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 early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume I > Part 17
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In order that many matters merely touched on in some of the suc- ceeding chapters may be more clearly and completely understood by the reader, it is deemed advisable to conclude this chapter with a brief descriptive review of the characteristics, customs and habits of
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS GENERALLY.
The matter; thus presented deals with conditions and describes usages which prevailed, more particularly, among the Indians of New York and Pennsylvania during the period of time comprehending the beginning, and the progress towards permanency, of the early settle- ments by white people in Wyoming Valley ; to which is added a brief account of the present-day Indians in the United States.
The North American Indians with whom European settlers first came in contact were divided into families or tribes, each distinguished by an armorial bearing called a totem, which was a representation of some animal or bird, as a deer, a bear, a tortoise, an eagle or a snipe.# The village (or "town," as it was called by some tribes) was (and is) the unit of organization in almost all the tribes. With the sedentary Indians the village was of a permanent character. Lodges, wigwams or tepees composed the village of the nomadic Indians-together with their live-stock and other property. A wigwam was constructed of twenty or thirty poles, each about twenty-five feet in length, which, being erected with their butts arranged in circular or other form and their tops united, were covered with bark, skins sewed together after having been dressed, or by any other material available. There was an aperture, closed with a flap, in the side of the wigwam for the ingress and egress of the occupants, and another aperture at the top, or apex, through which smoke from the open fire in the center of the wigwam could escape. The wigwams
* Buell's "Sir William Johnson," pages 227-230.
+ Drawn largely from Lossing's "Our Barbarian Brethren," Catlin's "Letters and Notes" and "Last Rambles," "Report on Indians in the United States at the Eleventh Census," Stone's "Poetry and History of Wyoming," "Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1885," and the "Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for 1902."
# See pages 103 and 120.
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were taken down easily in a few minutes and readily transported elsewhere by the Indian women, or squaws, whenever a change of location was to be made.
The accompanying illustration is a reduced facsimile of a drawing made by George Catlin, showing a wigwam made of twenty-five dressed buffalo skins elaborately garnished and painted. The poles supporting it were of pine, thirty in number, each twenty-five feet long, and, according to Mr. Catlin, had been "some hundred years, perhaps, in use." This wigwam was purchased from Indians in the West in 1832 by Mr. Catlin, and taken by him to Europe for exhibition. It was brought back to this country some years later, and is now in the National Museum at Washington.
The Algonkins lived in wigwams, and they moved frequently. The Iroquois lived in cabins, well constructed, with upright walls covered with bark. In peace the nomadic village was placed in a favorite retreat, and here the Indians remained until war or the seasons forced them to remove. As a rule, the bands of a tribe had their well- defined camping grounds, which were sacred to themn. A tribe seldom, if ever, camped or lived in a compact mass. The villages were frequently remote from each other, and in war were signaled by fires or alarmed by runners. The individual Indian was (and is) merged in the village. From the camp or the village the warrior set out to acquire new honors or to meet death. To it he returned alive or his story came with the survivors. This Indian village life, the growth of centuries, is at this day partially perpetuated on the Indian reservations in this country, for the love of it is one of the chief causes of the Indian's resistance to the white man's customs. The Indian does not like to live isolated.
With the exception of the Iroquois Confederacy there was 110 semblance of a national government among the Indians. A mixture of the patriarchal and despotic appeared everywhere. All political power was vested in the civil head of a family or tribe as executive, and it was absolute in his hands while he exercised it. He was sometimes an hereditary leader, but more often owed his elevation to his prowess in war, or his merits as an orator or statesman. Public opinion alone sus- tained him. It elevated him, and it might depose him. He was called Inca, Sagamore, Sachem, or whatever else, in various languages, denoted his official dignity-like that of King, Emperor, Tsar, Shall, or Sultan. Gen. Ely S. Parker ("Donehogáweh"),* well known in his lifetime as an intelligent, well-informed Seneca Indian and a sachem of the Six Nations, wrote in 1884: "The words 'sachem,' 'sagamore,' 'chief;' 'king,' 'queen,' 'princess,' &c., have been promiscuously and interchangeably used by
* See pages 121 and 135.
