USA > New Jersey > Passaic County > Paterson > History of Paterson and its environs (the silk city); historical- genealogical - biographical > Part 4
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Instances, however, are recorded where there were the sincerest attach- ments ; men and women would carry besons (love-philtres), to preserve the affection of one they loved; and when this affection was lost they would take poison to destroy the life no longer brightened by the light of love. In cases of separation, the children followed the mother, as they were always con- sidered as belonging to her tribe. Although a plurality of wives was per- missible, it was not commonly indulged in by the Delawares. Loskiel ungal- lantly says this was because "their love of ease rendered domestic peace a most valuable treasure." It is very evident, however, that in such a crude stage of existence few men were able to support more than one family, which fact would be sufficient explanation of the non-prevalence of the custom.
The women bore children easily. They immediately washed them, and "Having wrapt them in a Clout," says Penn, "they lay them on a strait thin Board, a little more than the length & breadth of the Child, and swaddle it fast upon the Board, to make it streight; wherefore all Indians have flat Heads; and thus they carry them at their Backs;" but when engaged in household work, the mother would "hang this rude cradle upon some peg, or branch of a tree." In order to make the infants rugged, they were frequently plunged into cold water, especially in severe weather. A name was given to
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PATERSON AND ITS ENVIRONS
the child in his sixth or seventh year, by the father, with much ceremony ; when he attained to manhood he was given another name, from some inci- dent of his prowess, or other circumstance. There was a superstitious reluc- tance among them to have their names uttered aloud, and they were usually spoken of by indirection. This is one reason why they preferred, in their intercourse with the whites, to use a name given by the latter. The name of a dead Indian was never mentioned.
Every boy was trained up in all his father's craft of field and wood and water. At the earliest age, as already remarked, he would be taught to use the bow-and-arrow, manhtat; how to fish with the hook-and-line-the line, wendamakan, twisted from the strands of the wild hemp, achhallop, or of the milk-weed, pichtokenna; the hook, aman, of bone, armed with bait, awauch- kon, made of either wecheeso, the earth-worm, or the wauk-chelachees, the grasshopper. He likewise acquired the art of spearing fish with a forked, pointed pole, and of trapping them by means of a brush-net, which will be described hereafter. In fishing, he learned to make and to use canoes, amoc- hol, either the dug-out, preferably made of the sycamore, called canoe-wood, amochol-he, or of birch bark, wiqua, and hence called wiqua-amochol. As he grew older he learned to wield the stone hatchet, the t'ma-hican ( from dema- pechen or temapechen, to cut, and hican, an implement), more familiarly known to English readers as the "tomahawk." At the age of sixteen or eighteen the Indian lad underwent a trying "initiation," prefaced by a long fast and accompanied by ceremonies well calculated to test his mental and physical stamina. Doubtless the Delawares had secret societies, such as exist among many if not most of the Indian tribes to-day, but the existence of which has only come to be known of late years.
Now he was expected to distinguish himself in the hunt, either singly, or when a large number of men gathered in the autumn to form a line and drive the deer before them, called a p'mochlapen. This was regularly prac- ticed by the Indians near Paterson, who would form their line on Garret mountain, from the river to the summit, and drive the deer northerly and eastwardly toward the Falls, where they must either submit to capture, or in their wild terror plunge over the cliffs rising above the present back-race. The narrow point of rock projecting toward Spruce street, between the chasm and the back-race, was in the early days known by the whites as the Deer's Leap, from this ancient Indian custom.
When a mere boy the Indian lad would be permitted to sit in the village council house, and hear the assembled wisdom of the village or his tribe discuss the affairs of state, and expound the meaning of the keekq' (beads composing the wampum belts), whether the belt handed forth at a treaty, the nochkunduwoagan ("an answering"), or the belt of ratification, aptun- woagan ("the covenant"). In this way he early acquired maturity of thought, and was taught the traditions of his people, and the course of con- duct calculated to win him the praise of his fellows. When he got old enough to go on the war-path, he was taught the war-whoop, kowamo, and how to hurl the war-club, apech'lit or mehittqueth.
