History of Buffalo County Wisconsin 10847607, Part 10

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BURIAL OF THE CHIEFTAIN.

See on his mat, as if of yore, How life-like seats he here; With the same aspect he wore When life to him was dear. But where the right arm's strength, and where The breath that used to breathe

To the Great Spirit aloft in air The peace pipe's lusty wreath ?

And where the hawk-like eye, alas! That wont the deer pursue, Along the waves of rippling grass,. Or fields that shone with dew ? Are these the limber, bounding feet That swept the winter's snows? What startled deer was half so fleet Their speed outstripped the roe's. -

These hands that once the sturdy bow Could supple from its pride, How stark and helpless hang they now, Adown the stiffened side!

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THE INDIANS.

which was to be buried alive under him, from whence he could see, as he said, "the Frenchmen passing up and down the river in their boats". He owned, among many horses, a noble white steed, that was led to the top of the grass-covered hill, and with great pomp and ceremony in the presence of the whole nation, and several of the fur-traders, and the Indian agent, he was placed astride of his horse's back, with his bow in his hand, and his shield and quiver slung, with his pipe and his medicine bag, with his supply of dried meat, and his tobacco pouch replenished to last him through the journey to the beautiful hunting grounds of the shades of his fathers, with his flint, his steel, and his tinder to light his pipe by the way; the scalps he had taken from his ene- mies' heads could be trophies for nobody else, and were hung to the bridle of his horse. He was in full dress, and fully equipped, and on his head waved to the last moment his beautiful head- dress of war-eagles' plumes. In this plight, and the last funeral honors having been performed by the medicine-men, every war- rior of his band painted the palm and fingers of his right hand with vermillion, which was stamped and perfectly impressed on the milk-white sides of his devoted horse. This all done, turfs were brought and placed around the feet and legs of the horse, and gradually laid np to its sides, and at last over the back and head of the unsuspecting animal, and last of all over the head, and even the eagle plumes of its valiant rider, where all together have smouldered and remained undisturbed to the present day."

I cannot close this relation of Indian .burials without some reference to related customs among prehistoric people in the Old World. Mounds and regular graveyards are not entirely wanting there, but discoveries have been made of burials in swamps, bogs and temporarily overflowed places, of which I could learn nothing similar in this country. Burials in cairns, that is piles of stones were common to the northern parts of Europe, notably England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula, Burial in dolmens or stone-graves, the stones being ar- ranged to form boxes or rude sarcophagi, seems to have been practised from the Baltic to across the Mediterranean, but by no means exclusively. Cairns seems to have served the same pur- pose in some parts of the West, notably in the Dakota country, but dolmens seem to be missing entirely in this country, or have

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so far escaped detection. Cremation prevailed among the prehis- toric Greeks, but the ashes were covered with mounds, as appears from the Iliad and Odyssee, but whether the pyre and the mound were confined to kings and heroes, while common inhumation was the lot of other mortals, we may surmise, but could hardly prove. The Etruscans, the predecessors of the Romans in the occupancy of the Latin parts of Italy, may or may not have practised the same burial customs as the Greeks, but this is not yet conclusively decided. The Arians had a diversity of ways in this matter, as the " Suttee," still in use among the " Hindustanee" seems to point to cremation, and other circumstances would indicate inhumation. The Parsees still bury in "living sepulchers," exposing their dead to be devoured by vultures in the towers of silence.

With these relations we close the relation of the burials, and turn to tha mourning observances among Indians. These observ- ances consisted of wailings, sacrifices, feasts, offering of food, dan- ces, songs, games, graveposts, fires and other ceremonies. Among the Natchez, and probably among some other Indians west of the Mississippi, the favorite wife of a departed chief had to accompany him to the land of the hereafter. Among other nations one or more horses were sacrificed. Sioux, Crows, Blackfeet and perhaps other tribes inflict wounds upon their arms, legs, and other parts of their bodies, amputate a joint of a finger, tear out their hair, cut it short. The description of mourning for a Crow chief in the autobiography of James Beckwourth is very lively and even revol- ting, but it is probably exaggerated, and possibly all invented. The eastern Indians mourned about one year, and at the feast of the dead, of course, repeated their wailings. Dances and songs were common methods of expressing their grief, sometimes games of a gymnastic character with competition for prizes accompanied the funeral, and there may have been some fervor in all these pro- ceedings if the deceased really was of much consequence to the tribe. Food was offered to the corpse before and after burial for some time; some tribes had the custom of maintaining a fire upon the grave, or under the scaffold, probably some longer or shorter time, according to the rank of the dead, or as convenience might serve. The men do not seem to have been obliged to mourn very long, though it might have suited them well enough, or at least some of them, to have an extra spell of idleness on pretense of

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mourning. Chippewa men signified their mourning by blackening their faces, in other tribes similar customs may have prevailed. Among the Choctaws, a southern tribe, the mourning occupied one moon and during that time the husband or widow went every morning and evening to the grave which was kept (partially at least) open for that length of time. At the end of that moon he or she went in the evening to do some more vehement wailing; that was the last cry. In the mean time neighbors and friends had gathered at the house for a feast of eating, dancing and general revelry in which the mourner was expected to participate, and this expectation was probably met promptly. After that ceremony the relict might mary again as soon as convenient.

