USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County : together with historic notes on the Northwest, and the state of Ohio, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and all other authentic sources > Part 9
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The Indians had three varieties of canoes, elm-bark, birch-bark and pirogues. "Canoes of elm-bark were not used for long voyages, as they were very frail. When the Indians wish to make a canoe of elm-bark they select the trunk of a tree which is very smooth, at the time when the sap remains. They cut it around, above and below, about ten, twelve or fifteen feet apart, according to the num- ber of people which it is to carry. After having taken off the whole in one piece, they shave off the roughest of the bark, which they make the inside of the canoe. They make end ties of the thickness of a finger, and of sufficient length for the canoe, using young oak or any other flexible and strong wood, and fasten the two larger folds of the bark between these strips, spreading them apart with wooden bows, which are fastened in about two feet apart. They sew up the two ends of the bark with strips drawn from the inner bark of the elm, giving attention to raise up a little the two extremities, which they call pinces, making a swell in the middle and a curve on the sides, to resist the wind. If there are any chinks, they sew them together with thongs and cover them with chewing-gum, which they crowd by heating it with a coal of fire. The bark is fastened to the wooden bows by wooden thongs. They add a mast, made of a piece of wood and cross-piece to serve as a yard, and their blankets serve them as sails. These canoes will carry from three to nine persons and all their equipage. They sit upon their heels, without moving, as do also their children, when they are in, from fear of losing their balance, when the whole machine would upset. But this very seldom. happened, unless struck by a flaw of wind. They use these vessels particularly in their war parties.
" The canoes made of birch bark were much more solid and more artistically constructed. The frames of these canoes are made of strips of cedar wood, which is very flexible, and which they render as thin as a side of a sword-scabbard, and three or four inches wide.
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
They all touch one another, and come up to a point between the two end strips. This frame is covered with the bark of the birch tree, sewed together like skins, secured between the end strips and tied along the ribs with the inner bark of the roots of the cedar, as we twist willows around the hoops of a cask. All these seams are cov- ered with gum, as is done with canoes of elm bark. They then put in cross-bars to hold it and to serve as seats, and a long pole, which they lay on from fore to aft in rough weather to prevent it from being broken by the shocks occasioned by pitching. They have with them three, six, twelve and even twenty-four places, which are designated as so many seats. The French are almost the only people who use these canoes for their long voyages. They will carry as much as three thousand pounds." These were vessels in which the fur trade of the entire northwest has been carried on for so many years. They were very light, four men being able to carry the largest of them over portages. At night they were unloaded, drawn upon the shore, turned over, and served the savages or traders as huts. They could endure gales of wind that would play havoc with vessels of European manufacture. In calm water the canoe men, in a sitting posture, used paddles ; in stemming currents, rising from their seats, they substituted poles for paddles, and in shooting rapids, they rested on their knees.
Pirogues were the trunks of trees hollowed out and pointed at the extremities. A fire was started on the trunk, out of which the pirogue was to be constructed. The fire was kept within the desired limits by the dripping of water upon the edges of the trunk. As a part became charred, it was dug out with stone hatchets, and the fire rekindled. This kind of canoes was especially adapted for the navi- gation of the Mississippi and Missouri; the current of these streams carrying down trees, which formed snags, rendered their navigation by bark canoes exceedingly hazardous. It was probably owing to this reason, as well as because there were no birch trees in their country, that the Illinois and Miamis were not, as the Jesuits remarked, "canoe nations; " they used the awkward, heavy pirogue instead.
Each nation was divided into villages. The Indian village, when unfortified, had its cabins scattered along the banks of a river or the shores of a lake, and often extended for three or four miles. Each cabin held the head of the family, the children, grandchildren, and often the brothers and sisters, so that a single cabin not unfrequently contained as many as sixty persons. Some of their cabins were in
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WIGWAMS.
the form of elongated squares, of which the sides were not more than five or six feet high. They were made of bark, and the roof was prepared from the same material, having an opening in the top for the passage of smoke. At both ends of the cabin there were entrances. The fire was built under the hole in the roof, and there were as many fires as there were families.