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THE ABORIGINES
The American Indians were all passionately fond of games, and were mostly inveterate gamblers. Among the Lenâpé a popular fireside game was quá-quallis. A hollow bone was attached by a string to a pointed stick, which was held in the hand, and the bone was thrown up by a rapid movement, the game being to catch the bone, while in motion, on the pointed end of the stick. In another game, the players arranged themselves in two parallel lines, forty feet apart, each armed with a reed spear or arrow. A hoop, tautmusq, was rolled rapidly at an equal distance between the lines, and the successful player was he who hurled his spear through the hoop in such a way as to stop it. Maumun'di was a third game; it was played with twelve flat bones, one side white, the other colored, placed in a bowl, thrown into the air and caught as they fell; those falling with the white side uppermost were the winning pieces.
"The Girls," says William Penn, "stay with their Mothers, and help to Hoe the Ground, Plant Corn, and carry Burthens; and they do well to use them to that Young, which they must do when they are Old; for the Wives are the true Servants of their Husbands; otherwise the Men are very affec- tionate to them."
What an eloquent tribute to the character of the Lenâpé Pastorius gives : "They cultivate among themselves a most scrupulous honesty, are unwaver- ing in keeping promises, insult no one, are hospitable to strangers, and faith- ful even to death to their friends." Another witness, at a much later date, testifies : "In former times they were quite truthful, although oaths were not customary among them. But it was not so in later times, after they had more intercourse with Christians." Says Thomas: "They are so punctual that if any go from their first Offer or Bargain with them, it will be very difficult for that Party to get any Dealings with them any more, or to have any farther Converse with them." William Penn tried the Golden Rule in his dealings with the Lenâpé, and from his practical experience of its workings gave this advice : "Don't abuse them, but let them have Justice, and you win them." In their primitive state, ere civilization had introduced to them a thousand comforts, conveniences and luxuries of which they had never dreamed, their wants were few, and covetousness was unknown. An Indian who heard the word for the first time asked what it meant, and when told that it signified a desire for more than a man needed, replied : "That is a strange thing."
On the other hand, all the early records show that they never forgot and rarely forgave an injury, and imitated the wild beasts they hunted, in their cruelty and ferocity in wreaking vengeance on a foe.
In other words, notwithstanding many excellent traits, in which the Lenâpé were superior to the Iroquois, they were still barbarians, and pre- served many of the instincts that had belonged to their state of savagery. Their crude idea of justice was not unlike that which prevailed among the Hebrews in the time of Moses: "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot," with a provision for adjustment on a money basis, such as was allowed by the earlier Roman law, and in that of England within the historic period. In short, it rested on the two-fold principle of retaliation
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PATERSON AND ITS ENVIRONS
and restitution or pecuniary compensation. There was no question of ethics involved, nor had Indian society yet reached that stage where an injury done to the individual was a delict a crime or a sin against the tribe, although there are occasional instances in the early records where the tribe felt a cer- tain responsibility for the acts of rash members. By their unwritten code, the thief was compelled to restore the article taken, or its value, and if he repeated the offence too often he was stripped of all his goods. Where one man killed another, it was left to the dead man's relatives to slay the offender, but unless this was done within twenty-four hours, it was usual to accept a pecuniary compensation, in which case one hundred fathoms of wampum would be paid for a man, and twice as much for a woman, the distinction being due to the fact that she might bear children.
Time was divided by moons-gischuch; they had but twelve lunar months in the year, gachtin :
Anixi gischuch ( Squirrel month), January.
Tsqualli gischuch ( Frog month), February.
M'choamowi gischuch ( Shad month), March.
Quitauweuhewi gischuch (Spring month), April.
Tauwinipen (Beginning of Summer), May.
Kitschinipen (Summer), June.
Yugatamoewi gischuch, July.
Sakauweuhewi gischuch (Deer month), August.
Kitschitachquoak (Autumn month), September; Big Snake month, from kitschi, big, and achgook, snake.
Pooxit (Month of vermin), October.
Wini gischuch (Snow month), November.
M'chakhocque (Cold month, when the cold makes the trees crack), De- cember.
Loskiel gives different names for some of the months: April, planting month ; May, when the hoe is used to the corn; June, when the deer become red; July, the time of raising the earth about the corn; August, when the corn is in the milk; October, the harvest month; November, hunting month ; December, when the bucks cast their antlers.
Periods less than moons or months were counted by nights or "sleeps." Instead of reckoning by years, they usually counted from certain seasons-as from one seeding time to the other, or "so many winters after" a particular event ; the time of day was calculated by the sun's height in the heavens. As the muse of Roger Williams puts it, "More particular," and very haltingly :
They have no helpe of Clock or Watch, And Sunne they overprize. Having these artificiall helps, the Sun We unthankfully despise.
