which henceforth is the cherished confidant of the rest of his life. Among the mysterious treasures of the " medicine-bag " is some article, meaningless to all but the owner, which is identified with this dream messenger. The course of ac- tion of an Indian in some of the most important of his voluntary proceedings is often decided by some' direction believed to have been made to him in a dream. If forced by companionship or necessity to do anything against which his superstitious musings have warned him, he complies with a faintness of heart which unmans him far more than does a faltering courage in the thick of carnage. A plear sant dream will irradiate his breast and his features for long days afterwards. He cheerfully complies with any acts of self-denial to which he is prompted through this medium. A pleasant story is told of a chief of the Five Nations in warm friendship with Sir WiUiam Johnson, British agent among those tribes. Seeing once the portly officer arrayed in a splendid scarlet uniform, with chapeau SUPERSTITIONS OP THE INDIANS. 191 and feather and epaulets and gold lace just received from England, the chief suggestively assured him soon after that he had dreamed a dream. On being questioned as to its purport, he candidly said that he had dreamed that Sir William was to make him a present of a similar array. Of course the politic officer fulfilled the dream. After a proper lapse of time Sir William also communicated a dream of his own, to the effect that the chief would pre- sent him with a large stretch of valuable land. The chief at once conferred the gift, quietly remarking that the white man " dreamed too hard for the Indian." The significance which the superstition of the Indian gives as omens to signs in heaven among the stars and clouds, or to aspects or incidents or objects which haply attract his notice around him, will either quicken him to joy or burden him with terror. The boldest warrior will wake with shudderings from a profound sleep, and nothing wUl bend his will to a course of which he has thus been instructed to beware. His own mind in fear or hope gives an iU or a propitious significance to things which have in themselves no suggestion of either character. The dream of a brave whose character or counsel carries weight with it will often decide the issue of peace or war for a tribe. As superstition, like most forms of folly and error, pre- dominates with shadows and fears over all brighter fancies which it brings to the mind, so the Indian's reliance upon his visionary experiences tends to a prevailing melancholy. The traditions of his tribe, also, were inwrought with some superstitions which on occasions turned a bright or a dark counsel in emergencies, and served to inspirit or to depress them in projected enterprises. The Jesuit missionaries among the Indians soon learned that some of the most embarrassing conditions of their residence, and some of the most threatening dangers to which they were exposed, — thwarting their efforts at con- version, and keeping their lives in momentary perils, — came 192 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESO0BCB8, ETC. from the superstitious suspicions of the natives. Cases of individual disease did not alarm them; but anything like an epidemic, contagious, or prevailing malady they always ascribed to an evil charm. They bent a lowering gaze upon the missionary as he went on his errands of mercy, suspecting him of communicating disease. Often did the zealous Father in cunning secrecy draw the sign of the cross on the forehead of the sick infant ; for even bap- tism came to be dreaded under some circumstances, as if that also were a charm. The darker passions of treachery, revenge, cherished animosities, cunning watchfulness for opportunity to gratify a grudge, and the practice of dis- simulation were, of course, as human proclivities, found in their full power among the men of the woods. Among the romantic views which enter into the prevailing conceptions of savage life is that which attributes to the Indian a some- what remarkable exercise of gratitude- in keeping in long remembrance any service or favor towards him, and wait- ing for an opportunity to repay it. Much will depend upon the sort of service or favor thus to be compen- sated. But there is nothing peculiar to the savage in this manifestation. The advocates of a resolute and vigorous military policy by our Government, as alone effective in the management of our Indian tribes, would pronounce it a most serious omission from a volume covering our whole subject if it failed to draw strongly, and in full and harrowing detail, the horrors and barbarities of Indian warfare, and the characteristic qualities of the savage as above all things a born fighter, blood-thirsty, ferocious, and destitute of all human feelings in his brutal conflicts with his own race or with the whites. Perhaps as much as most readers will care to peruse has been already put before them on pre- vious pages in reference to the inhumanity and barbarity of the savage in warfare, to his fiendish torturings of his victims, and to his frenzied passion, unslaked even by the THE INDIAN A BORN FIGHTER. 193 flesh and blood of his foe. Enough more will needs be said or recognized in pages yet to follow, in the various divisions of our subject, to keep in our minds these repul- sive qualities of the Indian as a fighter. In general it is to be said, that, apart from those qualities as a torturer and a cannibal, — which are simply inherent in full barbar- ism, — the savage Indian, like the civilized white man, uses against an enemy, in warfare, all the arts and imple- ments — the guile, the ambush, the stratagem, the surprise, the deceit, the weapons, and the flames — which he can put to his service. Lacking the steel sword, knife, and bayo- net, the pistol, firelock, and cannon, the armor, the horse, and the bloodhound, of the European, his armory was. drawn from the stones, the flint-barbed arrow and spear, occasionally tipped with poison, the sharp fish-bone, the tomahawk, and the war-club. He did the best he could under the circumstances. The "calumet," first mentioned under this Indian name by De Soto, is familiar to us as the emblem of peace when smoked and passed from hand to hand in an interview or council. This pipe was often lavishly ornamented. There is occasion here, in connection with the relation of the other incidents and elements of savage life, to note not so much the methods as the customs of the savage tribes in preparation for and in the return from their fields of blood. The savage, in all the northern parts of our continent, was and is a born fighter. A state of warfare is his chronic condition. So far as it relieves the burden of reproach on the white man in his long and generally, but not always, prevailing conflict with the savages, — and the relief is a considerable and a serious one, — we have to emphasize the fact that . the Indians have been each others' most virulent and fatal foes. They were found to be fighting each other when the white man came among them; and each and all the tribes, as one by one they have been brought into communication, had stories to telK 13 194 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOUECES, ETC. of previous and recent conflicts, and traditions of others running back into undated periods. It would indeed be difficult to say whether more of haroc had been wrought among the Indians in their internecine strifes than by the white man in his comprehensive warfare against them. From the formation of our own National Government its humane services have been often engaged in very embar- rassing and sometimes costly efforts to repress the hostili- ties between various tribes. These strifes have generally been hereditary, with a long entail. The Indian's memory, reinforced by faithful transmission through the traditions of the elders, is for these matters an equivalent substitute for records. Only within quite recent years our Govern- ment came as an umpire and a pacificator into one of these hereditary feuds between the Sioux, or Dakotas, and the Chippeways, in the Northwest. Neither of the parties could date the beginning of the alienation ; or, at least, each of them referred it to a different cause in its origin. The successive forts built by our Government at the junction of Western rivers and other strategic points, while mainly designed to aid its own purposes, have often served to over- awe or prove a refuge for a prowling or a hounded tribe of hostiles against hostiles. With such training for the field of conflict and blood the savages were always ready in preparation for any new scene and enterprise. They had, as well as white men, their military code, with rules and principles, their system of signals, their challenges, — except where a bold surprise was essential, — their conditions and flags of truce, their cartels, and terms of peace through reparation and trib- ute. We are familiar enough with the aboriginal figures of speech, the "burying" or the "lifting" the hatchet. " Laying down the hatchet " signified the temporary sus- pension of fighting, as in a truce. " Covering the hatchet" was condoning a cause of feud by presents. It is probably a mistake to suppose that the savages in their own tribal PEEPAEATION OP A WAR-PAETT. 195 ■warfare always sought to come upon the enemy in secret surprise : tliis was their method with the whites ; but most frequently the savage enemy had reason to expect a blow. Generally, too, while with provocation and a reasonable hope of success a single tribe would take the war-path alone, alliances were sought for by them, especially when their foes were multiplied. There was in the latter al- ternative full deliberation upon strength, resources, and methods. Messengers passed between these allied tribes; the council fires were lighted ; the pipe was passed from mouth to mouth ; intervals of deep silence were observed, for thoughtfulness and the summoning of wise speech. There was no clamor, no interruption of a speaker, whose forest eloquence enlarged upon grievances and deepened hate, roused courage by satire upon the cowardice of the enemy or flattery of the prowess of the hearers. "When the speaker closed, a single deep ejaculation was the sole comment on his words. After due pauses, as many ora- tors as were moved to utterance were patiently heard. Those who had best proved their bravery and ardor were most closely listened to. There was no place for cow- ards, though words of caution and hesitancy were not discountenanced. The scene in an Indian village the night preceding the going forth to the fray was hideous and diabolic. The painted, bedizened, and yelling fiends lashed themselves into a fury of passion, with contorted features and writh- ing gestures, striking their hatchets into the crimson war- post, and imitating the laments and shrieks which they intended to draw from a mastered foe. The clatter of drum and rattle is in keeping with their tuneless music. Thus with all the aspect and array of devils they prepared themselves to strike the blow. The aged and feeble, the women and children, were left in the lodges to await in dread the return of the braves ; never, however, disheart- ening them, but following them with rallying parting cheers 196 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOURCES, ETC. of praise and promise. The "war-whoop" is a phrase which has had terrific meaning for those who have quailed before its pandemonium fury. True to their proud kinship with the animals, the braves borrow from bears, wolves, owls, and the rest those howls and yelps, those shriekings and barkings, by which to strike a panic through their vic- tims and to paralyze their energies. In such of the Indian towns as were strongly fortified by palisades there was often occasion for much strategy in attack and defence. We need not follow this war-party, nor rehearse its doings, but take it up again at its return to the village. Those who are there on the watch for them are informed first by scouts sent in advance of the party. The first announcements, made in gloom and wailings if the occasion calls for it, are of the disasters of the ex- pedition, of the number and names of the slaughtered, or of those left as captives, of their own side. The women who are bereaved by these losses are allowed full indul- gence in their screams and lamentings, finding in the sharpening of their grief a keenness for the savage pas- sions which they are soon to wreak on victims, if any such come in as captives. When the full war-party comes in, if it has been even but moderately successful, all these laments must yield to boastful shouts of elated triumph. The warriors rehearse their exploits, with mimicry of their own actions and those of the enemy. The scalp-locks are swung in the air, the bloody weapons are brandished, and the scenes connected with those of the night preceding the start on the war-path are re-enacted. If there are prisoners, their fate is direful. Occasionally the privilege is granted to any one of the tribe, man or woman, who has been bereaved of a rela- tive, to claim that one or more may be spared for adop- tion in place of the . deceased ; and, according to circum- stances, the rescued captive may become a hard-tasked slave, or be received in full friendship as a member of the THE GANTLET AND THE TORTURE. 