Quite different it is among the Chippewas. A widow, es- pecially a young one, is expected to take a stick of wood, some- thing like two to three feet long and about five inches in diameter, dress it in her best clothes, while she must wear her worst, and this is henceforth her husband for at least a year, though she may at any time, even at the grave, become the wife of an unmarried brother-in-law, if he demands her. This badge of mourning she must carry until some member of her husband's family requests her to deliver it up, when she is released from further mourning and allowed to marry again. If, as might naturally be expected, she gets tired of that rag-baby, and begins to flirt, or even contracts a marriage outside of the prescribed family circle, she is punished by her female relatives, here as among other nations always ready to mind what is none of their business. Funeral feasts, like other feasts of the Indians, were performances of immoderate eating, followed, and sometimes preceded, by dancing as immoderate. The superstitions imputed to the Indians they probably possessed to at least some extent, but very often does the imputation betray the narrowmindedness of the person making it. As to the dances, they occur at every expected or unexpected occasion, and quite likely there was a dance for the dead among them, peculiar,. it is probable to every tribe. Their deadsongs were wails, sometimes degenerating into howling, common to all, or many barbarous na- tions. The games connected with burials were formerly of gym- nastic kind among the Iroquois-Huron confederacies, but in other places they seem to have been mere gambling, as among the Wahpe- ton and Sisseton Sioux. This gambling was carried on by throw.

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THE INDIANS.

the result of a mistaken policy on the part of the Whites. A notable instance of this is the long series of wars carried on by the Iroquois against the French and all their Indian allies. The policy of Champlain and most of his successors was to create en- mity among the Canadian Indians and those farther south, so as to prevent the diversion of the fur-trade to the Dutch and English settlements. The French themselves were probably friendly enough to the Indians within their own territory, but this policy of theirs accomplished, in the course of time the destruction of those whom they pretended to love and promised to protect. It is true that it also served to diminish and finally almost to an- nihilate the victors, but at the time this result was reached, the French were no longer in the position to profit by it. When Can- ada and the Great West had to be surrendered to the victorious British, it was certainly done with the mental reservation, to take it from them again at the first favorable opportunity. It may, however, be admitted that the French government did not by any overt act encourage the resistance of the Indians, which culmin- ated in the conspiracy of Pontiac, for even if it had wanted to prevent it, the power to do so was for the time gone. Not so with the personal influence of those French, fur-traders, and their de- pendents, who remained in the country, and to whom the Indians were wont to look for advice and assistance. This influence re- mained, and, the Indians being convinced by time that the res- toration of the French power in the northern country would no longer be possible, this same influence was enlisted by Great Bri- tain in its war against the United States, and continued after the surrender of the country east of the Mississippi, west of Lake Huron and south of Lake Superior to the United States. The ac- tion of the British in retaining the principal forts in the western territories for nearly thirteen years after the peace of Paris of 1783 showed clearly that the transfer was considered only temporary. The actual sufferers by this state of uncertainty were, of course, the Indians, who relied still on the power of Great Britain for pro- tection and considered the forts and the traders as their natural support. When, finally, this illusion was dispersed, most of the French still remained hostile to the United States, and took the first occasion to manifest this hostility by openly assisting the Eng- lish in the surprise and capture of Mackinaw, Green Bay and

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Prairie du Chien. They could rely on the Indians. But indepen dent of political intrigues, the Indians were always in the way of getting involved in war. Their own political organization, so to speak, was founded on the responsibility of the clan for the acts of an individual. They chose to apply this principle to their rela- tion or intercourse with Europeans. If any one of these hap- pened to offend them they retaliated upon the first individual of that race, sometimes, perhaps, because the retaliation of the state or country to which the victim belonged was slow to overtake them. But, whatever may have been the causes of war in the many thousand different cases, it must be conceded that the Indi- ans very readily accepted the offer of it, and were but seldom em- barrassed for a cause or pretext. We can not expect that they should always have observed the ceremony of announcing their hostile intentions to their enemies. Their mode of warfare did not favor this way of proceeding. Most of them were undoubt- edly personally brave, but they knew the value of a surprise, and that the art of war consists in being the strongest at a given op- portunity. The chase of the wild animals, too, had at the time when their weapons were inadequate to killing game at a distance, habituated them to lie in ambush and to approach as stealthily as possible. Their number being never very large, they were prone to prevent the possibility of losses, even if they were sure of a numerical superiority at a given time.