Although, as the same writer observes, "By occasion of their frequent lying in the Fields and Woods, they much observe the Starres, and their very children can give Names to many of them, and observe their Motions," we have no account of their identification of any but the polar star, by which
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THE ABORIGINES
they had earned to direct their course. The knowledge of astronomy appears to have originated with pastoral, and not with nomadic, peoples.
The red man, by reason of his adventurous pursuits, was peculiarly sub- ject to wounds and to diseases that follow exposure and irregular living. In his treatment of external injuries he was surprisingly successful, having a precise knowledge of the particular roots and herbs most efficacious in each case and how to apply them ; these remedies were often used internally also. Heckewelder relates some astonishing cures of dangerous wounds, pp. 224-7. He says : "There is a superstitious notion, in which all their physicians par- ticipate, which is, that when an emetic is to be administered, the water in which the potion is mixed must be drawn up stream, and if for a cathartic downwards." And again: "I firmly believe that there is no wound, unless it should be absolutely mortal, or beyond the skill of our own good practi- tioners, which an Indian surgeon (I mean the best of them) will not succeed in healing." Bishop Ettwein says: "There are a few Indians in general who have an actual Knowledge of the Virtues of Roots and Herbs, which they got from their Forefathers, and can cure certain Diseases, but they seldom communicate their Secrets, until they see they must soon die. Their Medi- cine or Beson is not for a white Man's Stomach, it is allways in great Por- tions. They have for a Bite of each particular Snake a particular Herb. Roberts' Plantain, called Cæsar's Antidote is commonly used for the Bite of a Rattle Snake, the Herb bruised and some of the Juice taken inwardly and the rest laid on the Wound." But the Indian's favorite remedy for disease and fatigue was the sweat-bath. Whether the warrior suffered from exhaus- tion or rheumatism, loss of appetite or small-pox, fever or consumption, he hied to the Pimoacun-the sweat-house. This was a sort of oven, usually built on the side of a bank, covered with split bark and earth, lined with clay, a small door being on one side. Here two to six men could huddle together, over some red-hot stones, on which water was then poured, till they ceased to "sing." In this way clouds of steam were raised. The men at the same time drank hot decoctions, inducing a profuse perspiration, and heightening the effect, after the manner of a modern Russian bath. From this oven they plunged into the cold river, causing a vigorous reaction. Unfortunately the cold water dip was apt to prove fatal in cases of small-pox and other eruptive fevers. Disease in general was attributed to some evil spirit getting into the sick man, and if the malady did not yield to the ordinary remedies, or the sweat-bath, the patient had a choice of one of two or three different "schools" of medicine.
David Brainerd, the devoted missionary among the Delaware Indians in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, gives us a glimpse of the Powaws, who were one class of priests and physicians. He says :
These are a sort of persons who are supposed to have a power of fore- telling future events, or recovering the sick, at least oftentimes, and of charming, inchanting or poisoning persons to death by their magic divina- tions. Their spirit, in its various operations, seems to be a Satanical imi- tation of the spirit of prophecy with which the church in early ages was
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PATERSON AND ITS ENVIRONS
favoured. Some of these diviners are endowed with the spirit in infancy ;- others in adult age. It seems not to depend upon their own will, nor to be acquired by any endeavours of the person who is the subject of it, although it is supposed to be given to children sometimes in consequence of some means which the parents use with them for that purpose ; one of which is to make the child swallow a small living frog, after having per- formed some superstitious rites and ceremonies upon it. They are not under the influence of this spirit always alike,-but it comes upon them at times. Those who are endowed with it, are accounted singularly favored.
