Aboriginal America

by Jacob S. C. Abbott

  The American Aborigines have been generally considered by mankind as a stern, taciturn, immovable, unfeeling, and yet shrewd and cunning people. Some travelers, like the celebrated Catlin, among others, who spent a great deal of time among the western tribes, maintain that the degree in which they possess these qualities has been exaggerated. Catlin found the Indians at their own homes, in the villages which they had built on the banks of the Missouri and upon the western prairies, as jovial, as talkative, and as full of life and animation as other men. But the prevailing testimony, especially in respect to those tribes that dwelt on the Atlantic coast at the time of the first settlement of the country, represents them as exceedingly grave and stolid in all their deportment, and possessing very little sensibility of any kind. Their power to endure hunger, cold, and fatigue was surprising. This powers was doubtless, in a great degree, acquired by habit, and must of their apparent insensibility was due to a feeling prevalent among them that it was weak and unmanly to complain. Still there seemed to be something in their physical constitution which gave them a greater power of endurance than belongs to the Caucasian race. They felt cold and hunger, and the pain of wounds, much less, and could consequently endure much more, with the same exercise of fortitude, than other men.

  Indeed, we might have been almost certain that this would be so. The same kind and watchful Providence which gives the eagle his astonishing extent of vision, in order that he may have power to survey the vast field over which he is to seek his food, and enables the polar bear to sleep in comfort on a floor of ice where mercury would freeze, would surely not impart a delicate sensibility to the organization of a man who was to live by seeking his food in the winter in a howling forest, with a certainty of often passing days without sustenance, and nights without any covering but bushes and snow.

  The Taciturnity of the Indians

  The extreme taciturnity of the Indians was one of their most striking characteristics. We shall explain it in different ways according as we suppose, that the Indian was made to fit the circumstances in which he was to be placed, or that he was made like other men, and that the circumstances changed him. On the latter supposition he has learned to be silent, from the fact that silence is so necessary for him while prowling through the woods in search of game, or watching against an ambuscade on the part of an enemy.

  But talkativeness is the result of a peculiar mental organization, leading to a lively and rapid flow of ideas, ardent sensibilities, and a quick and ready action of the nerves and muscles are connected with the organs of speech. All this nice mechanism would be out of place, in a great measure, with these children of the forest;; and, indeed, it would be worse than out of place, for it might be, necessarily for aught we know, connected with a greater sensibility to pain, which to the Indian would be a very serious evil.

  We might suppose, it is true, that the inward mechanism was with him, at birth, the same in respect to these faculties as in the Caucasian race, but that, on account of the mode of life which the Indian leads, it remained undeveloped. This is, doubtless, to some extent true. But it would seen that the Indian children manifest from their earliest infancy the same low degree of sensibility, giving them the power of bearing without inconvenience, or at least without pain, what would be intolerable to the children of another race, which characterizes their fathers and mothers. The children seldom cry. They remain patient, strapped upon their board, looking quietly about, and content apparently with existence alone; while a white child of the same age is endowed with powers of observation and with mental instincts and propensities so sensitive and active that it craves the incessant occupation of its faculties, and scarcely ever intermits his restless activity.

  Where we find peculiarities of temperament thus showing themselves at the earliest age, and continuing to mark the character and conduct under all circumstances to the end of life, it would seem that we are entitled to conclude that they are innate, and, in the individual at least, are not the result of climate or of education, or of any other outward causes.

  Cruelty

  The American Indians, like all other savages, were extremely cruel in the treatment of prisoners captured in war. They took great delight in torturing them, and often burnt them alive. Whether any palliation for these enormities can be derived from the fact that such inflictions produced a less exquisite pain in sufferers of their race than they would have done in ours, we will not undertake to say. At any rate, it is known that prisoners subjected to such treatment bore their tortures with most astonishing fortitude. Sometimes, indeed, such suffering was voluntarily incurred, under the impulse of some exalted sentiment of generosity, or other strong emotion.

  The Father Dying For His Son

  An account is given of an Indian who belonged to a tribe that was involved in some quarrel with a neighboring tribe, and one day when he came home from his hunting he found his wife in a state of extreme anguish and terror from the fact that a party of the enemy had come suddenly upon the wigwam during the absence of the father, and had made a prisoner of the oldest son, and carried him away. The father immediately bade his wife farewell, and putting himself upon the trail of the hostile party he followed them with the utmost diligence. He knew that the destiny of the poor prisoner was most assuredly to be tortured to death by fire, and he was going to offer himself for this sacrifice, in order to obtain the ransom of his child.

  He came up with the party of the enemy just as they were making preparations to enjoy their cruel revenge. He approached them with a signal which was equivalent to a flag of truce in civilized warfare, and offered himself as a substitute for his son. "My poor boy," said he, "is just entering upon life. Do not cut him off so prematurely from the enjoyment of it. He is vigorous and strong, too, and is the hope of his mother, and he will be, for many years, the stay and support of the family. But I am old and infirm. My work will soon be done, and I am of little value to my wife and children. But I am just as good to be burned alive for your revenge as he."

  This, or something equivalent to this, the old man said to his savage enemies. They acknowledged the propriety of the proposal, and made the exchange. They unbound the young man and gave him his liberty. The father sent him away, charging him to go home and take care of his mother and of the children, and then gave himself up to be burnt to death by a process protracted as long as possible, while his enemies feasted and danced around the fire.

