USA > Indiana > Montgomery County > History of Montgomery County, together with historic notes on the Wabash Valley; gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic sources > Part 20
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182
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
then the surface was polished with stone implements. These round stones were the common property of the tribe, and were used by individual families as occasion required .*
"They dug their ground with an instrument of wood, which was fashioned like a broad mattock, wherewith they dig their vines as in France ; they put two grains of maize together."+
For boiling their victuals they made use of earthen kettles .¿ The kettle was held up by two crotches and a stick of wood laid across. The pot ladle, called by them mikoine, laid at the side.§ "In the north they often made use of wooden kettles, and made the water boil by throwing into it red hot pebbles. Our iron pots are esteemed by them as much more commodious than their own." [
That the North American Indians not only used, but actually manufactured, pottery for various culinary and religious purposes admits of no argument. Hennepin remarks: "Before the arrival of the Europeans in North America both the northern and southern savages made use of, and do to this day use, earthen pots, especially such as have no commerce with the Europeans, from whom they may procure kettles and other movables."" M. Pouchot, who was ac- quainted with the manners and customs of the Canadian Indians, states "that they formerly had usages and utensils to which they are now scarcely accustomed. They made pottery and drew fire from wood." **
In 1700, Father Gravier, in speaking of the Yazoos, says: "You see there in their cabins neither clothes, nor sacks, nor kettles, nor guns ; they carry all with them, and have no riches but earthen pots, quite well made, especially little glazed pitchers, as neat as you would see in France." ++ The Illinois also occasionally used glazed pitch- ers.## The manufacturing of these earthen vessels was done by the women. §§ By the southern Indians the earthenware goods were used for religious as well as domestic purposes. Gravier noticed several in their temples, containing bones of departed warriors, ashes, etc.
* Statements of early settlers.
+ Laudonnière, p. 174.
# Hennepin, vol. 2, p. 105.
Pouchot's Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 186.
= Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, vol. 2, pp. 123, 124.
"T Volume 2, pp. 102, 103. This work was written in 1697.
** Pouchot's Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 219.
tt Gravier's Journal, published in Shea's Early Voyages Up and Down the Missis- sippi. p 135.
## Vide p. 109 of this work.
SS Gravier's Journal, published in Shea's Early Voyages Up and Down the Missis- sippi, p. 135; also, Du Pratz' History of Louisiana, vol. 2, p. 166.
183
INDIAN FORTIFICATIONS.
The American Indians, both northern and southern, had most of their villages fortified either by wooden palisades, or earthen breastworks and palisades combined. De Soto, on the 19th of June, 1541, entered the town of Pacaha,* which was very great, walled, and beset with towers, and many loopholes were in the towers and wall.+ Charlevoix said : "The Indians are more skillful in erect- ing their fortifications than in building their houses. Here you see villages surrounded with good palisades and with redoubts; and they are very careful to lay in a proper provision of water and stones. These palisades are double, and even sometimes treble, and generally have battlements on the outer circumvallation. The piles, of which they are composed, are interwoven with branches of trees, without any void space between them. This sort of fortifica- tion was sufficient to sustain a long siege whilst the Indians were ignorant of the use of fire-arms."+
La Hontan thus describes these palisaded towns : "Their villages are fortified with double palisadoes of very hardwood, which are as thick as one's thigh, and fifteen feet high, with little squares about the middle of courtines."§
These wooden fortifications were used to a comparatively late day. At the siege of Detroit, in 1712, the Foxes and Mascontins resisted, in a wooden fort, for nineteen days, the attack of a much larger force of Frenchmen and Indians. In order to avoid the fire of the French, they dug holes four or five feet deep in the bot- tom of their fort. |
The western Indians, in their fortifications, made use of both earth and wood. An early American author remarks: "The re- mains of Indian fortifications seen throughout the western country, have given rise to strange conjectures, and have been supposed to appertain to a period extremely remote ; but it is a fact well known that in some of them the remains of palisadoes were found by the first settlers." When Maj. Long's party, in 1823, passed through Fort Wayne, they inquired of Metea, a celebrated Pottawatomie chief well versed in the lore of his tribe, whether he had ever heard of any tradition accounting for the erection of those artificial mounds which are found scattered over the whole country. "He immediately replied that they had been constructed by the Indians as fortifica-
* Probably in the limits of the present state of Arkansas.