Hence they avoided a pitched battle, if they could, fought from cover, if the situation afforded any, and were frequently sub- ject to sudden panics. Superstition, also, had a marked influence upon their mode of fighting and their stratagems. It is usually considered that they had no fortifications, but the French and Hurons learned to their surprise and damage, that the villages of the Iroquois were not only fortified, but also provided with such ammunition for defense as the occasion of a siege might demand, and circumstances did afford. Most permanent villages had a palisade, which sometimes was only a single row of posts set into the ground upright, but among the tribes of the Iroquois-Huron relationship the palisades were often double and treble, interlaced at the top and almost a wooden wall, especially as there was often a sheeting of the heaviest bark procurable on the inside of the palisade. A ditch, too, was often around such palisades and, con-

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sidering their imperfect tools, we must admire their art as well as their perseverence in the construction of such defenses. Very often, however, the savages trusted too much to natural advantages, leaving certain sides of their fortifications unfinished, or entirely undefended, because approach to them was naturally difficult, or seemed impossible, on account of a deep and rapid stream, or a broad lake or pond, or because the unfinished part formed a rocky precipice. But not only had they learned to build these perma- nent fortifications, for at the time when better tools, procured from the Europeans, enabled them to execute the work rapidly enough, they fortified even their temporary camps, and fought from a space enclosed with an abattis, or from walls made of logs hasitly thrown together. This may have been the tactics of such tribes as inhabited wooded countries, the tribes of the prairies could but seldom resort to them. Crude and weak as such defenses would appear in modern warfare, they were most decidedly efficient against portable weapons, bows and arrows and even muskets. The soldiers in the war or the Rebellion often made use of similar constructions for purposes of defense. One weak point the Indi- ans presented in their excursions, and, as might be inferred, at home. They never set any guards. They lay down to sleep, all equally tired, and equally sure that no. attack would happen dur- ing the night. According to their own custom they were right but in their wars with civilized men they often found themselves outwitted on account of this neglect. As the Indian went into the fight for revenge and his passions excited to the highest pitch, he fought desperately, cruelly and mercilessly. It must, however, be admitted, that the necessity of fighting at close range, brought the alternative of either to kill or to be killed. He might deprive the foe in his front of one weapon and then spare his life, but that foe might still attack him with some other weapon; the foe must therefore be killed as soon as possible. To be taken prisoner was, in most cases worse than to be killed, hence the defense was as desperate as the attack. Prisoners were nevertheless taken, usu- ally after the main fight was over, or when defense was impossible and not attempted. The dead were scalped, and cases of scalping those who only seemed dead, must have been frequent.

In their first encounters with Europeans the Indians were armed with bows and arrows, hatchets or small axes, and knives.

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tice of the Dutch, and the Iroquois were almost all armed with guns. In the meantime the English at Hudson's Bay had armed the Knisteneaux in the same way, and the possession of guns and ammunition had become what every savage coveted. It was dan- gerons to furnish him with it; almost equally dangerous to deprive him of this safe-guard against those of his enemies, who possessed it already, and who might exterminate him, and then attack his European friends. Hunting, too, had become very difficult with- out this new instrument for killing. The possession of guns did not make much difference in the system of Indian warfare; tactics in a more precise sense they never had, and their strategic move- ments had always a close resemblence to those of a hunting party. In the course of time a new element entered into savage warfare and life, which was bidding fair to change both. This was the introduction of the horse. The supply for the Indians came at first from the Spaniards, and at later times from the wild stock, originating in animals that ran away, and multiplied in a wilder- ness seemingly created for such a purpose. The introduction of horses by the French and English for the purpose of agriculture and transportation may have furnished a few of the northern In- dians with these animals at intervals by raids and general stealing, but the numbers cannot have been very considerable. It does, however, not appear that the Indians, even those first in possession of horses, and who soon had an abundance of them, ever formed any cavalry, that is they never trained their horses to military evolutions. They became daring and accomplished horsemen, ranged over an immense expanse of country, executed unexpected attacks and surprises, fought sometimes in a scattered or running fight with the Whites, or among themselves, but never actually and intentionally used the horse itself as a means of attack. They valued it for its speed and endurance, nothing more. The posses- sion of the horse brought with it the use of the lasso and the lariat, at first for hunting, then for war. The northern Indians were never so well supplied both as to the number and the quality of their horses, as the Indians of more southern climes, with the un- bounded range of pasturage almost all the year round. We can not enter upon further particulars of Indian warfare, but we must yet say something of their way of treating prisoners taken in actual fight or by surprise. We see that these were either killed or

