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 20
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During the past one hundred years thousands of Indian arrow-heads have been found in the Wyoming region-chiefly scattered over the lowlands near the Susquehanna-where they had lain undisturbed for many years from the time they were shot away by the Indians in war and in the chase. Even at this late day fine specimens are often washed
* "Report on Indians at the Eleventh Census," page 53.
+ See illustration on page 38.
# See page 104.
INDIAN ARROW- AND SPEAR-HEADS AND A PESTLE. Photo-reproduction (one-half of the actual size) from the "Christopher Wren Collection," Wyoming Historical and Geological Society. By courtesy of the Society.
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out of the ground by the river at the time of a freshet, or at other times are turned up by the farmer's plough. When one realizes-from a knowledge of the number of these flint implements now in existence, and from a consideration of other matters-how undoubtedly great was the whole number of arrow-heads in use during, say, a period of fifty years immediately preceding the introduction of fire-arms among the Indians, the conclusion is irresistible that in every tribe there must have been skillful workmen who were kept constantly employed in supplying the large demand for these necessary implements. £ This work was certainly not easy, and could not be done by men selected at random, for it required time, patience, skill and considerable intelligence. Catlin, in his "Last Rambles," previously referred to, gives the follow- ing interesting account of the manufacture of flint arrow-heads as he saw it carried on in 1855 by Apache Indians west of the Rocky Mountains.
"Their flint arrow and spear-heads, as well as their bows of bone and sinew, are equal, if not superior, to the manufactures of any of the tribes existing. *
* Like mnost of the tribes west of and in the Rocky Mountains, they manufacture the blades of their spears and points for their arrows of flints, and also of obsidian, which is scattered over those volcanic regions west of the mountains ; and, like the other tribes, they guard as a profound secret the mode by which the flints and obsidian are broken into the shapes they require. Their mode is very simple, and evidently the only mode by which those delicate fractures and peculiar shapes can possibly be produced ; for civilized artisans have tried in various parts of the world, and with the best of tools, without success in1 copying them.
"Every tribe has its factory in which these arrow-heads are made, and in those only certain adepts are able or allowed to make them for the use of the tribe. Erratic bowlders of flint are collected (and sometimes brought an immense distance), and broken with a sort of sledge-hammer made of a rounded pebble of horn-stone, set in a twisted withe holding the stone and forming a handle. The flint, at the indiscriminate blows of the sledge, is broken into a hundred pieces, and such flakes are selected as, from the angles of their fractures and their thicknesses, will answer as the basis of an arrow-head ; and in the hands of the artisan they are shaped into the beautiful forms and proportions which are desired, and which are now to be seen in most of our museums.
"The master workman, seated on the ground, lays one of these flakes on the palm of his left hand, holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of the same hand, and with his right hand places his chisel (or punch)-held between the thumb and two forefingers -on the point that is to be broken off ; and a co-operator (a striker) sitting in front of him, with a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel on the upper end, flaking the flint off on the under side below each projecting point that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner from the opposite side, and so turned and chipped until the required shape and dimensions are obtained-all the fractures being made upon *
the palm of the hand. * * The yielding elasticity of the hand enables the chips to come off without breaking the body of the flint, which would be the case if it were broken on a hard substance.
"These people have no metallic instruments to work with, and the instruments which they use %
* I found to be made of the incisors of the sperm-whale or the sea- lion, which are often stranded on the coast of the Pacific. The chisel or punch is about six or seven inches in length and one inch in diameter, with one rounded side and two plane sides. *
* The operation [of flaking the flint] is very curious, both the holder and the striker singing, and the strokes of the mallet being given exactly in time with the music, and with a sharp and rebounding blow-in which, the Indians tell us, is the great medicine (mystery) of the operation."*
From statements made to the first white inen with whom the North American Indians came in contact, the normal condition of those Indians prior to the advent of the Europeans was war, cruel and bloody. War fitted the nature of the Indian, was his occupation by design and gave him fame. His heroes were warriors, and so tradition and fact en- couraged him to follow war as a profession as well as a recreation. The early Indian wars were generally for encroachments on fish and game preserves, or "hunting-grounds"; and when the several tribes fought with
* For an interesting illustrated article relative to Indian arrow and spear-heads, their manufacture, etc., see "The Stone Age" in "Proceedings and Collections of the Wyoming Historical Society," VIII : 93 -being a paper read before the Society by Christopher Wren, Esq., of Plymouth, Pa.
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each other they fought to exterminate-using with savage cunning and brutality the rude but effective weapons with which they were provided. The bad side of the old-time Indian was that he was undoubtedly hor- ribly cruel in warfare. He was cowardly, too, because he fought behind rocks and bushes, and usually began his wars against the whites by the murder of women and children. He was at all times treacherous, and fought like a wild animal, stealthily creeping and crawling up to his prey ; but when cornered, fighting like a devil incarnate. Indians who were brutally brave in battle were at other times arrant cowards. The Europeans initiated the Indians in the use of fire-arms, and taught them by example the use and value of cunning and deceit in transactions with men ; but they did not find it necessary either to demonstrate to the Indians that there is such an art as War, or to instruct them in the brutalities of that art.
"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 much of the white man'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 met 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 concealment 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.t 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 somne 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- esteem,' 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 110 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 infamy. 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 most 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 made 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 mediaval 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 Mohe- 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. On 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, infirm 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. Some- times, to torment the wretched mother, 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, almost worn-out with the burden laid upon his shoulders, would be disposed of in the same way. Famine was a com- 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 former 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).
t "Indian War in the Colonies." By Edward Eggleston, in The Century Magazine, XXVI : 709.
į 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 familes, 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 gun, 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 fromn 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."
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