+ Account by the Gentleman of Elvas, p. 172.
# Narrative Journal, vol. 2, p. 128.
% Vol. 2, p. 6.
Dubuisson's Official Report.
'T Views of Louisiana: Brackenridge, p. 14.
184
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
tions before the white man had come among them. He had always heard this origin ascribed to them, and knew three of those con- structions which were supposed to have been made by his nation. One is at the fork of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines Rivers, a second on the Ohio, which, from his description. was supposed to be at the mouth of the Muskingum. He visited it, but could not de- scribe the spot accurately, and a third, which he had also seen, he stated to be on the head-waters of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan. This latter place is about forty miles northwest of Fort Wayne."
One of the Miami chiefs, whom the traders named Le Gros, told Barron* that "he had heard that his father had fought with his tribe in one of the forts at Piqua, Ohio; that the fort had been erected by the Indians against the French, and that his father had been killed during one of the assaults made upon it."+
While at Chicago, and "with a view to collect as much informa- tion as possible on the subject of Indian antiquities, we inquired of Robinson # whether any traditions on this subject were current among the Indians. He observed that these ancient fortifications were a frequent subject of conversation, and especially those in the nature of excavations made in the ground. He had heard of one made by the Kickapoos and Fox Indians on the Sangamo River, a stream running into the Illinois. This fortification is distinguished by the name of Etnataek. It is known to have served as an in- trenchment to the Kiekapoos and Foxes, who were met there and defeated by the Pottawatomies, the Ottawas and Chippeways. No date was assigned to this transaction. We understood that the Et- nataek was near the Kickapoo village on the Sangamo."§
Near the dividing line between sections 4 and 5, township 31 north, of range 11 east, in Kankakee county, Illinois, on the prairie about a mile above the mouth of Rock Creek, are some ancient mounds. "One is very large, being about one hundred feet base in diameter and about twenty feet high, in a conic form, and is said to contain the remains of two hundred Indians who were killed in the celebrated battle between the Illinois and Chippeways, Delawares and Shawnees; and about two chains to the northeast, and the same
* An Indian interpreter.
+ Long's Expedition to the Sources of the St. Peters, vol. 1, pp. 121, 122.
# Robinson was a Pottawatomie half-breed, of superior intelligence, and his state- ments can be relied upon. He died, only a few years ago, on the Au Sable River.
§ Long's Expedition, vol. 1, p. 121. This stream is laid down on Joliet's map, pub- lished in 1681, as the Pierres Sanguines. In the early gazetteers it is called Sangamo: vide Beck's Illinois and Missouri Gazetteer, p. 154. Its signification in the Pottawat- omie dialect is "a plenty to eat ": Early History of the West and Northwest, by S. R. Beggs, p. 157. This definition, however, is somewhat doubtful.
185
INDIAN MOUNDS.
distance to the northwest, are two other small mounds, which are said to contain the remains of the chiefs of the two parties."*
Uncorroborated Indian traditions are not entitled to any high degree of credibility, and these quoted are introduced to refute the often repeated assertion that the Indians had no tradition concerning the origin of the mounds scattered through the western states, or that they supposed them to have been erected by a race who occu- pied the continent anterior to themselves.
These mounds were seldom or never used for religious purposes by the Algonquins or Iroquois, but Penicault states that when he visited the Natchez Indians, in 1704, " the houses of the Sunst are built on mounds, and are distinguished from each other by their size. The mound upon which the house of the Great Chief, or Sun, is built is larger than the rest, and its sides are steeper. The temple in the village of the Great Sun is about thirty feet high and forty-eight in circumference, with the walls eight feet thick and covered with a matting of canes, in which they keep up a perpetual fire."#
De Soto found the houses of the chiefs built on mounds of differ- ent heights, according to their rank, and their villages fortified with palisades, or walls of earth, with gateways to go in and out. §
When Gravier, in 1700, visited the Yazoos, he noticed that their temple was raised on a mound of earth. | He also, in speaking of the Ohio, states that "it is called by the Illinois and Oumiamis the river of the Akansea, because the Akansea formerly dwelt on it." The Akansea or Arkansas Indians possessed many traits and cus- toms in common with the Natchez, having temples, pottery, etc. A still more important fact is noticed by Du Pratz, who was inti- mately acquainted with the Great Sun. He says: "The temple is about thirty feet square, and stands on an artificial mound about eight feet high, by the side of a small river. The mound slopes insensibly from the main front, which is northward, but on the other sides it is somewhat steeper."