One of these Powaws was converted under the teaching of Brainerd, and gave him a curious account of his pre-natal experiences, and of his sub- sequent constant direction by a spirit. "There were some times," he told the missionary, "when this spirit came upon him in a special manner, and he was full of what he saw [in his pre-existent state] in the great man. Then, he says, he was all light, and not only light himself, but it was light all around him, so that he could see through men, and knew the thoughts of their hearts. My interpreter tells me, that he heard one of them tell a certain Indian the secret thoughts of his heart, which he had never divulged. The case was this, the Indian was bitten with a snake, and was in extreme pain with the bite. Whereupon the diviner, who was applied to for his recovery, told him, that such a time he had promised, that the next deer he killed, he would sacrifice it to some great power, but had broken his promise. Now. said he, that great power has ordered this snake to bite you for your neglect. The Indian confessed it was so, but said he had never told anybody of it." This instance of the power of the Powaw-doubtless a shrewd guess, perhaps based on some involuntary utterance of the sick man-was well calculated to impress the simple Indian. Nevertheless, though with manifest reluctance, Roger Williams confesses that these powaws "doe most certainly (by the helpe of the Divell) worke great Cures, though most certaine it is that the greatest part of their Priests doe merely abuse them and get their Money, in the times of their sicknesse, and to my knowledge long for sick times."
The name of this class of physician-priests is evidently allied to the Cree root, pâwamiw, the dream. They might be compared with the "healing clair- voyants" of the present day. So far as they were honest in their pretensions -and most of them were impostors-they were self-deluded, throwing them- selves into a condition of hypnotism. Not infrequently they were epileptic. These conclusions are reasonably inferred from the meager accounts we have of them. Dr. Stockwell expresses his contempt for the Indian treatment of diseases as being the merest fetichism. But he says: "All medicine-men of the first rank are clairvoyants and psychologists (mesmerists, if you like) of no mean pretensions, as a rule capable of affording instruction to the most able of their white confrères ; and to be a medicine-man at all demands that the individual be not only a shrewd student of human nature capable of drawing deductions from matters seemingly the most trifling, but also an expert conjurer and wizard. I have repeatedly known events in the far future to be predicted with scrupulous fidelity to details, exactly as they sub- sequently occurred; the movements of persons and individuals to be de-
27
THE ABORIGINES
scribed in minutiæ who had never been seen, and were hundreds of miles away, without a single error as to time, place, or act."
But the Indian "doctor" or medicine man" par excellence, was the Meteu or Medeu. The word is derived from meteohet, to drum on a hollow body ; a turkey cock is sometimes called meteu, from the drumming sound of his wings. The ancient medicine men used drums. Dr. Brinton thinks the word is derived from m'itch, heart, as the centre of life and emotions. The Cree word is mitcw, a sorcerer, medicine man, diviner. This priest- physician would prepare his roots and herbs with great ceremony, all the while chanting prayers and incantations. The quantity and quality of the medicines, as well as of the incantations, and their efficacy, likewise, de- pended on the size of the present given the meteu on his appearance. Having prepared the medicine, the physician would breathe on his patient, apply the decoction externally as well as internally, and then "howle and roar, and hollow over them, and begin the song to the rest of the people about them, who all joyne (like a Quire) in Prayer to their Gods for them." Sometimes the doctor would array himself in a bearskin, with a rattle in his hand, a gourd full of stones or beans, which he would shake violently as he came to the patient's hut, making hideous noises, and playing all sorts of juggling tricks. With a great assumption of gravity he would describe the disease and its location, prescribe a diet suited to the malady, and foretell the result. If he succeeded, well; if he failed, he would give some plausible explanation of his want of success. As his object was to drive out the sick spirit, he resorted to every expedient to that end. Often he succeeded, but in many cases the patient's spirit was frightened out of him at the same time by the fantastic and disgusting tricks, the alarming feats of legerdemain, and the diabolical clamor that were inseparable features of the medicine man's treat- ment. Loskiel says: "Sometimes the physician creeps into the oven, where he sweats, howls and roars, and now and then grins horribly at his patient, who is laid before the opening, frequently feeling his pulse." Copway, a chief of the Ojibways, says :
I would not like to hazard the assertion, in this enlightened age, that there is such a thing as magic or supernatural agency among the Indians, but I would confess myself unable, as all have done who have witnessed these exhibitions, to account for [them] satisfactorily ; one of those Indians who pretends to have an intercourse with spirits, will permit himself to be bound hands and feet, then wrapped closely in a blanket or deer's hide, bound around his whole body with cords and thongs, as long and as tightly as the incredulity of any one present may see fit to continue the operation, after which he is thrown into a small lodge. He begins a low, unintelligible incan- tation to the gods and increases in rapidity and loudness until he works him- self up into a great pitch of seeming or real frenzy, at which time, usually three or four minutes after being put in, he opens the lodge and throws out the thongs and hides with which he was bound without a single knot being untied or fold displaced, himself sitting calm and free on the ground.
