USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, from its first beginnings to the present time; including chapters of newly-discovered, Vol. I > Part 20
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"Still, along the Indian trail to oblivion, the white man, in many cases, has been as brutal and fiendish as the Indian, and with less excuse, for one is civilized and the other wild and untutored. There has been up to within a few years past but little humanity, charity or justice in inuch of the white inan's treatment of the American Indian. No apol- ogy can be offered for it; no excuse, save the domination for a time of the brute in our superior white race and the attempt to out-Herod Herod -for at times Indians have been wantonly murdered or used like beasts."
"From the very first settlement on the Atlantic coast," wrote Catlin in "Last Rambles," "there has been a continued series of Indian wars. In every war the whites have been victorious, and every war has ended in 'surrender of Indian territory.' Every battle which the whites have lost has been a 'massacre,' and every battle by the Indians lost a 'glorious victory.' And yet, to their immortal honor, they never fought a battle with civilized men excepting on their own ground."
War by one tribe of Indians against another-particularly among the Algonkian tribes-was declared by the people, usually at the insti- gation of their "war-captains"-"valorous braves," says Dr. Brinton, "of any birth or family, who had distinguished themselves by personal prowess." In early times the Indians went out on the "war-path" generally in parties of forty or fifty warriors or "braves." Sometimes a dozen went forth, like knights-errant, to seek renown in combat. They were skillful in stratagem and, as previously stated, seldom mnet an enemy in open fight. Ambush and secret attacks were their favorite methods of gaining an advantage.
"To win by crafty device, by sudden surprise and by unlooked-for perfidy, and to strike terror by ferocious cruelty, were principles of war grained in the very nature of the American savage. For the most part, Indian war was an ingenious system of assassination. A company of braves painted, as the first Dutch parson at Albany expressed it, to 'look like the Devil himself,' and carrying no rations but a slender supply of meal of parched maize, would creep for days through swamps and thickets, stepping each in the track of his predecessor, to surprise and put to fire and hatchet some unsuspecting hamlet of peaceful settlers. If compelled to fight with armed troops, it was not in pitched battle, but rather by ambuscade and perhaps with feigned retreat. The more ingenious the trick, the greater the glory. Piskaret, the Alonkin, whose very name was a terror to the Five Nations, approached alone a
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village of the Iroquois, with his snow-shoes reversed, and then, hiding in a wood-pile, entered the cabins night after night and killed some of the enemy, returning each time to his place of conceahnent in the midst of enraged foes who sent runners out to find him."*
Often the members of a tribe journeyed, either on land or on water, hundreds of miles for the purpose of engaging an enemy in battle. "An Indian considers a hundred miles but a short distance to march, when the purpose he has in view is to glut his vengeance," wrote Schoolcraft fifty years ago. When they went out formally to make war upon another tribe the Indians marched abreast, or side by side.+ At other times, when they had no unfriendly or hostile intentions, or when they were out to prey upon the white settlers, it was their custom always to march in single file, as previously mentioned.
Reference has already been made (on page 125) to the war-dances and war-songs that were generally danced and sung by the braves pre- viously to setting forth on the war-path or engaging in battle. At the instant of rushing into battle the warriors always sounded their fright- ful war-whoop, as the signal of attack. It was a shrill-sounded note, on a high key, given out with a gradual swell, and shaken by a rapid vibra- tion of the four fingers of the right hand over the mouth. This yell, or whoop, was not allowed to be given among the Indians except in battle, or in the war or other dances. Its sound always inspired terror in the white people who heard it, not because of anything especially terrifying in the yell itself, but because of associations connected with it.
If an Indian met with death while away from his camp or village on an expedition, or in battle, the surviving members of his band always took steps as soon as possible to bury his body on or near the spot where he had died, and then to conceal the place of burial as completely as circumstances would permit.