According to their own traditions, the Natchez "were at one
* Manuscript Kankakee Surveys, conducted by Dan W. Beckwith, deputy govern- ment surveyor, in 1834. Major Beckwith was intimately acquainted with the Potta- watomies of the Kankakee, whose villages were in the neighborhood, and without doubt the account of these mounds incorporated in his Field Notes was communicated to him by them.
t The chiefs of the Natches were so called because they were supposed to be the direct descendants of a man and woman, who, descending from the sun, were the first rulers of this people.
# Annals of Louisiana: Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida, new series, pp. 94, 95.
§ Account by the Gentleman of Elvas.
| Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi, p. 136.
T Idem, p. 120.
186
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
time the most powerful nation in all North America, and were looked upon by the other nations as their superiors, and were, on that account, respected by them. Their territory extended from the River Iberville, in Louisiana, to the Wabash."* They had over five hundred suns, and, consequently, nearly that many villages. Their deeline and retreat to the south was owing not to the superi- ority in arms of the less civilized surrounding tribes, but was due to the pride of their own chiefs, who, to lend an imposing magnificence to their funeral rites, adopted the impolitie custom of having hun- dreds of their followers strangled at their pyre. Many of the mounds, scattered up and down valleys of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi, while being the only, may be the time-defying monu- ments of the departed power and grandeur of these two tribes.
The Indian manner of making a fire is thus related by Hennepin : "Their way of making a fire, which is new and unknown to us, is thus : they take a triangular piece of cedar wood of a foot and a half in length, wherein they bore some holes half through ; then they take a switch, or another small piece of hard wood, and with both their hands rub the strongest upon the weakest in the hole, which is made in the cedar, and while they are thus rubbing they let fall a sort of dust or powder, which turns into fire. This white dust they roll up in a pellet of herbs, dried in autumn, and rubbing them all together, and then blowing upon the dust that is in the pellets, the fire kindles in a moment. "+
The food of the Indians consisted of all the varieties of game, fishes and wild fruits in the vicinity ; and they cultivated Indian corn, melons and squashes. From corn they made a preparation called sagamite. They pulverized the corn, mixed it with water, and added a small proportion of ground gourds or beans.
The clothing of the northern Indians consisted only of the skins of wild animals, roughly prepared for that purpose. Their southern brethren were far in advance of them in this respect. "Many of the women wore cloaks of the bark of the mulberry tree, or of the feathers of swans, turkies or Indian ducks. The bark they take from young mulberry shoots that rise from the roots of trees that have been cut down. After it is dried in the sun they beat it to make all the woody parts fall off, and they give the threads that remain a 'second beating, after which they bleach them by exposing them to the dew. When they are well whitened they spin them about the coarseness of pack-thread, and weave them in the following manner :
* Du Pratz' History of Louisiana, vol. 2, p. 146.
t Ibid, vol. 2, p. 103.
187
THEIR CANOES.
They plant two stakes in the ground about a yard and a half asunder, and having stretched a cord from the one to the other, they fasten their threads of bark double to this cord, and then interweave them in a curious manner into a cloak of about a yard square, with a wrought border round the edges."*
The Indians had three varieties of canoes, elm-bark, birch-bark and pirogues. "Canoes of elm-bark were not used for long voyages, as they were very frail. When the Indians wish to make a canoe of elm-bark they select the trunk of a tree which is very smooth, at the time when the sap remains. They cut it around, above and below, about ten, twelve or fifteen feet apart, according to the num- ber of people which it is to carry. After having taken off the whole in one piece, they shave off the roughest of the bark, which they make the inside of the canoe. They make end ties of the thickness of a finger, and of sufficient length for the canoe, using young oak or any other flexible and strong wood, and fasten the two larger folds of the bark between these strips, spreading them apart with wooden bows, which are fastened in about two feet apart. They sew up the two ends of the bark with strips drawn from the inner bark of the elm, giving attention to raise up a little the two extremities, which they call pinces, making a swell in the middle and a curve on the sides, to resist the wind. If there are any chinks, they sew them together with thongs and cover them with chewing-gum, which they crowd by heating it with a coal of fire. The bark is fastened to the wooden bows by wooden thongs. They add a mast, made of a piece of wood and cross-piece to serve as a yard, and their blankets serve them as sails. These canoes will carry from three to nine persons and all their equipage. They sit upon their heels, without moving, as do also their children, when they are in, from fear of losing their balance, when the whole machine would upset. But this very seldom happened, unless struck by a flaw of wind. They use these vessels particularly in their war parties.
