INDIAN WARFARE

17

matters pertaining essentially to the group. It was extremely democratic, and as the lowest unit of government gave tone to the deliberations on affairs too large for its jurisdiction. There was also a tribal council, composed of all the sachems and chiefs within the tribe. It decided upon matters touching the entire tribe, as relations with other tribes or with the whites. Any freeman might attend its meetings and speak his sentiments there: even the women might be heard through an orator whom they chose to speak for them; but the decision was left to the council. The Iroquois, and possibly some other tribes, required that a vote of the council be unanimous.

The Brother

În some of the large organizations there was a brotherhood, or phratry, a third group which was between the clan and the tribe. It was composed of clans, usually three or four. Its function was social and religious. In the celebrated ball games hood. the two sides would represent two brotherhoods. Disputes between two clans could be appealed to a council of sachems and chiefs from all the clans in the brotherhood. In the funerals of prominent men the brotherhood took conspicuous part, but its governmental functions were never well developed.

Names of

Persons.

Naming children was strictly regulated because it bore directly on clan organization. Each individual had two names within his life, one received at birth, the other at maturity; that is, at sixteen at eighteen years of age. Certain names were peculiar to certain clans, and were not given to children of other clans. In some tribes a youth was required to go on the warpath and earn his new name by an act of courage or prowess. This new name must be approved by the tribal council. An adult might change his name if he could get a chief to announce it in council. When a man was elected sachem or chief he took a new name selected for him by the council.

In conferring names, and in many other affairs, the authority of the clan or tribe was very great; but in beginning war much was left to the individual. Perhaps it is wrong to speak of the begin- Making ning of war. Strictly speaking, wars between the tribes War. never ended, except those which resulted in alliances. An interval of several years might elapse between outbreaks of hostilities, but within that time each side considered itself in a state of conflict with its enemies. The old men, remembering former trials, might prefer peace, but the young men were apt to desire to fight. Under such circumstances the latter would form a war party under some chieftain of known ability, there would be a war dance, and immediately the party would march against the enemy. Each member would take a pouch filled with Rockahominy, which was parched corn pounded into flour. Between Indian tribes there were usually broad, uninhabited zones, and the hostiles might, therefore, be many miles away. The Catawbas in upper South Carolina had for hereditary

C

enemy the Delawares, in the Delaware valley. The war party, painted so their mission might be known, marched through this neutral zone supporting themselves on game and fish until they were in the enemy's country, where no fires must be made lest the smoke reveal the approach of the warriors. Now they relied on the Rockahominy. So accustomed were they to fasting that two spoonfuls of it moistened with water and swallowed in haste was sufficient for several hours' nourishment. If they could surprise the foe, they struck quickly and returned with scalps and captives to their home to await some retaliating blow from the injured tribe. While such a war party was out, the rest of the tribe might remain at their peaceful occupations. But when the war was general and all the fighting men were out, they were formed into war bands in the same way, each led by some noted brave under whom the warriors desired to serve.

The Six
Nations.

The most distinguished group of North American Indians was the Six Nations of the Iroquoian family, five of whom lived through most of our colonial period in western New York, and the other, the Tuscaroras, in North Carolina. After suffering much from their enemies they established early in the fifteenth century a well-knit confederacy, with a common council and a strongly aggressive policy. They proved themselves the scourge of surrounding tribes. Their ancient enemies were the Algonkins of Canada and New England. They became friends of the white men in New York, and played an important part in the operations against the French of Canada, who early incurred their resentment by helping the Algonkins. A kindred southern branch, the Cherokees, played an important part

Other
Tribes.

in the early history of Tennessee and the region south of it. Further southward were the Creeks and other members of the Muskhogean family, very numerous, and for a long time they held back whites in the Gulf region. A large number of tribes classified as the Siouan family lived in the northern Mississippi basin and were represented by some branches on the upper Potomac and in the Piedmont region of the East. They were especially dependent on the buffalo, and followed it westward before the advance of the whites. At the middle of the nineteenth century they were in the vast Missouri valley, and their representatives, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and the Sioux, offered fierce resistance to the whites in the period immediately following the Civil War.

Stages of Indian Resistance.

The white settler's contest with the savage for territory divides itself into well-marked stages. The first colonies, weak and isolated, soon came into conflict with some neighboring small tribes who feared the loss of their land. The Pequot war in New England and the Virginia outbreak of 1622 are illustrations. The victory of the whites in these earliest struggles gave a respite; but as their settlements extended inland a larger number of Indians became alarmed, a stronger combination was formed, and a

INDIAN THOUGHT

19

sterner struggle ensued. For example, see King Phillip's war in New England, the Tuscarora war in North Carolina, and the Yemassee struggle in South Carolina. Another defeat convinced the savages of their weakness, and there followed another period of peace until the Indians found external allies. On the north it was the French who helped them, and several bloody wars were fought before this combination was broken. On the south outside aid came from Spain, though not openly, and the Indians themselves were numerous enough to be formidable. But the whites were now so well planted that the result was beyond question. From this time Indian wars were frontier struggles, the savages resisting their inevitable fate, sometimes stimulated to it by the designed oppression of white men and mixed breeds who wished an opportunity to seize Indian lands. In this way war has run over the land from ocean to ocean, extinguishing some tribes, greatly depleting others, and forcibly converting the remainder from nomads to agriculturalists.

Indian

In the Indian's character were some of the best and some of the worst qualities. In warfare he was stoically indifferent to his own suffering and also to that of his enemies; he was true to friends and truculent to foes; he was brave in battle, but he stalked Character. his enemies as he hunted wild game, and murdered them by stealth if he could. When it was necessary he was abstemious, at other times he was gluttonous: his virtues and vices were those of the savage. His pathetic passage across the page of history has appealed to the idealist, but his cruelty and vindictiveness awakened horror in most of those who encountered him.