The beds were upon planks on the floor of the cabin, or upon simple hides, which they called appichimon, placed along the parti- tions. They slept upon these skins, wrapped in their blankets, which, during the day, served them for clothing. Each one had his particu- lar place. The man and wife crouched together, her back being against his body, their blankets passed around their heads and feet, so that they looked like a plate of ducks. These bark cabins were used by the Iroquois, and indeed, by many Indian tribes who lived exclu- sively in the forests.
The prairie Indians, who were unable to procure bark, generally made mats out of platted reeds or flags, and placed these mats around three or four poles tied together at the ends. They were, in form, round, and terminated in a cone. These mats were sewed together with so much skill that, when new, the rain could not penetrate them. This variety of cabins possessed the great advantage that, when they moved their place of residence, the mats of reeds were rolled up and carried along by the squaws.
" The nastiness of these cabins alone, and that infection which was a necessary consequence of it, would have been to any one but an Indian a severe punishment. Having no windows, they were full of smoke, and in cold weather they were crowded with dogs. The Indians never changed their garments until they fell off by their very rottenness. Being never washed, they were fairly alive with vermin. In summer the savages bathed every day, but immediately afterward rubbed themselves with oil and grease of a very rank smell. "In winter they remained unwashed, and it was impossible to enter their cabins without being poisoned with the stench."
All their food was very ill-seasoned and insipid, "and there pre- vailed in all their repasts an uncleanliness which passed all concep- tion. There were very few animals which did not feed cleaner." They never washed their wooden or bark dishes, nor their porringers and spoons. In this connection William Biggs states : " They plucked off a few of the largest feathers, then threw the duck -- feathers, entrails and all-into the soup kettle, and cooked it in that manner."
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
The Indians were cannibals, though human flesh was only eaten at war feasts. It was often the case that after a prisoner had been tor- tured his body was thrown into "the war-kettle," and his remains greedily devoured. This fact is uniformly asserted by the early French writers. Members of Major Long's party made especial inquiries at Fort Wayne concerning this subject, and were entirely convinced. They met persons who had attended the feasts, and saw Indians who acknowledged that they had participated in them. Joseph Barron saw the Pottawatomies with hands and limbs, both of white men and Cherokees, which they were about to devour. Among some tribes cannibalism was universal, but it appears that among the Pottawat- omies and Miamis it was restricted to a fraternity whose privilege and duty it was on all occasions to eat out of the enemy's flesh ;- at least one individual must be eaten. The flesh was sometimes dried and taken to the villages.
The Indians had some peculiar funeral customs. Joutel thus records some of his observations: "They pay a respect to their dead, as appears by their special care of burying them, and even of putting into lofty coffins the bodies of such as are considerable among them, as their chiefs and others, which is also practiced among the Accan- ceas, but they differ in this respect, that the Accanceas weep and make their complaints for some days, whereas the Shawnees and other people of the Illinois nation do just the contrary, for when any of them die they wrap them up in skins and then put them into coffins made of the bark of trees, then sing and dance about them for twenty- four hours. Those dancers take care to tie calabashes, or gourds, about their bodies, with some Indian corn in them, to rattle and make a noise, and some of them have a drum, made of a great earthen pot, on which they extend a wild goat's skin, and beat thereon with one stick, like our tabors. During that rejoicing they threw their presents on the coffin, as bracelets, pendants or pieces of earthenware. When the ceremony was over they buried the body, with a part of the presents, making choice of such as may be most proper for it. They also bury with it some store of Indian wheat, with a pot to boil it in, for fear the dead person should be hungry on his long journey, and they repeat the ceremony at the year's end. A good number of presents still remaining, they divide them into several lots and play at a game called the stick to give them to the winner."
The Indian graves were made of a large size, and the whole of the inside lined with bark. On the bark was laid the corpse, accompanied
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INDIAN SUPERSTITIONS.
with axes, snow-shoes, kettle, common shoes, and, if a woman, carry- ing-belts and paddles.
This was covered with bark, and at about two feet nearer the surface, logs were laid across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by no means fall upon the corpse. If the deceased, before his death, had so expressed his wish, a tree was hollowed out and the corpse deposited within. After the body had become entirely decomposed, the bones were often collected and buried in the earth. Many of these wooden sepulchres were discovered by the early settlers in Iroquois county, Illinois. Doubtless they were the remains of the Pottawatomies, who at that time resided there.
