USA > Ohio > Jefferson County > Steubenville > Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio and Representative Citizens, 20th > Part 6
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For clothing they had blankets made of beaver and raccoon skins, with frocks, shirts, petticoats, leggings and moccasins of deer, bear and other skins. If cold the fur was placed next to the body, if warm ontside. Rib bones of the elk and buffalo were used to shave the hair off of skins they wished to dress, and the process was successful. The women also made blankets of turkey und goose feathers, interwoven with thread or twine made from the rind of the wild hemp and nettles. The men were clothed in blankets, plain or ruffled shirts, leggings and moccasins. The women had petticoats of eloth, red, blue, or black when they could get it from traders, and adorned themselves with trinkets from the same source, displacing the original ones of bone and shells. They painted them- selves with vermillion and the loose women deeply scarlet. Is this from whence the term "scarlet woman" is derived? The men painted their thighs, legs, breasts and faces, and there were dandies who would spend all night decorating themselves. They plucked ont their beards and hair on the head, except a tuft on the crown, with tweezers. Heckwelder says. "The Indians would all be bearded, like white men were it not for this custom."
vegetables while he hunted or fished. If both performed their duties they remained together ns man and wife. If either failed they separated. The household duties were uot heavy. There was but one pot to clean, no serubbing, and little washing, for cleanliness is not un Indinn virtue. If on a jom ney, the wife carried the baggage, for the hushand must avoid hard labor and stiffening of the museles if he expects to be an expert hunter and warrior. The In- dian loved to see his wife well clothed and hence gave her all his skins. This was be- fore the advent of the fur traders. While the wives seemed to have the henvy end of the hubor problem, yet their husbands were not without affection for them. Heek- welder mentions a case where an Indian wout forty or fifty miles after cranberries to satisfy his wife's longing. Another dur- ing a fumine went a hundred miles on horseback (of course after whites had brought horses into the country) after some corn, traded his horse for what would fill the crown of his hat, and walked home bringing his saddle back with him. If a man's wife offended him, he seldom abused her, but would go into the woods and re- main a week or two, living on ment, leav- ing his wife uncertain whether he will come back, and exposing her to the report of being a quarrelsome woman. When he re- turns she shows her repentance by atten- tions, although neither says a word of what has passed. The wife had her separate property, which included the contents of the wigwam except implements of the war or chase, and the councils and chiefs in the social goverment (not the military) were selected by a council of women from the male members of the tribe, n situation which would be considered quite advanced in these days.
The highest science of the Indian was war, and all his training was directed to that end. Each gens or tribe had a right to the services of all its available male mem-
An Indian took his wife on trial. He bers in avenging wrongs. in times of war.
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and as hunters in supplying game. In open to be shot down. In simple fortitude, times of scarcity whatever game was however, he was the equal if not the super- ior of the white man. brought to the camp or village was fairly divided among all present. The military Indian councils were noted for a gravity and decorum which might well afford an example to other deliberative bodies. An orator was never interrupted except by a gutteral sound "hoogh" expressive of sat- isfaction or agreement. Antagonists gave respectful attention to the speaker, and waited until he elosed before rising to re- ply. The Iroquois were especially eloquent. and it is unfortunate that there is no record of their orations. The celebrated speech of Logan will have later reference, but he was only one among many. Redjacket, Corn- planter, Cornstalk and Tecumstha were only leading examples in a large company. Con- cerning one of these an eyewitness and auditor of the interview between the chief and Lord Dunmore says: "When he arose he was in nowise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, witli- out stammering or repetition" and with peculiar emphasis. His looks while ad- dressing Dunmore were truly grand and majestic, yet graceful and attractive. I have heard the first orators in Virginia, Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, but never have I heard one whose powers of delivery surpassed those of Cornstalk." council was composed of all the able bod- ied men of the tribe. The war dance was the nsual preliminary to opening a cam- paign. It was really a dramatic repre- sentation of a battle. When the rhythmic movements to the beating of drums and singing of songs have roused the warriors to a pitch of enthusiasm, arrows fly, toma- hawks are wielded, dead and dying are sup- posed to strew the field, false scalps are taken from bleeding (painted) heads, and the scene closes with shouts of victory and dirges for the slain. Then all becomes quiet. The party leaves the village with its chief at the head threading its way through the forest in single or "Indian" file nntil the unsuspecting enemy is found, when the dramatic scenes of the war dance become a reality. Petroleum, which was found on Yellow Creek in Jefferson County, was used in mixing war paint and from the Senecas using this same fluid it was long known as "Seneca oil." The oil is said to have given them "a hideons glistening, ap- pearance as well as adding permanency to the paint and making it impervious to water."
