USA > Mississippi > A history of the Mississippi valley, from its discovery to the end of foreign domination. The narrative of the founding of an empire, shorn of current myth, and enlivened by the thrilling adventures of discoverers, pioneers, frontiersmen, Indian fighters, and homemakers > Part 7
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A History of the
of the American Antiquarian Society, estimated, (Win- sor's "History of America"), that "there were about 35,000 warriors east of the Mississippi, in the United States and across the straits at Detroit," at the time of the war of the Revolution. The Shawnese, at that time, had about 300 warriors, the Delawares 600 and the Wyandotts 200-all northwest of the Ohio. The Iroquois had 2,000 warriors. What was known as the "Ottawa Confederation"-a loose aggregation of west- ern tribes-had 8,000 warriors, of whom 3,000 lived near Detroit," (Winsor).
Most interesting is a study of the characteristics of the red people as they existed before they came in contact with white men. Let the reader who is not familiar with the matter forget what his school histories taught him, put aside his prejudices, whatever they may be. Above all let him put aside for the present what the men who have lived among modern Indians have to say about them. Parkman, for instance, thought he had learned the characteristics of the abo- rigines by living among a tribe that had been trading with white men for more than 200 years. Let the judgments of such men be put aside, and then consider what the scientific ethnologists have learned and print- ed, after long and patient labor, about the American aborigines. The reader who has seen the modern Indian and like Parkman, has lived among them, should be especially careful not to allow prejudice to influence him. For it has been shown that the dog soup, dirt and carnivorous insects of the wigwam and tepee almost invariably prejudice a clean man's mind so that he is incapable of rendering a fair judgment.
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Mississippi Valley.
Scientific investigation has learned first of all that it was not a roaming or nomadic people. It is true that a party of the Siouan people had gone away from the original family home to settle at Biloxi. Another party had become Catawbas living on the east side of the Alleghanies. The Shawnees had lived in various localities. But these were migrations of sedentary people,-migrations due to family quarrels-and were not the wanderings of nomads. The nearest approach to a nomadic life was found on the plains where such tribes as the Pawnees followed migratory herds of buf- falo for limited distances.
Being sedentary, the tribes were, as a whole, devel- oping into agriculturalists-becoming farmers. "They were fast progressing from the hunter state," says Powell in "Indian Linguistic Families." Corn was the chief of their cultivated foods. In the Jesuit "Rela- tions" one of the missionaries speaks of a Huron chief who had two caches of corn, each containing 125 bush- els. That was in Canada. In the south the corn crop reached tens of thousands of bushels.
More notable still some of the Indians were on the threshold of taming wild animals for domestic use. The Creeks of each village refrained from hunting over certain tracts of land where products of the forest relished by bears, abounded, until the bears there be- came both fat and tame. Then when meat was needed a bear was quietly killed. Precautions were taken to keep the bears tame, that is to say, and the range well stocked.
To say that the tribes were sedentary implies that they had dwellings of more or less substantial char-
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acter. The Iroquoians and other northern tribes built great shelters of poles covered with bark. The Dacotah Sioux covered the poles with buffalo skins. The Pawnees built houses with sod walls. The Natches and the Quapaws built houses with a latticed frame covered with adobe clay. The Cherokees and Muskhogean built good log houses. It is a right curious fact that the red men learned to build thick dirt walls to keep out heat before they learned to use such walls to keep out cold.
Of the Indian canoes and dugouts as means of transportation only mere mention seems necessary.
The Indian had developed the art of making pot- tery, baskets and cloth. They made sufficient tools of stone, shells and wood. Some that had native copper had learned to beat it into ornaments with a skill that the whites who first came to America were unable to surpass. They had, indeed, begun to develop the higher talent of the artist and they had made the first steps toward a written language.
There is, perhaps, nothing more interesting in the story of the red American than the few facts we know about their culture of the higher faculties-their groping after something that was not a necessary of life.