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every writer on Indians ever since their discovery. * The use of the term 'sagamore' is confined almost wholly to New England, and it has been applied promiscuously to heads of bands, large and small, and sometimes to mere heads of families. To use other terms, such as 'king,' 'prince' or 'princess,' is preposterous and presumptuous, considering the total absence among these people of paraphernalia, belongings and dig- nity of royalty."
The head-chief or sachem of a tribe, or nation, was at the head of a sort of republican government, and was only the executive of the people's will as determined in council or congress ; yet in those councils he was umpire, and from his decision there was no appeal. While a sachem or chief was in power the tribe or nation confided in his wisdom, and there was seldom any transgression of the laws promulgated by him. He had absolute control of all military expeditions, and withersoever the chief or leader of the warriors was sent by him, the fighting men followed.
In the public assemblies the greatest decorum prevailed, and, con- trary to the habit of civilized Parliaments and Congresses, every speaker was always listened to with the most respectful attention. Reference has already been made (on page 118) to the remarkable oratorical powers of the Iroquois. Eloquence in public speaking was a talent which the more intelligent Indians in every tribe generally earnestly cultivated ; and for the display of this eloquence many opportunities were afforded at the conferences, councils, congresses and treaties held by the Indians among themselves and with the white people. The sachems and chiefs prepared themselves for oratory, by previous reflection and arrangement of topics and method of expression, as carefully as ever did the most polished speaker in the Senate or Council of a civilized people. Their scope of thought was as boundless as the land over which they roamed, and their expressions were as free and lofty as those of any civilized men. Their language being too limited to allow a wealth of diction, they made up in ideas-in the shape of metaphors furnished by all nature around them-what they lacked in words. Pierre François Charlevoix, the French Jesuit traveler and writer (1682-1761), said in his "Journal of a Voyage to North America" :
"The beauty of their [the Indians] imagination equals its vivacity, which appears in all their discourses. They are very quick at repartee, and their harangues are full of shining passages which would have been applauded at Rome or Athens. Their eloquence has a strength, nature and pathos which no art can give, and which the Greeks admired in the barbarians.""
"An Indian council is one of the most imposing spectacles in savage life," wrote Horatio Hale about 1845. "It is one of the few occasions in which the warrior exercises his right of suffrage, his influence and his talents in a civil capacity, and the meeting is conducted with all the gravity and all the ceremonies and ostentation with which it is possible to invest it. The matters to be considered, as well as all the details, are well digested beforehand, so that the utmost decorum must prevail, and the decision be unanimous. The chiefs and sages-the leaders and orators-occupy the most conspicuous seats ; behind them are arranged the younger braves, and still farther in the rear appear the women and the youth as spectators. All are equally attentive. A dead silence reigns throughout the assemblage. The great pipe, gaudily adorned with paint and feathers, is lighted and passed from mouth to mouth,
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commencing with the chief highest in rank, and proceeding by regular gradation to the inferior order of braves. If two or three nations be represented, the pipe is passed from one party to the other, and saluta- tions are courteously exchanged before the business of the council is opened by the respective speakers. Whatever jealousy or party spirit may exist in the tribe is carefully excluded from this dignified assem- blage, whose orderly conduct and close attention to the proper subject before them might be imitated with profit by some of the most enlight- ened bodies in Christendom."
It is a curious fact that while the American Indian of earlier days possessed oratorical gifts in a large measure, his musical talents were meager-at least from the white man's point of view. The so-called musical instruments of the Indians were (and are) of the crudest and most primitive form-the principal one being the tambour, or drum. This was formerly rudely made by straining a piece of raw hide over a hoop, or over the head of a sort of keg, generally made by cutting away all the inner portion of a section of a log of wood, leaving only a shell. Besides the drum they used several kinds of whistles and rattles -the latter being usually made of tortoise shells dried and beautifully polished, and containing several small pebbles.
