Aboriginal America Part 13

The American Indians, like all other savages, were extremely cruel in the treatment of prisoners captured in war. They took great delight in torturing them, and often burnt them alive. Whether any palliation for these enormities can be derived from the fact that such inflictions produced a less exquisite pain in sufferers of their race than they would have done in ours, we will not undertake to say. At any rate, it is known that prisoners subjected to such treatment bore their tortures with most astonishing fort.i.tude. Sometimes, indeed, such suffering was voluntarily incurred, under the impulse of some exalted sentiment of generosity, or other strong emotion.

The Father Dying For His Son

An account is given of an Indian who belonged to a tribe that was involved in some quarrel with a neighboring tribe, and one day when he came home from his hunting he found his wife in a state of extreme anguish and terror from the fact that a party of the enemy had come suddenly upon the wigwam during the absence of the father, and had made a prisoner of the oldest son, and carried him away.

The father immediately bade his wife farewell, and putting himself upon the trail of the hostile party he followed them with the utmost diligence. He knew that the destiny of the poor prisoner was most a.s.suredly to be tortured to death by fire, and he was going to offer himself for this sacrifice, in order to obtain the ransom of his child.

He came up with the party of the enemy just as they were making preparations to enjoy their cruel revenge. He approached them with a signal which was equivalent to a flag of truce in civilized warfare, and offered himself as a subst.i.tute for his son. "My poor boy," said he, "is just entering upon life. Do not cut him off so prematurely from the enjoyment of it. He is vigorous and strong, too, and is the hope of his mother, and he will be, for many years, the stay and support of the family. But I am old and infirm. My work will soon be done, and I am of little value to my wife and children. But I am just as good to be burned alive for your revenge as he."

This, or something equivalent to this, the old man said to his savage enemies. They acknowledged the propriety of the proposal, and made the exchange. They unbound the young man and gave him his liberty. The father sent him away, charging him to go home and take care of his mother and of the children, and then gave himself up to be burnt to death by a process protracted as long as possible, while his enemies feasted and danced around the fire.

The Practice of Scalping

The practice which prevailed among all the native tribes of North America of taking off the scalps of enemies slain in battle, and preserving them as trophies of victory, has generally been considered a special token of the barbarous cruelty of the Indian character. The practice, it is true, presents a most shocking image to our imaginations, yet, when we reflect upon it, it does not seem to denote any special and peculiar cruelty. It is barbarous, without doubt, yet still perhaps not specially and peculiarly so.

Origin of the Practice

The practice arose very naturally from the custom that prevails universally among all hunting savages, and indeed among all hunting men, whether savage or civilized, of obtaining from the boy of the animal slain something to be preserved as a trophy of the prowess of the hunter in killing him. A barbarous hunter wears the trophies thus obtained upon his person. A civilized one hangs them up in his hall. That seems to be the chief difference between barbarism and civilization in this respect.

The Indians made their dresses of the skins of animals that they had killed; and the fiercer and more furious the beast that furnished the material, the more distinguished and glorious was the attire.

There were many parts of the bodies of these animals that were used in this way. Skins were made into quivers, moccasins, leggins and robes. Horns were used in head-dresses; bones were worked into beads and ornaments of every kind; and long hair, dyed of various colors, was formed into fringes to decorate the borders of garments. There was a particular species of eagle called the war-eagle, on account of his strength and fierceness, whose feathers were prized above all others for purposes of dress and decoration.

From this practice of taking the skin, the horns, the hair, or the feathers of animals slain in the chase as trophies to be used as articles of dress or ornament, it is but a single step to that of preserving a portion of the long hair of an enemy slain in battle for the same purpose; and when the man was dead there was no special cruelty in taking a portion of the skin with the hair. Not that we are to suppose that the Indians could have any feeling that would lead them to defer taking a scalp till after death from motives of humanity, but only that in ordinary cases they would be compelled to do so. It would, of course, be very seldom that a scalp could be taken from a victim while he was alive.

Customs Connected with the Practice of Scalping

The portion of the skin which was taken from the head in scalping an enemy was quite small, only a few inches in diameter. All that was essential was that it should include the crown of the head--that is, the central point from which the hair separates. The hair itself, however, which grew from the other parts of the head was usually cut off too, especially if it was long, and suitable to be worked into fringes and other such ornaments.

A scalp, when taken from the head, was first stretched in a sort of hoop to keep the skin distended while drying. This hoop was formed upon the end of a long pole by bending the end round into a circle, first cutting away a portion of the wood at the end to make it sufficiently flexible. The scalp was placed in the center of this hoop, and fastened there by strings pa.s.sing out in every direction to the circ.u.mference--the long hair hanging down the pole. The pole served, of course, for a handle by which the trophy could be borne in a conspicuous and triumphant manner.