"The canoes made of birch bark were much more solid and more artistically constructed. The frames of these canoes are made of strips of cedar wood, which is very flexible, and which they render as thin as a side of a sword-scabbard, and three or four inches wide. They all touch one another, and come up to a point between the two end strips. This frame is covered with the bark of the birch tree, sewed together like skins, secured between the end strips and tied
* Du Pratz, vol. 2, p. 231; also, Gravier's Voyage, p. 134. The aboriginal method of procuring thread to sew together their garments made of skins has already been no- ticed in the description of the manners and customs of the Illinois.
188
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
along the ribs with the inner bark of the roots of the cedar, as we twist willows around the hoops of a cask. All these seams are cov- ered with gum,* as is done with canoes of elm bark. They then put in cross-bars to hold it and to serve as seats, and a long pole, which they lay on from fore to aft in rough weather to prevent it from being broken by the shocks occasioned by pitching. They have with them three, six, twelve and even twenty-four places, which are designated as so many seats. The French are almost the only people who use these canoes for their long voyages. They will carry as much as three thousand pounds."+ These were vessels in which the fur trade of the entire northwest has been carried on for so many years. They were very light, four men being able to carry the largest of them over portages. At night they were unloaded, drawn upon the shore, turned over and served the savages or traders as huts. They could endure gales of wind that would play havoc with vessels of European manufacture. In calm water, the canoe men, in a sitting posture, used paddles ; in stemming currents, rising from their seats, they substituted poles for paddles, and in shooting rapids, they rested on their knees.
Pirogues were the trunks of trees hollowed out and pointed at the extremities. A fire was started on the trunk, out of which the pirogue was to be constructed. The fire was kept within the desired limits by the dripping of water upon the edges of the trunk. As a part became charred, it was dug out with stone hatchets and the fire rekindled. This kind of canoes was especially adapted for the navi- gation of the Mississippi and Missouri ; the current of these streams carrying down trees, which formed snags, rendered their navigation by bark canoes exceedingly hazardous. It was probably owing to this reason, as well as because there were no birch trees in their country, that the Illinois and Miamis were not, as the Jesuits re- marked, "canoe nations ;" they used the awkward, heavy pirogue instead.
Each nation was divided into villages. The Indian village, when unfortified, had its cabins scattered along the banks of a river or the
*"The small roots of the spruce tree afford the wattap with which the bark is sewed, and the gum of the pine tree supplies the place of tar and oakum. Bark, some spare wattap and gum are always carried in each canoe, for the repairs which fre- quently become necessary." Vide Henry's Travels, p. 14.
t The above extracts are taken from the Memoir Upon the Late War in North Amer- ica Between the French and English, 1755-1760, by M. Pouchot; translated and edited by Franklin Hough, vol. 2, pp. 216, 217, 218. Pouchot was the commandant at Fort Niagara at the time of its surrender to the English. He was exceedingly well versed in all that pertained to Indian manners and customs, and his work received the indorse- ment of Marquis Vaudreuil, Governor of Canada. Of the translation, there were only two hundred copies printed.
189
WIGWAMS.
shores of a lake, and often extended for three or four miles. Each cabin held the head of the family, the children, grandchildren, and often the brothers and sisters, so that a single cabin not unfrequently contained as many as sixty persons. Some of their cabins were in the form of elongated squares, of which the sides were not more than five or six feet high. They were made of bark, and the roof was prepared from the same material, having an opening in the top for the passage of smoke. At both ends of the cabin there were entrances. The fire was built under the hole in the roof, and there were as many fires as there were families.