  The Practice of Scalping

  The practice which prevailed among all the native tribes of North America of taking off the scalps of enemies slain in battle, and preserving them as trophies of victory, has generally been considered a special token of the barbarous cruelty of the Indian character. The practice, it is true, presents a most shocking image to our imaginations, yet, when we reflect upon it, it does not seem to denote any special and peculiar cruelty. It is barbarous, without doubt, yet still perhaps not specially and peculiarly so.

  Origin of the Practice

  The practice arose very naturally from the custom that prevails universally among all hunting savages, and indeed among all hunting men, whether savage or civilized, of obtaining from the boy of the animal slain something to be preserved as a trophy of the prowess of the hunter in killing him. A barbarous hunter wears the trophies thus obtained upon his person. A civilized one hangs them up in his hall. That seems to be the chief difference between barbarism and civilization in this respect.

  The Indians made their dresses of the skins of animals that they had killed; and the fiercer and more furious the beast that furnished the material, the more distinguished and glorious was the attire.

  There were many parts of the bodies of these animals that were used in this way. Skins were made into quivers, moccasins, leggins and robes. Horns were used in head-dresses; bones were worked into beads and ornaments of every kind; and long hair, dyed of various colors, was formed into fringes to decorate the borders of garments. There was a particular species of eagle called the war-eagle, on account of
his strength and fierceness, whose feathers were prized above all others for purposes of dress and decoration.

  From this practice of taking the skin, the horns, the hair, or the feathers of animals slain in the chase as trophies to be used as articles of dress or ornament, it is but a single step to that of preserving a portion of the long hair of an enemy slain in battle for the same purpose; and when the man was dead there was no special cruelty in taking a portion of the skin with the hair. Not that we are to suppose that the Indians could have any feeling that would lead them to defer taking a scalp till after death from motives of humanity, but only that in ordinary cases they would be compelled to do so. It would, of course, be very seldom that a scalp could be taken from a victim while he was alive.

  Customs Connected with the Practice of Scalping

  The portion of the skin which was taken from the head in scalping an enemy was quite small, only a few inches in diameter. All that was essential was that it should include the crown of the head - that is, the central point from which the hair separates. The hair itself, however, which grew from the other parts of the head was usually cut off too, especially if it was long, and suitable to be worked into fringes and other such ornaments.

  A scalp, when taken from the head, was first stretched in a sort of hoop to keep the skin distended while drying. This hoop was formed upon the end of a long pole by bending the end round into a circle, first cutting away a portion of the wood at the end to make it sufficiently flexible. The scalp was placed in the center of this hoop, and fastened there by strings passing out in every direction to the circumference - the long hair hanging down the pole. The pole served, of course, for a handle by which the trophy could be borne in a conspicuous and triumphant manner.

  There were certain ceremonies to be performed with the fresh scalps as soon as the party taking them had reached home, by way of public recognition of them as warlike trophies. These ceremonies consisted of feastings and rejoicings, accompanied with songs and dances - that is, if such wailing and unearthly succession of sounds as they made could be called songs, or their horrid contortions and gesticulation dances. When these ceremonies were completed the scalps were considered as duly consecrated, and were thenceforth preserved with great care in the wigwam, or worn upon the person, as badges of the highest distinction and honor.

  Treatment of Women

  The Indians have been accused of treating their women as slaves, and there is no doubt that the women were always held by them in a state of very complete and absolute subordination to the men. They were employed all the time in arduous labors, but this was a matter of necessity, for the continual toil of both men and women was in most cases necessary for the maintenance of the family. The woman had the house to put up and take down, the mats and clothing to make, fuel to bring for the fire, and the field to till.

  But all this probably made no more than her fair proportion of toil and exposure, when we consider the sufferings and danger and fatigue which fell to the lot of the husband in his hunting and fishing expeditions. The privations which the men sometimes endured in their long tramps through the forests, especially amid the snows and storms and intense cold which reigned in all the northern forests for so large a portion of the year, were indescribably great, especially since the indomitable pride of the hunter often presented his returning home, however urgent his own personal necessities might be, without having first obtained his game. Instances have been known of the Indians wandering in the woods until they have become perfectly exhausted, and of their then lying down and perishing hunger, rather than go home to a starving family, without the means of supplying them with food.

  Polygamy

  Polygamy prevailed to some extent among the Indian tribes. Of course, since the number of the sexes is everywhere so nearly equal, this practice can never be carried to any very great extent in any human community, even if there were no natural instincts in the heart to war against it. There was no law among the Indians restricting men to a single wife, and prominent personages, such as great warriors and chieftains, often accordingly possessed themselves of more than one. The motive which influenced them, however, in these cases was not, as it would seem, a sensual one. but rather a desire to extend their influence by connecting themselves with powerful families, and to aggrandize themselves in the estimation of the community by enlarging their domestic establishment. The practice, however, being in violation of the natural instincts of man and the essential laws of his constitution, led generally to domestic disquiet and suffering, and sometimes to catastrophes which would have comported well with the strength of the sentiment of jealousy in the heart of the most civilized woman.

  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 discover
ed, 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.

  Chapter 10. 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.