When an Indian had killed an enemy, whether from an ambush or in open battle, his first effort was to secure his victim's scalp. Some- times scalps were taken from the heads of persons who had been only wounded or stunned, and who ultimately recovered from the effects of the wound or blow as well as the scalping. Again, Indians have been known to take the scalp from the body of a former foe accidentally found dead and buried. An account of an instance of this character, that occurred in Pennsylvania in 1755 during the French and English War, will be found in the "Pennsylvania Archives," First Series, II : 459. Paxinos, a Shawanese chief living in Wyoming Valley, and friendly to the English, was in the neighborhood of Shamokin on the Susquehanna with several of his tribe. While there a fight occurred some six miles farther down the river, between white settlers and cer- tain "French" Indians from New York who were out on the war-path. The next day Paxinos and other Indians went to the scene of the fight, where they found the dead bodies of several white men. "Following the tracks of the Indians into the woods Paxinos discovered a sapling cut down, and near by a grub [root ?] twisted. These marks betokened something, and upon search they found a parcel of leaves raked together ; upon removing which they found a fresh made grave in which lay an
* "Indian War in the Colonies." By Edward Eggleston, in The Century Magazine, XXVI : 709 (Sep- tember, 1883).
+ See "Pennsylvania Archives," First Series, II : 746.
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Indian who had been shot. They discovered him to be a French Mohawk Indian, and they stripped and scalped him."
The following paragraphs referring to scalping and scalps are from Catlin's "Letters and Notes" (I : 238).
"The taking of the scalp is a custom practised by all the North American Indians- which is done, when an enemy is killed in battle, by thrusting the left hand into the hair on the crown of the head and passing the knife around it through the skin, tearing off a piece of the skin with the hair as large as the palm of the hand, or larger, which is dried and often curiously ornamented, and preserved and valued as a trophy. The most usual way of preparing and dressing the scalp is that of stretching it on a little hoop at the end of a stick two or three feet long. Scalping is an operation not calculated of itself to take life, as it only removes the skin without injuring the bone of the head ; and, necessarily, to be a genuine scalp, must contain and show the crown or center of the head -that part of the skin which lies directly over what phrenologists call the 'bump of self- esteeni,' where the hair divides and radiates from the center.
* * * "The scalp, then, is a patch of the skin taken from the head of an enemy killed in battle, and preserved and highly appreciated as the record of a death produced by the hand of the individual who possesses it. * * It will be easily seen that the Indian has no business or inclination to take it from the head of the living-which I venture to say is never done in North America unless it be, as it sometimes has happened, where a man falls in the heat of battle, stunned by the blow of a weapon or a gun-shot, and the Indian, rushing over his body, snatches off his scalp, supposing him to be dead. * * The scalp must be from the head of an enemy also, or it subjects its possessor to disgrace and infanny. There may be many instances where an Indian is justified, in the estimation of his tribe, in taking the life of one of his own people, and their laws are such as oftentimes make it his imperative duty ; and yet no circumstance, however aggra- vating, will justify him in, or release him from the disgrace of, taking the scalp. * * * * * "Besides taking the scalp the victor, generally, if he has time to do it without endangering his own scalp, cuts off and brings home the rest of the [victim's] hair, which his wife will divide into a great many small locks, and with them fringe off the seams of his shirt and his leggings."
"THE CAPTIVE."
From a painting by W. P. Saurwen.
When a war-party turned homeward from a successful expedition, one of their number was selected to bear a pole upon which were suspended the scalps taken from the enemy. Having reached home either the War Dance or the Scalp Dance, previously described, took place.
When, in time of war, an Indian was taken prisoner by a hostile tribe, he was usually tortured and then put to death on the spot. Some-
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times, but not often, his captors carried him back with them to their village, there to be humiliated, tormented and deprived of his life in the inost public and cruel manner. There was continual exposure to suffer- ing at the hands of enemies ; and so, from earliest childhood, the Indian was taught-as were the ancient Romans-never to betray weakness before an enemy, and never to utter a word or exhibit any emotion in public when enduring the sharpest suffering. His muscles were steeled against pain, and inade absolutely the slaves of his will. It was con- sidered a mark of weakness or cowardice for an Indian to allow his countenance to be changed by surprise or suffering. This was an accepted maxim from Patagonia to the Arctic seas. Stoicism, or im- perturbability, was a necessary habit of the barbarian life.
