Aboriginal America

by Jacob Abbott

  Intellectual Superiority of the Caucasian Race

  We are surprised sometimes, it is true, at the ingenuity which the Indians exhibited in some of their inventions, and it is, indeed, in some sense wonderful that with materials and implements so imperfect they could manufacture such efficient weapons and carry out such serious contrivances. But, after all, when we come to compare a bark canoe, perfect as it is in its way, with one of the ocean steam-ships of the Caucasian race, or the best made stone-tipped arrow ever shot at a moose or a buffalo, with the double barreled rifled carbines carrying an explosive bullet, with which a French hunter lies in wait for an African lion, we learn the immense distance which separates the powers and attainments of the two races from each other. We must remember, too, that the contrivances which we find Indians now using, and which we think so ingenious, are not the inventions of the individuals that we see using them, not even of the generation now upon the stage. They are the results of the combined ingenuity of a hundred generations! It is somewhat the same, it is true, with our inventions; but with us, not only are the results infinitely greater, but the work is still going on with a steadiness and rapidity of progress almost inconceivable. There is doubtless more real invention exercised, and a greater number of new and ingenious contrivances originated and perfected every single year, in any one of ten thousand machine shops and manufactories now in operation in America, than the Indians can produce as the result of the accumulated efforts of all the generations of their race, from their earliest arrival upon these shores to the present time.

  Two Great Means of Civilization

  But what ever we may think of the intellectual inferiority of the Indian race, the slowness of their progress in the arts of life was not due wholly to that cause. There are two great essential elements without which civilization can never make any rapid progress, or attain to any great height, in any nation. These two elements are iron, and the art of writing. With the possession of iron to make implements and tools, one man, it is found, can produce the food of ten, thus leaving the other four of the half of the community that we may suppose to be able-bodied, to be employed in other occupations. it is in consequence of this release of so large a portion of the community from the labor of procuring food, through the aid afforded by iron, that arts and inventions arise. Whereas, without iron, it requires five men to produce the food of ten, and the other five consist of the very young, the very old, the sick and the inform. So that, without iron, nearly the whole available strength of the community is required for the production of food, the surplus that remains being barely sufficient to provide, in the simplest possible way, for the demands of nature in respect to shelter and clothing.

  Again, with the art of writing the progress made in each separate generation is recorded, and thus the goal attained in one age becomes the starting point in the next. It follows from this art a race that possesses the art of writing may be decisively progressive, but one which is without that art can only be so in a very limited degree. In this latter case the greatest part of what any one genius discovers or learns dies with him, and the next genius that arises must commence the work anew. Thus the nation, even if it is always rising, is always sinking back again to where it was before. Nothing but the art of writing, to provide each generation with the means of recording what it has discovered, will enable it to keep its hold and go on continually ascending.

  The Indians accordingly, being without this art, made no advance whatever. If they did not even retrograde, they lived from generation to generation the same.

  The Coming of the Europeans

  The Coming of the Europeans

  The coming of the Europeans to this country brought new races not only of men, but also of plants and animals, into contact and connection with those previously existing here. The result was that, in the course of two centuries, immense changes were produced in the occupancy of the country, new and higher forms that were introduced from the old world superseding and displacing the inferior and more imperfect ones which before had possession of the new.

  Changes in Respect to Animal Life

  Some of the more remarkable of these changes are well known. Others equally interesting, in a philosophical point of view, but leading to results less conspicuous, have not attracted so much attention. One very striking case is that of the horse. Certain animals of this species escaped from the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru--very likely a small number at first. They found the region around them producing plenty of grass, and the climate mild and summer-like through the whole year. Of course, they required no care on the part of man, and began soon to multiply with great rapidity; and now, after the lapse of three hundred years, herds of them cover the prairies and plains of the middle and southern regions of America in countless millions, and, of course, other animals, that before occupied the same grounds and fed upon the same herbage, have been displaced by them and have disappeared.

  It is somewhat so with the cow. Wild cattle, originally introduced into the country by colonizing companies from Spain, now throng the South American plains in such numbers that they are hunted and slain by hundreds of thousands every year for the sake of the hides. And still the numbers are increasing.

  The bovine races of Europe, however, have not been able to spread in a wild state northwardly into the prairies of North America, on account perhaps of the fact that the buffalo, a superior animal of the same kind--superior in respect to strength and ability to maintain his ground--has possession already. Nor were they or the horses able, unaided by man, to occupy the northern regions on the Atlantic; for although these regions were well adapted to produce their peculiar food, the winters were too long and cold for such animals to live through them without artificial aid. With this aid, however, they can do it, and thus, under the fostering charge of man, the green meadows and hill-sides, extending over many thousands of square miles between the lakes and the sea, have been covered with flocks of sheep and herds of horses and cows, while the bear and the moose that formerly had possession of them have passed away. A few lingering specimens only remain to roam in solitude within the narrow limits left to them, and to wonder where their companions can have gone.