There were certain ceremonies to be performed with the fresh scalps as soon as the party taking them had reached home, by way of public recognition of them as warlike trophies. These ceremonies consisted of feastings and rejoicings, accompanied with songs and dances--that is, if such wailing and unearthly succession of sounds as they made could be called songs, or their horrid contortions and gesticulation dances. When these ceremonies were completed the scalps were considered as duly consecrated, and were thenceforth preserved with great care in the wigwam, or worn upon the person, as badges of the highest distinction and honor.

Treatment of Women

The Indians have been accused of treating their women as slaves, and there is no doubt that the women were always held by them in a state of very complete and absolute subordination to the men. They were employed all the time in arduous labors, but this was a matter of necessity, for the continual toil of both men and women was in most cases necessary for the maintenance of the family. The woman had the house to put up and take down, the mats and clothing to make, fuel to bring for the fire, and the field to till.

But all this probably made no more than her fair proportion of toil and exposure, when we consider the sufferings and danger and fatigue which fell to the lot of the husband in his hunting and fishing expeditions. The privations which the men sometimes endured in their long tramps through the forests, especially amid the snows and storms and intense cold which reigned in all the northern forests for so large a portion of the year, were indescribably great, especially since the indomitable pride of the hunter often presented his returning home, however urgent his own personal necessities might be, without having first obtained his game. Instances have been known of the Indians wandering in the woods until they have become perfectly exhausted, and of their then lying down and perishing hunger, rather than go home to a starving family, without the means of supplying them with food.

Polygamy

Polygamy prevailed to some extent among the Indian tribes. Of course, since the number of the s.e.xes is everywhere so nearly equal, this practice can never be carried to any very great extent in any human community, even if there were no natural instincts in the heart to war against it. There was no law among the Indians restricting men to a single wife, and prominent personages, such as great warriors and chieftains, often accordingly possessed themselves of more than one. The motive which influenced them, however, in these cases was not, as it would seem, a sensual one. but rather a desire to extend their influence by connecting themselves with powerful families, and to aggrandize themselves in the estimation of the community by enlarging their domestic establishment. The practice, however, being in violation of the natural instincts of man and the essential laws of his const.i.tution, led generally to domestic disquiet and suffering, and sometimes to catastrophes which would have comported well with the strength of the sentiment of jealousy in the heart of the most civilized woman.

Intellectual Superiority of the Caucasian Race

We are surprised sometimes, it is true, at the ingenuity which the Indians exhibited in some of their inventions, and it is, indeed, in some sense wonderful that with materials and implements so imperfect they could manufacture such efficient weapons and carry out such serious contrivances. But, after all, when we come to compare a bark canoe, perfect as it is in its way, with one of the ocean steam-ships of the Caucasian race, or the best made stone-tipped arrow ever shot at a moose or a buffalo, with the double barreled rifled carbines carrying an explosive bullet, with which a French hunter lies in wait for an African lion, we learn the immense distance which separates the powers and attainments of the two races from each other. We must remember, too, that the contrivances which we find Indians now using, and which we think so ingenious, are not the inventions of the individuals that we see using them, not even of the generation now upon the stage. They are the results of the combined ingenuity of a hundred generations! It is somewhat the same, it is true, with our inventions; but with us, not only are the results infinitely greater, but the work is still going on with a steadiness and rapidity of progress almost inconceivable. There is doubtless more real invention exercised, and a greater number of new and ingenious contrivances originated and perfected every single year, in any one of ten thousand machine shops and manufactories now in operation in America, than the Indians can produce as the result of the acc.u.mulated efforts of all the generations of their race, from their earliest arrival upon these sh.o.r.es to the present time.

Two Great Means of Civilization

But what ever we may think of the intellectual inferiority of the Indian race, the slowness of their progress in the arts of life was not due wholly to that cause. There are two great essential elements without which civilization can never make any rapid progress, or attain to any great height, in any nation. These two elements are iron, and the art of writing. With the possession of iron to make implements and tools, one man, it is found, can produce the food of ten, thus leaving the other four of the half of the community that we may suppose to be able-bodied, to be employed in other occupations. it is in consequence of this release of so large a portion of the community from the labor of procuring food, through the aid afforded by iron, that arts and inventions arise. Whereas, without iron, it requires five men to produce the food of ten, and the other five consist of the very young, the very old, the sick and the inform. So that, without iron, nearly the whole available strength of the community is required for the production of food, the surplus that remains being barely sufficient to provide, in the simplest possible way, for the demands of nature in respect to shelter and clothing.

Again, with the art of writing the progress made in each separate generation is recorded, and thus the goal attained in one age becomes the starting point in the next. It follows from this art a race that possesses the art of writing may be decisively progressive, but one which is without that art can only be so in a very limited degree. In this latter case the greatest part of what any one genius discovers or learns dies with him, and the next genius that arises must commence the work anew. Thus the nation, even if it is always rising, is always sinking back again to where it was before. Nothing but the art of writing, to provide each generation with the means of recording what it has discovered, will enable it to keep its hold and go on continually ascending.