In this connection it may be mentioned that the common impression that the In- dian was superior to his white competitor in woodcraft or even bravery is without foundation. Given sufficient experience, the 'white hunter and trapper has invari- ably proven the superior of the red man. The Indian will stand any sort of torture with stoicism and face inevitable death with the calmness of a Christian martyr, but never could be depended on for an assault in the open, unless in such over-whelming numbers as to make success certain. A check would disperse them even though they outnumbered their opponents several to one. So long as he could fight from be- hind a screen or overcome his adversary by a sudden rush he was eunning and brave, but he had no notion of standing up in the
The Indian learned to talk English, per- haps quite as rapidly as the average for- eigner, but his own vocabulary being lim- ited he natnrally followed the same line in his acquired tongue. This, so far from detracting, added to the dignity of his declarations as they were expressed in plain Anglo-Saxon. Here is an extract from an address delivered to President Washington in Philadelphia in 1790 on he- half of Cornplanter, Great Tree and Half- King :
"Father, when you kindled your thirteen fires separately the wise men assembled at them told us that you were all brothers; the children of one Great Father, who regarded the red people as his children. They called us brothers, and invited us to his protec. tion. They told us he resided beyond the great waters where the sun first rises; and he was a King whose power no people could resist, and that his goodness wan as bright as the sun. What they said went to
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our hearts. We accepted the invitation, and promised to obey him. What the Seneca nation promises they faithfully perform. When you refused obedience to that King be commanded us to assist bis beloved men in making you sober. In obeying him we did no more than yourselves bad bid us to promise. We were de- ceived, but your people, teaching us to confide in that King, had helped to deceive us, and we now appeal to your heart. Is all the blame ours?""
Could anything be more logical than the above? Pages of oration would have been no more convincing. Here is a bit of elo- quence from Red Jacket.
"We stand on a small island, in the bosom of the great waters. We are encircled, we are encompassed. The Evil Spirit rides upon the blast and the waters are disturbed. They rise, they press upon us, and the waters once settled over tis, we disappear forever. Who, then, lives to mourn ust None. What marks our extinction! Nothing. We are mingled with the common elements. "
Tecumstha in 1810 made a speech in re- gard to the red men's common occupancy of the land which would not be a bad argu- ment at the present day, but we have not space to multiply examples.
Jefferson County is interested in the ac- count of the last fight between the Wyan- dots or Hurons, and their old enemies, the Iroquois. They had fought together at Braddock's defeat in 1755, and on the homeward route the Senecas followed the trail via Mingo and west to the Tuscar- awas. The Wyandots kept to the north, striking the ridge between the heads of Elk Eye Creek (Muskingum) and the Seneca capital in Tuscarawas. They tried to steal a march on the town, but the Senecas were alert, and sent Ogista, an old chief, out to meet them. He went boldly into their camp, and made an agreement that in lieu of a general battle each tribe should piek twenty warriors, willing to suffer death by single combat. When all were slain they were to be covered, hatchet in hand, in one grave, and henceforth neither Seneca nor Wyan- dot were ever again to raise a bloody hand against the other. Forty braves were soon selected, the war dance enacted in all its details, and the carnage began. By night- fall bnt one warrior, a son of Ogista, was left, with none of the enemy to strike him
down. His father took his weapon, and with it cleaved the head of his offspring. The dead were gathered into a heap with their tomahawks by their sides, and a mound of earth raised over them, (this reads like a performance of the Mound Builders) when all repaired to the Seneca capital and closed the proceedings with a grand feast, as a memorial of the compaet that the hatchet was to be buried forever between these two tribes. Fort Laurens was afterwards erected near here, in 1779, and was shortly after besieged by 184 Wyandots, Senecas and Mingoes. Suppos- ing the Indians had left, a party of seven- teen soldiers went out to catch horses and gather wood. They were ambushed and all killed by the Indians, who were performing religious or funeral rites at the grave of their relatives.