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adopted. The mode of killing was various. In a situation where there was danger of escape or rescue, the killing may have been sudden, followed by scalping. Some tribes never scalped women , though some killed them occasionally, with or without the cus- tomary preliminaries of torture. In some cases a few of the pri- soners were tortured and killed soon after capture, while the remainder were reserved for the women to exercise their cruel ingenuity upon them, in which, according to the testimony of the men, they excelled the latter, both in tenacity and refinement . This torture, which almost always resulted in death, and som e- times in the flesh of the victim being eaten, was at other times terminated by an adoption into the tribe. In the course of time through the influence of civilized people much of it was aban- doned, but.during the earlier times even women were subjected to it, as, for instance, in the raid of the Iroquois upon the Illinois. Adoption into a family, and hence into the tribe, began to be the more frequent, the greater were the losses by fights, by sickness and other causes, and it has been computed, that of the Iroquois in the beginning of their decline nearly one-half of the fighting men were adopted. Torture and abuse seem to have been more fierce and frequent among the eastern than among the western tribes.

Something remains to be said about the- general character of Indians. That they were arrant thieves, there is no use denying. They were dangerous foes, but very unreliable friends. The solemnity displayed in making treaties of peace served but too often to hide for the time their insincerity and treachery .. We must not forget the sins of White Men towards the Indians, and the imperfect knowledge of the savages in regard to the ultimate power of the white race to crush them, If an intuitive dread of such a power often exasperated the savage heart, this dread was finally the only thing that made them adhere to the most solemn agreements. Considering how little of provocation it usually needed to cause an outbreak of savage fury, and how often for some wrong actually inflicted upon some member of a tribe re- taliation was executed by individuals of the same, that were not at all concerned, upon white persons, who most probably were ignorant even of the supposed injury, we might almost agree with Gen. Sherman, that the only good Indian is a dead one. It has been customary with some people to make heroes of Indian war-

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riors indiscriminately, but facts do not warrant such a transforma- tion. Exceptions do certainly not make a rule, though they are said to confirm it.

The question, whether the character of the Indians has im- proved or deterioriated by reason of their contact with civilization and the attempts at conversion and civilizing made at different times and for sometimes conflicting reasons, often under condi- tions most favorable, is connected with Indian history and the fu- ture of that people. The first attempts at conversion and civiliza- tion were scarcely more than pretensions for the opening up of commercial resources. The fur-trader was not an instrument of civilization. The greatest inducement for an Indian to trade was fire-water, and the first care of most traders was to provide a suffi- cient quantity of the intoxicant, the next to render the Indian as helpless, and himself and his goods as safe as possible. This was openly confessed by Canadian council in their address to the king of France relative to the proposition, made by the Jesuits, to pro- bibit the importation of brandy into trading establishments. The excuse of the council was probably as true as anything they could hit upon. They said that the sale of brandy was the only thing by which the fur-trade could be prevented from leaving the French and the St. Lawrence, and going to the English and the Hudson. Nor was the zeal of the Jesuits in this matter entirely sincere. It is notorious that they trafficked in beaver as much as they could, openly under the plea that this was all they could do for the sup- port of the missions, and in secret partnership with some traders who were, or were not, lay-members of their order. The charge of their selling brandy was made by an employee of theirs, who was dismissed, because of his alleged falsehoods, but the charge of their trafficking was made openly by Frontenac and his council, by La Salle and his officers, and even the Indians, one of whom, a chief, is said to have remarked in open council, that he had been willing enough to act the part of a Christian as long as the mis- sionaries had been in his neighborhood, but since there were no more beavers, the missionaries, also, had disappeared. This im- putation however was not made until the second attempt at con- verting the Indians, in the latter half of the seventeenth century It was the same order, and there was no less zeal for the establish- ment of missions than before, but it was less a zeal for the conver-

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honest, much less the greater majority of the men to whom such a task was entrusted. If under all these circumstances the character of the Indian was not improved, if they had adopted new vices, especially of drunkenness and idleness, and if they had grown still more suspicious and vengeful, we ought not to be surprised. One of the phenomena growing out of the character of the Indians are the numerous treaties and landsales concluded between them and the government of the United States. They go to show that for capriciousness the Indians can not easily be surpassed, and that they were at all times keen traders and greedy of large prices. But they were at best very improvident, and always sure to ex- haust their resources prematurely. They were clamorous of their wants, but careless of the provisions made to meet them. A curi- osity in their treaties are the descriptions of land pretended to be in their possession, and a map of Indiana, which delineates in va- rious colors the boundaries of their land sold with extra grants and reservations is as gay as a man could but imagine, if he had never seen it. The delineation of the boundaries is a desperate task even for a person well informed on such matters, but I will try to give at least one specimen of such in the history of those tribes who used to be domiciled in our neighborhood. That they were but little inclined to respect boundary lines, even if they had agreed to them, we may readily imagine. The game they had to live upon did not always remain inside of such lines, how then could the Indians ?

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History of Buffalo County Wisconsin 10847607, Part 10

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