Mind.

His intellectual development was slight. The most advanced tribes had no system of written language higher than picture writing, which reached the stage of symbolism in Algonquian tribes, and was rudely hieroglyphical in Mexico and Yucatan. His The Indian body of tradition, preserved orally, was limited; and his music, chiefly religious, was lacking in harmony, a rhythmic chant with complex structure, designed to fire the will rather than please the ear. In decorative art he was most successful; for although he knew nothing of higher forms, his designs for ornamental pottery, basketry, and weaving had a quiet beauty which appeals to the best modern taste. The same quality appears in the simple beauty of many of his myths. His religion was animism, a belief in the existence of numerous spirits. He was apt to stress most the importance of the spirit he attributed to the thing most influential in his life, as the Religion. sun, the rain, or the moon. The tribes of the plains gave high place to the spirit of the buffalo. The name manitou, or mystery, was used by the Algonquian tribes for spirits, and it has become a general term. The early travelers and missionaries spoke of the belief in a "Great Spirit," single and invisible, but ethnologists have found no evidence that the Indian had such an elevated ideal. He believed,

however, that man had a soul some tribes thought he had several - and that he lived after death in a "happy hunting ground." Some Indians buried their dead, others cremated them, and others preserved them as mummies. A man might make a manitou his friend, and if so he became a shaman, or medicine-man. He could now, through the aid of his manitou, drive away the evil spirit which was thought to inhabit a sick person. He accomplished the work by singing, dancing, and physical manipulations. Frequently the patient recovered: if he died, it was said that he was possessed by a manitou stronger than that of the shaman who treated him. In the more advanced tribes of the Southwest there were associations of shamans to preserve the secrets of their cult, among which were religious ceremonies.

Recent comparative studies have thrown much light on Indian mythology. It reveals no well-defined idea of creation. Most of the stories say that the earth once differed from its present conMythology. dition, and that men and animals then lived and talked together and were the prey of great monsters. There was no daylight or fire, and poverty and misery ruled the world. Finally came a beneficent person who reformed tribes, taught man to improve his habits, and gave him certain inventions. His work of betterment done, he departed to come again. The Messianic quality of this personage probably suggested the idea that the Indians had a belief in a "Great Spirit"; but he was only a culture hero, and not altogether an admirable one; for although he worked for others and had superior intelligence he was sometimes a sharp trickster and was frequently made ridiculous by his opponents.

The houses of the Indians were sometimes communal and sometimes designed for single families. Of the former the best type is the long house of the Iroquian tribes. It was made of Houses. bark and poles, and inner partitions divided it into several compartments. A door at each end and openings in the partitions gave an open passageway from one end to the other. In each alternate opening in the partitions was a fire pit with a hole in the roof above. One family occupied one compartment, and one fire thus served two families. Around the walls of the room were hurdles made of small poles, covered with mats and skins. By day they were benches and by night beds. Sometimes the houses were large and round, with one great fire pit in the center, at which the partitions converged, making triangular compartments.

Pueblos.

In a part of our Southwest, Mexico, and Central America the Indians lived in pueblos, the Spanish word for villages. These were great communal houses several stories high, the front wall of each story dropping back so as to make a terrace. In the modern pueblos doors are made in the walls, but formerly the interior was reached through holes in the flat roofs, or floors, of the terraces by means of ladders which were taken up at night or when

THE INDIANS AND CIVILIZATION

21

there was danger of intruders. The building material was either adobe or rough stones laid in clay mortar. When the whites entered the Southwest there were about sixty-five of these houses there. They were the usual type of Mexican dwelling, and the imaginative Spaniards who first saw them described them as palaces. In Yucatan they achieved a degree of massiveness and ornamentation which indicates, perhaps, the highest point of development in Indian architecture. Tribes of different linguistic stock adopted this kind of house, and the term Pueblo Indians has been used for all of them. It ought to be remembered that it has no family significance.

The Indians and the Whites.

Contact with the white man made it necessary for the Indian to adopt civilized habits or perish. In ordinary social evolution this change would have required many centuries. Stimulated by the liberal government of the United States the more advanced tribes have made progress, the less advanced have caused disappointment to their well wishers. The Cherokee and Muskhogean tribes have shown greatest power of assimilation, both in their eastern homes and in the now obliterated Indian Territory, where they resided for seventy-five years. They show, also, a slight gain in population, which cannot be said of most of the Indians who formerly lived on the western plains and who have been gathered into reservations under government supervision. In contact with civilization the Indian is abnormally susceptible to diseases, particularly smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis. The use of spirituous liquors is also especially harmful. The males generally are averse to manual labor, and agricultural progress has often meant more idleness for the men and more work for the women. Idleness breeds bad habits, which retard racial progress.

In 1500 there were about half a million Indians in North America, the great majority being in what is now the United States, where, by the best estimates, there are now, 1911, only 322,715. In Present the latter number are included 101,287 in the five civilized conditions. tribes, including freedmen and intermarried whites. Dur

ing the last half century the Indian population seems to have been about stationary. The Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles now included in Oklahoma are the five civilized tribes. They are self-supporting and prosperous. In 1911 the total federal appropriation for Indians was $10,452,911. In this year $9,381,232 was spent on Indian education.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

For physical features see: Farrand, Basis of American History (1904); Whitney, The United States (1889); Shaler, Physiography of North America (in Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, 1884); and Ibid., The United States of America 2 vols. (1897). See also the articles on "North America" and "United States' in Mill, International Geography (1900).