Indian respect for old age, in fact for any elderly person was carried to an ex- treme.
"The aged." they say, "have lived through the whole period of our lives, and long before we were born. They have not only all the knowledge which we possess, but a great deal more. We, therefore, must submit our limited views to their experi- ence." While traveling the eldest always took the lead, even in the case of children, and if accosted on the way nobody pre- smines to reply except the eldest, whom they call the speaker. As an illustration of how far this rule was carried au inci- dent is related of a party of Christian In- dians near Philadelphia being permitted to return to their homes in the interior, peace having been concluded with some warring tribes. They had to cut a path through the wilderness which they did with great amount of labor and delay, and finally came to a very steep mountain through which no passage could be found above or below. They had been following the lead of sev- eral old men who undertook to be their guides. There seemed to be no alternative but to go back and take another road, which would involve a journey of nearly one hun- dred miles. It occurred to the missionary
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THE HALF-MOON, OHIO RIVER. STEUBENVILLE
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF STEUBENVILLE
WELL'S RUN. STEUBENVILLE
ENTRANCE TO UNION CEMETERY, STEUBENVILLE
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that there was an Indian named David with them who was acquainted with that part of the country and might be able to pilot them out of their difficulty. The supposi- tion proved correct. David knew a good road along which the party might easily pass, but not having been questioned on the subject, he had hitherto kept silent, and followed with the rest, although he knew all the time they were going wrong. He now led them back six miles where they found an easy way through the mountain and pursued their journey.
There was also a strong filial affection it being considered the bounden duty of parents to care for their children until they were old enough to care for themselves, an obligation that was to be returned by the children when their parents grew old. In fact the old were treated very much as children, and even in hunting parties the aged were placed where the game would pass by so they would be in at the death. Zeisberger says : "I am free to declare that among all the Indian nations that I have become acquainted with, if any one should kill an old man or woman, for no other cause than that of having become burden- some to society, it would be considered as an unpardonable crime; the general indig- nation would be excited, and the murderer instantly put to death. I cannot conceive any act that would produce such an univer- sal horror and detestation. Such is the veneration which is everywhere felt for old age."
To have one's children taken captive by the Indians was regarded as the most cruel fate possible, but unless children were killed in an attack on a settlement or put out of the way on the homeward march they were usually adopted into one of the tribes. The horrible tortures of children which are related as part of the history of the Orient especially had no counterpart among the earlier American savages. It is a well known fact that after living a few years with the Indians, white children were most loath to return to their former homes, and force was necessary to compel thein to do
so. And it must be remembered, not as a justification but an explanation, that it was a cardinal rule of the frontiersman to which of course there were notable ex- ceptions, that an Indian had no rights which a white man was bound to respect. They reverenced the graves of their dead which the whites ruthlessly desecrated. Their women were regarded as the prop- erty of every dissolute white man whose basest passions were excited. No consid- eration was shown their homes or their families, and as for shooting an Indian, that attracted about as much attention as shooting a bear or a wolf. Is it surprising that under such provocations the untutored savage engaged in reprisals that make the blood run cold? Even a civilized Christian would hardly be expected to maintain an equable poise under such conditions.
The Indians were not without a rude code of laws for the punishment of crime. Theft was punished by double restitution, treason, which consisted in revealing the secrets of the medicine preparations, as well as giving information or assistance to the enemy, was punished by death. Witch- craft was punished by death by stabbing, burning, or with the tomahawk. Probably the latest instance of this punishment in Ohio was that of Leatherlips, a chief who was tomahawked in Franklin County on June 1, 1810. For adultery a woman had her hair cropped for first offense, and for persistency in the practice her left ear was eut off. Outlawry was recognized, and it was not only permissible but the duty of any member of the tribe to kill any one who had been declared an outlaw.