"Not only men, but sometimes women, and in rarer instances, even children, were subjected to long-drawn deviltries of torment that cause the wildest imaginings of inediæval theologians and poets to seem tame. The Indian warrior deemed cruelty a virtue, and sometimes trained himself in boyhood for a warrior's career by exercising his inhumanity on the animals captured in the chase. On his own part, the brave was pre- pared to suffer the most extreme torments with the sublimest fortitude, provoking his enemies and inflicting on himself additional torture by way of ostentation. The women evinced as much fortitude in suffering and as much ferocity in inflicting pain as the men. This superfluous diabolism of savage nature vented itself on the dead by ghastly and grotesque mutilations. The frequent cannibalism in the northern tribes arose, no doubt, from a fondness for punishing an enemy after death, though it had a religious significance in some tribes, and was often a resort to satisfy hunger in war time. A Mole- gan is said to have broiled and eaten a piece of Philip's* body, probably with some notion of increasing his own strength. Acts of cruelty to the living and outrages on the dead were meant, like the painting of the warrior's face, to excite the enemy's fear, and consequently may be said to have had a legitimate place in Indian warfare."t
The Indians had a strong aversion to negroes, and generally killed them as soon as they fell into their hands. When white people were taken prisoners by the Indians they were almost invariably pinioned and compelled to march off with their captors, and were required to carry any plunder that might have been gathered up by the latter. When the party encamped over night the prisoners were usually tied to two poles or posts stuck into the ground and often painted red. O11 the march-which was always a hurried one-the cruelty of the Indians towards their captives was chiefly exercised upon the children and such aged, infirin and corpulent persons as could not bear the hardships of a journey through the wilderness. An infant, when it became trouble- some, had its brains dashed out against the next tree or stone. Soine- times, to torment the wretched inother, they would whip and beat the child till almost dead, or hold it under water till its breath was about gone, and then throw it to her to be comforted and quieted. If the mother could not readily still the child's weeping, a tomahawk was buried in its skull. An adult captive, alinost worn-out with the burden laid upon his shoulders, would be disposed of in the same way. Famine was a comll- mon attendant on these hurried marches. The Indians, when they killed any game, devoured it all at one sitting, and then, girding them- selves tightly around the waist, traveled without sustenance until chance threw more in their way. The captives, unused to such anaconda-like repasts and abstinences, could not well support either the surfeits of the foriner or the cravings of the latter.
* Philip, otherwise "Metacum," chief sachem of the Wampanoag tribe of Indians in New England. He was the son and successor of Massasoit, and is known in history as "King Philip-the most wily and sagacious Indian of his time" (1675).
+ "Indian War in the Colonies." By Edward Eggleston, in The Century Magazine, XXVI : 709.
# See "The Journal of Christian Fr. Post" (1758).
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Added to all these circumstances were restless anxieties of mind ; retrospections of past scenes of pleasure ; remembrances of dear and distant friends ; bereavements experienced at the beginning or during the progress of the captivity ; daily apprehensions of death either by famine or savage captors, and the more obvious hardships of traveling barefooted and half naked across pathless deserts, over craggy mountains and through dismal swamps, exposed by day and night in Winter to frost, snow or rain, and in Summer to various bodily discomforts.
Arriving at the Indian town or encampment to which the war- party belonged, each prisoner was required to run the gantlet. This took place in the open, in the midst of the assembled members of the tribe or band, each one of whom-even to the children-endeavored, with a switch or club or something equally as effective, to smartly strike the prisoner as he scurried through the narrow, living lane in an effort to reach the shelter of one of the cabins or wigwams of the village, where, for a time at least, he would be entitled to protection and permitted to receive necessary food and drink. Female prisoners were never required to run the gantlet.