Consider their first steps in the development of a written language. One may presume that their at- tempts to write out ideas grew out of their sign lan- guage, or were suggested by it. And it is not difficult to think that the sign language was developed before articulate speech.
Many ideas were conveyed by movements and
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Mississippi Valley.
postures of the body-by living pictures, that is to say. A Dacotah standing on one bank of a river saw strangers on the further side and held aloft his left hand to ask, "Who are you?" And one of the strangers put two fingers of each hand up above his head in a way to suggest the sharp, peaked-up ears of the wolf, and thus replied, "We are wolves-Pawnees." .
From making these living pictures it was but a short step, easily taken, to the painting or carving of pictures that would convey ideas. They had learned to paint and carve some pictures of their sign language on their pottery, on wood and on smooth stones. Most remarkable are some of the rock carvings that are yet to be found along the Mississippi and its branches. Pictures of men, beasts, birds, reptiles and insects abound. With these are found pictures of the tracks of men and animals, and of figures and lines oft re- peated that represent nothing to our minds.
Many essays and books have been written about the picture writing of American Indians-works that usually describe rather than explain the Indian pictures -but some advance in comprehending this red litera- ture has been made by the scientific specialists. Says Mr. James Mooney, (Seventeenth annual report Bureau of Ethnology) :
"It is known that our own tribes had various ways of de- picting their mythology, their totems, or isolated facts in the life of individual or nation, but it is only within a few years that it was even suspected that they could have anything like continuous historical records, even in embryo.
"The fact is now established, however, that pictographic records, covering periods of from sixty to perhaps 200 years or more, do or did exist among several tribes, and it is entirely probable that every leading mother tribe had such a record of
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its origin and wanderings, the pictured narrative being compiled by the priests and preserved with sacred care through all the shifting vicissitudes of savage life, until lost or destroyed in the ruin that overwhelmed the native governments at the coming of the white men."
Time was when all of these tribal histories might have been gathered, or copies made. The white men might have learned exactly what ideas the Indians in- tended to convey when making some of the noted pic- tures now called petrographs. For when the first mis- sionaries and the first traders went among the Indians the art of stone writing was at its best. But because Indian art work or culture was commonly found in connection with Indian religion, our missionaries were shocked by the "idolatrous exhibits," and strove in earnest, well-meaning fashion, to turn the Indian thoughts from pictured totems, and dreams of happy hunting grounds, to a conception of a cubical city built of jewel stones, and having streets paved with gold.
As for the traders who might have learned some- thing about this latest development of Indian culture- this picture writing-it is enough to say that the one thought constantly animating their minds was to ex- change a pint of rum, or six cents' worth of red paint, for a beaver skin worth ten dollars in the white settle- ments. The poet-naturalist of Concord wrote that "trade curses everything it handles," and no men in the history of civilization and commerce have been so fully engrossed or so utterly degraded and deeply cursed by their trade as those who have dealt with the aboriginal inhabitants of the earth. With them even a thought of fair dealing was, (and is), a manifestation
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A History of the
its origin and wanderings, the pictured narrative being compiled by the priests and preserved with sacred care through all the shifting vicissitudes of savage life, until lost or destroyed in the ruin that overwhelmed the native governments at the coming of the white men."
Time was when all of these tribal histories might have been gathered, or copies made. The white men might have learned exactly what ideas the Indians in- tended to convey when making some of the noted pic- tures now called petrographs. For when the first mis- sionaries and the first traders went among the Indians the art of stone writing was at its best. But because Indian art work or culture was commonly found in connection with Indian religion, our missionaries were shocked by the "idolatrous exhibits," and strove in earnest, well-meaning fashion, to turn the Indian thoughts from pictured totems, and dreams of happy hunting grounds, to a conception of a cubical city built of jewel stones, and having streets paved with gold.
