A Brief History of the United States Part 11

[5] The first government of Plymouth Colony was practically a town meeting. The first town to set up a local government in Ma.s.sachusetts was Dorchester (1633). Thus started, the system spread over all New England.

Nothing was too petty to be acted on by the town meeting. For example, "It is ordered that all dogs, for the s.p.a.ce of three weeks after the publishing hereof, shall have one leg tied up.... If a man refuse to tye up his dogs leg and he be found sc.r.a.ping up fish [used for fertilizer] in the corn field, the owner shall pay l2_s._, besides whatever damage the dog doth." The proceedings of several town meetings at Providence are given in Hart's _American History told by Contemporaries_, Vol. II, pp. 214-219.

[6] Penn's charter required him to keep an agent in or near London.

[7] Charles II died in 1685 and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of York (proprietor of the colony of New York), who reigned as James II.

[8] New Hampshire, which had been annexed by Ma.s.sachusetts in 1641, was made a separate province in 1679; but during the governorship of Andros it was again annexed.

[9] These were Ma.s.sachusetts (including Maine), New Hampshire, Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, East Jersey, and West Jersey--eight in all. The only other colonies then in existence were Pennsylvania (including Delaware), Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina. For an account of the attack on the New England charters, read Fiske's _Beginnings of New England_, pp. 265-268.

[10] The Protestant Episcopal Church of England was established in the colony (1692), and sharp laws were made against Catholics. From 1691 till 1715 Maryland was governed as a royal province; but then it was given back to the fifth Lord Baltimore, who was a Protestant.

[11] Read Fiske's _Dutch and Quaker Colonies_, Vol. II, pp. 199-208. _In Leisler's Times_, by Elbridge Brooks, and _The Segum's Daughter_, by Edwin L. Bynner, are two interesting stories based on the events of Leisler's time.

[12] Berkeley put so many men to death for the part they bore in the rebellion that King Charles said, "The old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father."

Berkeley was recalled. Read Fiske's _Old Virginia and her Neighbours_, Vol. II, pp. 44-95; or the _Century Magazine_ for July, 1890.

[13] In New Hampshire settlers had moved up the valley of the Merrimac to Concord. In Ma.s.sachusetts they had crossed the Connecticut River and were well on toward the New York border (map, p. 59). In New York settlement was still confined to Long Island, the valley of the Hudson, and a few German settlements in the Mohawk valley. In Pennsylvania Germans and Scotch-Irish had pressed into the Susquehanna valley; Reading had been founded on the upper Schuylkill, and Bethlehem in the valley of the Lehigh (map, p. 78). In Virginia population had gone westward up the York, the Rappahannock, and the James rivers to the foot of the Blue Ridge; and Germans and Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania had entered the Great Valley (map, p. 50). In North Carolina and South Carolina Germans, Swiss, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish were likewise moving toward the mountains.

[14] Houses were warmed by means of open fireplaces. Churches were not warmed, even in the coldest days of winter. People would bring foot stoves with them, and men would sit with their hats, greatcoats, and mittens on.

[15] Read Fiske's _Dutch and Quaker Colonies_, Vol. II, pp. 248-257.

CHAPTER VIII

THE INDIANS

Wherever the early explorers and settlers touched our coast, they found the country spa.r.s.ely inhabited by a race of men they called Indians. These people, like their descendants now living in the West, were a race with copper-colored skins, straight, jet-black hair, black eyes, beardless faces, and high cheek bones.

MOUNDS AND CLIFF DWELLINGS.--Who the Indians were originally, where they came from, how they reached our continent, n.o.body knows. Long before the Europeans came, the country was inhabited by a people, probably the same as the Indians, known as mound builders. Their mounds, of many sizes and shapes and intended for many purposes, are scattered over the Ohio and Mississippi valleys in great numbers. Some are in the shape of animals, as the famous serpent mound in Ohio. Some were for defense, some were village sites, and others were for burial purposes.

[Ill.u.s.trations: RUINS OF CLIFF DWELLINGS.]

In the far West and Southwest, where the rivers had cut deep beds, were the cliff dwellers. In hollow places in the rocky cliffs which form the walls of these rivers, in Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, are found to- day the remains of these cliff homes. They are high above the river and difficult to reach, and could easily be defended. [1]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOTEM POLE IN ALASKA.]