We are told by well-informed writers on the subject that the music of the Indians is solely and simply vocal. They know no other way of expressing emotion in melodic form. Their songs are compositions which have in them nothing borrowed from instruments and nothing of artificial instigation ; while a large proportion of them are entirely with- out words-syllables being used to carry the tones. There are, of course, songs which have fragments of words ; but these are quite distinct from the syllables which are used solely for musical purposes. Catlin says, in his "Letters and Notes" previously mentioned :
"It has been said by some travelers that the Indian has neither harmony nor melody in his music, but I am unwilling to subscribe to such an assertion, although I grant that for the most part of their vocal exercises there is a total absence of what the musical world would call melody ; their songs being made up chiefly of a sort of violent chant of harsh and jarring gutturals, of yelps and barks and screams, which are given out in perfect time, not only with 'method (but with harmony) in their madness.' "
"But there are times * * when the Indian lies down by his fireside, with his drum in his hand, which he lightly and almost imperceptibly touches over, as he accom- panies it with his stifled voice of dulcet sounds that might come from the inost tender and delicate female. These quiet and tender songs are very different from those which are sung at their dances, in full chorus and with violent gesticulations, and many of them seem to be quite rich in plaintive expression and melody, though barren of change and variety."
Both songs and the musical instruments previously mentioned were used in connection with the numerous dances by which the Indians amused themselves, celebrated some important event or performed certain rites of worship or devotion. Some of these dances were the "Welcome Dance," the "Calumet Dance," the "Buffalo Dance," the "Bear Dance," the "Ghost Dance," the "Green Corn Dance," the "Snake Dance" the "Feather Dance," the "War Dance" and the "Scalp Dance."
The "War Dance" was one of the most exciting and spirited of the dances, and was performed by the warriors, or braves, before starting out on the war-path, and quite often after their return, when they boasted how they had met the enemy, taken their scalps, etc. This dance, as performed by the Delawares, was often given in time of peace, and was considered very beautiful. It always took place in the daytime, and the
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warriors all appeared in full war-outfit with paint, feathers and weapons, and some with animals' horns fastened to their heads. In time of war a scalp would be fastened to a pole, and the dance would take place around the pole. The musicians, standing on the outside of the circle of warriors, would beat quicker time than for other dances, and would sing their war-songs, which would be answered by the braves with cries of approval and war-whoops. The dancers seemed to move with great caution and care, with very wild expressions in their eyes, and looking and watching as if expecting an approach of the enemy at any moment. Then they would make sudden springs to the right or left, or backward or forward, strike at an invisible foe or dodge an imaginary blow, and then, suddenly, as if the foe were conquered, resume a slow and cautious march, all the while going around the pole. The action of the dancers was guided, or governed, by the war-song, for they acted out what was sung. In time of peace, instead of a pole with a scalp on it a fire would be built in the center of the ring ; but in other respects the dance would be the same .*
A "SCALP DANCE," AS SEEN IN 1832.
The foregoing illustration is a reduced facsimile of a drawing made by George Catlin for his "Letters and Notes." It illustrates a "Scalp Dance" witnessed by him in 1832 at the mouth of Teton River. The following is Mr. Catlin's description of the dance :
"This barbarous and exciting scene is the Indian mode of celebrating a victory, and is given fifteen 'nights in succession when a war-party returns from battle bringing home with them the scalps from the heads of their enemies. This dance is danced at a late hour in the night, by the light of torches, and a number of young women are selected to aid (though they do not actually join in the dance ) by stepping into the center of the ring and holding up the scalps that have recently been taken, whilst the warriors dance (or rather jump) around in a circle, brandishing their weapons, vaunting forth the most extravagant boasts of their wonderful prowess in war, and barking and yelping in the most frightful manner-all jumping on both feet at the same time, with a simultaneous stamp and blow and thrust of their weapons as if they were actually cutting and carving each other to pieces. During these frantic leaps and yelps and thrusts every man distorts his face to the utmost of his muscles, darting his glaring eye-balls about and snapping his teeth as if he were in the heat of battle. No description that can be written could ever convey more than a feeble outline of the frightful effects of these scenes enacted in the
* "Report on Indians in the United States at the Eleventh Census," page 300.