The beds were upon planks on the floor of the cabin, or upon simple hides, which they called appichimon, placed along the parti- tions. They slept upon these skins, wrapped in their blankets, which, during the day, served them for clothing. Each one had his particular place. The man and wife crouched together, her back being against his body, their blankets passed around their heads and feet, so that they looked like a plate of ducks .* These bark cabins were used by the Iroquois, and, indeed, by many Indian tribes who lived exclusively in the forests.
The prairie Indians, who were unable to procure bark, generally made mats out of platted reeds or flags, and placed these mats around three or four poles tied together at the ends. They were, in form, round, and terminated in a cone. These mats were sewed together with so much skill that, when new, the rain could not penetrate them. This variety of cabins possessed the great advantage that, when they moved their place of residence, the mats of reeds were rolled up and carried along by the squaws. t
"The nastiness of these cabins alone, and that infection which was a necessary consequence of it, would have been to any one but an Indian a severe punishment. Having no windows, they were full of smoke, and in cold weather they were crowded with dogs. The Indians never changed their garments until they fell off by their very rottenness. Being never washed, they were fairly alive with vermin. In summer the savages bathed every day, but immediately afterward rubbed themselves with oil and grease of a very rank smell. "In winter they remained unwashed, and it was impossible to enter their cabins without being poisoned with the stench."
All their food was very ill-seasoned and insipid, "and there pre- vailed in all their repasts an uncleanliness which passed all concep-
* Extract from Pouchot's Memoirs, pp. 185, 186.
t Letter of Father Marest, Kip's Jesuit Missions, p. 199.
190
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
tion. There were very few animals which did not feed cleaner."* They never washed their wooden or bark dishes, nor their porringers and spoons.+ In this connection William Biggs states: "They; plucked off a few of the largest feathers, then threw the duck, - feathers. entrails and all,-into the soup-kettle, and cooked it in that manner."§
The Indians were cannibals, though human flesh was only eaten at war feasts. It was often the case that after a prisoner had been tortured his body was thrown into "the war-kettle," and his remains greedily devoured. This fact is uniformly asserted by the early French writers. Members of Major Long's party made especial inquiries at Fort Wayne concerning this subject, and were entirely convinced. They met persons who had attended the feasts, and saw Indians who acknowledged that they had participated in them. Joseph Barron saw the Pottawatomies with hands and limbs, both of white men and Cherokees, which they were about to devour. Among some tribes cannibalism was universal, but it appears that among the Pottawatomies and Miamis it was restricted to a frater- nity whose privilege and duty it was on all occasions to eat of the enemy's flesh ; - at least one individual must be eaten. The flesh was sometimes dried and taken to the villages. |
The Indians had some peculiar funeral customs. Joutel thus records some of his observations: "They pay a respect to their dead, as appears by their special care of burying them, and even of putting into lofty coffins the bodies of such as are considerable among them, as their chiefs and others, which is also practiced among the Accanceas, but they differ in this respect, that the Accan- ceas weep and make their complaints for some days, whereas the Shawnees and other people of the Illinois nation do just the con- trary, for when any of them die they wrap them up in skins and then put them into coffins made of the bark of trees, then sing and dance about them for twenty-four hours. Those dancers take care to tie calabashes, or gourds, about their bodies, with some Indian corn in them, to rattle and make a noise, and some of them have a drum, made of a great earthen pot, on which they extend a wild goat's skin, and beat thereon with one stick, like our tabors. During that rejoicing they threw their presents on the coffin, as bracelets,
Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, vol. 2, pp. 132, 133.
+ For a full account of their lack of neatness in the culinary department, vide Hen- nepin, vol. 2, p. 120.
# The Kickapoos.
¿ Narrative of William Biggs, p. 9.
|| Long's Expedition to the sources of the St. Peters, vol. 1, pp. 103-106.
·
191
BURIAL CEREMONIES.
pendants or pieces of earthenware. When the ceremony was over they buried the body, with a part of the presents, making choice of such as may be most proper for it. They also bury with it some store of Indian wheat, with a pot to boil it in, for fear the dead per- son should be hungry on his long journey, and they repeat the cere- mony at the year's end. A good number of presents still remaining, they divide them into several lots and play at a game called the stick to give them to the winner."*
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