  Changes in Respect to Plants

  Changes corresponding to these have taken place on a vast scale in the vegetable kingdom. Multitudes of plants that were introduced into America by the European colonists, either accidentally or by design, have since that time become very widely extended here, and have extirpated or displaced, to a corresponding degree, the original occupants of the soil. These changes have taken place sometimes with and sometimes without the aid of man. One of the most striking examples of the former class is that of the grasses and the cereal grains, such as wheat and rye, which now cover millions and millions of acres through all the central regions of the continent, where formerly brakes and bullrushes and wild wood-flowers, barren and useless, had complete possession.

  It is well that this should be so. Such changes are in fulfillment of the beneficent designs formed by the author of nature for the gradual improvement of the condition of the earth, and the advancement of it, in respect to its occupants, from lower to higher and nobler forms of life.

  Changes in the Races of Men

  A change exactly analogous to these has taken place in respect to man. The aboriginal inhabitants of the country were of races formed with constitutions, both physical and mental, adapting them to obtain their livelihood by fishing and the chase--modes of life by means of which North America might sustain perhaps twenty or thirty millions of inhabitants. The Caucasian race, which was introduced from Europe, is endowed with constitutions adapting them to gain their livelihood by agriculture, commerce, and the manufacturing arts, a mode of life by which the same territory is capable of supporting many hundred millions--we know not how many. Under these circumstances it was an inevitable, and as much in fulfillment of the designs of divine Providence, that the old races should be supplanted by the new, as that the horse and the co
w should displace the alligator and the elk , and brakes and bulrushes yield their native ground to corn.

  And such has been the fact. It has been estimated that at the time America was discovered the number of Indians dwelling within the limits of the United States was about sixteen millions. Of the descendants of these sixteen millions only about two millions now remain.

  The Displacement of One Race By Another Not Necessarily Attended With Suffering

  Nor are we to suppose that such a change as this, by which a lower race is supplanted by a higher one, necessarily implies any violence or wrong on the part of the former against the latter, or any special suffering. It is the race and not the individuals that the extirpating process acts upon. That is to say, the effect is produced, not by the destruction of individuals already existing, but by a diminution in the numbers born to take the places of those ceasing to exist by natural causes. If the various aboriginal races had always been, and still continued to be, treated with the strictest justice and the most sincere and cordial good will, they would have none the less surely fulfilled the universal destiny of the lower to give way before the higher forms, in the great onward march of organization and life; but the change would have come slowly, quietly, and without suffering. Indeed, the very beings subject to it, with the exception of a few far-seeing minds that might discover it by a special and laborious study of the past and of the future, would have been unconscious that it was going on.

  Difficulties That Opposed the Amalgamation of the Two Races

  It might at first be supposed that when a superior and an inferior race were brought thus together upon the same territory, a process of amalgamation would have set in, by which, in the end, they would gradually be melted into one; but there are very deep-seated causes operating in all such cases to prevent such a union. In the first place, the mental and physical constitution of the Indian fits him specially for wandering as a hunter through the woods, and gaining his subsistence by the chase, and for no other mode of life. These qualities are innate and permanent. At least they are beyond the reach of any means of change that can be brought into operation in the course of any moderate number of generations. The whole history of the Indian tribes and of the almost fruitless attempts which have been made to civilize them, and induce them to live like white men, proves this quite conclusively. Missions were established among the Indians of New England for the purpose of instructing them in the arts of European life and in the truths of Christianity, and though for a time very remarkable results were produced, no radical or lasting change was usually effected. As soon as the external support to this new state of things, and in a certain sense unnatural, was withdrawn, everything slowly but irresistibly sank back into its former condition, and the hereditary instincts and propensities of the race returned in all their pristine vigor.

  In the same manner the experiment has several times been made of educating Indian Young men in the New England colleges, but the pupils thus taught have, almost without exception, when their prescribed course was finished, and they were left at liberty, as they arrived at manhood, to follow the impulses and instincts of their own hearts, very soon turned away from the arts and refinements of life to which they had thus been ushered, and have gone back into the woods, and relapsed hopelessly into their former condition.

