USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 9
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monarch of France, making peace in the year 1763, yields up to Great Britain all Canada, and all Louis- iana east of the Mississippi, excepting only the dis- trict and city of New Orleans, which, with all the rest of Louisiana, is given to the Spaniards, by a pri- vate treaty made with Spain the year before.
Thus this great garden land, this granary for the nations, this home for that better time coming, to which we all look forward with such longings and such love, passes from the grasp of hereditary mon- archy, of the ancient French divine-right rulers, from under the heavy shadow of dead mediaval law and dying feudal tenures, into the hands of England and of Spain. Not, however, into their hands as in fee ; not in permanent proprietorship ; but in trust, for the future use and behoof of a people whose career, as we hope, shall fulfill in the near future the dreams of the long past, and realize that golden time of the world's history which the prophets saw in shadow, which the poets have told in broken words and vain aspirations after adequate expression, which all good men pray for and look for; the period when the trust- worthiness of the people shall be vindicated by their righteousness ; when the true equality of the nation shall be found, not in levelling those above, but in the rising of those below, by a celestial gravitation, to the level of the highest ; when humanity, free, edu- cated, justified, the Bible in its hand and the love of
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God in its heart, and led by His Holy Spirit, shall stand as upon a lofty mountain summit of attainment, not upon a ghastly peak of cold sterility and eternal ice, but where the smile of God makes summer sun- shine, and God's love makes all the air benign ; where all humanity is bound up together in the bun- dle of God, in bonds of brotherly love and kindness.
Lecture IV.
THE RED MEN; AND THE
WAR OF PONTIAC.
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THE RED MEN, AND WAR OF PONTIAC.
AT the commencement of Europe's acquaintance with the Indians this side the Mississippi, so far as we can calculate, from 180,000 to 300,000 of the red men occupied that tract of country now included within the limits of our republic, and lying between the Atlantic and the Father of Waters. These abo- riginal tribes were divided into three families-the Algonquins, the Iroquois, and the Mobilian races. The Mobilians occupied the region of country lying south of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi, including the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, western Georgia, western South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The Iroquois, or Five Nations, subsequently increased to six by the addi- tion of the Tuscaroras, who migrated from western Carolina, dwelt in the western part of New York. The remainder of the country was occupied by the tribes of that great family known as the Algonquins. Whilst there were certain tribal peculiarities, certain distinctive features, marking and separating these tribes, they yet shared traits and features in common, showing them to belong, all of them, to one great
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parent stock. Their manners and customs, their views and opinions, modes of action and forms of speech, afford us perfectly reliable evidences of this.
The Indian is the child of the wilderness, born amidst its rugged grandeurs, cradled amidst its storms, surrounded with its vastness, schooled by it from his earliest infancy in the development of his per- ceptive faculties, almost to the exclusion of his rea- soning powers ; employed in those occupations which develop athletic strength of body, the chase, war, pre- datory incursions upon his neighbors ; seeking his food from boundless hunting-grounds. Nurtured in a school like this, the delicacy of his senses has passed into a proverb ; and he acquired such fineness of eye, such exquisiteness of ear, as is scarce paral- leled or approximated in the records of history.
The relation between the parent and the child among the Indians constitutes, it seems to me, a pe- culiar feature, and one marking them among the na- tions of the earth, distinct from all others. What is called parental authority, was hardly known among them. The child was brought up in the wigwam of its parents ; but they never expected, so it seems, to impose on it their authority, their will, their command. The child grew up his own master, basking and sport- ing around the door of the bark lodge, enjoying the care of the mother, the notice of the father, until, attaining nearly our own age of majority, he was pre
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pared by vigil, fast, seclusion among rugged rocks in the depths of inaccessible forests-tried by visions and dreams, and communings with what he thought the Great Spirit-for his future career of heroism and conquest. American children, carried in their early years, as captives, to the homes of the Indians, nur- tured and trained by their adopted red fathers and mothers, asseverate, and their evidence is conclusive, that they have never seen a hand raised by a parent against a child-and yet, so far as the conditions of their iron nature would permit, such tractableness, such docility, such loyalty, such glad and willing obedience from children to parents, is rarely to be found even in the highest stages of civilized society. That opposite beliefs are current in the popular mind, I well know; and that there are examples of barba- rous desertion, of inhuman cruelty from children to- ward their aged parents, when the latter have grown to be an incumbrance, this I know ; but these are the exceptions-the other is the rule.