In "Indian Medicine," the writer declares that he personally bound a famous Ojibway "medicine man" with powerful strips of green moose-hide,
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PATERSON AND ITS ENVIRONS
drawing them so tightly about his naked form that the blood threatened to burst from the imprisoned flesh, employing knots and turns innumerable, such as had been suggested by naval experience; then he was lifted into a small tent erected for the purpose in the midst of an open prairie. Instantly a vast variety of noises was heard to the accompaniment of the prisoner's low chant, and presently he appeared at the door of the tent, unbound. The thongs could not be found, but he pointed to a tree a mile away, and on going thither, there were the bonds, apparently intact !
Crude petroleum was a favorite medicine, especially for external com- plaints, but it was also taken internally.
Another class of medicine-men in the vicinity of New York is described by Wassenaer, in 1624. These men were called Kitsinacka, evidently Kitschii, great, achgook, snake. Their practice was not unlike that of the meteu. "When one among them is sick," says our old Dutch chronicler, "he visits him, sits by him and bawls, roars and cries like one possessed." We have no other details of the "practice" of the Big-Snake Doctor. No doubt it was connected with the awe in which the serpent was held by the Ameri- can tribes in general. The serpent figured in their materia medica, and on the principle similia similibus curantur, when a man was wounded by a snake, the fat of the serpent itself, rubbed into the wound, was thought to be effica- cious. The flesh of the rattlesnake, stewed into a kind of broth, was another remedy, and the skin, shed annually by that snake, was dried and pounded fine, and used internally for many purposes.
Indian surgery was of the crudest description, but very successful. "They are perfect masters in the treatment of fractures and dislocations," says Loskiel. "If an Indian has dislocated his foot or knee, when hunting alone, he creeps to the next tree, and tying one end of his strap to it, fastens the other to the dislocated limb, and lying on his back, continues to pull till it is reduced." Even to this day the Lenapé resort to an operation similar to trephining for severe headaches. A crucial incision is made in the scalp on or near the vertix, and the bone is scraped.
To the simple savage, living always in close contact with nature, so thor- oughly in touch with her fresh and life-giving qualities, health was the normal condition of man. When the form that had once been so vigorous and ani- mated lay still and cold, it was a mystery he could not fathom. Dr. Brinton says that "in all primitive American tribes, there is no notion of natural death. No man 'dies,' he is always 'killed.' Death as a necessary incident in the course of nature is entirely unknown to them. When a person dies by dis- ease, they suppose he has been killed by some sorcery, or some unknown venomous creature." Heckewelder says he has often heard the lamentable cry, Matta wingi angeln, "I do not want to die." It was different when they met death at the hands of an enemy, either in battle, or even by dreadful tor- ture. There they encountered their fate face to face. There was none of that mystery about it which was so dreadful to the untutored mind. They could hurl defiance against their visible foes, and utter never a groan.
When a person died a natural death, the relatives were loud in their cries
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THE ABORIGINES
of grief, which they kept up for some days, until the time of burial. The body was attired in the best garments of the deceased, the face painted red, and the corpse interred in a grave some distance from the village or huts of the survivors. In the vicinity of New York, at least, and probably among the New Jersey Indians generally, the body was placed in a sitting position, the face toward the east; the pipe, tobacco, bow and arrows, knife, kettle, wam- pum, a small bag of corn, and other personal property of the deceased that might be useful to him on his long journey to the spirit land, were placed in the grave with him. At the head of the grave a tall post was erected, indi- cating who was buried there. If it was a Chief, the post was elaborately carved with rude figures telling something of the dead; and if he was a war Chief or a great warrior, his valiant deeds were set forth with care upon a post painted red. In the case of a medicine man, his tortoise shell rattle or calabash was hung on the post. The grave was enclosed with a fence and covered over, to keep it secure from intrusion, the grass was neatly trimmed, and the friends looked after it for years. Even when far removed from their old homes, they would repair at least once a year to the graves of their dead, to see that they were preserved. It is a shocking fact that the valuable furs in which the Indian hunter was often buried, sometimes tempted the whites to plunder the grave and rob the dead, occasioning an indignant pro- test upon the part of his tribe. When a prominent Indian died far from home, they would carry his bones back to his former abode, after a con- siderable lapse of time, and bury them beside his kindred.
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