As for the traders who might have learned some- thing about this latest development of Indian culture- this picture writing-it is enough to say that the one thought constantly animating their minds was to ex- change a pint of rum, or six cents' worth of red paint, for a beaver skin worth ten dollars in the white settle- ments. The poet-naturalist of Concord wrote that "trade curses everything it handles," and no men in the history of civilization and commerce have been so fully engrossed or so utterly degraded and deeply cursed by their trade as those who have dealt with the aboriginal inhabitants of the earth. With them even a thought of fair dealing was, (and is), a manifestation
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of contemptible weakness; the ability to over reach the sauvage was the only feature of mind worth praise or cultivation.
In short, through egotistical prejudice and foul greed, we threw away-refused to gather-the full knowledge of how men in the stone age of the world began to develop their higher faculties.
Nevertheless some knowledge remains. A glance at the arrow heads with notched edges; at the bas- kets and pottery, illuminated with the lightning flashes from the thunder god, and at the ornaments of beaten copper, shows unmistakably that a love of the beautiful was growing among them, and that many of their products portrayed the joy of the artist in his work.
Consider next the subject of aboriginal warfare. It is in connection with this subject that one needs to forget what his school histories teach him. Says Major Powell in "Indian Linguistic Families"; (p. 39) :
"Altogether the character of the Indian since the discovery of Columbus has been greatly changed, and he has become far more war-like and predatory. Prior to that time, tribes seem to have lived together in comparative peace, and to have settled their difficulties by treaty methods. Their accumulations were not so great as to be tempting, and their modes of warfare were not exceedingly destructive. * Battle for plunder, tribute and conquest was almost unknown. Such intertribal wars as occurred originated from other causes, such as infractions of rights relating to hunting grounds and fisheries, and still oftener preju- dices growing out of their superstitions."
For the sake of emphasis let this be repeated.
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A History of the
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Mississippi Valley.
Although the red men "had not yet entered completely into the agricultural condition," they "were fast pro- gressing from the hunter state." "Battles for plunder, tribute and conquest were almost unknown."
War never was and never will be advantageous to mankind as a whole, however necessary at times be- tween nations; but for the red men such wars as oc- curred before the whites came were not an unmixed evil. For they fought hand to hand, or at close range; they fought for the love of their country and for glory. Thus they learned to face death with unruffled minds, and to covet something higher than physical wealth.
Then, too, through wars they built fortifications- they became mound builders, though their mounds were also erected for the purpose of worship. Many earthen forts were found in the Mississippi valley, and we know, now, that it was not some prehistoric tribe of superior intelligence that built them. Nothing proves the white man's lack of intelligent observation so conclusively as does this now abandoned notion about a prehistoric tribe of superior attainments.
Consider one of these Indian fortifications-that one built where Marietta, Ohio, now stands. There was one square fort, fifty acres in extent (one authori- ty says forty), and another twenty-seven, (or twenty) large. The walls were from twenty to thirty feet wide on the base when surveyed. It is fair to presume that these earth walls were originally surmounted by pali- sades, for wooden forts were common enough.
There were other works of less extent, in and near these two, including elevated mounds within the squares, a guarded passage way, 680 feet long, to the
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Muskingum river, a well-protected cemetery, an en- closed field, a large camp ground, &c.
At least ten thousand cubic yards of earth were piled into the walls of the passageway that led down the hillside toward the Muskingum, and how many thou- sands in the remaining walls need not now becalculated. What should be considered is the fact that the Indians had neither shovels nor wheel barrows when they built these walls. How many days, therefore, did they la- bor in digging the earth with their rude tools and carrying it up by hand to build those walls? And yet we have been told in our school histories that the In- dian was by nature lazy!
Huge mounds were built for graves, as well as for war. The structure that gives its name to Mounds- ville on the Ohio, is as interesting as any. It is one hun- dred feet in diameter at the base, sixty-eight feet high and fifty-fivein diameter at the top. The mound was tun- neled at the surface of the earth, in 1838, and a shaft was sunk from the top down to the tunnel. Thirteen skeletons, with shell beads, copper rings and plates of mica for ornaments, were found in two vaults that had been lined and covered with timbers.