One of the primal elements of the Indian character is hero worship, and if Mr. Carlyle is intent upon con- solidating and organizing his Utopian society upon this basis, I know of no realm or clime to which he may resort with such hopes of success as to the Rocky Mountains of our own continent, where, among the Blackfeet, the Sioux, the Apaches, and all those wan- dering tribes, he will find this element in the full
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grandeur of its supremacy. The child is taught it from his earliest infancy. When first he can inter- pret the words spoken around the watch-fire, in the sombre lodge of his people; when the grey-haired fathers of the tribe, in the long evenings of the win- ter time, when the chase is no longer open to them, and the war-path ceases to invite them, over the blaze of their household fires, relate the deeds of the fore- fathers of the tribe, and tell the traditions of the olden time -- then the children are wont to listen with eager interest to all these recitals, to cherish in their memo- ries and in their hearts the admiration of this older time, and to resolve to emulate their ancestors, and to surpass, if possible, their deeds of prowess and hardihood.
And these old chief and sachems, wise men, held in universal reverence, to whom is paid a sort of ho- mage, not only of the intellect, but of the heart- these old men, by this kindly and genial influence upon the juvenile character, while that character is yet plastic in their hands, do much to determine its strength and scope. Hence the reverent loyalty to which I have referred, from the younger members of the tribe to the older, first in the relation of child to parent, and then, more generally, in that of junior to senior. And I fancy that in these times of ours, of ex- citement and turmoil, of self-conceit, arrogance and presumption, when the young exaggerate their powers
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and capabilities, when juvenility is set in, or usurps, every high place, when the young man takes grey hairs for the tokens of a dotard, and a wrinkled face for the sign of a driveller-feels that he is the great object on whom the gaze of the world, and in whom the hope of the future, is concentrated-in these wild times of ours, with their rash enterprises, their fury and folly, filibustering, factions and seditions-I fancy that in this age of Young America, many good lessons might be learned from the Indian ancestors of the soil, the red aborigines ; who, whatever of the noblest manhood they lacked, had, at least, respect for the aged, and reverence for those wiser than themselves.
In that wild, unfettered, disjointed democracy, where the will of the people-but even that com- pletely subordinate to the will of the minority or the individual, for itself or himself-was the prominent source of power, men were exalted for their wisdom. The aged were the repositories of tradition, the re- pertories of good counsel, the vehicles of instruction ; they could not only tell of times long past, of ances- tors long departed, but they could tell the pathways of the woods, the old feuds of the tribes, the manner of leading the young men to combat and to triumph ; and this attribute of abstract and practical wisdom exalted men to chieftainship. Their sachems or wise men were their leaders in all matters of counsel
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and debate, and the young men deferentially listened, standing around, their swarthy figures leaning against the door-posts of their cabins, or against some no- ble tree. While the father spoke, the sons listened in silence, and the words of the aged fell upon their ears and their hearts like the dew from the brow of the evening.