197 tribe. According to circumstances, too, he will hence- forward be on the watch for an opportunity to escape, or, becoming reconciled to his lot, will make the best of it. The methods of torment are graduated by processes leading on through intensified trials of endurance and sen- sibility to a result which, while stilling the tide of life, shall dismiss the spirit in a quiver of agony. The victims of this barbarity are usually first subjected to the running of the gantlet between two defined goals, the women and the children lining the way, inflicting blows, with bitter taunts. It is when, under the insults, the lashings, the kicks, and maulings of this preliminary ordeal, and in the fiercer agonies of the stake, the brave can maintain his calm and serenity of countenance, with exalted spirit, taunting his tormentors because their devices are so weak and harm- less, boasting of the number of them whom he has treated in the same way, and raising his death-song above their yellings, — it is then that they reward him with their admiration. This may prompt a generous enemy — not in pity perhaps, but in responsive nobleness of spirit — to deal the final blow of deliverance. The coward, who shrinks and weeps, and pleads for mercy, only raises the scorn of his tormentors, and leads them to prolong and multi- ply the ingenuities of cruelty. This sketch of the war-customs of the savages conforms more particularly to the periods preceding their inter- course with the Europeans, and to those after the races were brought into their earlier strifes. Among the West- ern and N'orthern tribes these war-usages have continued substantially unchanged to our own times ; but slight modifications have come into them within this century. There have been occasions in very recent conflicts be- tween the whites and the Indians, when, under the goad- ings of some deep-felt sense of wrong and perfidy in their treatment, all the most furious passions of the savages 198 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOTJECBS, ETC. seem to have been kindled into an intensified rage and desperation. Military officers now in service, and fron- tiersmen on our border lines, testify that the war-spirit, with all its attendant savage characteristics, has not been mollified or subdued in some of the tribes, but has rather been exasperated by the experience of the white man's potency, and by the dark forebodings of des- tiny for the red race. The slaughterings which we call massacres, when wrought by the Indians, have been as hideous and as comprehensive in their fury within the lifetime of the present generation as were any on the records of the past. Our military men have found their savage foes as quick in stratagem and as artful in their devices as if they had been learning in their own school something equivalent to the modern civilized advance in the science of soldiery. Our campaigners against a body of hostiles, when seeking to conceal their motions and trackings, have learned to look keenly towards all the surrounding hill-tops to discover any of the " smoke-sig- nals," made from moist grass and leaves with a smoulder- ing fire, by which the ingenious foe, hidden in their re- treats, make known to their separate watch-parties the direction and the numbers of their jealously observed white pursuers. The frontier settler, telling his expe- riences of the prowling Indian thief, incendiary, and mur- derer, will not admit that the savage has been either awed or humanized by feeling the power or influence of the white man. The ingenuity of the Indian is taxed in arraying himself in war-paint, especially as he has no mirror to aid him. Very few of our natives seem to have practised tattooing, except of some small totem- figure on a limb. Le Moyne, in his illustrations, repre- sents the Florida Indians as elaborately and even artisti- cally tattooed over the whole body, except the face. The first fire-arms that came into the hands of our savages, giving them the aid of the white man's imple- INDIAN TRIBAL GOVERNMENT. 199 ments for warfare, were those which the Dutch on the Hudson, about the year 1613 and subsequently, bartered with the Iroquois or the Mohawks for peltry. This was most grievously complained of afterwards by the French in Canada and the English on the Atlantic sea- board as an act of real treachery, for the sake of gain, against the common security of all European colonists. The French and the English protested against it, and vainly sought by prohibitions and enactments to pre- vent any further traffic of the sort. The mischief was done. The savage now felt himself to be on an equality with the white man, of whose artificial thunder and light- ning he no longer stood in superstitious awe. Not again were the savages to quail before the report and the deadly missile, as they did on that first campaign of the French, when Champlain, near the lake to which he gave his name, fired his arquebuse with fatal effect. The Indian's eye and aim with the rifle have heightened his skill and prowess as a fighter. As we shall note further on, upon the plea that as game has become scarcer and more timid the bow and arrow have lost their use, the Indians on the reservations and under treaty and pen- sions with our Government, some of whom are of worse than dubious loyalty, have been freely supplied with the best revolvers, rifles, and fixed metallic ammunition. Fierce have been the protests from our soldiers and fron- tiersmen, that the instruments of their annoyance and destruction come from our national armories. There has always been a general tendency among the Europeans here to overestimate the presence, method, and influence of anything to be properly called government in the internal administration of Indian tribes. The near- est approach to what we regard as organization, represen- tation and joint fellowship among the Indians is presented to us in what is known as " The Iroquois League," which has had an imaginative delineation in the exquisite poem of 200 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EBSOUECES, ETC. "Hiawatha," and proximately a truthful historical descrip- tion by the late Lewis H. Morgan, — an adopted member of the tribe, and familiar from early years with its rich traditions. There seems to have been more of system and method in the confederated League of the Tribes compos- ing the union, than there was of like organization in each of its component parts. In the several independent or , even affiliated Indian tribes with which the Europeans came into contact from the first colonization, the latter assumed that there was a tolerably well-arranged method in each of them for the administration of affairs of peace and war by a chief and his council, who had an almost arbitrary authority ; that he received tribute, which was equivalent to a system of taxation ; and that the proceeds constituted a sort of com- mon treasury to be drawn upon for public uses. One of the grievances alleged by King Philip and other sachems when, under the influence of the Apostle Eliot, many of the Indians had been gathered into villages of their own that they might be instructed and trained, was that they ceased to pay the tribute which they had previously rendered to their chiefs. There may, therefore, have been instances, more or less defined, in which such usages prevailed among the tribes. But it is safe to say that they were by no means general, still less indicative of a universal custom of Indian government. There was no occasion for endowing a chief, or for furnishing him a salary. The probability is that there has been more of organized and of administrative order in several of the tribes since the coming of the whites than there was before, and that modifications and adap- tations of original Indian usages, or a recourse to some wholly new ones, have necessarily followed upon intimacy of relations with the strangers. When the whites wished to make a treaty with a tribe, to obtain a grant of land, or to execute any other like covenant, they would naturally call for such persons among them as had authority, ex- INDIAN CHIEFTAINS AND OEATORS. 201 ecutive and decisive, for acting for the tribe. These the whites called kings, chieftains, sachems, councillors, while the commonalty were called subjects. The facts certainly soon came to conform to this view of the whites ; but it is doubtful whether such had previously been the state of things. Especially is it doubtful whether the members of a tribe considered themselves as subjects of their chief, in our sense of the word. Our term " citizens " would more prop- erly apply to them. They spoke of themselves as the people of a tribe. We shall have again to refer to this point in connection with the matter of the cession of lands. There was a wide variety as to headship and methods of organization among the scattered tribes of the aborigines on this continent. We find frequent instances in which headship was divided into two distinct functions, there being a chief for affairs of war and another for civil ad- ministration, — a fighter and an orator. The " powwows," priests, or medicine-men had functions in the government. Sometimes the hereditary headship ran in the male, some- times in the female line, and occasipnally it ran off into col- lateral branches. The holding of a headship, if its posses- sor was of marked ability, gave him a large range to assert authority, and assured to him full liberty and acquiescence in its exercise. The ablest Indians with whom the whites have had the most serious relations, in peace or war, have been without exception chiefs of their tribes. There have been but few of these great men, born sovereigns and pa- triots, compared with the vastly larger number of the ordi- nary and petty sachems who have held their places. Often, too, the character and qualities of the so-called subjects would influence the functions and authority of a chief, as well as indicate what sort of a man he had need to be. Under the term " Belts," Europeans name the wrought and ornamented strips of skin or cloth in use by the na- tives, made by themselves, and employed to signify or ratify covenants, pledges, and treaties in their councils upon the 202 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, BESOUECBS, ETC. more serious affairs, among their own tribes or with the whites. As first known to the whites through the Indians near the coast, these "Belts," called "Wampum," were often used as currency and ornaments. There they were made of little fragments of sea-shells; in the interior, of other hard and glittering fragments, — glass, beads, etc. The laying them down or passing them from hand to hand marks emphatic points in an address, or impresses its close. The intent is that these belts shall be preserved and iden- tified with the occasion and pledge in giving and receiving them. The nomadic and inconstant habits of the natives do not favor this preservation. But in some instances they have been cherished and handed down through careful transmission in a tribe, and acquire sacred associations. The Indians over our whole northern continent, at least, are indebted to the Europeans for the addition to their own natural resources of what is now the most valuable of their possessions, — a compensation for much which they have lost, and a facility admirably adapted to their use in perfect keeping with their own wild life. This is the horse. What- ever support may be assured for the theory that the horse was at any time indigenous on either section of this conti- nent, or whether, as has been asserted, its bones have been found among fossils, it is certain that the present stock of the animals is from the increase from foreign importations, — first and chiefly by the Spaniards through Florida and California. How marvellous has been the change which time and circumstances have wrought since the simple na- tives of our islands and isthmus quailed in panic dread and ' awe at the first sight of those frightful monsters, with their steel-clad and death-dealing riders, till now when the useful and almost intelligent beast has become the Indian's play- thing in sportive pastime, and his indispensable resource in the chase and in his skirmishes with the white man ! The rifle and the horse have spanned the chasm between the two races in most of the occasions on which they now confront THE INDIAN " PONT." 203 each other. The " pony," as the animal is now affection- ately named by the owner, is the chief object in an Indian's inventory of his private possessions. It is the standard estimate of value for the purchase-price in marriage of the daughter of a brave by the young buck who wishes to enter into the bonds of wedlock ; and the more ponies the buck possesses, the more of such helpmeets can he gather at the same time in his lodge. And when he wishes the privilege of divorce, he can always salve the wounded sensibilities of a father-in-law by giving him some of the same sort of currency which obtained for him the bride who has become an incumbrance : the father will always take her back if she is well mounted and has relays, — only the animals become his, not hers. The pride of the Indian all over our central and western regions now rests upon his ponies (their number not infrequently running into the hundreds) , their training for the chase of beasts, or men, and their fleetness in flight. Symmetry of form, grace of move- ment, quality of blood, are not generally to any extent ob- jects of critical concern to their owners. Tliey are seldom groomed, though often petted ; they are rough and shaggy in appearance, and untrimmed. The breed, as modified from progenitors under a different clime and usage though not wholly unlike forms of service, has adapted itself to new conditions of food, exposure, riders, and treatment. Wholly in contrast with the sleek and glossy Arab courser, the Indian pony, who never knows stable, and but seldom shelter, conforms himself patiently and as by consent of Nature to these changed terms of his experience. Coralled in companies by night, or singly fettered or tied to tree or stake, with a range for browsing, according as security or apprehension from all furtive prowlers might dictate to the owner, the pony finds his chance for resting and for eating at the same time. His food, as well as that of his master, is always contingent, often meagre, and sometimes lack- ing for days together. On favored expanses of the prairie 204 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, ETC. he is at times better fed than is his rider. In his straits he will paw away the deep snows that cover rich or scant herbage, or relieve his pangs by branches of the cotton- wood, or other juiceless forage. His training was that which should adapt him to the special requirements of his master. No circus ring shows us more facile or daring equestrians than are common, indeed universal, among the savages. Their accomplishments are marvellous. To over- come the pony's reluctance to draw into too close proximity with the wounded buffalo, and when by his front or side to help the pony to avoid the short horns propelled by muscles of gigantic pressure, is a matter of understanding between him and his master. The pony also easily acquires a con- formity of his movements and attitudes to help the pur- poses of his rider in throwing the lasso. A brave will cling by one arm or leg to the neck or back of the animal, sus- pending his head and body out of reach by his enemy, and catch his chance to take aim and fire his rifle. Not the least of the acquired accomplishments of the In- dian in equestrianism is that of plying every artifice of cunning and skill, of crawling in the covert, and watching his chance for stealing the horses of his neighbor on the frontiers, or of his enemy in camp. This is one of the highest on the catalogue of the virtues of the Indian. Suc- cess in horse-stealing is equal in merit to courage in battle. The Indian in boasting his feats gives a high place to the tale of his equestrian spoils. If after having made a suc- cessful raid for such booty he is followed up by the rifled owner, he stands whoUy unabashed before the claimant, and seems rather to expect a compliment than a rebuke, appear- ing outraged at the suggestion of reprisals. The Indians have added horse-racing, in which they are fiery and bois- terous adepts, to their own native games ; and they love to have white men for spectators. The last resource of the famishing Indian, as indeed it has been of many parties of hunters and explorers among the whites, buried in winter THE PAPPOOSE AND THE YOUTH. 