After a death they took care to visit every place near their cabins, striking incessantly with rods and raising the most hideous cries, in order to drive the souls to a distance, and to keep them from lurking about their cabins.
The Indians believed that every animal contained a Manitou or God, and that these spirits could exert over them a beneficial or prejudicial influence. The rattlesnake was especially venerated by them. Henry relates an instance of this veneration. He saw a snake, and procured his gun, with the intention of dispatching it. The Indians begged him to desist, and, "with their pipes and tobacco pouches in their hands, approached the snake. They surrounded it, all addressing it by turns and calling it their grandfather, but yet kept at some distance. During this part of the ceremony, they filled their pipes, and each blew the smoke toward the snake, which, as it appeared to me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining coiled and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it stretched itself along the ground in visible good humor. The Indians followed it, and, still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeched it to take care of their families during their absence, and also to open the hearts of the English, that they might fill their (the Indians') canoes with rum. This reverence of the Indians for the rattlesnake will account for the vast number of these reptiles met with by early settlers in localities favorable for their increase and security. The clefts in the rocky cliffs below Niagara Falls were so infested with rattlesnakes that the Indians removed their village to a place of greater security.
The Indians had several games, some of which have been already noticed. McCoy mentions a singular occurrence of this nature : "A Miami Indian had been stabbed with a knife, who lingered, and of whose recovery there was no doubt. On the 12th of May a party
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
resolved to decide by a game of moccasin whether the man should live or die. In this game the party seat themselves upon the earth opposite to each other, while one holds a moccasin on the ground with one hand, and holds in the other a small ball; the ball he affects to conceal in the moccasin, and does either insert it or not, as he shall choose, and then leaves the opposite party to guess where the ball is. In order to deceive his antagonist, he incessantly utters a kind of a sing-song, which is repeated about thrice in a minute, and moving his hands in unison with the notes, brings one of them, at every repetition, to the mouth of the moccasin, as though he had that moment inserted the ball. One party played for the wounded man's recovery and the other for his death. Two games were played, in both of which the side for recovery was triumphant, and so they concluded the man would not die of his wounds."
The Indians had a most excellent knowledge of the topography of their country, and they drew the most exact maps of the countries they were acquainted with. They set down the true north according to the polar star; the ports, harbors, rivers, creeks, and coasts of the lakes ; roads, mountains, woods, marshes and meadows. They counted the distances by journeys and half journeys, allowing to every journey five leagues. These maps were drawn upon birch bark. "Previous to General Brock's crossing over to Detroit, he asked Tecumseh what sort of a country he should have to pass through in case of his pro- ceeding farther. Tecumseh took a roll of elm bark, and extending it on the ground, by means of four stones, drew forth his scalping knife, and, with the point, etched upon the bark a plan of the country, its hills, woods, rivers, morasses, a plan which, if not as neat, was fully as accurate as if it had been made by a professional map-maker.
In marriage, they had no ceremony worth mentioning, the man and the woman agreeing that for so many bucks, beaver hides, or, in short, any valuables, she should be his wife. Of all the passions, the Indians were least influenced by love. Some authors claim that it had no existence, excepting, of course, mere lust, which is possessed by all animals. "By women, beauty was commonly no motive to marriage, the only inducement being the reward which she received. It was said that the women were purchased by the night, week, month or winter, so that they depended on fornication for a living ; nor was it thought either a crime or shame, none being esteemed as prostitutes but such as were licentious without a reward." Poly- gamy was common, but was seldom practiced except by the chiefs. On the smallest offense husband and wife parted, she taking the
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MARRIAGE AND RELIGION.
domestic utensils and the children of her sex. Children formed the only bond of affection between the two sexes; and of them, to the credit of the Indian be it said, they were very fond. They never chastised them, the only punishment being to dash, by the hand, water into the face of the refractory child. Joutel noticed this method of correction among the Illinois, and nearly a hundred years later Jones mentions the same custom as existing among the Shawnees.
