The Wild Frontier

by William M. Osborn

  After Fort William Henry fell in 1757, Paul Roubaus, missionary to the Abnaki Indians, ordered them not to participate in ritual cannibalism as the Ottawas had done before.89

  Governor Clinton reported before 1814 that the Indians “utterly destroyed their enemies by eating their bodies, not because they had an appetite for such fare but in order to excite themselves to greater fury.”90 French officer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, comte de Bougainville, wrote to his mother that “her child shudders at the horrors which we will be forced to witness” in combat employing these most “ferocious of all people, and cannibals by trade,” his Indian allies. He wrote to his brother that the Indians had been “drawn from 500 leagues by the smell of fresh human flesh and the chance to teach their young men how one carves up a human being destined for the pot.”91

  While John Tanner was a captive of the Indians between 1789 and 1817, he encountered medicine man Aiskawbawis. Tanner admitted he never thought well of Aiskawbawis, who claimed to talk with the Great Spirit, beat his drum incessantly at night, driving all the game away, and had “once eaten his own wife because of hunger.” The Indians wanted to kill him for this, but didn’t.92

  Some of the tribes on the northwestern coast were cannibals. They had secret societies. Alvin M. Josephy told about them:

  One of the best known was the Kwakiutl Cannibal Society, whose initiates were possessed by the Cannibal Spirit at the North End of the World. Working up to a frenzy, the dancers bit flesh from the arms of those watching them, and then ate of the body of a specially killed slave or of an animal masked to resemble a human.93

  In the 1860s, 3 Indian tribes attacked the Tonkawa Indians, who were hated for their adherence to Texas and accused of practicing cannibalism.94 The Comanche fought the Tonkawas in 1874 and lost. The Comanche hated them because they served the army as scouts against other Indians and because they were, or had been, cannibals.95

  The Tonkawas practiced cannibalism for food, not ritual. A Tonkawa band, together with settlers in Texas, chased some Comanche horse thieves. Three Tonkawas killed a Comanche rear guard, then rode to a neighboring farm. Noah Smithwick was invited to their feast and remembered what happened:

  Having fleeced off the flesh of the dead Comanche, they borrowed a big wash kettle … into which they put the Comanche meat, together with a lot of corn and potatoes—the most revolting mess my eyes ever rested on. When the stew was sufficiently cooked and cooled to allow of its being ladled out with the hands, the whole tribe gathered round, dipping it up with their hands and eating it as greedily as hogs. Having gorged themselves on this delectable feast, they lay down and slept till night, when the entertainment was concluded with the scalp dance.96

  The Lipans in Texas practiced cannibalism. Texas Ranger Robert Hall was invited to dinner after a Lipan skirmish with the Comanche. “ ‘They offered me a choice slice of Comanche,’ he remarked, ‘but I politely informed them that I had just eaten a rattlesnake and was too full to eat any more.’ “97

  The fact that some Indians were cannibals was a serious impediment to a satisfactory relationship between Indians and settlers. Bernard W. Sheehan put it like this:

  No fantasy-ridden portrayal of savage violence cut more deeply into the Indian’s reserve of humanity than the charge of cannibalism. Some commentators denied the accusation; others made palliating distinctions over the circumstances in which Indians would eat human flesh. James Adair protested that they consumed only the heart of the enemy in order to inspire them with his courage, and at the same time, he denied that Indians were cannibals. An occasional account took pleasure in a blood anecdote. John Long quoted the story of a Jesuit missionary who described an Indian woman feeding her children when her husband arrived with an English prisoner: “She immediately cut off his arm, and gave her children the streaming blood to drink,” asserting at the priest’s protestation that she wanted her children to be warriors “and therefore fed them with the food of men.” A sergeant named Jordan wrote to his wife from the Northwest in 1812 and told of an incident that occurred immediately following his capture by “four damned yellow Indians.” One of the natives agreed to spare his life because Jordan had once given him tobacco at Fort Wayne. But the savage went to the body of Captain Wells who lay nearby, “cut off his head and stuck it on a pole, while another took out his heart and divided it among the chiefs, and they ate it up raw.” The fact could not be disputed, Indians had eaten human flesh and thus had offended against the moral basis of human existence. No amount of explanation could quite cover the crime, nor would any fanciful description replace the accusation.98

