Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines Part 8

The Mandan village contained at the time of Catlin's visit (1832), as elsewhere stated, about fifty houses and about fifteen hundred people. "These cabins are so s.p.a.cious," Catlin remarks, "that they hold from twenty to forty persons--a family and all their connections....

From the great numbers of the inmates in these lodges they are necessarily very s.p.a.cious, and the number of beds considerable. It is no uncommon thing to see these lodges fifty feet in diameter inside (which is an immense room), with a row of these curtained beds extending quite around their sides, being some ten or twelve of them, placed four or five feet apart, and the s.p.a.ce between them occupied by a large post, fixed quite firmly in the ground, and six or seven feet high, with large wooden pegs or bolts in it, on which are hung or grouped, with a wild and startling taste, the arms and armor of the respective proprietors." [Footnote: North American Indians, Philadelphia ed., 1857, i, 139.]

The household, according to the custom of the Indians, was a large one. The number of inhabitants divided among the number of houses would give an average of thirty persons to each house. It is evident from several statements of Catlin before given that the household practiced communism in living, and that it was formed of related families, on the principle of gentile kin, as among the Iroquois.

Elsewhere he intimates that the Mandans kept a public store or granary as a refuge for the whole community in a time of scarcity.

[Footnote: ib., i, 210.]

In like manner Carver, speaking generally of the usages and customs of the Dakota tribes and of the tribes of Wisconsin, remarks that "they will readily share with any of their own tribe the last part of their provisions, and even with those of a different nation, if they chance to come in when they are eating. Though they do not keep one common store, yet that community of goods which is so prevalent among them, and their generous disposition, render it nearly of the same effect." [Footnote: Travels, etc, p. 171.]

What this author seems to state is that community of goods existed in the household, and that it was lengthened out to the tribe by the law of hospitality. Elsewhere, speaking of the large village of the Sauks, he says: "This is the largest Indian town I ever saw. It contains about ninety houses, each large enough for several families."

[Footnote: Travels, etc., Phila. ed. 1796, p. 29.]

In a previous chapter (supra p. 49.) Heckewelder's observations upon hospitality among the Delawares and Munsees, implying the principle of communism, have been given. He remarks further that "there is nothing in an Indian's house or family without its particular owner.

Every individual knows what belongs to him, from the horse or cow down to the dog, cat, kitten, and little chicken.... For a litter of kittens or a brood of chickens there are often as many different owners as there are individual animals. In purchasing a hen with her brood one frequently has to deal for it with several children. Thus, while the principle of community of goods prevails in the State, the rights of property are acknowledged among the members of the family.

This is attended with a very good effect, for by this means every living creature is properly taken care of." [Footnote: Indian Nations, p. 158.]

I do not understand what Heckewelder means by the remark that "the principle of community of goods prevails in the state," unless it be that the rule of hospitality was so all-pervading that it was tantamount to a community of goods, while individual property was everywhere recognized until it was freely surrendered. This may be the just view of the result of their communism and hospitality, but it is a higher one than I have been able to take.

The household of the Mandans consisting of from twenty to forty persons, the households of the Columbian tribes of about the same number, the Shoshone household of seven families, the households of the Sauks, of the Iroquois, and of the Creeks each composed of several families, are fair types of the households of the Northern Indians at the epoch of their discovery. The fact is also established that these tribes constructed as a rule large joint tenement houses, each of which was occupied by a large household composed of several families, among whom provisions were in common, and who practiced communism in living in the household.

Among the Village Indians of New Mexico a more advanced form of house architecture appears, and their joint tenement character is even more p.r.o.nounced. They live in large houses, two, three, and four stories high, constructed of adobe brick, and of stone imbedded in adobe mortar, and containing fifty, a hundred, two hundred, and in some cases five hundred apartments in a house. They are built in the terraced form, with fireplaces and chimneys added since their discovery, the first story closed up solid, and is entered by ladders, which ascend to the platform-roof of the first story. These houses are fortresses, and were erected as strongholds to resist the attacks of the more barbarous tribes by whom they were perpetually a.s.sailed. Each house was probably occupied by a number of household groups, whose apartments were doubtless separated from each other by part.i.tion walls. In a subsequent chapter the character of these houses will be more fully shown.

