I. THE NORTH ATLANTIC GROUP.

1. THE ESKIMOS.

The word Eskimo, properly Eski-mwhan, means in the Abnaki dialect of Algonquin, “he eats raw flesh,” and was applied to the tribe from its custom of consuming fish and game without cooking. They call themselves Innuit, “people,” a term the equivalent of which is the usual expression applied by American natives to their own particular stock.

The Innuit are at present essentially a maritime and arctic nation, occupying the coast and adjacent islands from the Straits of Belle Isle on the Atlantic to Icy Bay, at the foot of Mount St. Elias on the Pacific, and extending their wanderings and settlements as far up Smith’s Sound as N. Lat. 80°, where they are by far the northernmost inhabitants of the earth. They have occupied Greenland for certainly more than a thousand years, and were the earliest settlers in some of the Aleutian islands. Portions of them at some remote period crossed Behring Strait and settled on Asiatic soil, while others established themselves along the shores of Newfoundland. Indeed, from the reports of the early Norse explorers and from the character of relics found on the Atlantic coast, it is probable that they once extended as far south as the mouth of the Delaware river.[63] Their ancestors quite possibly dwelt on the moors of New England when the reindeer browsed there, and accompanied that quadruped in his final migration to the north. They belong in history and character to the Atlantic peoples.

This question, as to where their common progenitors resided, has been much discussed. A favorite theory of some writers has been that they migrated out of Asia by way of Behring Strait; but those who have studied their culture on the spot do not advocate this opinion. These observers have, without exception, reached the conclusion that the Innuit were originally an inland people, that their migrations were toward the north and west, and that they have been gradually forced to the inhospitable climes they occupy by the pressure of foes. Dr. Rink, who passed many years among them, would look for their early home somewhere in Alaska; but Mr. John Murdoch and Dr. Franz Boas, two of our best authorities on this tribe, incline to the view that their primal home was to the south of Hudson Bay, whence they separated into three principal hordes, the one passing into Labrador and reaching Greenland, the second moving to the coast of the Arctic sea, and the third to Alaska. These form respectively the Greenland, the Chiglit and the Kadjak dialects of the common tongue.[64]

The closest observers report the physical traits of the Eskimos as thoroughly American and not Asian, as has sometimes been alleged.[65] In appearance the Innuits of pure blood are of medium or slightly undersize, color dark, nose prominent and sometimes aquiline, hair dark brown or black, moderately strong on the face, the pubes and in the axilla; the eyes are dark brown and occasionally blue. The skull is generally long (dolichocephalic), but is subject to extensive variations ranging from almost globular to exceptionally long and narrow specimens.[66]

In spite of the hardships of their life, the Innuits are of a singularly placid and cheerful temperament, good-natured among themselves and much given to mirth and laughter.[67] The ingenuity with which they have learned to overcome the difficulties of their situation is quite surprising. In a country without wood or water, frightfully cold, and yielding no manner of edible fruit or vegetable, they manage to live and thrive. Their principal nurriture is the product of the sea. They build boats called kayaks or bidarkas from the bones of walrus covered with the skins of seals; their winter houses are of blocks of snow laid up on the principle of the circular arch to form a dome, with windows of sheets of ice. These they warm by means of stone lamps fed with blubber oil. Their clothing is of bird skins and furs, and they are skilled in the preparation of a sort of leather. As faithful companions they have their dogs, intelligent animals, used both in hunting and for drawing small sledges built of wood or bone.

With their tools of bone or stone they fashion many curious and useful articles, displaying a marked inventive faculty and an artistic eye. The picture-writing which they devised for the assistance of their memory is greatly superior to any found north of Mexico in the faithful delineation of objects, especially of animal forms.[68]

The long winter nights are enlivened by music and songs, of which they are passionately fond, and by the recital of imaginative tales, the stock of which is inexhaustible. A skillful bard enjoys a wide reputation, and some of their poems contain fine and delicate sentiments.[69] Others are from ancient date, and are passed down from generation to generation with scrupulous fidelity, every tone, every gesture, being imitated. The meter and rendition of their songs seem to the European monotonous, but the Eskimo has his own notion of the music of verse, and it is a very advanced one; he would have it akin to the sweet sounds of nature, and for that reason their poets sleep by the sound of running water that they may catch its mysterious notes, and model on them their own productions.[70] These songs also serve as a peaceful means to allay feuds. When two persons quarrel, they will appoint an evening and sing “nith songs” at each other, and the audience will decide which comes out best. This verdict will put an end to the ill-feeling.