It is evident that the Indian would work when he had a motive that he considered adequate, but his mo- tives were not always those of the whites. The white man who turned the tunnel in Moundsville mound into a lager-beer saloon, some years ago, was, doubtless, animated by some motives which the red builders of the mound could not have comprehended. And that white man undoubtedly held the entire red race in contempt.
We have now arrived at what really is the red
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Mississippi Valley.
man-that is, at the motives that inspired him to ac- tion; for all men should be judged, at last, by their aspirations.
To learn what the Indian motives were, consider first that every red settlement was literally a communi- ty, especially in the food supply. "The hungry In- dian had but to ask to receive * it was his right to demand" a share.
"Indiscriminate hospitality" followed. We see herein one feature of Indian life that attracted many white men. The white visitors might eat, even though they could not provide food for themselves or others. With men of the habits of thought of the white race, this "indiscriminate hospitality" would, and does, de- stroy industry and thrift. Free food at the kitchen door adds to the number of tramps. It is believed by some philosophers that the selfish love of money- the desire to get rich-is all that sustains the push of enterprise.
But among the Indians, game was killed and shared, corn was cultivated and shared, and clothing, tools and weapons were made and shared, year after year, without pauperizing the race. The race made progress, in fact, in spite of the influence of a custom that would, it is alleged, pauperize the white race.
How did it happen, then, that work was done, and progress achieved without the spur of greed? Says Powell: "The peculiar institutions prevailing in this respect gave to each tribe or clan a profound interest in the skill, ability and industry of each member. He was the most valuable person in the community who supplied it with the most of its necessities. For this
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reason the successful hunter or fisherman was always held in high honor, and the woman who gathered great store of seeds, fruits or roots, was one who commanded the respect and received the highest approbation of the people.
A desire for honor among his people was the chief motive that inspired the Indian. And the Jesuits in their "Relations" tell of Indians who, in the pursuit of game, continued the chase until death from ex- haustion overtook them. For the sake of standing well in his community the Indian would sometimes work till he died. For killing game was unquestion- ably work with the Indians; it required much more strength and endurance than digging ditches or build- ing forts.
But the common motive of the white man made no appeal to him.
A Kansas real estate dealer was once good enough to go with the writer of this chapter into the Quapaw reservation. There, as it happened, we met Quapaw Charlie, the Indian chief. And as the real estate deal- er and the Indian looked at each other, a feeling of contempt, deep and unrestrained, appeared in the face of the white man, and found expression in his words. That Indian had a thousand acres of the fattest land of America. If he would but cultivate it he might sell the produce for $5,000 a year, clear profit, and rapidly accumulate those evidences of wealth for which the white race strives. But there he lived in a little log hut with its acre or two of corn and vegetables. He killed rabbits, quails and prairie chickens, now and then, and he often fished in the nearby stream;
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but his food was coarse and his clothing worse. The Kansas man did not believe God meant that such be- ings should cumber the earth.
But while the Kansas man talked the Indian gazed back at him with a feeling of contempt equally deep and hearty. The Kansas man had been "booming" a townsite. He had been working day and night. His eyes were red from lack of sleep. His hands trem- bled from nervous exhaustion. The "boom" had "gone broke." Rest and peace were words but dimly under- stood by this feverishly energetic man of business. Could he have come into the possession of Charlie Quapaw's acres he would have obtained less comfort from them than the Indian did, for he would have surveyed a town site immediately, and started another "boom," with all its deadly nervous exhaustion.
Quapaw Charlie was not condemned by this white man for failing to use his abundant leisure in the study of literature, or the study of art, or the study of nat- ure. He was not condemned for any ill use of leisure. He was condemned for having leisure. Why didn't he plow and sow and reap from sun to sun, and do the chores by lantern light? That was the query of the indignant man from Kansas.