TRIBES AND CLANS.--The Indians were divided into hundreds of tribes, each with its own language or dialect and generally living by itself. Each tribe was subdivided into clans. Members of a clan were those who traced descent from some imaginary ancestor, usually an animal, as the wolf, the fox, the bear, the eagle. [2] An Indian inherited his right to be a wolf or a bear from his mother. Whatever clan she belonged to, that was his also, and no man could marry a woman of his own clan. The civil head of a clan was a "sachem"; the military heads were "chiefs." The sachem and the chiefs were elected or deposed, and the affairs of the clan regulated, by a council of all the men and women. The affairs of a tribe were regulated by a council of the sachems and chiefs of the clans. [3]

CONFEDERACIES.--As a few clans were united in each tribe, so some tribes united to form confederacies. The greatest and most powerful of these was the league of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in central New York. [4] It was composed of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida (o-ni'da), and Mohawk tribes. Each managed its own tribal affairs, but a council of sachems elected from the clans had charge of the affairs of the confederacy. So great was the power of the league that it practically ruled all the tribes from Hudson Bay to North Carolina, and westward as far as Lake Michigan.

Other confederacies of less power were: the Dakota and Blackfeet, west of the Mississippi; the Powhatan, in Virginia; and the Creek, the Chickasaw, and the Cherokee, in the South.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN HATCHET AND ARROWHEAD, MADE OF STONE.]

HUNTING.--One of the chief occupations of an Indian man was hunting. He devised traps with great skill. His weapons were bows and arrows with stone heads, stone hatchets or tomahawks, flint spears, and knives and clubs. To use such weapons he had to get close to the animal, and to do this disguises of animal heads and skins were generally adopted. The Indians hunted and trapped nearly all kinds of American animals.

ANIMALS AND IMPLEMENTS UNKNOWN TO THE INDIANS.--Before the coming of the Europeans the Indians had never seen horses or cows, sheep, hogs, or poultry. The dog was their only domesticated animal, and in many cases the so-called dog was really a domesticated wolf. Neither had the Indians ever seen firearms, or gunpowder, or swords, nails, or steel knives, or metal pots or kettles, gla.s.s, wheat, flour, or many other articles in common use among the whites.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIANS IN FULL DRESS.]

CLOTHING.--Their clothing was of the simplest kind, and varied, of course, with the climate. The men usually wore a strip of deerskin around the waist, a hunting shirt, leggings, moccasins on the feet, and sometimes a deerskin over the shoulders. Very often they wore nothing but the strip about the waist and the moccasins. These garments of deerskin were cut with much care, sewed with fish-bone needles and sinew thread, and ornamented with sh.e.l.ls and quills.

Painting the face and body was a universal custom. For this purpose red and yellow ocher, colored earths, juices of plants, and charcoal were used. What may be called Indian jewelry consisted of necklaces of teeth and claws of bears, claws of eagles and hawks, and strings of sea sh.e.l.ls, colored feathers, and wampum. Wampum consisted of strings of beads made from sea sh.e.l.ls, and was highly prized and used not only for ornament, but as Indian money.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAMPUM.]

HOUSES.--The dwelling of many Eastern Indians was a wigwam, or tent-shaped lodge. It was formed of saplings set upright in the ground in the form of a circle and bent together at their tops. Branches wound and twisted among the saplings completed the frame, which was covered with brush, bark, and leaves. A group of such wigwams made a village, which was often surrounded with a stockade of tree trunks put upright in the ground and touching one another.

On the Western plains the buffalo-hunting Indian lived during the summer in tepees, or circular lodges made of poles tied together at the small ends and covered with buffalo skins laced together. The upper end of the tepee was left open to let out the smoke of a fire built inside. In winter these plains Indians lived in earth lodges.

FOOD.--For food the Eastern Indians had fish from river, lake, or sea, wild turkeys, wild pigeons, deer and bear meat, corn, squashes, pumpkins, beans, berries, fruits, and maple sugar (which they taught the whites to make). In the West the Indians killed buffaloes, antelopes, and mountain sheep, cut their flesh into strips, and dried it in the sun. [5]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN JAR, OF BAKED CLAY.]