The Algonquin tribes, differing in this respect from the southern Indians, had no especial religion. They believed in good and bad spirits, and thought it was only necessary to appease the wicked spirits, for the good ones "were all right anyway." These bad spirits were thought to occupy the bodies of animals, fishes and rep- tiles, to dwell in high mountains, gloomy caverns, dangerous whirl- pools, and all large bodies of water. This will account for the offerings of tobacco and other valuables which they made when passing such places. No ideas of morals or metaphysics everentered the head of the Indians; they believed what was told them upon those subjects, without having more than a vague impression of their meaning. Some of the Canadian Indians, in all sincerity, compared the Holy Trinity to a piece of pork. There they found the lean meat, the fat and the rind, three distinct parts that form the same piece." Their ideas of heaven was a place full of sensual enjoy- ments, and free from physical pains. Indeed, it is doubtful if, before their mythology was changed by the partial adoption of some of the doctrines of Christianity, they had any idea of spiritual reward or punishment.
Wampum, prior to and many years subsequent to the advent of the Europeans, was the circulating medium among the North Ameri- can Indians. It is made out of a marine shell, or periwinkle, some of which are white, others violet, verging toward black. They are perforated in the direction of the greater diameter, and are worked into two forms, strings and belts. The strings consist of cylinders strung without any order, one after another, on to a thread. The belts are wide sashes, in which the white and purple beads are arranged in rows and tied by little leathern strings, making a very pretty tissue. Wampum belts are used in state affairs, and their length, width and color are in proportion to the importance of the affair being negotiated. They are wrought, sometimes, into figures of considerable beauty.
These belts and strings of wampum are the universal agent with
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
the Indians, not only as money, jewelry or ornaments, but as annals and for registers to perpetuate treaties and compacts between individuals and nations. They are the inviolable and sacred pledges which guarantee messages, promises and treaties.
As writing is not in use among them, they make a local memoir by means of these belts, each of which signifies a particular affair or a circumstance relating to it. The village chiefs are the custodians, and communicate the affairs they perpetuate to the young people, who thus learn the history, treaties and engagements of their nation. Belts are classified as message, road, peace or war belts. White signifies peace, as black does war. The color therefore at once indicates the intention of the person or tribe who sends or accepts a belt. So general was the importance of the belt, that the French and English, and the Ameri- cans, even down as late as the treaty of Greenville, in 1795,used it in treating with the Indians
CHAPTER IX.
THE WAR FOR THE FUR TRADE.
FORMERLY the great Northwest abounded in game and water-fowl. The small lakes and lesser water courses were full of beaver, otter and muskrats. In the forests were found the marten, the raccoon, and other fur-bearing animals. The plains, partially submerged, and the rivers, whose current had a sluggish flow, the shallow lakes, producing annual crops of wild rice, of nature's own sowing, teemed with wild geese, duck and other aquatic fowl bursting in their very fatness.
The turkey, in his glossy feathers, strutted the forests, some of them being of prodigious size, weighing thirty-six pounds.
The shy deer and the lordly elk, crowned with outspreading horns, grazed upon the plain and in the open woods, while the solitary moose browsed upon the buds in the thick copsewood that gave him food and a hiding place as well. The fleet-footed antelope nibbled at the tender grasses on the prairies, or bounded away over the ridges to hide in the valleys beyond, from the approach of the stealthy wolf or wily Indian. The belts c" timber along the water courses afforded lodgment for the bear, and were the trellises that supported the tangled wild grape- vines, the fruit of which, to this animal, was an article of food. The bear had for his neighbor the panther, the wild cat and the lynx, whose carnivorous appetites were appeased in the destruction of other animals.