Our knowledge of the plan of life in these houses in the aboriginal period is still very imperfect. They still practice the old hospitality, own their lands in common, but with allotments to individuals and to families, and are governed by a cacique or sachem and certain other officers annually elected. An American missionary to the Laguna Village Indians, Rev. Samuel Gorman, in an address before the Historical Society of New Mexico in 1869, remarks as follows: "They generally marry very young, and the son-in-law becomes the servant of the father-in-law, and very often they all live together in one family for years, even if there be several sons-in-law; and this clannish mode of living is often, if not generally, a fruitful source of evil among this people. Their women generally have control over the granary, and they are more provident than their Spanish neighbors about the future. Ordinarily they try to have one year's provisions on hand. It is only when they have two years of scarcity succeeding each other that pueblos as a community suffer hunger." [Footnote: Address, p. 14.]

The usages of these Indians have doubtless modified in the last two hundred years under Spanish influence; they have decreased in numbers, and the family group is probably smaller than formerly. But it is not too late to recover the aboriginal plan of life among them if the subject were intelligently investigated. It is to be hoped that some one will undertake this work.

The Spanish writers do not mention the practice of communism in living as existing among the Village Indians of Mexico or Central America. They are barren of practical information concerning their mode of life; but we have the same picture of large households composed of several families, whose communism in the household may reasonably be inferred.

We have also the striking ill.u.s.tration of "Montezuma's Dinner,"

hereafter to be noticed, which was plainly a dinner in common by a communal household. Beside these facts we have the ownership of lands in common by communities of persons. Moreover, the ruins of ancient houses in Central and South America, and in parts of Mexico, show very plainly their joint tenement character. From the plans of these houses the communism of the people by households may be deduced theoretically with reasonable certainty.

Yucatan, when discovered, was occupied by a number of tribes of Maya Indians. The Maya language spread beyond the limits of Yucatan. This region, with Chiapas, Guatemala, and a part of Honduras, contained and still contains evidence, in the ruins of ancient structures, of a higher advancement in the arts of life than any other part of North America. The present Maya Indians of Yucatan are the descendants of the people who occupied the country at the period of the Spanish conquest, and who occupied the ma.s.sive stone houses now in ruins, from which they were forced by Spanish oppression.

We have a notable ill.u.s.tration of communism in living among the present Maya Indians, as late as the year 1840, through the work of John L Stephens. At Nohcacab, a few miles east of the ruins of Uxmal, Mr. Stephens, having occasion to employ laborers, went to a settlement of Maya Indians, of whom he gives the following account: "Their community consists of a hundred labradores, or working men; their lands are held and wrought in common, and the products are shared by all. Their food is prepared at one hut, and every family sends for its portion, which explains a singular spectacle we had seen on our arrival, a procession of women and children, each carrying an earthen bowl containing a quant.i.ty of smoking hot broth, all coming down the same road, and disappearing among the different huts. Every member belonging to the community, down to the smallest pappoose, contributing in turn a hog. From our ignorance of the language, and the number of other and more pressing matters claiming our attention, we could not learn all the details of their internal economy, but it seemed to approximate that improved state of a.s.sociation which is sometimes heard of among us; and as theirs has existed for an unknown length of time, and can no longer be considered merely experimental, Owen on Fourier might perhaps take lessons from them with advantage." [Footnote: Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, ii, 14.]

A hundred working men indicate a total of five hundred persons, who were then depending for their daily food upon a single fire, the provisions being supplied from common stores, and divided from the caldron. It is, not unlikely, a truthful picture of the mode of life of their forefathers in the "House of the Nuns," and in the "Governor's House" at Uxmal, at the epoch of the Spanish conquest.

It is well known that Spanish adventurers captured these pueblos, one after the other, and attempted to enforce the labor of the Indians for personal ends, and that the Indians abandoned their pueblos and retreated into the inaccessible forests to escape enslavement, after which their houses of stone fell into decay, the ruins of which, and all there ever was of them, still remain in all parts of these countries.

It is hardly supposable that the communism here described by Mr.

Stephens was a new thing to the Mayas; but far more probable that it was a part of their ancient mode of life, to which these ruined houses were eminently adapted. The subject of the adaptation of the old pueblo houses in Yucatan and Central America to communism in living will be elsewhere considered.

When Columbus first landed on the island of Cuba, he sent two men into the interior, who reported that "they traveled twenty-two leagues, and found a village of fifty houses, built like those before spoken of, and they contained about one thousand persons, because a whole generation lived in a house; and the prime men came out to meet them, led them by the arms, and lodged them in one of these new houses, causing them to sit down on seats ... and they gave them boiled roots to eat, which tasted like chestnuts."