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dead of night, under the glaring light of blazing flambeaux; nor could all the years allotted to mortal man in the least obliterate or deface the vivid impress that one scene of this kind would leave upon his memory."
Brief mention is made earlier in this chapter* of the Indian calu- met, or pipe, and later, of the "Calumet Dance." The calumet was sometimes looked upon as a sacred object. Its stem was painted in different colors and decorated usually with the war-eagle's quills, but often with the heads, tails and wings of beautifully plumaged birds. Rogers, in his "Account of North America" (1766), says :
"The use of the calumet is to smoke either tobacco, or some bark, leaf or herb) which they [the Indians] often use instead of it, when they enter into an alliance, or any serious occasion, or solemn engagements-this being among them the mnost sacred oath that can be taken ; the violation of which is esteemed most infamous, and deserv- ing of severe punishment from Heaven. When they treat of war the whole pipe and all its ornaments are red ; sometimes it is only red on one side, and by the disposition of the feathers, &c., one acquainted with their customs will know at first sight what the nation who presents it intends or desires. Smoking the calumet is also a religious cere- mony on some occasions, and in all treaties is considered as a witness between the parties, or rather as an instrument by which they invoke the sun and moon to witness their sincerity, and to be, as it were, a guarantee of the treaty between them."
Catlin says that the "Calumet Dance," or "Pipe of Peace Dance," was given at the conclusion of a treaty of peace, after smoking through the sacred stem of the special pipe. The dance was also often given out of regard for a brave, and was looked upon as the highest compliment that could be paid to his courage and bravery.
"It is a notable fact that the Indian tribes of north-eastern America, belonging to the Iroquoian and Algonkian families, who, at the first coming of the white colonists occupied the eastern portions of what are now the United States and Canada, and who are often styled savages, had two inventions or usages which are ordinarily deemed the special concomitants of an advanced civilization. These were a monetary cur- rency and the use of a form of script for conveying intelligence and recording facts. * * In a paper which was read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Montreal in August, 1884, and was published in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1886, I produced the evidence which seemed to me to show that the shell money of North America was derived from the ancient tortoise-shell money of China. This shell money preceded the metallic coins con- monly known as cash-which are circular discs of copper, perforated in the center, and usually strung on a string. These came into use more than 2,000 years before the Christian era. The shell money which preceded the copper cash has been traced eastwardly * * to the coasts of California and Oregon, where it is in use among the Indians to this day, and whence it has apparently made its way across the conti- nent to the eastern coast."t
This shell money, known to us as wampum, consisted of a certain kind of beads, some made of the white and some of the black or colored parts of marine shells. They were formed in the shape of cylinders, each about one-fourth of an inch long and one-eighth of an inch in diameter, were highly polished and were perforated lengthwise with a small hole through which the Indians strung them together with strips of deerskin, or thread made from filaments of slippery-elm bark or flax. As the fabrication of wampum was free to all persons, every one was
* See pages 94 and 104.
+ Horatio Hale, in Popular Science Monthly, L : 481 (1897).
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director of his own mint, and, verifying the words of the Book of Proverbs-"the hand of the diligent maketh rich"-he who mnost assid- uously sought the simple bullion from which wampum was coined was in the way of becoming the wealthiest of his race. But, although any one was entirely free to manufacture for himself as much wampum as he pleased, the difficulties of the process seem to have prevented inen from thuis becoming rich by their own handiwork. The rich men were those who accumulated wampum through trade and war, so that gener- ally the possession of an unusual quantity of it betokened some real ability or bravery.
Wampum was called by the Dutch settlers "sewant." Adriaen Van der Donck, in his "Description of the New Netherlands" (1653), says that the species of sewant were black and white; "but the black is worth more by one-half than the white. The black is made from conch- shells which are to be taken from the sea, or which are cast ashore from the sea twice a year. They strike off the thin parts of these shells and preserve the pillars or standards, which they grind smooth and even, and reduce the same according to their thickness, and drill a hole through every piece, and string the same on strings, and afterwards sell their strings in that manner. This is the only moneyed medium among the natives with which any traffic can be driven. Many thousand strings are exchanged every year near the seashore, where the wampum is only made, and where the peltries are brought for sale." In Smith's "History of New Jersey" (1876) we are told that the white wampum was fabricated from the inside lining or layer of the great conchs, and the black or purple from the inside portion of the shell of the clam or mussel-"from the Indian name of which last shell-fish the term 'wam- pum' was derived."