The bald truth is that the Indian's habit of thought was in exact accord with the Christian precept which says; "Having food and raiment be ye therewith con- tent." And he used some of his abundant leisure in ornamenting his weapons, and in making petrographs.
The Indian government was, perhaps, the loosest bond that ever held peoples together. It was a simple democracy so far as it was like anything called govern-
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ment among the whites. Important matters were con- sidered by the whole people in open council, and in these councils the women often had a part, and their advice was considered. The majority of the whole tribe decided to follow this or that course; in many cases a tribe would unanimously agree on some im- portant matter. But when a majority considered one course advisable the minority was free to follow its own course; and even when all were agreed, their fickleness soon divided them.
As for the chiefs, the whole community constantly weighed the merits of each member of it, and the in- dividual's influence was in exact proportion to his abili- ties. A war chief was an able fighting man; the sa- chems were the most astute statesmen and diplomats. But the ruler ruled only by influence-by advice and example-not as a despot. Each individual might do as he pleased even to making war when peace had been declared by the chiefs.
By dwelling on the good qualities only of the In- dian, one easily comes to believe that he was, if a "little lower than the angels," not far from as good as the white man. It is worth while to remember that he was of a lower race-one far less developed than the white race. In ferocity the American Indians were unsurpassed. They continually acted on the theory that "hanging was too good" for certain offences. They burned captured enemies to death, and prolonged the torture. In doing this they were animated by various motives; they did it for revenge and to awe the tribe to which the prisoner belonged, hoping thus to prevent future aggressions in the same direction.
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A History of the
That is to say they tortured a prisoner to death- burned him alive-in order "to protect their homes.".
They sometimes tortured prisoners at the stake through religious motives-as a duty to their gods- but never to make converts, or restrain conscience.
But behind all these motives was the pleasure which undeveloped men, and degenerates, feel when they see another in pain. As a race these undeveloped men found intense delight in the prolonged suffering of their victims. When La Salle's agents went among the Iroquois to get permission to build a fort at Niaga- ra, a victim was burned by way of entertaining them.
It is asserted by some writers that ferocity was cultivated as a virtue, and pity condemned as a vice by the Indian. It is certain that in their gatherings each man rose to his feet and boasted of his deeds of prowess-of the scalps he had taken, and the tortures he had inflicted. It was not idle boasting either. The scalps were in evidence, the audience knew the state- ments to be true. And when they approved the boast- ing words the hearts of the boys burned with an eager ambition to do deeds of which they might boast in like manner. Red boys were taught to hunt for scalps. But in the course of nature-of evolution-the har- vesting of corn, and the making of copper ornaments, and the carving of petrographs, were coming to oc- cupy much more time than the gathering of scalps. They were taming themselves while they tamed wolves and made preserves for bears.
The Indian's idea of love has been much discussed, but we will never doubt that red mothers loved their children as white mothers love theirs. In the rela-
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Mississippi Valley.
tions between the sexes, however, it seems impossible that what we call heroic unselfish love, (such, for in- stance, as Ruskin bore for his unworthy wife), was ever known among them. Passion was unrestrained. Indulgence was no cause for shame. The unfaithful wife was sometimes punished. Grosseilliers and Rad- isson "observed with much admiration," says a Jesuit writer, "that one tribe of Indians cut off the noses" of unfaithful wives. The unfaithful man was, of course, never punished. The man without sin could not be found to cast the first stone. The Indians had no con- ception of what we call sexual morality. The girls might do as they pleased. The guests of the tribe- even the white trader who came to swindle them, in after years-received not only his food, but a wife. And when the Indian came to visit the whites he was, at times, not a little astonished and indignant because they were not equally hospitable. In short, the Indians were wholly unmoral in sexual matters. In some tribes they were too vile to be discussed by self re- specting men.
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