Reverence for the aged and care for the children was carried beyond the grave. It is hardly necessary to repeat what every- body knows that with the warrior were buried his weapons, with the hunter his instruments of the chase, his cooking uten- sils and food, with the women their kettles and cooking apparatus, and with all to- bacco, as felicity in this world or the next without tobacco was unthinkable. Among the Iroquois and others the dead were
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placed on scaffolds, and evidence of this practice is yet visible to the traveler on the Columbia River. Ten days were usually allowed for decomposition before final burial, so there was no danger of an Indian being buried alive.
In presenting a brief review of the bet- ter side of the Indian character, it must be borne in mind that he was after all a savage with all the traits that might be ex- pected from such. This is nowhere more markedly exhibited in his religion if his system of mythology can be called such. We have already mentioned that the inon- otheistie, spiritual idea of a Great Sprit, as betrayed in the later tribes and which has been extensively adopted in romance and poetry was an assimilation from the mis- sionaries, a habit in which the Indian is particularly apt. Nobody has made a more thorough study of this subject than Park- man, and his conclusions are worthy of credence. To the Indian the material world was sentient and intelligent. Birds, beasts, and reptiles have ears for human prayers, and are endowed with an influence on hn- man destiny. A mysterious and inexplicable power resides in inanimate things. They, too, can listen to the voice of man, and in- fluence his life for evil or for good. Lakes, rivers, waterfalls are sometimes the dwell- ing-place of spirits; but more frequently they are themselves living beings, to be propitiated by prayers and offerings. The lake has a soul; and so has the river, and the cataract. Each can hear the words of men, and each can be pleased and offended. Through all the works of nature or of man, nothing exists, however seemingly trivial, that may not be endowed for blessing or for bane. A belief prevailed that men owed their first parentage to beasts, birds or reptiles, as bears, wolves, tortoises or cranes, and the names of the totemnie elans, borrowed in nearly every case from ani- mals, are the reflection of this idea. Were the Indians the first Darwinians? Conse- qnently an Indian hunter was always an- xious to propitiate the animals he sought to kill. He had often been known to ad-
dress a wounded bear in a long harangue of apology. Bones of the beavers were treated with special tenderness, and care- fully kept from the dogs, lest the spirit of the dead beaver, or his surviving brethren should take offense. This feeling extended to inanimate things. The Hurons in order to propitiate their fishing nets and per- snade them to bring in good dranghts, mar- ried them every year to two young girls with a more formal ceremony than was oh- served in human wedlock. So must the fish also be propitiated, and to this end they were addressed every evening from the fishing camps, the speaker exhorting them to take courage and allow themselves to be caught, assuring them that the utmost re spect should be shown to their bones. A rather slender consolation, one would think. The hurangue took place after smp per, and during its delivery the remainder of the party were required to lie on their backs, silent and motionless, around the fire.
Beyond the material world the Indian be. lieved in supernatural existences known among the Algonquins as Manitous and among the Iroquois and Hurons as Okies or Otkons. In these were included all forms of supernatural beings, possibly excepting certain diminutive fairies or hobgoblins, and certain giants, and monsters which appeared under various figures, grotesque and horrible in the Indian legends. There was little stretch of the imagination here. In nearly every case, when they revealed themselves to mortal sight they bore the semblance of beasts, reptiles, birds or shapes unusual or distorted. Other mani- tous withont local habitation, good and evil, countless in number and indefinite in attributes, filled the world and controlled human destinies of men. These beings also appear in the shape of animals, sometimes of human beings, but more frequently of stones, which when broken are found full of living blood and flesh.