In the treatment of prisoners in many tribes they were in the habit of inflicting the most appalling tortures. Hot stones were applied to the soles of the feet ; needles were run into the eyes (this cruelty being generally performed by the women) ; arrows were shot into the body, pulled out and then shot again-this usually by the children. These tortures were continued for two or three days, provided the victim could be kept alive so long. If a captive proved refractory, or was known to have been instrumental to the death of an Indian, or was related to any one who had been, he was tortured with a lingering punishment, gener- ally at the stake, while the other captives looked on with fear and trembling. Sometimes a fire would be kindled and a threatening given out against one or more-though there was no intention to sacrifice them, but only to make sport of their terrors. The young Indians often took advantage of the absence of their elders to treat the captives in- humanly, and when inquiry was made into the matter the sufferers either remained silent, or treated the incident lightly, in order to pre- vent worse treatment in the future.
If a captive should appear sad and dejected, he was sure to meet with insult ; but if he could sing and dance and laugh with his captors he was caressed as a brother. Some captives were given over to Indians to be adopted into their famniles, to take the places of members who had died or been killed ; others were hired out by their Indian captors and owners to service, or were sold outright as slaves, among the Canadians. A sale among the French in Canada was to a captive the most happy event that could happen-next to his escape from captivity and safe return home to family and friends.
"Among the customs, or, indeed, common laws, of the Indian tribes, one of the most remarkable and interesting was the adoption of prisoners. This right belonged more particularly to the females than to the war- riors, and well was it for the prisoners that the election depended rather upon the voice of the mother than on that of the father, as innumerable lives were thus spared that otherwise would have been immolated by the warriors." If an Indian had lost a relative a prisoner, bought for a gun1, a hatchet or a few skins, must supply the place of the deceased,
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and be the father, brother or son of the purchaser ; and the captive who could accommodate himself to the new conditions-who assumed a cheerful aspect, entered into the mode of life of the Indians, learned their language and, in brief, acted as if he actually considered himself adopted-was treated with the same kindness that would have been shown the individual in whose place he was substituted, and all hard- ships not incident to the Indian mode of life were removed. But, if this change of relation operated as an amelioration of conditions in the life of the prisoner, it rendered ransom extremely difficult in all cases, and in some instances precluded it altogether.
It is a remarkable fact, well proved by many historical instances, that, during the wars-particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-between the whites and the Indians, no woman held captive by the latter was ever treated by them with immodesty or indecency. Defenceless, helpless women-at their homes as well as in captivity- were subjected by Indians to fiendish mental and physical tortures, and sometimes were put to death and scalped; but no instance is known of a violation of the chastity of any of the women ever held as captives by Indians. It was a happy circumstance for such captives that, in the midst of all their distresses, they had no reason to fear from a savage foe the perpetration of a crime which has too frequently dis- graced not only the personal but the national character of those who make large pretences to civilization and humanity.
Charlevoix, in his early account of the Indians of Canada, wrote : "There is no example that any have ever taken the least liberty with the French women, even when they were their prisoners." Mary Rowland- son, who was captured at Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1675, has this passage in her narrative : "I have been in the midst of these roaring lions and savage bears-that feared neither God nor man nor the devil -by day and night, alone and in company, sleeping all sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity in word or action." Elizabeth Hanson, who was taken prisoner from Dover, New Hampshire, in 1724, testifies in her narrative that "the Indians are very civil toward their captive women, not offering any incivility by any indecent carriage." William Fleming, who was taken prisoner in Pennsylvania in 1755, said the Indians told him that "he need not be afraid of their abusing his wife, for they would not do it for fear of offending their god-for the man that affronts his god will surely be killed when he goes to war." Fleming further said that "one of the Indians gave his wife a shift and petticoat which he had among his plunder, and though he was alone with her, yet he turned his back and went to some distance while she put them on."
Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a genuine Sioux Indian, a graduate of Dartmouth College and a gentleman of intelligence and culture, said not long since that "the North American Indian is the most picturesque and interesting uncivilized man who has ever lived." This is without doubt a fact ; but furthermore "he is an enigma"-as was stated more than a hundred years ago, in a report to L'Academie Francaise written by a competent and famous investigator. And, in the sense that what- soever is puzzling and inexplicable is enigmatic, the Indian, an enigma at first, is a much greater enigma the more his life and character are examined. The truth of this statement will be made very apparent to
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any one who will dip into some of the numerous books and essays relat- ing to North Americani Indians which are referred to in the forepart of this chapter.