The Indians accordingly, being without this art, made no advance whatever. If they did not even retrograde, they lived from generation to generation the same.

The Coming of the Europeans

The Coming of the Europeans The coming of the Europeans to this country brought new races not only of men, but also of plants and animals, into contact and connection with those previously existing here. The result was that, in the course of two centuries, immense changes were produced in the occupancy of the country, new and higher forms that were introduced from the old world superseding and displacing the inferior and more imperfect ones which before had possession of the new.

Changes in Respect to Animal Life

Some of the more remarkable of these changes are well known. Others equally interesting, in a philosophical point of view, but leading to results less conspicuous, have not attracted so much attention. One very striking case is that of the horse. Certain animals of this species escaped from the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru--very likely a small number at first. They found the region around them producing plenty of gra.s.s, and the climate mild and summer-like through the whole year. Of course, they required no care on the part of man, and began soon to multiply with great rapidity; and now, after the lapse of three hundred years, herds of them cover the prairies and plains of the middle and southern regions of America in countless millions, and, of course, other animals, that before occupied the same grounds and fed upon the same herbage, have been displaced by them and have disappeared.

It is somewhat so with the cow. Wild cattle, originally introduced into the country by colonizing companies from Spain, now throng the South American plains in such numbers that they are hunted and slain by hundreds of thousands every year for the sake of the hides. And still the numbers are increasing.

The bovine races of Europe, however, have not been able to spread in a wild state northwardly into the prairies of North America, on account perhaps of the fact that the buffalo, a superior animal of the same kind--superior in respect to strength and ability to maintain his ground--has possession already. Nor were they or the horses able, unaided by man, to occupy the northern regions on the Atlantic; for although these regions were well adapted to produce their peculiar food, the winters were too long and cold for such animals to live through them without artificial aid. With this aid, however, they can do it, and thus, under the fostering charge of man, the green meadows and hill-sides, extending over many thousands of square miles between the lakes and the sea, have been covered with flocks of sheep and herds of horses and cows, while the bear and the moose that formerly had possession of them have pa.s.sed away. A few lingering specimens only remain to roam in solitude within the narrow limits left to them, and to wonder where their companions can have gone.

Changes in Respect to Plants

Changes corresponding to these have taken place on a vast scale in the vegetable kingdom. Mult.i.tudes of plants that were introduced into America by the European colonists, either accidentally or by design, have since that time become very widely extended here, and have extirpated or displaced, to a corresponding degree, the original occupants of the soil. These changes have taken place sometimes with and sometimes without the aid of man. One of the most striking examples of the former cla.s.s is that of the gra.s.ses and the cereal grains, such as wheat and rye, which now cover millions and millions of acres through all the central regions of the continent, where formerly brakes and bullrushes and wild wood-flowers, barren and useless, had complete possession.

It is well that this should be so. Such changes are in fulfillment of the beneficent designs formed by the author of nature for the gradual improvement of the condition of the earth, and the advancement of it, in respect to its occupants, from lower to higher and n.o.bler forms of life.

Changes in the Races of Men

A change exactly a.n.a.logous to these has taken place in respect to man. The aboriginal inhabitants of the country were of races formed with const.i.tutions, both physical and mental, adapting them to obtain their livelihood by fishing and the chase--modes of life by means of which North America might sustain perhaps twenty or thirty millions of inhabitants. The Caucasian race, which was introduced from Europe, is endowed with const.i.tutions adapting them to gain their livelihood by agriculture, commerce, and the manufacturing arts, a mode of life by which the same territory is capable of supporting many hundred millions--we know not how many. Under these circ.u.mstances it was an inevitable, and as much in fulfillment of the designs of divine Providence, that the old races should be supplanted by the new, as that the horse and the cow should displace the alligator and the elk , and brakes and bulrushes yield their native ground to corn.

And such has been the fact. It has been estimated that at the time America was discovered the number of Indians dwelling within the limits of the United States was about sixteen millions. Of the descendants of these sixteen millions only about two millions now remain.

The Displacement of One Race By Another Not Necessarily Attended With Suffering

Nor are we to suppose that such a change as this, by which a lower race is supplanted by a higher one, necessarily implies any violence or wrong on the part of the former against the latter, or any special suffering. It is the race and not the individuals that the extirpating process acts upon. That is to say, the effect is produced, not by the destruction of individuals already existing, but by a diminution in the numbers born to take the places of those ceasing to exist by natural causes. If the various aboriginal races had always been, and still continued to be, treated with the strictest justice and the most sincere and cordial good will, they would have none the less surely fulfilled the universal destiny of the lower to give way before the higher forms, in the great onward march of organization and life; but the change would have come slowly, quietly, and without suffering. Indeed, the very beings subject to it, with the exception of a few far-seeing minds that might discover it by a special and laborious study of the past and of the future, would have been unconscious that it was going on.

Difficulties That Opposed the Amalgamation of the Two Races