Fish and meat were cooked by laying the fish on a framework of sticks built over a fire, and hanging the meat on sticks before the fire. Corn and squashes were roasted in the ashes. Dried corn was also ground between stones, mixed with water, and baked in the ashes. Such as knew how to make clay pots could boil meat and vegetables. [6]

CANOES.--In moving from place to place the Indians of the East traveled on foot or used canoes. In the northern parts where birch trees were plentiful, the canoe was of birch bark stretched over a light wooden frame, sewed with strips of deerskin, and smeared at the joints with spruce gum to make it watertight. In the South tree trunks hollowed out by fire and called dugouts were used. In the West there were "bull boats"

made of skins stretched over wooden frames. For winter travel the Northern and Western Indians used snowshoes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAKING A DUGOUT.]

After the Spaniards brought horses to the Southwest, herds of wild horses roamed the southwestern plains, and in later times gave the plains Indians a means of travel the Eastern Indians did not have.

INDIAN TRAILS.--The Eastern Indians nevertheless often made long journeys for purposes of war or trade, and had many well-defined trails which answered as roads. Thus one great trail led from the site of Boston by way of what is now the city of Springfield to the site of Albany. Another in Pennsylvania led from where Philadelphia stands to the Susquehanna, then up the Juniata, over the mountains, and to the Allegheny River. There were thousands of such trails scattered over the country. As the Indians always traveled in single file, these trails were narrow paths; they were worn to the depth of a foot or more, and wound in and out among the trees and around great rocks. As they followed watercourses and natural grades, many of them became in after times routes used by the white man for roads and railroads.

Along the seaboard the Indians lived in villages and wandered about but little. Hunting and war parties traveled great distances, but each tribe had its home. On the great plains the Indians wandered long distances with their women, children, and belongings.

[Ill.u.s.trations: WESTERN INDIANS TRAVELING.]

WORK AND PLAY.--The women did most of the work. They built the wigwam, cut the wood, planted the corn, dressed the skins, made the clothing, and when the band traveled, carried the household goods. The brave made bows and arrows, built the canoe, hunted, fished, and fought.

Till a child, or papoose, was able to run about, it was carefully wrapped in skins and tied to a framework of wicker which could be carried on the mother's back, or hung on the branch of a tree out of harm's way. When able to go about, the boys were taught to shoot, fish, and make arrows and stone implements, and the girls to weave or make baskets, and do all the things they would have to do as squaws.

For amus.e.m.e.nt, the Indians ran foot races, played football [7] and lacrosse, held corn huskings, and had dances for all sorts of occasions, some of them religious in character. Some dances occurred once a year, as the corn dance, the thanksgiving of the Eastern tribes; the sun dance of the plains Indians; and the fish dance by the Indians of the Columbia River country at the opening of the salmon-fishing season. The departure of a war party, the return of such a party, the end of a successful hunt, were always occasions for dances. [8]

INDIAN RELIGION.--The Indians believed that every person, every animal, every thing had a soul, or spirit, or manitou. The ceremonies used to get the good will of certain manitous formed the religious rites. On the plains it was the buffalo manitou, in the East the manitou of corn, or sun, or rain, that was most feared. Everywhere there was a mythology, or collection of tales of heroes who did wonderful things for the Indians.

Hiawatha was such a hero, who gave them fire, corn, the canoe, and other things. [9]

WARFARE.--An Indian war was generally a raid by a small party led by a warrior of renown. Such a chief, standing beside the war post in his village, would publicly announce the raid and call for volunteers. No one was forced to go; but those who were willing would step forward and strike the post with their tomahawks. Among the plains Indians a pipe was pa.s.sed around, and all who smoked it stood pledged to go.

The weapons used in war were like those used in the hunt. Though the Indians were brave they delighted to fight from behind trees, to creep through the tall gra.s.s and fall upon their enemy unawares, or to wait for him in ambush. The dead and wounded were scalped. Captive men were generally put to death with torture; but captive women and children were usually adopted into the tribe.

INDIAN WARS IN VIRGINIA.--The first Europeans who came to our sh.o.r.es were looked on by the Indians as superior beings, as men from the clouds. But before the settlers arrived this veneration was dispelled, and hostility took its place. Thus the founders of Jamestown had scarcely touched land when they were attacked. But Smith brought about an alliance with the Powhatan, and till after his death there was peace.