205 snows or on desert plains, is to commit the pony to the kettle, or to tear his raw flesh. In this extremity, how- ever, the beast like his owner is but a bony skeleton. Nothing answering to our ideas of instruction or even of training was recognized among the Indians for each genera- tion of the young. All the teaching they received was by the approved method of example ; only the example was of a sort merely to reproduce without advance or improvement all the characteristic degradation of the same barbarism which had been perpetuated for an unknown lapse of time. The words home, school, pupilage, discipline, morality, de- cency, find no place in any of the multiplied Indian vocabu- laries. The catalogue of qualities which we call virtues did not enter even among the idealities of the savage. "With scarce an exception in his favor, all who as inti- mates and observers have best known the Indians report them as fraudulent, insincere, skilled in all the arts of guile and artifice, with habits filthier and more shameless than those of beasts. Such being the most marked traits of the elders among them, and in the lack of any aim or purpose to improve upon themselves in their children, the utmost we could expect of fathers is that they would be simply indifferent to their pappooses, until, growing up to ma- turity, the girls were about to be salable as wives, and the boys were to put themselves into training for warriors. A common mode of paternal discipline for an offending youth was to throw water upon him by sprinkling or dashing. Indians, however, are often very fond of their children, and excessively indulgent in the liberty allowed them. The Indian youth — who had been repressed as an in- fant, left alone for long hours strapped on his birch or bark cradle leaning against tree or wigwam, and not given to crying, because he learned very early that there was no use in crying — was trusted as a child to growth and self- development. He was inured to cold, hunger, and pain; to rough dealings on the ground, in the air, and in the 206 THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, EESOURCES, ETC. water. He had been nursed by his mother for three, four, or even more years, because of the lack of other infantile nutriment. As soon as he was free for the use of his limbs, for the training of his senses, and for the gaining and exercise of physical strength, his prospective range and method of life, with the conditions under which it was to be passed, decided what he was to learn and practise. Upon the females, as soon as they could take their earliest lessons in it, was impressed the consciousness of what their full share was to be in what we now call " women's right to labor." Their lords and masters never questioned that right, or interfered with it, except to see that it was fully exercised in doing all the work, the easy and the hard alike ; for the male Indian would not do a stroke of either. The Indian women were not prolific ; their families were generally small. Their happy and indulgent hours were found in their groupings together on the grass or around the fire, with their work in their hands and their tongues busy and free. The boys could gambol, play ball or other games, and practise with their bows and fish-hooks. The girls were equally free until reaching their teens, and in some tribes never came under any discipline of withdrawal or restraint till they became wives. The earnest and labo- rious efforts which have been made most effectively, in quite recent years, for the school education of young In- dians, have profited by a lesson of experience. Trials were made among them of schools after the usage of the whites, the children being gathered before their teachers at the school hours, and then left to return to their parents' lodges. No advance was made by this method, either in the intellectual training or the elevation of the pupils. Recourse is now had to boarding-schools, in which the children are withdrawn from all the influences of their wild life, and are taught decorum, cleanliness, and self- respect, with the alphabet and primer. This is one of the hopeful methods of dealing with our Indian problem. CHAPTER IV. INDIAN TENURE OP LAND AS VIEWED BY EUEOPBAN INVADERS AND COLONISTS. We are in the habit of speaking of our sweep of territory on this continent as our "national domain." Its area, excluding Alaska, is estimated at a little more than three million square miles, or 1,936,956,160 acres. We may form a comparative view of this extent by reminding our- selves that the acreage of England and Wales together is 37,531,722. Adding the areas of Ireland and Scotland, we have an acreage for the United Kingdom of 76,842,965, or less than one twenty-fifth part of the territory governed by the United States on this continent. But Great Britain on the main and on the American islands has the control of territory exceeding our own by some sixty-two million acres. t By the last census we have a population rising fifty mill- ions. Of these, about forty-three millions are whites, more than six millions have negro blood, and there are less than three hundred thousand Indians, sixty or seventy thousand of whom are regarded as tamed and civilized, while a hun- dred thousand more are somewhat advanced in that pro- cess, being clothed, according with the ways of the whites, with some of our implements and resources. Less than fifty thousand of the natives are now regarded as violently hostile ; though many more of them, partially subdued and brought to terms, are restless, subject to outbreaks, and require constant and watchful restraint and oversight. All 208 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. of the natives may be said — through pensions, supplies, or gratuities — to share in the favors of our Government, or, as one may view the matter, in compensation for the losses and wrongs suffered by them from the whites. It is computed that some fifteen hundred thousand square miles of our territory are settled by a thriving population on homesteads, pursuing peacefully all the occupations of industry and thrift. Nearly fifty million acres have been given by the Government as largesses to railroads, for their services in advancing surveys and opening the country. Other tracts of territory have been deeded for educational and agricultural institutions, and as bounties or pensions to soldiers. There are estimated to be about two billions of acres of public lands, more or less perfectly surveyed and explored, in possession of the Government. Our Government, representing a people that has well- nigh dispossessed and displaced the original occupants of our present domain, is for the present time under covenants, with various terms and conditions, to hold some one hun- dred and thirty patches of this territory, as reservations, for the sole ownership and use of native tribes. About one hundred and fifty-six millions of acres, or two hundred and forty-three thousand square miles, are thus covenanted. I have just used the limitation, for the present time, with a reason. Many of those treaty covenants embrace the solemn phrase " for ever," as extending the term for which they were to be binding. But experience has shown that that phrase is practically inapplicable, and has to be quali- fied, reduced, and taken as limitable ; just as, in the dis- cussions of theologians and scripturists, the same phrase applied to the duration of future retributive punishment is argued by many to mean less than endlessness in the lapse of time. An examination of a digest of all the treaty covenants made by the Government with Indian tribes during its century of existence, will show very many re- visions and annulments of them, from necessity, emer- SECURITIES OF LAND-TITLES. 209 gency, or the alleged stress of circumstances. Sometimes these have been made with the full consent and approba- tion of the tribes concerned in them ; sometimes they have been compelled to assent to them against their wills, more or less compensatory substitutes being made to them. We shall have soon to meet and deal with the question, whether the occasions, reasons, and terms under which the Government entered into these covenants with Indian tribes, with the intent or promise to secure to them per- petual possession, committed it virtually and in the court of honor to an acknowledgment of the previous -absolute ownership of even the whole territory. In other words, have the Indians received their reservations as of right, and in confession of our trespass in dispossessing them during all previous years, since the first European coloniza- tion of the regions over which they had roamed ; or has the Government been dealing with them in the character of chance interlopers, having no certified rights, while for reasons of humanity it might well have granted to them indulgences and favors ? Having given in the previous statistics the number of thousands of square miles of our territory occupied by the homes and fields of thrifty industry, we are tempted, in passing, to contrast the tenure by which these possessions are now held with that — such as we shall find it to be — of the aboriginal occupants of the soil as they roamed over it, or as the dictation and authority of our Government have defined that tenure of the whole, or over some of its parts. The homes, fields, forests, mill-streams, and mining tracts of the whites holding our subdued territory, or even regions still in the depths of the unreclaimed wilderness, are se- cured to them by a system of deeds, carefully drawn with bounds and measurements, with indications of previous ownership, and the terms of transfer and possession. These deeds, legally attested, are matters of registry in a series 14 210 INDIAN TENTJEE OF LAND. of offices provided for them, with other provisions for their testamentary or non-testamentary disposal. Excepting al- ways the guardianship of human life, none of the posses- sions of civilized men are more jealously watched over and secured than is real estate. The whole powers of a gradation of courts are engaged — even without charge to individuals concerned, because having to do with a com- mon public interest — to guard these landed rights of ownership. There certainly is a fundamental difference between this tenure of land as held by civilized men, and that of nomadic roamers or transient squatters over por- tions of wilderness territory. Precisely what that differ- ence of tenure is, we are to try to define. But it is well for us to anticipate the inquiry by presenting to ourselves in full contrast the claims, usages, and acquired rights of those who by settlement and toil improve the surface of the earth, and those who only skim it. Another preliminary and comprehensive question now presents itself. As in the last resort we all look to our General Government for protection and security in our titles to land, as to other forms of property^ we assume that the fee of the whole territory vests in that Government. How did the Government acquire the right and power to hold this territory, parcelled out to individuals, or secured by it in large spaces to Indians? In answer to this ques- tion — postponing the notice of what had previous to our Revolutionary war transpired in the relations, peaceful or warlike, with the aboriginal tribes — we have to say, in general, that our Government holds part of the territory by cession in the treaty with Great Britain closing our national struggle. Portions of the territory have been since added by purchase from the French and Spaniards, and by con- quest, annexation, and compensation in our relations with Mexico. But primarily our rights, such as they are, accrue from our victory over Great Britain. That power claimed at least such a portion of our continent as at the period OyE CONQUEST PROM GREAT BRITAIN. 211 of the war had been explored and occupied by the whites, by right of discovery and possession ; by victory over the French, and the cession through them by treaty of all their claims upon regions explored and held by them ; and by conquest of additional portions in wars with the savages. We acceded to whatever territorial rights Great Britain had acquired, and impliedly to some that it had claimed, and would have asserted and vindicated had its dominance continued. If Great Britain had cause of grievance in be- ing compelled to yield this territory, much more (as we shall see) had Prance to complain of the previous dispos- session of it by that conquering power. Only in the later period of the colonization of the country, and when the times of rough and hard beginnings had been passed and rewarding success achieved, did Great Britain in its patron- izing or protecting functions of government concern itself with its nominal subjects on this continent ; and then it came in not so much for their benefit as from jealousy and hostility to France. France, on the other hand, had from the first reachings forth of its enterprise and its costly outlays over our seas and bays, our lakes and rivers, and the capacities of trade and commerce here, engaged the power and patronage of its monarchs and prime ministers, its nobles and its armies, to secure and improve an inheri- tance on this broad continent. But when it yielded to British arms in a conflict substantially lasting through a century and a half, our Government succeeded to such benefits and to such controversies and quarrels of the tem- porary dominion as were left here below our present boun- dary-line. If Francis of France, for the benefit of his royal successors, had been provided for, as he thought he should have been, by a clause in Adam's will disposing of this continent, those successors would have been in no wise benefited by it. Whatever compunctions may be felt by any among us as to our method of dispossessing our aborigines, none such 212 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. are entertained about any advantage or property obtained in our victory over Great Britain. We rest without a single throb of conscience in the fullest enjoyment of them. Indeed, we are ready to put the most indulgent construc- tion upon, and to strain to the fullest vindication which candor and justice will allow, the sort and right of tenure which Great Britain had enjoyed to the territory which we conquered from her. Our Government is not responsible for trespass against the natural rights of the aborigines which Britain committed in following what it would call a law of Nature, after discovery. A striking illustration is found of the views of our Government on this matter in the course pursued by General St. Clair, when he went, in 1788, as governor of the Northwest Territory, to Fort Harmar, — Marietta, — at the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio, to enter into treaties with savages north and west of the latter river. When the savages com- plained that the whites were not willing to regard the river as a boundary, St. Clair flatly told them, that, as they had been allies of our British enemies in the war, they must meet as the consequence of defeat the loss of their lands. ^ It is time for us now to turn to the aboriginal tribes, to inquire what had been and were their territorial rights before and while they were being ground in the mill by rival European nationalities, all intruders. What were the right and tenure by which the red men, on the first coming of Europeans as colonists to this con- tinent, are to be understood as holding the soil, either in localities by their several tribes, or as a race in possession of the whole territory ? Of course we put out of sight all those terms — instruments, covenants, and constitutions — in use among nations, states, and municipalities under civil- ization, to define their bounds and mark their jurisdiction. No state-paper offices, no registries of deeds, no treaty sanc- tions even, have place in this question ; and only such ele- INDIAN POSSESSION BY CONQUEST. 