  Paradoxically, James Wilson, author of The Earth Shall Weep, had some good things to say about cannibals, quoting Michel de Montaigne about some Brazilian cannibals he had met in Paris: “Those peoples … seem to me to be barbarous only in that they have been hardly fashioned by the mind of man, still remaining close neighbours to their original state of nature.”99

  The way Indians usually handled their prisoners (in Texas at least) terrified the settlers as much as their cannibalism:

  The Indian customs of mutilation, torture, rape, and wanton murder were seen as total depravity. Marauding Indians generally killed their victims outright or tortured them to death soon after capture. They rarely kept prisoners because they did not have the means to confine them, and very often did not even have the means to feed them. Boys and girls beyond the age of infancy were spared because they were useful—the boys to be groomed as warriors and the girls as wives. Infants, however, often were killed as liabilities. Captive women and even young girls could expect to be gang-raped, although sometimes a warrior with prestige might claim a captive as exclusively his own. Girls placed under the supervision of Indian women might be subject to routine acts of sadism, such as burning with firebrands or hot irons, or laceration.100

  As a general rule, when Indian captives were taken, they were held for ransom, adopted by the Indians, or “put to slow, horrible deaths, a practice which, like prisoner taking itself, had originated before the coming of Europeans.”101

  Customs varied from nation to nation, but as a rule war criminals were ritually shaved and painted, then secured loosely, so as to allow some interesting freedom of movement, to a post around which slow-burning firewood had been piled. Before and after the flames were lighted, victims were stoned, slashed, and partially dismembered, care being taken so that these preliminary torments did not bring about their untimely end. Skillful torturers could keep a man, or at least the charred, mutilated hulk of one, alive for many hours. Somewhat like hangings and witch or heretic burnings among Europeans, these were great public occasions which engaged the entire community and were thought to be instructive particularly for youths.102

  The plight of the Moore family illustrated the kind of treatment settlers captured by Indians might receive:

  There was, for example, the case of Martha Moore and her family. After their men were killed defending a farm in southwestern Virginia, they were captured by Shawnee raiders led by a minor chief, Black Wolf. Two of the children, a crying infant, Peggy, and a retarded son, John, were immediately killed…. Returning to his village in Ohio, Black Wolf found a band of Cherokee visiting there. They had also been raiding but without success and were consequently sore and disgruntled. To cheer them up, Black Wolf made a present of Martha Moore and her daughter Jane. (Another daughter, Mary, and a servant girl, Martha Evans, were kept by the Shawnees and treated well until they were ransomed several years later.) The Cherokee tied the women to a stake and commenced to roast them very slowly. Martha Moore cried out and begged to be released quickly, but her pleas were directed to her own God. They were heard by a Shawnee matron who, disgusted by the unheroic sport of the Cherokee, entered their fire ring and with two quick hatchet blows ended the ordeal of the Moore women.103

  Bil Gilbert, who described this scene, added that “such horrible happenings became increasingly frequent and involved the Shawnee as well as Cherokee and othe
r nations.”104

  The matter of Indians murdering prisoners was, of course, a serious one, and Frederick Drimmer said, “The Indian put to the tomahawk all but a small proportion of those who fell into his power.”105 Clark Wissler concluded that the purpose of an Algonquin raider in torturing the settler to death was

  to shock and enrage the white man’s relatives. He took care to leave behind the most hideous evidences of brutality, even the revelation of his tribal identity. No wonder the settlers came to look upon the Indians as devils and to vent their rage against them in much the same way, even carrying off their women and children to be sold as slaves in the West Indies.106

  There is no indication that the purpose of the other tribes was any different.