The beads were bored by means of a flint awl, many of which are still to be found in the shell heaps along the New England coast. After the coming of the English iron awls were substituted, but even then the process of manufacture must have been extremely tedious. It is said that by a day's hard labor it was barely possible for a man to produce wam- pum having a money value equivalent to fifteen cents in present-day money. Whether the work was done by the men or the women cannot be known, but it may well have been shared by both.
Dr. Beauchamp says* that "while shell beads were probably of ' early manufacture along the seashore-being made and used by the Algonkins-they were very little known in the interior and west of the Hudson before the seventeenth century. Accordingly we find few tra- ditions of their origin among the river and shore Indians, while their use among the Iroquois was so sudden and conspicuous an event as to make a great and lasting impression. According to them the origin of wampum was coeval with that of their League. Hiawatha decreed and regulated its use."+
In The New England Magazine for February, 1903, Frederic A. Ogg says :
"If one wished to indicate the most obvious characteristic of the Indians of the Atlantic seaboard, at the time of the English settlement in New England, he could not
* In "Wampum and Shell Articles," published in Bulletin No. 41, Vol. 8 (March, 1901), of the New York State Museum.
+ Dr. Beauchamp is one of those who hold that the Iroquois League was organized by Hiawatha as late as about the year 1600. See ut supra, pages 338 and 421 ; also, page 108, ante.
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perhaps make better selection than their general eagerness to possess and display large quantities of wampum. It meant all to the Indian that money does to us, and infinitely more. Not merely did it serve him as a medium of exchange and a standard of values, but worn as an ornament it was his badge of wealth and position, in the hands of the chiefs his record-book and ledger, and through the favor of the Great Spirit its possession became in no small degree the passport to the happy hunting-grounds of the future world. The use of wampum constituted a bond of union among the Indians such as was scarcely supplied by language, religion or racial customs."
The colonists never came to regard wampum as anything more than a convenience for the prosecution of trade with the Indians. Never- theless they were forced sometimes to use it in their dealings with each other, and even in the payment of their taxes. When so employed, however, it was not regarded as any form of money, but, as the Rhode Island Colonial Records for 1662 say, "It is but a commodity, and it is unreasonable that it should be forced upon any man." In 1627 Isaac De Razier, Secretary of the New Netherlands, while in command of a trading vessel took £50 worth of wampum from New Amsterdam to Plymouth ; and in 1630 the maiden voyage of the Blessing of the Bay -the first ship built in New England, by Winthrop-was despatched to the Dutch on Long Island to obtain a stock of Indian money.
The use of wampum, as money, among the settlers in the northern Colonies was at its height about 1640. At that time, despite the suspi- cions of many with regard to wampum and their reluctance to accept it, it was by far the nearest approach to a universal currency that the colonists had. In 1648 Massachusetts ordered that wampum, if good, should be legal tender to the amount of forty shillings. In 1658 the Sheriff of New Netherlands, acting as commissary, was selling goods in small quantities for wampum. In 1666 Connecticut made a grant of "fifty fathoms of wompom." Rhode Island recognized it officially as late as 1670. By proclamation of the Governor and Council of the New Netherlands in 1673 the value of this Indian money was fixed at the rate of six white or three black (instead of eight white or four black, which had been the rate) to one stiver-twenty stivers being equal to one guilder, which at that time was worth six pence currency, or four pence sterling. As late as the beginning of the eighteenth century wampum was used in the payment of ferriage between the city of New York and Brooklyn. It was used in southern Connecticut as late as 1704, and in the backwoods regions of the northern and middle Colonies well down into the eighteenth century.
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