For a generation or more there has been a disposition among somne writers, and a very general tendency among professional soldiers and "Indian-fighters," to reject the old traditions and beliefs regarding "the noble red men of the forest"-that is, the red inen inore particularly who dwelt on this continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; and in the meantime the people generally have become familiar with the adage (originated, it is said, by a distinguished General in the United States Army) that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." We ought to be reminded, however, that the bad Indian of to-day is in part the creation of the white man, whose vices have degraded him and whose greed has impoverished him. The white man early initiated the Indian into the mystery of drunkenness, for it is nowhere recorded that the latter had an intoxicant prior to the time the Europeans first met him. Cursing and swearing were among the first things learned from the white man, whose peculiarly vicious expressions were at the same time adopted ; for, relying upon his own language, the Indian could not in- dulge in the practice of profanity. Smallpox and certain other loath- some diseases were also the white man's contribution to his red brother's ills. Then, thirty-five or forty years ago, "the dirt, disease and dis- honesty of the alcoholic civilization of the West" of that period did their work, and so the reservation Indian of our time is in a transition stage. He has lost, or is losing, his own virtues, and has not yet acquired those of the white man. The old-fashioned, wild, pagan Indian, before he was tamed, was far superior to the "blanket" Indian of to-day as a type of the American aboriginal.
Palfrey maintains in his "History of New England"-and some sub- sequent writers agree with him-that the Indians, being "a cowardly lot," were paralyzed into comparative inactivity by the evident superi- ority of the whites. This view of the case does not seem to be borne o11t by the facts of recorded history, and the majority of those writers, early and late, who had personal knowledge of the Indians did not look at the matter in this light.
One of the distinguished national traits of the American Indian, that stamped his character as so mentally superior to that of the African and some other races, was his inalienable and uncompromising tenacity of unbounded freedom in all matters and under all circumstances. And so it was that, inured from infancy to the severest vicissitudes, and fortified by savage maxims from age to age, the Indian was not possessed of very lively sensibilities, and acts of harshness, cruelty and injustice- inroads and impositions upon his right of freedom-only served to in- furiate and embitter him.
"The Indian, of necessity, had to give way to the progress of the age. His game preserves-thie vast area of land over which the buffalo roamed-began to feel the influence of a nation's growth. Game became scarce, and then Indian food and clothing were more difficult to obtain. The Indian, a wild man pure and simple-in- genious, it is true, and, for his surroundings and conditions, more so than inost white men-could not (and does not) realize the necessity for change. * * He was a good man until something he did not like or understand occurred, and then the wild inan became a live child of the
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plains. He roamed as free as air, and without restraint. The in- closures of civilized life were the end of his old methods and customs, and the smoke of the settler's cabin the doom of his freedom. He met what to him was death, with bloody and fierce resistance." But yet, claims Catlin, the Indians were a people not only human by nature, but humane, and "they evinced a degree of submission and forbearance that would be a virtue and an honor for any race."
At the beginning they were a hospitable and kindly race, who would have scorned to attack strangers. The leading authorities point out that nearly all the European adventurers, who sailed along the eastern coast of North America during the first century after Columbus, reported the natives as peaceable and kind when not misused. Ponce de Leon, on his first visit to Florida, was hospitably received by the red men. It was only on his second visit, when the atrocious treatment of the natives of Cuba by the Spaniards had become known on the neigli- boring mainland, that he and his followers were set upon and driven from the peninsula. It is well known that the French-who were inore just, sympathetic and politic in their attitude toward the aborigines than were the English-had but little trouble with the red men in Canada ; while, for more than seventy years after William Penn concluded his "Great Treaty" with the Indians at Shackamaxon, not a war-whoop was sounded in Pennsylvania. In a word, the animosity and cruelty ex- hibited by Indians toward white inen during most of the last one hundred and fifty years is the outcome of desperation, the natural, in- evitable result of the faithless and cruel treatment received by them at the hands of the greater part of the English colonists, and of their descendants, the citizens of the United States .*
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