  Fixedness of the Indian Tastes and Habits

  There are remnants of many of the ancient tribes existing at the present day in various parts of our country, but they live by themselves, a marked and separate race, with nothing changed except the external circumstances by which they are surrounded. They live in huts still, as their ancestors did three hundred years ago. it is only the covering that is changed--the birch bark, which has failed, being replaced with canvass, or with slabs obtained from the white men. They sit upon the ground around their wigwam fire, just as of old, and are occupied in the same species of employment, only that they make baskets instead of canoes, and bows and arrows to sell as toys, or to be used by children in shooting at coppers for a prize, instead of for the service of hunters in the chase. Even their garments retain in a great measure the forms of the old national costume, though made now of blankets and calico, instead of the skins of beasts, and adorned with glass beads instead of wampum. they come with the wares which they make to sell into the white man's kitchen, where they are kindly entertained, and where they have every opportunity to observe the conveniences and the comforts which civilization affords, but no kindling desire is awakened in their minds to imitate or share them. Silent, patient, impassible, they witness the advance of the mighty wave which sweeps on so irresistibly over and around them, apparently without any regret for the past, or any emotion, either of hope or fear, in respect to the future. And thus in the heart of a country changing and advancing more rapidly than any other, they alone remain, from generation to generation, wholly unchanged.

  There are descendants from Indians residing in certain portions of the Southern States that have adopted a settled mode of life, and have attained to a considerable degree of refinement and civilizations, but in general, even among these, the degree in which they manifest the capacities of the Caucasian race corresponds very nearly to the proportion of Caucasian blood that flows in their veins.

  Present Condition of the Western Tribes

  In the interior and western portions of the continent are vast tracts of land which remain almost entirely in possession of Indians; and although the United States government exercises a general jurisdiction over the whole country, still there are extended territories reserved for the exclusive occupancy of the native tribes. Within these reservations the tribes live in their own way, pursuing such modes of life and maintaining such systems of government as they themselves choose. This state of things has continued for more than a century, without any essential change taking place in the Indian habits or character. A very considerable trade has sprung up, it is true, between the natives and the whites, by which, in exchange for skins and furs which they obtain by trapping and the chase, the former procure a great many commodities that are produced by the arts and manufactures of civilized life. But the introduction of these commodities among them does not have the effect of changing their habits or modes of life in any appreciable degree, but rather, by facilitating the supply of their wants and the satisfaction of their desires, to fix and establish these habits more firmly than ever. They obtain from white men horses and guns and blankets, and gaudy trappings and decorations of all kinds. But they use all these things only as means to enable them the better to act their parts as huntsmen and warriors.

  The Mandan Lodges

  Some of the western tribes avail themselves of their commerce with the whites to procure the means of adding very materially to their domestic comfort, while still not essentially changing the system of life handed down to them from their forefathers. They built lodges of great size, sometimes fifty feet in diameter. The sides are formed, for four or five feet above the ground, of a bank of earth. Above this the walls are continued upward by a row of very stout poles or stems of trees, which are set close together on the top of the bank and meet in the center above. The roof is thatched with willow boughs and then plastered over with clay, so as to make it perfectly water-proof. In the center of the interior is a fire-place, which consists simply of a shallow depression in the ground. This fire-place can, of course, be approached on every side, and it is for the use in common of all the families that inhabit the lodge.

  The space at the circumference of the lodge, extending along the wall, is divided into separate compartments, like the cabins of a ship, for the several families. Sometimes very rich and showy curtains are used to separate these compartments from each other, and the posts which are set up to divide them are hung with arms and armor, and also with scalps, antlers and other trophies.

  Each family has a bedstead within its compartment. A buffalo skin stretched over it forms both sacking and bed. Another buffalo skin serves the combined purpose of sheets, blan
kets and counterpane; while a third, properly folded, fulfills the function of both bolster and pillows.

  Some of these Indians carry their luxury, in the matter of dress and decoration, very far. An American traveler once gave fifty dollars for the head-dress of a western Indian, which he wished to purchase as a specimen of Indian art, to add to his museum.

  Different Causes for the Aversion of the Indians to Live Like the Whites

  Great surprise has often been expressed at the total disinclination always manifested by Indians to imitate the modes of living adopted by the whites, after having once had an opportunity to observe the infinite superiority of them. And although the principal cause may be that they are endowed by the Creator with a mental and physical constitution that adapts them to a different course of life, there are other causes that have been combined with this in producing the effect. Among them one was the repulsion of race--a fixed principle of nature that manifests itself universally throughout all the realms of animal life, and has been ordained, as we shall presently see, for wise and beneficent ends, which prevented them from being cordially received into the same social and domestic system with the whites, and treated by them in it as friends and brothers. A great many curious anecdotes are related in books of Indian history illustrating the position which the poor Indian occupied among the whites, and the feelings with which he entertained the idea of living with them and becoming one among them.