[Footnote: Herrera, i, 55.]

One of the first expeditions which touched the main land on the coast of Venezuela in South America found much larger houses than these last described. "The houses they dwelt in were common to all, and so s.p.a.cious that they contained one hundred and sixty persons, strongly built, though covered with palm-tree leaves, and shaped like a bell." [Footnote: ib., 216.]

Herrera further remarks of the same tribe, that "they observed no law or rule in matrimony, but took as many wives as they would, and they as many husbands, quitting one another at pleasure, without reckoning any wrong done on either part. There was no such thing as jealousy among them, all living as best pleased them, without taking offense at one another." [Footnote: ib., i, 216.]

This shows communism in husbands as well as wives, and rendered communism in food a necessity of their condition. Elsewhere the same author speaks of the habitations of the tribes on the coast of Carthagena. "Their houses were like long arbors, with several apartments, and they had no beds but hammocks." [Footnote: ib., 348.]

Many similar statements are scattered through his work.

Among the more advanced tribes of Peru the lands were divided, and allotted to different uses; one part was for the support of the government, another for the support of religion, and another for the support of individuals. The first two parts were cultivated by the people under established regulations, and the crops were placed in public storehouses. This is the statement of Garcila.s.so.

[Footnote: Royal Com. l. c., pp. 154, 157.]

Herrera, however, says generally that the people lived from common stores. "The Spaniards drawing near to Caxamalca begun to have a view of the Inca army lying near the bottom of a mountain.... They were pleased to see the beauty of the fields, most regularly cultivated, for it was an ancient law among these people that all should be fed from common stores, and none should touch the standing corn." [Footnote: Herrera, iv, 249.] The discrepancy between Herrera and Garcila.s.so may perhaps be explained by the reservation of the crops grown on lands set apart for the government and for religion.

The reason for presenting the foregoing observations of different authors concerning the households, the houses, and the practice of communism in food, has been to show, firstly, that the household of the Indian tribes was a large one, composed of several families; secondly, that their houses were constructed to accommodate several families; and thirdly, that the household practiced communism in living. These are the material facts, and they have been sufficiently ill.u.s.trated. The single family of civilized society live from common stores, yet it is not communism; but where several families coalesce in one common household and make a common stock of their provisions, and this is found to be a general rule in entire tribes, it is a form of communism important to be noticed. It is seen to belong to a society in a low stage of development, where it springs from the necessities of their condition. These usages and customs exhibit their plan of life, and reveal the wide difference between their condition and that of civilized society; between the Indian family, without individuality, and the highly individualized family of civilization.

[Relocated Footnote: Alfred W. Howitt, F. G. S., Bariusdale, Australia, mentions, in a letter to the author, the following singular custom of an Australian tribe concerning the distribution of food in the family group:

A man catches seven river eels; they are divided thus (it is supposed that his family consists only of these named):

1st eel. Front half himself; hind half his wife.

2d eel. Front half his wife's mother; hind half his wife's sister.

3d eel. Front half his elder sons; hind half his younger sons.

4th eel. Front half his elder daughters; hind half his younger daughters.

5th eel. Front half his brother's sons; hind half his brother's daughters.

6th eel. One whole eel to his married daughter's husband.

7th eel. One whole eel to his married daughter.

This custom may be supposed to show the ordinary household group, and the order of their relative nearness to Ego. It foots up himself and wife, wife's mother and sister, his sons and daughters, his brother's sons and daughters, and his daughter's husband. It implies also other members of the household, who are obliged to take care of themselves: viz. his brothers and sisters.]

CHAPTER IV.

USAGES AND CUSTOMS WITH RESPECT TO LANDS AND TO FOOD

THE OWNERSHIP OF LANDS IN COMMON.

Among the Iroquois the tribal domain was held and owned by the tribe in common. Individual ownership, with the right to sell and convey in fee-simple to any other person, was entirely unknown among them.