213 ments of the common law as pertain to the simple rights of humanity can come into the argument. It has been assumed that on the first occasion of contact between the red man and the white man on each portion of this continent, as successively entered upon by colonists, the Indians then and there in occupancy — after their mode of use — had the full right of ownership, as if indigenous or lawful inheritors. Following the localities on the sea- board and the interior then occupied by tribes of the sav- ages, we might be tempted to identify them with such spots, and, assigning each tract to each party, might infer a long and secure occupancy, known and certified, so as to cover a complete title. But such a conclusion on our part would be wide of the mark. The right of any one tribe — or, as often loosely named, any one nation — of the savages to any particular region of territory here over which they roamed, or where they planted their cabins or cultivated their maize, was simply the right of present occupancy and possession. We can hardly, in any case known to us, say that it was a right of inheritance even, much less of continuity through genera^ tions of this or that same stock identified with a particular locality. We draw upon our fancies somewhat, if not in excess, when we speak of the ancestral forests, lakes, streams, and mountains passing by inheritance through the generations of a tribe. They were an Islunaelitish race. The fact of possession was more often found through conquest than through inheritance. We have positive his- torical knowledge, in a large number and in a wide variety of cases, of the transient occupancy of one or another re- gion by those whom the white men found upon it. The aborigines were in a chronic state of civil war. The war- path for them alternated with the hunting-path, though both paths often were on the same route. Their wars were for conquest, for revenge, for self-defence, and not infre- quently ended only in the extermination of one party. 214 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. the sparse remnant left being adopted into the tribe of the conquerors. Such had been tlie state of things before the coming of the whites, and it has so continued to our own times. It was not till more than a century after the whites had formed permanent settlements on the Atlantic and the Car nadian borders of this continent that they knew anything positively about the extent and manner of its occupancy by native tribes in the interior. The natural inference, in ' \, the absence of knowledge, was that the interior was occu- j pied very much as were the borders, — by the same sort of / sparse and roaming tribes, each claiming the spaces and / regions over which they hunted, or where they reared their lodges and planted their maize ; so that in effect the rights of savagery, such as they were, covered substantially our j whole present domain. This inference, too, was a part of ' the assumption that there were many millions of natives \ spread over the continent. Actual exploration, positive knowledge, and better-grounded inferences have greatly modified the views assumed when these vast realms were all shadowed by the mystery of the unknown. Those sup- posed millions in our native forests have been reduced by well-informed inquirers to only three, and again to only one million, and even to a much diminished estimate. The better we have become informed about the numbers and the conditions of life of existing savage tribes, the more unreasonable seems to us a large estimate of the numbers of their predecessors. The fancy that our vast interior spaces, with their lakes and river-courses, their valleys, plains, and meadows, were all parcelled out and occupied, after their fashion, by our native tribes, has yielded to assured facts of proved incon- sistency with it. Tribes vanquished near the seaboard and on our lake-shores were always able to find a refuge in unoccupied territory. The whole of Kentucky, when the white pioneers explored it, was tenantless, unclaimed, THE CONTINENT THINLY POPULATED. 215." crossed only as it might have been by war-parties on their raids beyond its bounds. Enormous reaches of Upper Canada, and large parts of the present States bordering on the south of the great lakes, had no human tenants ; one might roam in them for weeks and find no trace of man. It has been intelligently affirmed that just before our Revolutionary War the number of Indian warriors between the ocean and the Mississippi, and between Lake Superior and the Ohio, did not exceed ten thousand. If the theories drawn from the examination of the Western earth-mounds have good reasons to support them, an unmeasured length of time had passed since their disuse and desertion. How- ever populous the regions around them may once have been, they had long been lonely and tenantless. These theories, in connection with others of the archaeologists, trace suc- cessive conquests from north to south and from south to north, sweeping over these midland territories, causing them at last to be turned to solitudes. Epidemic diseases also may have ravaged over those long reaches of the interior, and nearly or entirely depopulated them. Never in a single case within the last century, when white men have first come to the knowledge of remote tribes, have they been found to be very numerous. As successively the tribes have moved back from our frontiers into farther spaces, they have, till quite recent years, always found sufficient wild territory for their own habits, where they could go undis- turbed ; or, if meeting with any already roaming there, found them to be so few that there was no crowding. The tradi- tions of many tribes also preserve relations of voluntary migrations made by them, independently of any catas- trophes of war, and merely for bettering their condition. The abundance of the game in former centuries, when com- pared with its rapidly increasing scarcity in recent years, would indicate that it was not of old drawn upon for any vast number of consumers. In the lack, therefore, of the more positive knowledge which is out of our reach, there 216 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. are reasonable grounds for the belief, that, when the Europeans arrived, there were no vast multitudes of na- tives here, and that they could not have appropriated the whole continent. /' The statement may be strongly emphasized, that, from / the first entrance of the white man on this continent, the condition in which the natives were found, and the rela- I tions in which they stood to each other furnished every I facility for their conquest and dispossession of the soil, and I indeed even solicited and tempted the new comers to as- sume over them the tyranny of superiors. In discussing under the broadest terms the responsibility of the Euro- peans, coming hither either as conquerors or as peaceful settlers, for their treatment of the red men, the statement just made opens many important suggestions which are to be candidly considered. It may be affirmed in very posi- tive terms, that if the natives had been in a state of peace, of union and harmony among themselves, and had with one purpose fronted the early European adventurers, giving them no aid and comfort, and resisting their first feeble, forlorn, and impoverished encroachments, both conquest and colonization on this soil would have been long de- ferred, and when finally accomplished would have been ac- companied by very different circumstances, conditions, and_ results. Europeans, conquerors and colonists, of each na,-\ tionality, — Spanish, French, Dutch, and English, — found | their opportunity and their facility in the intestine strifes_^ and the savage hostilities of the natives. The new comers in every case were able to find, and at once availed them- selves of, Indian alliances against Indians. Cortes in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru would inevitably have been cut off, starved, and disabled in their schemes but for the fortuity of circumstances which gave them strong native alliances with rival chieftains, with rebels, or with the whole or portions of tribes smarting under the wild or tyrannical sway of their native despots. To each single EXTERMINATING INDIAN HOSTILITIES. 217 Spaniard in the sparse ranks of each crew of the invaders, one or even many hundred of the Indians were to be found acting as guides, purveyors, or actual and vigor- ous combatants. The rival caciques of Peru, as well as Montezuma and his heirs, found that the intruding white man was constituting himself an umpire in their intestine quarrels. When the French were seeking their first foot- hold in Canada they happened to fall among the Hurons, who were ready to be their friends against hostile neighbors across the lakes who had already humbled them. In the early abortive attempts of French colonization in Florida, — those of the Huguenots under Ribault and Laudonnidre, in 1562 and 1564, — it proved that there were several rival confederacies of native tribes on that peninsula. They had been at bitter feud, and engaged in deadly strife with each other for a hold on the soil, previous to the arrival of the French. With three of these warring and jealous bands the commanders came into intercourse. At a critical stage in his enterprise Ribault saved his company from the threat- ening violence of the tribe on whose soil he was about erect- ing a fort, by agreeing upon an alliance with its chief in his projected raid upon his nearest enemy. The commander entered upon the covenant, but was perfidious to it, and made friends with the other tribes so far as to serve his own temporary ends. The first French missionaries in Acadia found the Souriquois, or Micmaks, in fierce war- fare with the Esquimaux, paddling by sea thirty or forty miles to attack them. The rapidity with which the pro- cess, well-nigh exterminating, of Indians against Indians, went on may be inferred from a statement made by the heroic Father Brebeuf. While he was living among the Hurons, he estimated their nmnbers, perhaps excessively, at thirty thousand, distributed in twenty villages, besides a dozen numerous sedentary tribes speaking their lan- guage. All these had been well-nigh exterminated at the close of the seventeenth century by the fiei-cer Iroquois, 218 INDIAN TENUEE OP LAND. the remnant being barely sufficient to compose a small mission at Lorette. The pacific policy of William Penn, in his fair purchase of land and his honest covenant with the Indians, stands accredited in our popular histories and traditions with all the distinctive qualities of justice and humanity which can fairly be claimed for it. Perhaps a keen scrutiny, insti- tuted by severer tests, of historical authorities might reduce the special and exceptional dignity and rectitude of the Quaker purchase. But it is to the point to recognize the very important fact, that the Delaware Indians, with whom Penn made his treaty, were then a vanquished and humbled remnant of several tribes, which had previously been under the harrows of the ferocious Iroquois of New York. The conquerors of the Delawares exacted tribute from them, and stigmatized them as women. Under these circumstances the white man's friendship was worth its easy cost. Neverthe- less, the exceptionally pacific spirit and equitable dealing which characterized the first relations of Penn's proprie- tary government did not secure his colonists under the administration of his grandson. Governor John Penn, from a full share in the hostilities of the Indians in the French and English wars preceding and following the Eevolu- tion. In their dire emergency the Quakers were obliged to abandon their peace policy. / In connection with the aggression of the whites, it is natu- /ral to lay stress on the fact that there were repeated instan- l' ces in the case of the earliest colonists from each of the European nationalities, when the foreign adventurers, rovers, and settlers were so weak and helpless, so reduced to absolute starvation, that had it not been for the pity and aid of the natives, as well as for the fact of their being at bitter feud among themselves, there would not have been a survivor l^lg|t of them. Had the natives, with or without concert, and with a prescience of what was to be their fate from the in- truders, availed themselves of their opportunity, the miser- METHODS OP THE SEVERAL COLONISTS. 