There was another kind of chieftainship, however ; another sort of authority besides this of wisdom in matters of counsel and debate. Those who were en- terprising and dauntless, who burned to lead their brethren to war, could nominate themselves to a sort of temporary chieftainship -- a war chieftainship. These, if they had any quarrel to settle, any wrong to avenge, any hope of success in some foray, were accustomed, after vigil, fast, incantation-after dwell- ing apart until their features were harsh, their bodies shrunken, and they were reduced halfway to inani- tion,-coming back to the wigwams of the nation, to send invitations through the tribe, to all the young men to meet them at a festival. Here abundant pro- vision was spread before the guests, the chief dainty being commonly dog's meat; and all must be dis- patched before they were allowed to depart. He who had summoned them, meanwhile, sat in silence, ab- staining from all gratification of appetite, albeit nearly famished. When the festival was ended, his body painted black, he springs into a ring prepared for the
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purpose, in the centre of which stands a blackened post ; around this he marches, singing a sort of reci- tative, a monotonous cadence, in which he recounts the deeds of his forefathers and his own heroic achievements, every now and then brandishing his tomahawk and furiously striking it into the post in the centre. Thus he inflames the passions and imagi- nation of his audience, till warrior after warrior springs into the ring like himself, and in like manner chants, recites, raves and strikes. Then rises a fierce tumultuous clamor of voices from all, and when they have aroused themselves to the highest pitch of frenzy, the war-path is prepared. Decorated with fanciful paints, and with all the ornaments they can com- mand, and marching, in single file, one, two, or three miles from the village, if there be a convenient camp- ing ground near a brook, here they pause, and dis- charge their guns slowly, one at a time. Here they encamp, and now the ornaments and trinkets are ga- thered and sent back to the squaws at the village, to be kept till their return. Then, in silence, in single file, under the lead of this self-nominated chieftain, they proceed upon their errand of destruction and blood. Whatever the result, when they return great rejoice- ings are had in the village, or in the wigwams of the nation ; and if any have fallen, their manes are ap. peased by the sacrifice of such victims as have been captured, their torture being considered a lawful and
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even obligatory offering, that shall satisfy the spirits of the dead.
But this portraiture of Indian character, intended as a sort of introduction to the theme of the occasion, is drawing me on too far. I must hasten to com- plete the rough outline, though with the omission of many interesting points. The leading and most re- markable peculiarities of the Indians are, indomitable resolution and endurance, haughty pride, daring and arrogance toward an enemy, a calm and unmoved exterior, that hides impenetrably all secrets of thought and feeling, as a mantle of ice and snow the blazing fires of the volcano beneath ; and a natural wild independence, nourished and confirmed by their solitary perilous lives ; which, although they may act voluntarily under the guidance of these self-appointed chieftains, preserves them unconstrained by any law, subject to no authority, bound to none by fealty, and subordinating themselves only to the heroic virtues and preeminent abilities of their few great states- men and warriors. Such salient peculiarities, exem- plified, too, in such endless displays of savage hero- ism and skill and strength, cannot but open to the student of human nature a chapter of absorbing in- tercst.
All three of the great families, Mobilians, Iroquois, and Algonquins, though the innumerable battles be- tween and among themselves sprinkled the whole
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continent with blood, were united by one singular and wide-extended bond of friendship, which well deserves a short consideration. This was that sort of free-masonry, or association into fraternities, which may be called the Totemic, as depending upon the signs or emblems of these families, called their Totems. Such emblems were the Hawk, the Eagle, the Tortoise, the Bear, the Wolf, the Snake. And as these associations were limited neither to one nation nor set of nations, so we find, for instance, a family of the Wind, among both Mobilians and Iroquois ; a family of the Tortoise, both among the Iroquois and the Algonquins.
The brotherhood of the totem bound its mem- bers, whether in peace or war, to aid and comfort each other in whatever need. The lonely wanderer, weary and starving after a long and unsuccessful chase, could never ask in vain for relief and ad- mitance at the cabin of one of his brethren of the totem, however far removed his language, tribe, or blood. This singular association a little alleviated the many horrors of the constant warfare of the hunters of the woods. Another of its rules was, that members of one family or elan should not in- termarry with each other; but that the young man of the totem of the Tortoise must choose his wife from the family of the Bear or the Hawk, or of any totem but the Tortoise. This provision, in strict
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conformity with physiological truth, was well calcu- lated to perpetuate the physical vigor and hardi- hood, the integrity and individuality of the race.
Hereditary distinctions, so far as they existed among the Indians, descended not directly, in the male line, but collaterally, through the female. Thus, it was not the son of the chief who inherited his chieftainship after him, but the son of the sis- ter, or some female relative of the chief. Nor was even this inheritance sure or necessary. No mantle fell by any law of succession upon unworthy shoulders. The candidate for the authority of his un- ele received and retained his power, if he did receive it, because he also was preeminently wise in council, powerful in debate, sagacious in planning, and heroic in strife. Wanting these merits, he fell unresistingly into a private station, and the poorest and obscurest youth of the tribe, if his abilities entitled him, as- sumed the power of sachem. Insignia the office had none.