  *The Potawatomi tribe fought against the English in Pontiac’s Rebellion and for the English in the American Revolution. They fought against the United States in Little Turtle’s War, Tecumseh’s Rebellion, and the Black Hawk War. Soon afterward, their situation became hopeless, and they were relocated west of the Mississippi.86

  CHAPTER 5

  Colonial Atrocities

  The colonial era began with the arrival of the first white settlers in America from Great Britain. The Spanish conquistadores came to the New World to search for gold and glory for their sovereign. The corporate merchants of Great Britain, however, “went looking for money-making opportunities for themselves and their investors.”1 Three years after Queen Elizabeth I died, King James I granted settlement charters to the Virginia Company of London to develop the South and the Virginia Company of Plymouth to develop New England. These were capitalistic companies. Great Britain “deliberately set out to populate the New World.” The Spanish had had few settlers.2

  The Virginia Company of London settled at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. A swampy area had been selected to deter Spanish attacks, and it was a breeding ground for malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, and dysentery. The emigrants knew little about farming, and after a severe drought, there was widespread starvation. The company persisted and provided supplies to any colonist willing to make the voyage west. Captain John Smith* arrived and saved the colony by stopping the practice of having everyone draw from the common stores. Instead, he encouraged individuals to work harder “by giving each his share in direct proportion to his production.”4

  The Mayflower, headed for Virginia, was blown off course by a storm and landed on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Although the ship remained through the winter to give shelter, by April half the colonists had died. The others had survived in part because the Abnaki Indian Samoset (who was visiting the Wampanoag) and the Wampanoag Squanto arranged a treaty with the local Wampanoags and introduced them to native crops such as corn.5

  John Smith’s adversary in the Powhatan Wars was Chief Opechancanough, brother of Powhatan. In 1607, Smith was hunting with some Indian guides. His party was ambushed by Opechancanough and his 300 Indians. Smith was the only settler who survived. He was captured, but later released.6

  The next year, he was getting some corn from Opechancanough when he learned he was surrounded by several hundred well-armed Indians. Smith grabbed Opechancanough by the scalp lock and stuck his pistol in his ribs. He told the Indians that they had promised to load his ship with corn, and if they did not, he would load it with their dead carcasses. The corn was loaded.7 This was only one of several times Opechancanough and John Smith would take turns capturing each other.

  In 1622, Opechancanough began a war that became a series of conflicts. It started in Jamestown as the result of an event involving 2 men. Trader Morgan (whose first name is not known) had gone into the woods to do business with the Indians in March. His friends never saw him again. But, shortly afterward, Nemattanow, or Nemattanew, a prominent Powhatan (the English called him Jack of the Feathers because he would often dress himself with feathers “as though he meant to flye”8), came out of the woods wearing Morgan’s hat.9 One author stated that Nemattanow announced Morgan’s death.10 Morgan’s servants shot and killed him.11

  Opechancanough immediately threatened revenge, even though he had told the settlers only a few months before that “he held the peace so firme, the sky should fall [ere] he dissolved it.”12 He knew that the lucrative tobacco crop had brought too many settlers to Virginia. By 1622, Indian hunting grounds and even the Indian way of life had been impaired by the settlers. The Morgan incident made up his mind. Only 2 weeks after Nemattanow’s death, Opechancanough directed an attack against settlements and plantations along the James River; on the first day alone, 347 men, women, and children were killed out of a population of only 1,200.13

  Governor Wyatt called a peace conference. Opechancanough and several hundred Indians attended, and Wyatt tried to poison all of them. Some 200 became violently ill, and “many, helpless, were slaughtered,”14 but Opechancanough escaped.15 (The poisoning led to the complaint of the Virginia Company noted earlier, to the effect that the colonists had gone too far.)

  Opechancanough signed a peace treaty with the settlers in 1632, but 12 years later, in 1644, he attacked again, this time killing 500 out of the 8,000 settlers. At the time of this attack, he was about 100 years old, very feeble, blind, and had to be carried on a litter. He was captured for the last time. Governor Berkeley ordered that he be treated with courtesy, but a guard shot him in the back, killing him.16

  As so often occurred in conflicts between settlers and Indians, both sides were losers. Opechancanough brought about not only the bankruptcy of Virginia, but also the end of the Powhatan Confederacy. Chief Powhatan’s successor, Necotowance, granted the settlers the legal right to the lands they had occupied.17