Immense herds of buffalo roamed over the extensive area bounded on the east by the Alleghanies and on the north by the lakes, embracing the states of Ohio, Indi- ana, Illinois, Wisconsin and the southern half of Michigan. Their trails checkered the prairies of Indiana and Illinois in every direction, the marks of which, deep worn in the turf, remained for many years after the disappearance of the animals that made them. Their numbers when the country was first known to Europeans were immense, and beyond computation. In
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
their migrations southward in the fall, and on their return from the blue grass regions of Kentucky in the spring, the Ohio River was obstructed for miles during the time occupied by the vast herds in crossing it. Indeed, the French called the buffalo the "Illinois ox," on account of their numbers found in "the country of the Illinois," using that expression in its wider sense, as explained on a preceding page. So great importance was attached to the supposed commercial value of the buffalo for its wool that when Mons. Iberville, in 1698, was engaged to undertake the colonization of Louisiana, the king instructed him to look after the buffalo wool as one of the most im- portant of his duties ; and Father Charlevoix, while traveling through " The Illinois," observed that he was surprised that the buffalo had been so long neglected. Among the favorite haunts of the buffalo were the marshes of the Upper Kankakee, the low lands about the lakes of northern Indiana, where the oozy soil furnished early as well as late pasturage, the briny earth upon the Au Glaize, and the Salt Licks upon the Wabash and Illinois rivers were tempting places of resort. From the summit of the high hill at Quiatanon, overlooking the Wea plains to the east and the Grand Prairie to the west, as far as the eye could reach in either direction, the plains were seen covered with groups, grazing together, or, in long files, stretching away in the distance, their dark forms, contrasting with the green sward upon which they fed or strolled, and inspiring the enthusiasm of the Frenchman, who gave the description quoted on page 104. Still later, when passing through the prairies of Illinois, on his way from Vincennes to Ouiatanon-more a prisoner than an ambassador-George Croghan makes the following entry in his daily journal : "18th and 19th of June, 1765 .- We traveled through a prodigious large meadow, called the Pyankeshaws' hunting ground. Here is no wood to be seen, and the country appears like an ocean. The ground is exceedingly rich and partially overgrown with wild hemp. The land is well watered and full of buffalo, deer, bears, and all kinds of wild game. 20th and 21st .- We passed through some very large meadows, part of which belonged to the Pyankeshaws on the Vermilion River. The country and soil were much the same as that we traveled over these three days past. Wild hemp grows here in abundance. The game is very plenty. At any time in a half hour we could kill as much as we wanted."
Gen. Clark, in the postscript of his letter dated November, 1779, narrating his campaign in the Illinois country, says, concerning the prairies between Kaskaskia and Vincennes, that "there are large meadows extending beyond the reach of the eye, variegated with
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THE DESTRUCTION OF THE GAME.
groves of trees appearing like islands in the sea, covered with buffalos and other game. In many places, with a good glass, you may see all that are upon their feet in a half million acres." It is not known at what time the buffalo was last seen east of the Mississippi. The Indians had a tradition that the cold winter of 17-, called by them "the great cold," on account of its severity, destroyed them. " The snow was so deep, and lay upon the ground for such a length of time, that the buffalo become poor and too weak to resist the inclemency of the weather;" great numbers of them perished, singly and in groups, and their bones, either as isolated skeletons or in bleaching piles, remained and were found over the country for many years afterwards.
Before the coming of the Europeans the Indians hunted the game for the purpose of supplying themselves with the necessary food and clothing. The scattered tribes (whose numbers early writers greatly exaggerated) were few when compared with the area of the country they occupied, and the wild animals were so abundant that enough to supply their wants could be captured near at hand with such rude weapons as their ingenuity fashioned out of wood and stone. With the Europeans came a change. The fur of many of the animals possessed a commercial value in the marts of Europe, where they were bought and used as ornaments and dress by the aristocracy, whose wealth and taste fashioned them into garments of extraordinary richness. Canada was originally settled with a view to the fur trade, and this trade was, to her people, of the first importance-the chief motor of her growth and prosperity. The Indians were supplied with guns, knives and hatchets by the Europeans, in place of their former inferior weapons. Thus encouraged and equipped, and accom- panied by the coureurs des bois, the remotest regions were penetrated, and the fur trade extended to the most distant tribes. Stimulated with a desire for blankets, cotton goods and trinkets, the Indians now began a war upon the wild animals in earnest; and their wanton destruction for their skins and furs alone from that period forward was so enormous that within the next two or three generations the improvident Indians in many localities could scarcely find enough game for their own subsistence.
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