219 able plight of the white men would have made their ruin easy. But in most of these cases of the extremity of the whites they owed their safety and relief as much to the animosities of warring tribes as to the pity and kindness of the red men. Though the Spaniards by their atrocities had roused against themselves the dread and fiercest hate of their wretched victims, they were several times gene- rously and piteously fed by them when they had neither money to purchase nor arms to wrest supplies. When the arrogant company of French Protestants under Ribault, in 1562, in the St. John River in Florida, had been reduced to starvation by their idleness and recklessness, the Indians, who despised their frivolity as much as they hated the haughty ferocity of the Spaniards, came to their relief. A friendly chief built and filled for them a store-house of supplies in their fort, and when on the night following a fire destroyed it with all its contents, rebuilt and filled it again. And when the desperate Frenchmen resolved to seek their way back to France, the savages helped them to build and rig a vessel. But instead of manifesting simple gratitude under such circumstances, the invaders were al- ways on the watch to foment discords among the natives, that they might profit by engaging, if possible, a stronger Mha^or the stronger faction of a tribe, on their side. There was a very broad distinction in the course pursued by the permanent English colonists, when their turn came, from that which was taken up by the Spaniards and the French in the earlier periods, as to any bargains or treaties about land with the natives. I cannot call to mind a single instance in which the Spaniards, recognizing any sort of vested right to territory occupied by the Indians, were at the pains even to ask leave of them for residence, much less to obtain a release of claims and a transfer of any space for their own lawful possession. The only exception to the sweep of this statement is in the case in which Columbus, after the loss of one of his vessels in his first 220 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. Toyage here, obtained the consent of a cacique for con- structing his fort at La Navidad for the party left by him as a colony. The Spaniards always acted complacently on their own church theory, that, as heathen territory belonged to Christians, no title-deeds were necessary to transfer its ownership. The French, according to the purpose and method of their errand and occupancy here, seem never to have thought of the propriety of asking leave or of acquiring a title from the natives. In their steady progress of explora- tion and establishing trading-stations and missions along the Northern lakes and by the courses of the Western rivers, they assumed that the natives and themselves were to share in mutual advantages, and might take for granted that the new comers would be welcome. They were not bent upon establishing cleared farms and townships, like the English. They never objected, as did the English, to the unrestrained presence of the natives circulating among them, and keep- ing up a free intercourse. It seems never to have occurred to them to ask for the transfer to them, by covenants, of bounded tracts of land. The French took up their first permanent residence in the territory of the Algonquins and Hurons, making themselves agreeable to the natives at first by profitable trade, and soon afterwards necessary as allies against their ruthless enemies the Iroquois. These Iro- quois, who were in amicable relations with the Dutch, were deadly enemies of the French, because the latter were in alliance with the Hurons. The powerful Iroquois were themselves invaders, and held by conquest the splendid region at the centre and the west of New York. They drove out the previous occupants. The strife between them and the Adirondacks of Canada continued more than half a century after the early voyages of the French in 1535. We may make the largest allowance for the fact that the whites, in many places all over the country and in all the INDIANS DISPOSSESSING INDIANS. 221 years that have passed, have justified their dispossession of successive tribes by the plea that they were only spoiling spoilers. The Muscogees from the Ohio moved down into Alabama after it had been desolated by De Soto, and pur- sued their conquests over many enfeebled tribes. In 1822, in a talk with the missionary Compare, Big Warrior, the chief of the Creek Confederacy, boasted of their prowess in conquering, driving out, and destroying the tribes in possession before them. But the missionary silenced the boaster with this question : " If this is the way your ances- tors acquired all the territory of Georgia, how can you blame the Americans now in the State for trying to take it from you ? " Just previous to the arrival of the Plymouth and Bay colonists in Massachusetts a fatal plague had devastated the local tribes. Massasoit, the sachem of the once power- ful Wampanoags wasted by this scourge, had in conse- quence become tributary to the Narragansetts ; and he was glad to lighten the yoke by entering into a solemn treaty | with the Pilgrims. This first treaty of white and red men lasted also longer than any one ever made between the \ parties, — unbroken for fifty years. The Pilgrims thus ! found protection, in their first extreme feebleness, in allies jealous of a superior native tribe. And when Philip began to organize his league he became tributary to Plymouth. In their exterminating war against the Pequots the English had the Narragansetts as allies. The Mohicans, who had occupied the upper Hudson, had been driven from it by the Mohawks in 1628, and, settling again on the Connecticut, had been made tributary to the Pequots, — thus being i;eady for an alliance with the English. It must be admitted that the Europeans of every nation- ality, even when not fomenting discord, were all too ready to avail themselves of the rivalries, the hostilities, and the internecine struggles of the native tribes, and to turn them to their own account. Doubtless, too, the Europeans pri- 222 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. marily opened some of these quarrels, raising jealousies and trying to persuade the Indians that the new comers would be better friends and more useful to them than they could be to each other. When in Philip's war the noble Canon- chet, a sachem of the Narragainsetts and Philip's chief captain, was taken prisoner, he was offered his life on condi- tion of the submission of his tribe. Refusing the condition he was sentenced to be shot. The English sought to in- sure the future fidelity of their allied tribes against any vengeful feeling for his execution by making them, after a sort, parties to it. So the subjugated Pequots were made to shoot him ; the Mohicans to cut off his head and quarter him ; the Niantics to burn his body ; and then his head was sent to the English commissioners at Hartford as " a token of love." And when the time for it came, the Indians were always ready to make alliances with rival and warx'ing colo- nists, to the sacrifice of their own common interests. Even on the Island of Nantucket, on the first coming of the whites, there were two Indian tribes at feud ; and Philip claimed tribute there. I Yet had it been the fact that each and every tribe of Indians found in occupancy here had secured its tract of territory by conquest from some other tribe, at any pre- vious interval of time near or remote, and that the Euro- peans were aware of it, this fact alone could not in the view of the latter have proved that the possessors had no right- ful tenure on such soil. Rights obtained by conquest were recognized in what we call the code of natural law. The ancestors of all the Europeans who dispossessed our aborig- ines had, to a greater or less extent, acceded to the lands held by them in the same way of conquest. Never in any case have the whites on this continent undertaken to drive off any tribe in transient occupancy of a particular region for the purpose of restoring it to those who formerly held it. It has been always for their own possession and use that Europeans have induced or compelled the natives to yield LAND BIGHTS OP NOMADS. 223 their successive resting places, and to move on. So that though the whites have on all occasions made the most of the plea that they only spoiled spoilers, it is plain that this alone would not have been relied upon as justifying them in disputing the sufficiency of the aboriginal tenure of ter- ritory. Looking beyond this, therefore, we find that there were two other grounds of defence and of privilege as- sumed by the Europeans : first, some shape of the assump- tion that the heathenism of the Indians impaired their natural rights ; and second, that they made no such use and improvement of the soil as to secure a title to it. The tenure of land among the ancient and some modern migratory hordes of the Eastern World was similarly loose and undefined with that of our aborigines. When the Israelites wislaed to justify their conquest of Canaan, they said that they were only reclaiming an old ancestral pos- session, of which in the absence of written -title-deeds there were three expressive tokens, — the altar on the hill of Bethel, the well of Jacob, and the family sepulchre in the field of Machpelah. It would be irrelevant to quote here, and to institute an application of, the principles advanced in the treatises of Maine and other recent publicists on the conditions regulat- ing, or rather allowing, the occupancy and use of wild land by wild men, as they simply follow the law of Nature, per- sonal liberty, and impulses of their own, in roaming or resting here or there. The principles of natural law may suggest the theories which are to be drawn from or applied to the kind of tenure to territory thus claimed or held. But the theories, after all, have to be constructed from the facts in any instance of large application. In the case of our own aborigines we have as signal and significant a one as could be proposed for a precedent. All the conditions which could ever present themselves together for raising all the terms of the question as to the natural and acquired rights of barbarians found in temporary occupancy of wild 224 INDIAN TENURE OF LAND. territory, were necessarily met here ; and the way in which the whites viewed claims founded on those assumed rights, presents the other side of the problem. As we have already seen, some of the Europeans — the Spaniards — utterly de- spised such rights, never giving the least heed or deference to them; others of the Europeans — the French-^ did not find it necessary for their purposes to bring them under controversy or discussion. Either of these two courses might be pronounced as consistent as they were conven- ient, in averting all complications of argument or arbitra- tion. But the English colonists, as we shall see, did not follow the example either of the Spaniards or the French. They adopted views and pursued courses distinctively their own as to the recognition of and dealing with the assumed rights of the savages on tliis wild territory. Their way of dealing with the matter, if not their opinions about it, was not consistent, but vacillating and variable, adjusting itself to circumstances. And this inconsistent course, adopted from the first by the English, has run down through our whole history, and is really at the root of the worst per- plexities and embarrassments entailed upon our G-overn- ment in its dealings with the Indians. The inconsistency was in admitting certain natural rights of the natives without defining them, and then trifling with them by a vacillating policy. The claim of the disciples of the Roman Church was, as we have seen, absolute in this matter ; and, practically, the course pursued by the Protestants — though they would have pleaded that they were driven to it by stress of cir- cumstances in their self-defence — at first proceeded upon the assumption of the same claim, though it was soon modified. When Francis I. of France had reminded him- self that, if Adam had made a will, a portion of the New World which the Pope had given over in a lump to the monarchs of Spain and Portugal would have fallen to him, he determined to act on the reasonable supposition and to EOTAL DONATIONS OP TEEEITORT. 225 claim his share in the spoils of the heathen, and sent Verra- zano, in 1524, to pick up the leavings. Verrazano made three voyages, and planted the arms of Prance from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence. Though the bull of Pope Paul III. had pronounced the natives here to be real men, not monkeys, — " vtpote veros homines," — Francis, in his Commission, declared them to be " savages living without the knowledge of God and without the use of reason." His successor, Henry IV., wrote : " We have undertaken, with the help of God, ■ — the Author, Distributor, and Pro- tector of all kingdoms and states, — to guide, instruct, and convert to Christianity and the belief of our holy faith the inhabitants of that country, who are barbarians, atheists, devoid of religion," etc. So the Marquis De la Roche was appointed viceroy here in 1598 ; but he brought over for this work of conversion only fifty felons from the prisons, and no clergymen. A similar commission was given in 1601 to M. Chau- vin, who was ordered to spread the Catholic faith over North America. But he was a Calvinist. He collected peltry, in which he did a profitable business, and left the missionary work unattempted. In all the subsequent en- terprises of the French for colonization and empire here, according to the patronage under which each of them was pursued, there was an alternation of preponderance given to secular or sacred objects to be advanced. As in all worldly interests, according to the Scripture text never challenged, " Money answereth all things," the support of mission work depended upon thrift in trade. Though the traffickers in brandy and peltry were often brought into collision with the priests, the parties which both of them represented were considered as equally essential to the success of each successive enterprise ; so that, as we have said, it was not thought necessary to ask leave of residence or grant of territory. Whether the French monarch con- ferred his vast gift of geometrically bounded spaces and 15 226 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. reaches of dominion, of island or continent, on individuals or companies, he never gave a thought to extinguishing an Indian title, or perplexing himself with the tenure by which the aborigines held the regions given away so lav^ ishly by him.