  Father Isaac Joques was a missionary to the Mohawk. He was captured in the 1630s, whereupon his thumb was amputated and presented to him. He publicly offered it to God as a sacrifice, but one of his comrades told him to stop because otherwise the Indians might force it into his mouth and compel him to eat it. He flung it away. Cutting off an ear, a strip of flesh, or a finger and making the victim eat it was a “usual torture.”18

  In 1632, the Delawares killed 32 Dutch settlers at Swaanendael on Delaware Bay.19

  The settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony learned that the Indians, presumably Pequots, flayed some prisoners alive with “ye shells of fishes,” cut off the members and joints of others piecemeal and broiled them on the coals, and ate clumps of the flesh of others in their sight while they lived.20 A group of settlers in Massachusetts was killed in 1637. One was put to death by roasting.21

  In retaliation, in May 1637 Captain John Mason led an expedition that took an Indian prisoner who answered the English interrogation with mockery. The soldiers tied one of his legs to a post, pulled on a rope tied to his other leg, and tore him apart. Captain Underhill shot the Indian as an act of mercy.22

  Other atrocities were committed by the settlers (sometimes with the help of other Indians). In June 1637, an army composed of 240 English colonists, 1,000 Narragansets, and 70 Mohegans made a night attack on a Pequot town near the Mystic River in Connecticut, burned the town, and killed its 600 inhabitants. Many of the casualties were women and children who burned to death. The governor said it was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire. Some Pequots were later trapped in a swamp and surrendered. The adult male captives were killed, the boys sold to the West Indies, and the women and girls parceled out to the settlers as slaves.23

  Toward the end of the Pequot War in 1637, the English received the severed heads of Pequots from surrounding Indian tribes.24

  In the first year of the Beaver Wars, a war party of 100 Iroquois met 300 Hurons* and Algonquins. Normally Indians did not attack unless they had substantially superior numbers, but Iroquois (Oneida) chief Ononkwaya persuaded the Iroquois to attack anyhow. Only 4 or 5 Iroquois survived, one of whom was Ononkwaya, and they were killed by torture. His execution was reported by a Jesuit missionary.

  Ononkwaya was roasted, but did not flinch. When the Hurons believed him dead, one of them scalped him. He leape
d up, grabbed some burning sticks, and drove the crowd back. He was pelted with sticks, stones, and live coals. He was thrown into the fire, but he leaped out with a blazing brand in each hand and ran toward the Huron town. The Hurons tripped him, cut off his hands and feet, and again tossed him into the fire. He crawled toward the crowd on his elbows and knees glaring at them ferociously. They rushed forward and cut off his head.26

  In 1639, the Hurons captured 113 Iroquois. Some were from war parties. Others were casual travelers. All 113 were burned to death.

  A Dutch Staten Island farmer was killed in 1641 by a group of Raritan Indians, a subtribe of the Delawares. The Dutch then offered bounties for Raritan scalps or heads.27

  The Wappinger Indians asked Dutch governor Willem Kieft in 1643 for help against the Mohawk, who were trying to get tribute from them. Kieft instead turned the Mohawk loose on the Wappingers, who killed 70 and enslaved others. Kieft then sent Dutch soldiers to Pavonia, the present site of Jersey City, to murder the surviving Wappingers, mostly women and children, whom the Mohawk had not harmed. They returned bearing the severed heads of 80 Indians. The soldiers and settlers used them as footballs on the streets. Thirty prisoners were tortured to death “for the public amusement.” The night became known as the Slaughter of the Innocents.28

  The governor had a houseguest both before and after the slaughter. His name was David Pietersz de Vries, an artillery master. He could see the firing in Pavonia from the residence that night and hear the shrieks of the Indians. He learned that the soldiers had taken babies from their mothers’ breasts, hacked them to pieces in the presence of their parents, and thrown the pieces in the fire and in the water. Some babies were thrown in near the shore, and when their parents jumped in to save them, the soldiers would not let them come back to land, and they drowned. The next day some survivors came in to beg for food and get warm. They were murdered and tossed in the water. When de Vries returned to his country home, survivors straggled by with hands or legs amputated. Some were “holding their entrails in their arms.”29