Having thus hastily sketched out some prominent traits of Indian character, I now come to the more immediate subject of this lecture : the great conspi- racy organized against the encroaching whites, by one of the greatest, if not the very first of Indian statesmen and warriors : and to the life and character of its leader-the War of Pontiac, the Ottawa.
In 1760, near the close of the old French war,
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when the three victorious armies of England had met, converging at Montreal; when Canada had been suljugated, and the French empire was about to cease over the new continent, Sir Jeffrey AAmherst, commander-in-chief of the English forces in this country, dispatched a New Hampshire ranger, Ma- jor Robert Rogers, with a party of his men, to take possession of the French forts west of the lakes. This Major Rogers was a companion in arms of old Israel Putnam ; an experienced and successful Indian fighter, of desperate courage, yet of the coolest and most sly and cautious prudence. A tall, strong man, of a somewhat evil countenance, he was little trou- bled with conscience, was strongly suspected of treachery during the Revolutionary war, and, indeed, became a colonel in the British service ; and last-an odd feature in the character of a backwoodsman-he possessed no inconsiderable tincture of good litera- ture, having published a well-written journal of his adventures as a ranger, and even-it is believed-all or part of " The Tragedy of Ponteach," a drama of the fortunes of the very chieftain of whom I am about to speak.
This hardy adventurer, at the head of two hundred men, in a fleet of whaleboats, proceeded as far as to the site of the present city of Cleveland, which he reached in November, 1760. Here his advance was arrested by a party of Indians, who met him, saying
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that they were the envoys of one Pontiac, the mo- march of all that realm, and who bade him halt there until a conference should be had with him.
Thus steps forth, for the first time within the light of history, from the obscurity of his small tribe-tlie Ottawas, fugitives among the great Algonquin na- tion, the Ojibwas of Lake Superior, from the destroy- ing fury of the terrible Iroquois-the great chief, Pon- tiac, sometimes even called the Emperor of the Ottawa Indians, so extensive was his sway, and so vast his power.
Before nightfall, the great chief made his appear- ance, and proudly demanded wherefore the English were in his country ? Rogers made answer, that the English, having conquered the French, were now. taking possession of the forts of the vanquished, and that this was his errand to Detroit. Taking until the next day to answer, the Indian chieftain concluded with prompt decisive wisdom that the English power was, in truth, becoming uppermost, and that he would worship the rising sun. He returned and made a corresponding reply ; and on the journey, which the English party completed successfully, averted at least one intended attack by the Detroit Indians.
While with Rogers, Pontiac was very inquisitive to learn how the English manufactured such guns of the black rock called iron ; how cloth was woven, and powder made ; how they drilled and disciplined their
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troops ; and asked a thousand other questions about European matters. This man was the head chief of all the Ottawas, and high in the esteem of all the neighboring tribes on the peninsula which projects from the main base of the continent, and is surrounded by lakes Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Erie. The Ojibwas, Wyandots, Pottawatomies, and other neigh- boring tribes entertained for him a sort of reverence, similar in kind, and even greater in degree, than that afterward commanded by Tecumseh, nimself-as were King Philip and Pontiac-of Algonquin blood.
A year or two passed away, and British troops and British influences had replaced those of France through all the vast belt of inland possessions which had for nearly a century owned the power of the French king. It is not necessary here to describe the difference, so often enlarged upon, between the light-hearted, social and plastic French, and the haughty, gruff, and arrogant English, in their inter- course with the punctilious and irritable sons of the forest. Instead of the generous and casy hospitality, the careful, courteous, and indulgent observance, with which the French officers and traders had so judi- ciously and successfully treated the Indians, they were suddenly everywhere used with rude overbear- ing insolence, neglected, driven off with curses, and even with blows-the last indignity to which an In- dian could be subjected.