Each Indian had his guardian maniton. to whom he looked for counsel, guidance and protection, and these spiritual allies
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are obtained by a process not unknown among more civilized communities. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, the Indian boy blackens his face, retires to some solitary place and remains for days without food. His sleep is haunted by visions, and the form which first or most often appears is that of his guardian manitou; a beast, a bird, a fish, a serpent, or some other object, animate or inanimate. An eagle or a bear is the vision of a destined warrior; a wolf, of a successful hunter, while a serpent fore- shadows the future medicine man, or ac- cording to others, portends disaster. The youth henceforth wears about his person the object revealed in his dreams, or some portion of it-as a bone, a feather, a snake skin, or a tuft of hair. This in the modern language of the tribes is his "medicine." To it the wearer uses a sort of worship, propitiates it with offerings of tobacco, thanks it in prosperity, and upbraids it in disaster. If his medicine fails to bring the desired success he will sometimes discard it and adopt another. The superstition now becomes mere fetich worship, since the Indian regards the mysterious object which he carries about him rather as an embodiment than as a representative of a supernatural power.
Besides the beings already mentioned there were others more or less shadowy. The Algonquins had what they called Man- abozho, Messon, Michabou; Nanabush or Great Hare, who was king of all the ani- mal kings. According to the most eur- rent belief his father was the West Wind, and his mother a great granddaughter of the Moon. Sometimes he is a wolf, a bird, or a gigantic hare, surrounded by a retinue of quadrupeds; sometimes he appears in human shape, of majestic stature and of great endowments, a mighty magician, a destroyer of serpents and evil manitous; sometimes he is a vain, and treacherous imp, full of childish whims and petty trickery, the butt and victim of men, beasts and spirits. Although it does not appear that he was an object of worship, yet tra- dition declared him to be the chief of the
manitous, or the "Great Spirit." He was said to have restored the world, submerged by a deluge. He was hunting in company with his brother, a wolf, when the latter fell through the ice of a frozen lake and was devoured by serpents. Manabozho, in- tent on revenge, changed himself into the stump of a tree, and thus surprised and slew the king of the serpents as he basked with his followers in the sun. The other serpents, who were all manitous, in their rage caused the waters of the lake to de- luge the earth. Manabozho climbed a trec, which in answer to his entreaties, grew as the flood rose around it, and thus saved him from destruction. Submerged to the neck he looked abroad over the waters and at length saw a loon or great northern diver, (which formerly was known on the Ohio) to whom he appealed for aid in the task of restoring the world. The loon dived in search of a little mud, as material for reconstruction, but could not reach the bot- tom. A musk-rat made the same attempt, but soon reappeared floating on his back, apparently dead. Manabozho, however, on searching his paws, discovered in one of them a particle of the desired mud, and of this, together with the body of the loon, created the world anew. In some other tra- ditions Manabozho appears, not as the re- storer, but as the creator of the world, forming mankind from the carcases of beasts, birds and fishes (Darwinism again). Other accounts represent him as marrying a female musk-rat by whom he became the progenitor of the human race.
The Algonquins had traces of a vague belief in a shadowy spirit under the name of Atahocan, others saw a supreme being in the Sun, while others believed in a per- sonal devil, who, however, was not as bad as his wife who was the cause of death, and who was driven away from the sick by yelling, drumming, etc.
The Iroquois and Hurons had a tradition that while the earth was a waste of waters there was a heaven with lakes, streams. plains and forests inhabited by animals, spirits and human beings. Here a female
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spirit was chasing a bear, which slipping through a hole fell down to earth. Her dog followed, when she herself, struck with despair, jumped after them. Others de- clare that she was thrown out of heaven by her husband for an amour with a man; while others believed that she fell in the attempt to gather for her husband the me- dicinal leaves of a certain tree. The animals swimming in the watery waste below, saw her falling, and hastily met in council to determine what should be done. The case was referred to the beaver who turned it over to the tortoise, who thereupon called on the other animals to dive, bring up the mud and place it on his back. Thus was formed a floating island on which Ataensic (the spirit) fell, and where she was deliv- ered of a daughter who in turn bore two boys named Taouscaron and Jouskeha. They came to blows, and Jouskeha killed his brother with a staghorn. The back of the tortoise grew into a world full of ver- dure and life, ruled by Jouskeba and his grandmother. He was the Sun and she the Moon. He is beneficent and she is malig- nant. They had a bark house at the end of the earth, and graced the Indian feasts and dances with their presence. The early writers call Jonskeha the Creator of the world.
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