^ When on the expansion of our population by pioneer emigration from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, the Americans came into hostile relations with the old French posts beyond the Ohio, they assumed that, having conquered the French and the English, they might take possession of any territory previously held by them. The British from Canada, and such of them as still lingered holding the lake and river posts, under the chagrin of their defeat endeavored to instigate many Indian tribes into a conspiracy against the iiiflowing emigrants. They also prompted the Indians to affirm that the English had never received any deeds or titles to the disputed lands. These controversies were more or less satisfactorily disposed of by new treaties, beginning with that of Fort Harmar. But when the emigration reached the farther French posts,, the plea was that the French had never really owned any terri- tory there, but had set up their trading-houses and mis- sions merely by allowance, — neither receiving nor asking formal covenants to do so, — and thus had never acquired a permanent title to the soil. The theory under which Europeans came and took pos- session of parts of this continent, and have been led by the development of circumstances to claim the whole of it, was in their view a very simple one. So far as regarded any rival questions among themselves, the right of occupancy was admitted to be founded upon discovery, confirmed by act- ual entry upon any defined portion of the territory. This was the political element of the right. But as regards the 1 I have a note of a quotation from Lamartine, though I have misplaced the reference to it, in these words: "Le glohe est la propriety de rhomme; le nouveau continent, I'Amerique, est la propriety de TEurope." EUROPEAN EIGHT TO AMERICA. 227 / jtnoral right, involving a dispossession of human beings ,'then occupying the soil, a full justification was found in I a more or less emphasized assertion of a divine preroga- , tive of Christians over and against all heathendom. Very Irarely, and always ineffectually, was this sweeping claim cRaftenged or discredited. Roger Williams, from the first and always a radical champion of the natural rights of all men, struck at what he regarded as the fundamental false- hood involved in this claim when he denied the right of a Christian sovereign to give a patent to the territory of the natives on the groimd of their being heathens. He wrote in his " Key," etc., that it was " a sinful opinion amongst many, that Christians have right to heathen lands." Wil- liams's fellow Rhode Islander, Coddington, wrote from Newport to Massachusetts, in 1640, a letter from his com- panions, in which, as Winthrop says, the Rhode Islanders " declared their dislike of such as would have the Indians rooted out as being of the cursed race of Ham ; and their desire of our mutual accord in seeking to gain them by justice and kindness, and withal to watch over them to prevent any danger by them." The Friends, or early Quakers, also stood for the natural rights of the savages. In Penn's interview — as he was about leaving England — with Charles II., the King asked him what would prevent his getting into the savages' war- kettle, as a savory meal for them. Penn replied : " Their own inner light. Moreover, as I intend equitably to buy their lands, I shall not be molested." " Buy their lands ! " said the amazed monarch; "why, is not the whole land mine ?" " No, your Majesty," answered Penn. " We have no right to their lands ; they are the original occupants of the soil." "What! have I not the right of discovery?" asked Charles. " Well," said Penn, " just suppose that a canoe full of savages should by some accident discover Great Britain: would you vacate or sell?" Yet Charles's great predecessor, William the Conqueror, when he 228 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. stepped on the English shore, said he " took seisin of the land." If the Indians could have been parties to the argument and discussions as to their natural rights compared with those of European sovereigns whose mariners discovered the continent, they might have suggested that if their pos- session of the continent, though only as roamers over it, did not assure their ownership, certainly the mere skirting of its ocean-shores by a crew of foreign sailors did not confer a better title. But these exceptional pleas for the native rights of the savages, as human beings, in the soil which they occupied, were but feeble in view of the prejudgment of the case in favor of the prerogative of Christians over heathen. The claim as to the reduction of the native tribes to the state of subjects of the monarch to whom the settlers among them owed allegiance seems to have been very distinctly and warmly contested by King Philip, in the contentions between him and the authorities of Plymouth and Massa- chusetts. Practically, these authorities acted as if they acceded, as by commission or otherwise, to the functions of the crown over the Indians. Even the natives may have appreciated a difference between being subjects of the King of England and being subjects of his subjects. It was es- pecially aggravating to the haughty sachem Philip and his fellows to be summoned as culprit subjects to the colony courts ; nor was their irritation relieved at being told that these courts were representing a foreign crown. The chiefs also complained that their own people were thus drawn from their former allegiance to themselves as sachems. They said the whites had no right to intrude themselves between them and their people, or to interfere with their jurisdiction in their forest domains ; nor had the whites, unless their intervention was asked by both parties, any justification for intermeddling between Indians and Indians. The whites had sentenced and hung one of Philip's Indians INDIANS SUBJECTS OP EUROPEAN MONAECHS. 229 for killing another of them: Philip insisted that in this case the administration of justice should have been left to him. When Philip once proposed an arbitration on the difficulties, which had become aggravated, between him and his white neighbors, doubting their impartiality, he urged that the Governor of New York and an Indian king should be the umpires. He was willing to take his place and hold his rank with those who held the highest authority as repre- senting the English crown ; but he could not be made to imderstand or to approve the process by which he who had been obeyed as a sovereign over his own people, previous to the coming of the white men, was reduced before a petty colonial magistrate into the condition of one of his own subjects before himself. To the Europeans, however, there was a logical consequence in this reduction of Indian chief- tains to the state of subjects of their monarchs, following from the extension of foreign sovereignty over the terri- tory, whether or not the whites had gone through the form of purchasing title. And when afterwards some of the na- tive chiefs were proud of calling a foreign monarch their Great Father, others preferred to regard him as a brother potentate. This cool assumption on the part of the European adven- turers, discoverers, and colonists here was adopted as an axiom to the inference that their respective monarchs ac- ceded to territorial rights to the soil. It was that the Indian tribes among whom they planted themselves became fellow-subjects of their own foreign sovereigns, and thence- forward owed them allegiance. The Spaniards at once acted on this assumption, and put in force everything that followed from it. When the great circumnavigator, Sir Francis Drake, entered the harbor of San Francisco and explored it, — not knowing that the Spaniards had preceded him, — he took possession for the crown of England, and called the country " New Albion." The natives were quiet and friendly. They wore feather head-dresses, somewhat 230 KDIAN TENURE OP LAND. after the fashion of a crown. One of the chiefs giving Drake this " emblem of royalty," he interpreted the act as an abdication of sovereignty in favor of Queen Elizabeth. In some cases there was a degree of formality in the methods by which the European intruders sought to make intelligible to the natives the fact — whether admitted by them or denied — that they were henceforward subjects of monarchs across the salt sea. It must have mystified the aborigines, till use had emp- tied the phrase of meaning, to be told that the king of Spain, of Prance, or of England was their Great Father. A pretty fair test for measuring the relative manliness and native spirit of different forest chieftains might be found in the attitude in which they placed themselves, secretly or avowedly, towards the sentence announcing to them their bounden duty of subjection, allegiance, and loyalty to a foreign superior. Some chieftains, with their tribes, allowed it to pass unchallenged, especially when it assured to them the desired material aid of their European guests in their own internecine strifes. Others made no open re- monstrance, content that silence should conceal their dis- dain at the assumption. Some, however, there were who from the first doubted the grounds of it, and as they gradu- ally came to understand what the assertion of their subject state signified, and what it carried with it, stoutly and resolutely repudiated the claim. This was emphatically the case with each of the successive Indian chieftains known in our history as the master-minds among ordinary savages, who sought to combine their tribes for rooting out the white man. Philip, Pontiac, and Tecumseh were the patriots of their race. Instead of attempting to indicate in any precise terms the view which Europeans, in anticipation and at their first coming, took of the rights of tenancy and occupancy of the savages on this continent, let us come to the concep- tion which we wish to reach, by stating the actual result, PREROGATIVES OP CIYILIZATION. 231 either of theory or practice, in the disposal of the whole question by the whites. We can afterwards acquaint our- selves with any terms or bargains by which the English alone of all the colonists, with a slight exception for the Dutch and the Swedes, appear to have qualified their gen- eral assumption that the Indians had no territorial rights whatever. In treating in later pages upon the subject of the cession made by Indian chiefs or tribes of portions of territory, — by private bargain, covenant, or formal treaty transfer, — we shall have occasion to note what were the Indians' views of their land tenure, and what was the valuation which they set or' allowed the white man to set upon the property surrendered. The result of the white man's view of the tenure of the natives to the soil, as we are to attempt to define it, was, — ^ as we see it now over the larger part of this continent, and as coming generations will surely see over the remainder of it, — this, the succession of the civilized white man, or possibly the civilized Indian, to the savage red man in occupying it. This was from the first, and will be, inevi- table. The nature and constitution of things, as we say, decide it. According to our preference of thought and phrase, we may assert either that fate compelled or that a wise Providence decreed it. The reasoning was as fol- lows : If the earth and man have the relation of place and occupant to each other, then each portion of the earth and the whole of it will belong to those men whose best use of it will give them the mastery of it. If this earth is to sup- port human life, then the extending and increasing needs of man must decide the conditions under which it shall be populated and ruled. If the magnificent resources of this continent, instead of being unused or wasted, were to be turned to the account of man's subsistence, improve- ment, development, and general welfare, then certainly the red man's habits and ways of life must give place to those of the white man. All our regrets and reproaches, — our 232 INDIAN TENURE OF LAND. laments over the grievous wrongs inflicted upon the sav- ages, and our reproaches upon our ancestors here or upon the continuous course of our Government in its dealings with the natives,— all these complaints and censures must attach only to the process, the way, the attendant acts and methods, by which the savages have been despoiled and the whites have come into possession. Let the statement just made be strictly limited, lest it be supposed to exaggerate a plea or to prejudice it. It urges only and simply the fair judgment, that the white man's uses of this continent rightfully succeed to and displace the red man's uses of it. This is not saying, nor necessarily implying, that the white man should displace and exterminate the red man. Quite other and far less simple and well-grounded reasoning and argument and dealing with facts and principles come in, when, from standing for the fair uses of enormous portions , of the earth's territory, we pass to the treatment of those who were found in occupancy of it. It is not strange that the general and popular judgment of the inevitableness of the result — namely, the displace- ment of the natives of the soil — should attach the same character of necessity and fate to the means by which the result has been brought about ; and should urge that every successive step and act, however harsh or cruel or ruth- less, by which the savages have been pressed or crushed or slaughtered, is to be ascribed to the stern compulsion of circumstances. Of late years at least, a far more discrimi- nating and considerate view has been taken of the object to be realized, as involving one or another method for reaching it. The conviction is now as firmly cherished through our nation at large as it ever was by the most ruthless body of the earliest colonists, that the land must be rid of savages ; even the most remote regions now occupied by them must sooner or later find in them tamed and civilized inhabitants. While this conviction holds un- qualified, civilization is substituted for extermination as the CIVILIZATION AGAINST BAEBARISM. 