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And while this unhappy, invariable course on the part of the Englishi, together with the brutal swindling of their traders, the rapid advance of their settle- ments, the ruin of their hunting-grounds, and the swift and steady eireumseription of their territories, kindled all along the vast extent of the Indian fron- tier the smoldering exasperation and bitter enmity that ever and anon flamed out into murders and de- vastating inroads by individuals and war-parties of the young men of one and another tribe; the chiefs them- selves, long accustomed to the special distinctions and valuable presents which formed so agreeable a part of' the French system of colonial administration, were still more bitterly mortified and enraged at the neg- lects and insults which they received from the coarse and proud men with whom the British forces were almost always officered.
Pontiac felt all this, and felt it the more pro- foundly, by as much as the depth of his intellect and the strength of his passions and his pride surpassed those of his savage contemporaries. But his wrath, and sorrow, and mortification, were yet a thousand- fold more inflamed by disappointments of a charac- ter which very few of the tribesmen under his com- mand could even comprehend, much less sympathize with.
The dream and desire of his life was, the progress and improvement of his people, and their advance ir
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power and in happiness. And so just and far-reach- ing were the views of this wild Ottawa sachem, that he comprehended the necessity of the manufactures of civilized races, and would fain have rendered the tribes independent of both English and French, in this respect, by enabling them to supply all their own wants. He neither loved nor feared the English or the French ; and his alliance with each, and his pre- ference of either, was decided singly by the advan- tage which he hoped thus to secure to his race. So long as the French held much territory and many fortresses in America, he remained in alliance with them. When they were conquered, and the places of their troops filled by the red-coated soldiery of England, he as promptly made friends with the Englishı.
But the hopes of elevating and bettering his race, which, though delusive, had been long maintained by the fair professions and careful external obser- vances of the Frenchmen, were quickly quenched by the more honest rudeness, neglects and insults, which the British officers inflicted upon the Indians ; and Pontiac soon perceived that the Ottawa nation, and all the Indian tribes, would perish, unless their white invaders should be destroyed, or their progress arrested. This design he at once set about accom- plishing ; and forthwith he organized a conspiracy, far the most gigantic ever originated by an Indian on
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this continent, and which, for extent, secrecy, and ability of conception and execution, will vie with any plot in history.
His own personal qualifications, and the circum- stances of the time, made the opportunity a perfect one. In the prime of a leader's life-being about fifty years old-despotic ruler of the confederated tribes of the Ottawas, Pottawatomies, and their third ally, the great tribe of the Ojibwas-long possessed of a paramount influence over all the Indians of Illi- nois, and known and honored throughout all the wide territories of the Algonquin race-no other chieftain could have aroused such hosts as he, or could have sustained or controlled their wrath so long ; nor were the Indians at any other time ever so extensively and fiercely hostile to their white aggressors. From the distant trading-stations in the cold regions beyond Lake Superior, to the far southern tribes back of the settlements in Carolina and Georgia, the savages were all yet hot with their anger of the recent strife in which they had fought for the French ; and this wrath was still more vehemently enkindled by the insulting treatment of which I have spoken, by the brutal conduct and enormous impositions of the Eng- lish fur-traders, and still more by the ominous rapid- ity with which the white frontier marched westward, destroying one hunting-ground after another, covering the lands, and annihilating or expelling the tribes.
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In the latter portion of the year 1762, therefore, there went out from the Ottawa village, which stood just below Lake St. Clair and above Fort Detroit, on the Canada side of the river, many messengers. They sped into the distant forests of the northern Algonquins beyond the great lakes ; to the banded nations of the Iroquois; to the pacific Delawares in Pennsylvania; to the savage Tuscaroras, and the warlike Mobilians, west of Carolina and along the Gulf coast ; to the various tribes all along the Mis- sissippi ; and to the nations of the Illinois country. Everywhere they carried the great red war-belt and . the words of the great Pontiac ; and everywhere, in re- sponse to the wild call of the savage envoys, the young men rose up and prepared for war. To all was appointed a certain time in the next May, when every tribe was to exterminate the garrison nearest it, and the whole wild host were then to break in upon the settlements. And all the savage confede- rates, and Pontiac himself-who was in this deluded with all the rest-expected decisive succor from the armies of the French king, which they believed to be on the march to recover their great Canadian posses- sions. This expectation was kept up by the reports of the Canadian French, and even by forged letters, giving advice of the march of French troops up the St. Lawrence.
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