It required the experience and development of the two succeeding ethnical periods to bring mankind to such a knowledge of property in land as its individual ownership with the power of alienation in fee-simple implies. No person in Indian life could obtain the absolute t.i.tle to land, since it was vested by custom in the tribe as one body; and they had no conception of what is implied by a legal t.i.tle in severalty with power to sell and convey the fee. But he could reduce unoccupied land to possession by cultivation, and so long as he thus used it he had a possessory right to its enjoyment which would be recognized and respected by his tribe. Gardens planting-lots, apartments in a long-house, and, at a later day, orchards of fruit were thus held by persons and by families. Such possessory right was all that was needed for their full enjoyment and for the protection of their interest in them. A person might transfer or donate his rights to other persons of the same tribe, and they also pa.s.sed by inherence, under established customs, to his gentile kin. This was substantially the Indian system in respect to the ownership of lands and apartments in houses among the Indian tribes within the areas of the United States and British America in the Lower Status of barbarism. In later times, when the State or National Government acquired Indian lands and made compensation therefor, payment for the lands went to the tribe, and for improvements to the individual who had the possessory right. At the Tonawanda Reservation of the Seneca-Iroquois, a portion of the lands are divided into separate farms, which are fenced and occupied in severalty, while the remainder are owned by the tribe in common.

When a young man marries and has no land on which to subsist, the chiefs may allot him a portion of these reserved lands. The t.i.tle to all these lands, occupied and unoccupied, remains in the tribe in common. Individuals may sell or rent their possessory rights to each other, or rent them to a white man. No white man can now acquire a t.i.tle from an Indian to Indian lands in any part of the United States.

A person could transfer his possessions to another, but apartments in a house must remain to his gentile kindred. In the time of James II the right to acquire lands was vested in the Crown exclusively as a royal prerogative, to which prerogative our State and National Governments succeeded.

The same usages prevail on the Tuscarora Reservation, near the Niagara River, where this Iroquois tribe owns in common about 8,000 acres of fine agricultural land in one body. A part of this reservation has long been parceled out to individuals in small farms, fenced, and cultivated by the possessors. The remainder is unparceled and under the control of the chiefs. The people are allowed to remove from the wood-land of the reserve the dead wood and litter but are not permitted to touch the standing timber. When a young man marries, if he has no land the chiefs allot him forty acres to cultivate for his subsistence; but, before giving him possession, the lot is first open to all the tribe to cut off the timber for fire-wood. Thus the double object is gained of supplying the people with fire-wood and of clearing the land for cultivation for the new family. These possessory rights pa.s.s by inheritance to the recognized heirs. A person may transfer or rent his possession to another person; he may rent to a white man, but in no case can he sell to a white man.

And here I may be allowed a brief digression, to notice a recent opinion of the late Secretary of the Interior, Hon. Carl Schurz, shared in to some extent by the National Government, in relation to the division of our Indian reservations into lots or tracts, and their conveyance in severalty to the Indians themselves, with power of alienation to white men after a short period, say twenty-five years. It is to be hoped that this policy will never be adopted by any National Administration, as it is fraught with nothing but mischief to the Indian tribes. The Indian is still, as he always has been, and will remain for many years to come, entirely incapable of meeting the white man, with safety to himself, in the field of trade and of resisting the arts and inducements which would be brought to bear upon him. He is incapable of steadily attaching that value to the ownership of land which its importance deserves, or of knowing how far the best interests of himself and family are involved in its continued possession. The result of individual Indian ownership, with power to sell, would unquestionably be, that in a very short time he would divest himself of every foot of land and fall into poverty. The case of the Shawnee tribe of Kansas affords a perfect ill.u.s.tration of this pernicious policy. The Shawnees were removed to Kansas under the Jackson policy, so called, and occupied a splendid reservation on the Kansas River, where they were told they were to make their home forever. But after a few years of undisturbed possession, our people, in the natural flow of population, reached Kansas, where they found the Shawnees in possession of the best part of what has since been the State of Kansas. Our people at once wanted these Indian lands, and they determined to root out the Shawnees in the interest of civilization and progress. They accomplished this result in the most speedy and scientific manner, using as their proposed lever this identical plan since adopted by Mr. Schurz. First, the government was induced to re-purchase a part of the reservation on the ground that they had more land than they needed for cultivation; and, secondly, the government induced the Indians to have the remainder divided up into farms and conveyed to heads of families in severalty, with power of alienation. In 1859, when this scheme was being worked out, I visited Kansas, and found the Shawnee's cultivating and improving their farms, some of which embraced a thousand acres, and owning them, too, like other farmers.

When next in Kansas, ten years later, the work was done. There was not a Shawnee in Kansas, but American farmers were in possession of all these lands. It was this individual ownership with power to sell that had done the work.