233 method for realizing the conviction. The last Report of the United States Commissioner for Indian Affairs (1881) is emphatic on this point. He says : — " There is no one who has been a close observer of Indian history and the effect of contact of Indians with civilization, who is not well satisfied that one of two things must eventually take place ; to wit, either civilization or extermination of the Indian. Savao-e and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground. One of the two must die. If the Indians are to be civilized and become a happy and prosperous people, which is certainly the ob- ject and intention of our Government, they must learn our language and adopt our modes of life. We are fifty millions of people, and they are only one fourth of one milHon. The few must yield to the many." Anticipating a matter which will demand our deliberate notice farther on, the Commissioner adds, that, as we can- not expect the Indians to abandon their own and to adopt our habits of life while we carry victuals and clothes to their reservations, we must compel them to work for a sub- sistence as we ourselves do. Happily for all who desire to view this momentous and profoundly interesting question with the utmost candor and intelligence, not forgetful of all humane sentiments, the question is not one that concerns merely the long or the recent past in our country. On the contrary the right, ' the just, the wise, the expedient, the best possible way in which the civilized whites as a people, and through their government, can and ought to deal with the original, native, and savage occupants of our territory is one of the most living and exciting and serious questions of our day. The perplexing issues on the trial of which we have had two and a half centuries of practical experience have never been settled, and are open to-day. This experience seems to have made us no wiser; it has not introduced any essentially new elements for our guidance, nor relieved the sadness and the suffering and the injustice which in- 234 INDIAN TENUEE OP LAND. vest the whole subject before us. Substantially the same course which the white men first pursued towards the nar tives, when in feeble companies of way-worn adventurers and colonists they invaded the soil, has followed on step by step, as a mighty nation, swarming to half a hundred millions, with all its increase of power and humanity, has pushed its frontiers into savage domains steadily and as resistless as the flow of its own river torrents. To revert to the point first stated, — the right of civilized man to succeed to wild territory occupied by savages, — de- ferring for the present the subject • of the treatment of its occupants. We admit the right of human beings on occupying wild territory to exterminate all noxious ver- min and wild beasts, to cut down forests, to dam streams, and to do everything else on and with the soil to make / it secure and habitable. An arresting scruple comes in when ■ this right is inferred to include or to justify the allowance that a more civilized or powerful body of new comers may trample upon, drive off, or subjugate an in- ferior race occupying the territory. Now practically, with a fair, frank avowal, we may as well make short work of all ingenious pleadings and subterfuges here, and speak right out the historic fact, — the fact of to-day, — that the white man made a logical syllogism which connected his right to improve the soil with his way of treating the Indians ; namely, he satisfied himself that the savages were a part of the vermin and wild beasts which he was justified in removing, and compelled to remove, before the territory would serve its use. However wide off from this view any of the early colonists here may have been, no candid person can deny that the view steadily came to fill the eye and mind of those whom we should have thought would have been most shocked by it. From the first European occupancy of this continent up to these recent years when it has been sternly rebuked, the basis, the real root, of every assumption and justifica- INDIANS REGARDED AS VERMIN. 235 tion involved in our treatment of the Indians proceeded upon this opinion or belief, — -Jhat^ they are in-fact simply ^ a_partof_tlie vermin and wild beasts which must be ex- terminated in order that the territory may be habitable Sy^^iyilized man. There are infinitely varied degrees of frankness and fulness in which tlaat radical and sweep- ing opinion may be held or expressed. Those who have successively encountered the perils and massacres of fron- tier life (pioneers and Indian fighters) for tw-e- and a half centuries, the rank and file of our armies at Northern and Western posts, have, with very rare exceptions, boldly and sternly avowed their belief that Indians are tigers, wolves, and wild-cats, and as such in the sight of man and God must be exterminated. Those who have had most to do with the Indians are almost unanimously of that belief ; and very many men who are not cruel, nor vindictive, nor careless of their words or judgments, have accorded in it. Statesmen, magistrates, and various func- tionaries who have had responsible and practical relations with the Indians have with milder terms, and perhaps with some qualifying or softening clauses, expressed their con- viction that the savage is more a beast than a man. This opinion is now held as literally and as firmly by vast num- bers among us as it ever was; subject, however, from some of them to the qualification that the savage is such a y peculiar sort of a beast, that, while there is any possi- bility of his being domesticated, his slaughter ought to be deferred. A few, a very few, of those who with means of a like sort for knowing the Indians have listened to this classi- fication of them with noxious vermin have, with degrees of earnestness in their protest, remonstrated against it. The humane, the philanthropist, the Christian missionary have sternly denied the assumption, and have censured with withering denunciations the course of power or policy which has proceeded upon it in dealing with the Indians 236 INDIAN TBNUEE OP LAND. as if they were beasts and not men. And, of course, those who thus protest and denounce do not fail to affirm that it is the white man's treatment of the Indian that has infuriated him, and made him act like a tearing beast in his torture and rage ; and that in fact the white man has proved the wilder beast of the two. If it should be regarded as worth the while of any two earnest disputants, the one standing for and the other chal- lenging the course pursued towards the aborigines on the ground of their being noxious and pestilent nuisances on the soil, the philanthropical pleader could hardly fail to inti- mate a suggestion something like the following: that in every great city of Christendom there are proportionately to the population of each of them more men, women, and children in the slums and drains of vile filth, desperate in- competency, wretchedness, vice, and destitution than there are of the original native race on this continent; that we do not deny to the most degraded and worthless of these wretches some harborage and dole of pity, nor the right to live out their days in their own fashion ; but that on the contrary we assume the burden and protection of them at our own cost. And why, it would be asked by the phil- anthropist, might not the same course pursued towards the human vermin of the wilderness be taken with these ver- min of cities, — the Indian having at least the one advan- tage of being ventilated by the free air ? The only answer that seems to offer itself to this ques- tion is, that the comparison between the nature and the state of the Indians and the condition of the most wretched classes in cities is not wholly one of likeness, but yields a marked difference. The vilest classes in the cities are the /outgrowth, the refuse, the deposit, the residuum of civiliza- /tion, and so deserve the care and pity of those who enjoy its full blessings ; while the Indians oppose a fresh, resist- \.ing force to the very beginnings of civilization. They are all merged and overshadowed by the disabilities and SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOE CHRISTIANS. 237 wretchedness of pauperism, ignorance, and the lack of any spur in themselves to shake off their squalor and barbar- ism ; there are none among them able and disposed to do for them what prosperous and merciful people do for the i refuse of civilization. / If we thus find the root or starting-point of the white \ man's whole course towards the Indian to lie in the as- sumption or the belief that he was a part of the vermin of the soil whose removal or extinction was essential to secure the white man's unquestioned right to make waste territory liabitable by civilized human beings, it is but fair that we examine the reasons or the evidence which* the white man had for coming to that opinion. And fairness requires the statement that the white man did not begin his intercourse witli the natives with that prejudged viewj of them. That opinion was not a theory to start from, — certainly not with the leading English colonists. Some of the earliest intercourse of the English more especially, but also of the French and Dutch comers liere, with individual natives or with groups of them, was marked by consider- ate sympathy and generosity. And the whites acknowl- edged it as such ; they recognized in it human kindness, — the response of fellow-feeling in the heart, which knits ^ kinship independent of race. It must be urged that the whites did not from the beginning assume as a foregone conclusion that they would need to exterminate the red men utterly, as a condition of their own comfort and se- curity. Indeed, in many very significant instances they seem to have sincerely felt and acknowledged that they had human obligations to fulfil towards the savages. It is true that all the Protestants of those times did believe, as on most sufficient and positive Scriptural authority, that Christians had a right to possess themselves of soil occu- pied by heathens, and to assume the mastery over heathens. But they by no means claimed or believed that it followed from this, as included in it, that they had a right to put ;238 INDIAN TENURE OF LAND. ithe heathen to death as they did the hears and wolves land panthers. The claim of possession and mastery over the heathen was avowedly understood to carry with it the ^obligation to civilize and Christianize them, to treat them jwith human kindness ; and in this way, while standing to I them as benefactors, to obtain their good-will and security from their hate and violence. A careful study of the pri- mary sources of information concerning the earliest inter- course of the white and the red men, always excepting the Spanish invaders, will abundantly prove that the colonists felt and owned an obligation to the natives as human be- ings. But the continuance of that intercourse for a few years supplanted this obligation by the vermin theory. This ruthless view of the natives as belonging to the wild beasts of the forest and the valleys, not having been assumed or acted upon from the first by the Europeans, was of subsequent adoption. Those who have ever since avowed it, maintained it, and resolutely and sternly put it into effect in exterminating warfare, and all who allow this view plausibility and acquiesce in it without protest, stand ready to vindicate it as certified by actual, positive experience. They say that it has been forced upon their convictions by an infinite variety and a vast amount of evidence, the result of actual trial. All purposes and efforts (they will plead) to treat Indians as other than vermin have been utterly thwarted and wasted. More than two centuries of more or less considerate scheming and working for the Indians, as tractable and improvable human beings, have been demonstrated to be failures. Stress is laid upon this very significant affirmation, that those who were found living on this whole continent from the first coming of the whites down to this day, so far from showing among them any self-working process of im- provement or development of manhood, have been steadily deteriorating ; and that, on the whole, — leaving out of view the wrongs inflicted on the Indians by the whites, even REASONS FOR DISPOSSESSING THE NATIVES. 239 if wrong and outrage have predominated in that treatment, — everything which the whites have sincerely, humanely, and intelligently intended for their benefit has invariably been a bane and an injury to them, — depriving them of their wild virility, and reducing them to a mean, abject, and grovelling incompetency or idiocy. Under the influ- ences of civilization which have come the nearest to taming \^ the Indian, it is affirmed that he always exhibits those reversionary characteristics shown by that species of dog among the Esquimaux which is a domesticated wolf : he exchanges a howl for a bark. More than this, intelligent and humane observers have remarked that the same influ- ences and means which advance the white man in steady progress and accvmiulating good, have a deteriorating and pernicious effect upon the Indians. The enormous amount of materials and helps for improving the condition of the Indians which our Government, for instance, has supplied, — implements and tools for husbandry and domestic thrift, stock-cattle, goods of every kind, — have been wasted on unappreciative and swinish receivers, and have simply re- sulted in pauperizing them and making them more lazy. The cooking-stoves, frying-pans, and other like utensils which have been sent into the Indian country by the hun- dred thousand to prompt the squaws to improve their housewifery, and which careful white matrons pride them- selves upon burnishing and keeping for a lifetime, rust out from filth and neglect in a few days of use. ^ It was then through force of the reasons following that , 1 the whites, as soon as they became acquainted with the facts about the Indians, justified themselves in taking pos- session of the wild territory occupied by them ; — 1. They found the native tribes in a state of internecine conflict, fighting with, subduing, and exterminating each other. 2. They satisfied themselves that no one tribe on the locality on which for the time being it happened, so to 240 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. speak, to be encamped, had any long-secured and enjoyed ancestral right of domain upon it; they simply occupied it from stress of circumstance or by result of conquest. 3. They failed to see any signs of improvement or better- ment on the soil, marking an appropriated ownership ; no dwelling, no fence, no well, no stable token of proprietor- ship appeared. The wild rovers or campers left no other trace of themselves than does a horde of buffaloes or a pack of wolves. 4. Very early in the civilized occupancy of this country the conviction rooted itself that there was no possibility of a joint and peaceful occupancy by the two races. No cor- don could keep them apart; one of the two, the civilized or tlie barbarian, must have the whole or none. Having reached the conclusion that the right of local tribes to portions of the territory on which the white men found them was the right of actual possession or occu- pancy for different and unknown terms of time of regions won by conquest and liable at any time to be yielded to a stronger party, another suggestion comes up, which seems to intimate an acknowledgment by the whites of a certain legality in their tenure of the soil by the Indians. The colonists of New England from the first settlement, as individuals and in towns, did consider it a matter of duty, or security, to obtain conveyances of land-titles from the savages. By what right did a petty sachem or a tribal y/ chief deed away and alienate the lands of his people ? We can answer only that the whites put the idea of sale into his head ; suggested it to him ; and in so doing seem to have justified him in assuming the right, to have recognized that he had it so far as to meet their wishes, and to have accepted his scrawls and scratches of bows and tomahawks as signatures completing a quit-claim. "We know that trans- actions of this sort were disputed as invalid within a very short time after they had been made, and that a claim was afterwards advanced by the representatives of foreign sever- ATTESTATION OP INDIAN DEEDS. 241 eigns that all deeds to land here made by the Indians were worthless. The theory being that all wild territory discov- ered by a subject vested in his monarch, the inference was drawn that all subdivisions of it, large or small, needed the royal sanction to convey possession of them. Governor An- dres threw all the people of Massachusetts into a panic by asserting this doctrine. Lands held here directly from the Indians by deed to an individual, or by partitions of a town- ship through the same sort of instruments, might even have the sanction of the General Court of the colony ; but as that court had acted illegally by illegal use of the char- ter, and the charter had been vacated, all proceedings un- der it were null. The trepidation of the disfranchised and non-suited Puritan folk was intense till they stiffened them- selves to assert their rights of possession by purchase and improvement. Andres's doctrine would have left their tenure of the soil hardly any firmer than was that of the Indian. In various parts of the older settlements of the country, preserved among the towns' records or in the cabinets of individual housekeepers, are cherished deeds and instru- ments of conveyance from the Indians, which those who hold them regard as something more than mere curiosities. They are held in many cases as evidences of an honest, humane, and generous purpose on the part of magistrates or ancestors to recognize the natural territorial rights of those found on the soil. The efforts to attest these instru- ments by the generous use of English letters in unpro- nounceable Indian names for persons and for places, and the " armorial bearings," as La Hontan would call them, of the chiefs, certify at least to their antiquity. Many a New England farmer, showing his rough acres to a visitor, will say complacently, " Our family hold this estate from the Indians." The next question in order is this : When an Indian executed a deed of land to white men, what rights of his 16 242 INDIAN TENUEB OP LAND. own did he consider that he yielded up or parted with, and what rights did he intend to transfer to the pur- chaser ? "We must remember that the land in all cases was without improvements, clearings, fencings, wells, or build- ings. It was in its wild state of nature. Curiously enough, the actual testing of the transactions between the seller and the purchaser in such cases showed what the Indian thought he was doing when he sold his land. Tlje moment the white man changed this wild state of nature and began to make improvements upon it, the Indian regretted and tried to retract his transfer of it. It woiild seem that he had intended to allow the white man a right of joint occu- pancy with himself, using the facilities of the region in common. The Indians had no idea of moving off to a dis- tance and keeping away from the fields of the white men. Nor did they generally do so. They came and went as before, loitered about, occasionally got jobs of work and food, and they were always accessible. Nearly half a cen- tury after the settlement of Boston and scores of towns around it, the Apostle Eliot found Indians enough to oc- cupy a dozen towns of their own within thirty miles. It comes at last to this. The white man's uses of terri- tory are always and everywhere incompatible with the red man's uses of it; and the white man's uses nullify and destroy the red man's. The issue, turned to plain fact, is this, — the red man must consent to make common and joint use of territory with the habits of the white man, or he must give way to the white man. A railroad track,"!" mail route, a telegraph wire passing through a wilderness, puts an interdict upon the savage and claims the territory for civilization. The comity of nations, independent and jealous in their sovereignty, does not forbid those links and fibres of transit and intercourse. The untamed ocean allows them, and the wild red hunter must not prohibit ^/them. Here is the central turning-point of all the strug- gle between civilization and barbarism. King Philip began INDIAN EIGHTS NEVER DEFINED. 243 with complaints of the white man's fences at Plymouth ; the savages on our ever-shifting frontiers complain that the white man's surveying parties, engineers, and miners frighten off his game on plains and mountains, — and the white man tells the Indian that if he cannot give up his game he must go with it. All the theories about the rights of savage occupants of unimproved territory, all the prin- ciples of natural law argued out by the most accomplished publicists, yield to the pressure of practical expediency and of the action of another series of laws developed from human activity. Most of those who have had to recog- nize and deal with the undefined rights of the savages in the tenure of land have known nothing at all of these theories and principles of natural law. Those who have known more or less about them, and who might have been expected as statesmen or lawyers to have had some re- gard for them, have found them set aside by such a pre- vailing force of practical defiances or obstructions of them that they have quietly allowed them to fall into abeyance as inoperative. No upright and candid man, magistrate, colonist, army officer, member of Congress, or simple pio- neer, would ever have stoutly denied that the Indians were entitled to some sort of a heritage here; but in all the pages referring more or less directly to the subject which have passed under my eye, I have never met with a clearly defined and positive, however limited, statement of what precisely that right was and is. Nor would such a state- ment even in the form of a legal definition, and allowed as a precedent, have proved practically to carry authority with it, as it would in all cases be held to be subject to the qualification that it must in no case permanently impair the prerogative of civilization over barbarism. According to the natural features and products of dif- ferent regions, competent authorities have made and war- ranted this estimate, — that an extent of from six thousand to fifty thousand acres (that is, more than seven square 244 INDIAN TENURE OP LAND. miles) is necessary for the support in his way of life of a single Indian with his family. And the land must be and continue in a perfectly wild state — of forest, meadow, swamp, coverts, and streams — that it may shelter and subsist all the creatures which live on each other, and then serve the Indian. The axe must never be heard in those deep forest recesses ; the streams must not be dammed at the peril of the fish-ways ; the scent of humanity must not need- lessly taint the air; the tinkle of a cow-bell is a nuisance, and the restless enterprise of the white man is a fatality. No inapt illustration of the contrasted uses of territory by the red man and the white man may be suggested in setting against each other a countless herd of bellowing buf- faloes, trampling over the succulent grasses of the prairie, and the groups of domestic cattle lowing in their fenced pastures and barn-yards. The pond which being dammed to a falling water-power grinds the food of families and saws the lumber for their dwellings, is put to better ser- vice so than when it shelters the lodges even of the in- dustrious and wise beavers. It has been said by a United States Indian Commissioner that a single Indian requires for his support a number of square miles fully equal to the number of civilized whites that can subsist on one square mile. The latest proposition and argument look- ing towards the most humane and practical dealing with the Indian question, recognize the very same principle which has asserted itself in reference to the actual land- tenure of the natives. The most hopeful solution for all our difficulties is said to offer in dividing Indian lands, breaking up all tribal communes, and assigning to each person a severalty of possession to be for a term of years inalienable. At present the United States holds in Reser- vations some one hundred and fifty-six millions of acres for an estimated population of two hundred and sixty- two thousand Indians. Any one who pleases may cast the sum as to the number of acres which would fall to FREE RANGE FOR A SAVAGE. 245 each out of this commonalty. This baronial ownership of territory it is proposed largely to reduce. The space which is by common agreement thought both equitable and practically expedient to assign to each Indian for fixed occupancy and improvement by his own forced or volun- tary labor, is one hundred and sixty acres, — leaving the remaining undivided part of each Reservation as a common ~ stock for investment for the whole tribe. If this scheme should take effect, with assured and recorded legal guaran- tees, it would prove the first real recognition ever made of land-tenure for our aborigines. Vjs'^'"^'*'^ This estimate that has been made of the number of acres of wild forest-space required for the range of each single sav- age, even if allowed to include provision for his squaw and his pappooses, would not even then in all portions of the continent suffice for the maintenance of those dependent in a wasteful way upon it, for all the seasons of the year. In most parts of this country the Indians have always been compelled or prompted to lead a more or less nomadic life. When they are induced to move from one region where game has become scarce in order to seek it in another, they must be able to find such another equally wild region in re- serve for them. The deer, the elk, the moose, the bear, and many small animals were their favorite food. The wolf and the cougar were oftener let alone than molested. Maize was necessarily relied upon by natives not living within the range of the buffalo, for winter's use, and as a very small store of it was easily carried on their tramps. It was at best but dry and hard though nutritious food. Parched and pounded, a handful of grains of it mixed with water, either with or without the help of further cooking, would, as we have noticed, sustain an Indian for a long journey. There is a favorite dish prepared by old-fashioned New England households, of boiled green corn and beans, known by the name of " Succotash " ^ as coming to us from the 1 From the Narragansett language. 246 INDIAN TENUEB OP LAND. Indians. But we should not much relish a dish which a squaw might have cooked for us under that name ; we should have missed the butter and the salt, of which the Indians knew nothing. Fish too, caught in a rude way from full waters, was a resource at some seasons. We must remember, too, that the Indians used the fur- bearing animals only for their own moderate needs, and did not require any such number of them as would threaten their extermination. The rapacity and commercial spirit of the Europeans at once turned the skins of the bear, the deer, the beaver, the fox, the marten, the otter, and the buffalo into articles coveted for traffic. Prom the first colonization a wasting raid has been made upon these ani- mals by the whites, utterly exhausting the near supply, and compelling the Indians — for their own needs and for bar- ter sale — to move deeper and deeper into the wilderness. Much of their land which the whites have occupied had been abandoned by the Indians, and much more has been readily sold by them as useless for their purposes. Indeed soil, forest, valley, and meadow and stream, represent quite different capacities and values to the red man and the white man. And if no violent dealing were spent on the Indians, the steady wasting of their old game would put a period to their way of life. We have also to take into account the fact, that vastly the larger portion of the Indians now on the continent, even the wildest of them, have become, in different degrees, de- pendent upon help and resources for subsistence furnished to them by the whites. I have already made mention of the fact, that, among the vast variety and divergency of views which have found expression concerning the whole rela- tions between the Europeans and the Indians on our north- ern continent, the bold opinion has been advanced that the savages have on the whole found a balance of advantages and benefits from our intercourse with them. If there is a shadow of truth to warrant that eccentric assertion as GOVERNMENT SUPPLIES TO INDIANS. 247 applicable in the past, there is reason for believing that it h&s much to verify it in these last years. The present gene- ration of savages profit largely either from the remorse, or from the apprehensions, or from the generosity of our peo- ple as expressed by the Government. While in our largest cities are crowded hordes of wretched, houseless beggars, suffering all the direful miseries of penury, cold, naked- ness, and disease, the Indians who are pensioners of our Government have transported to their fastnesses, by most costly modes of carriage and distribution, a marvellous variety of necessities and even of luxuries. Droves of beef on the hoof, with whole warehouses of clothing emp- tied of materials for their apparel, minister to prime neces- sities. But this is by no means all : any one who will turn over the annual report of the United States Indian Commission will find in it a most elaborate table, covering (for 1881) one hundred and sixteen closely printed pages, headed " Proposals received and Contracts awarded for Supplies for Indian Service." On reading over that table, one will have really a new and grateful impression of the resources, appliances, ingenuities, and ministrations of civ- ilization for human life. All the varieties of food, of house- hold and farming, mechanical and artistic, tools, of stuffs and garments, of groceries and furniture, of iron, tin, glass, and crockery ware, — fill the specifications in the tables. The eye falls with pleasure upon the hundreds of thousands of pounds of soap, and the thousands of combs, which may be put to excellent use. Cosmetics hold a large space. The variety of surgical instruments and mechanical medi- cal devices is an amazing one. The elaborate list of drugs and medicines would seem to indicate that a system of light practice does not prevail among the natives. To- bacco is furnished most lavishly. When it is considered that ninety-nine hundredths of the articles on these tables were never used by or even known to the Indians before their intercourse with the whites ; and when we also take