The imaginative character of the people is also reflected in their religions. They believe in one or several overruling powers, and in a multitude of inferior spirits and uncanny monsters. These require propitiation rather than worship. The general belief is that a person has two souls, one of which is inseparably connected with his name and passes with it to any infant named for him; while the second either descends to a warm and pleasant abode under the earth or passes to a less agreeable one in the sky; the streaming lights of the aurora borealis were sometimes thought to be these latter spirits in their celestial home.

The rites of their religion were performed chiefly by the priests, called angekoks, who, however, were little better than conjurers. In some parts this office was hereditary.

The language of the Innuits is very much the same throughout the whole of their extended domain. Bishop de Schweinitz once told me that a few years ago a convert from the Moravian mission in Labrador went to Alaska, and it required but a few weeks for him to understand and be understood by the natives there. In character the tongue is highly agglutinative, the affixes being joined to the end of the word. The verb is very complex, having thirty-one hundred modified forms, all different and all invariable.[71] It is rich in expressions for all the objects of Eskimo life, and is harmonious to the ear. Like the Greek, it has three numbers, singular, dual and plural.

Those Eskimos who live in Asia call themselves Yuit, a dialect form of Innuit. They dwell around East Cape and the shore south of it, in immediate contact with the Namollos or Sedentary Chukchis, a Sibiric people, totally different in language, appearance and culture. The Yuits have not at all assimilated to the reindeer-keeping, pastoral habits of the Chukchis, and by their own well-preserved traditions, moved across the straits from the American side, with which they continue commercial intercourse. Their villages are sometimes close to those of the Namollos, or Sedentary Chukchis, they intermarry, and have a jargon sufficient for their mutual purposes; but it is an error, though a prevailing one, to suppose that they are the same people. The Chukchis never entered America, and the Innuits, as a people, never crossed from Asia, or originated there.[72] The jade implements of northeastern Siberia have proved to be of the Alaskan variety of that stone, and not the Chinese jade, as some supposed.[73]

From all points whence we have definite information, this interesting people are steadily diminishing in numbers, even where they are not in contact with the whites. The immediate causes appear to be increasing sterility and infant mortality. Two surviving children to a marriage is about the average productiveness, and statistics show that it requires double this number for a population to maintain itself even stationary.

The Aleutian branch occupies the long chain of islands which stretch westward from the southwestern corner of Alaska. The climate is mild, the sea abounds in fish, and innumerable birds nest in the rocks. We may therefore believe the navigators of the last century, who placed the population of the islands at 25,000 or 30,000 souls, although at present they have sunk to about 2,000. They have the same cheerful temperament as the Eskimos, and their grade of culture was, when first discovered, about the same. In their own language they call themselves Unangan, people, the name Aleutes having been given them by the Russians.[74]

It may be considered settled that their ancestors populated the islands from the American and not the Asiatic side. Not only do their own traditions assert this,[75] but it is confirmed by the oldest relics of their culture, which is Eskimo in character, and by their language, which is generally acknowledged to be a derivative of the Alaskan Eskimo.[76] It is divided into two dialects, the Unalashkan and Atkan, not very dissimilar, and is remarkable for the richness of its verbal forms.[77]

In physical traits they are allied to the Eskimos, though with rounder heads, the average of twenty-five skulls giving an index of 80.[78] Early in this century they were brought under the control of Russian missionaries, and became partially civilized and attached to the Greek Church. In their ancient myths their earliest ancestor was said to have been the dog, which animal was therefore regarded with due respect.[79]

2. THE BEOTHUKS.

Adjacent to the Labrador Eskimos and the northern Algonkins, upon the Island of Newfoundland, dwelt the Beothuks, or “Red Indians,” now extinct, who in custom and language differed much from their neighbors of the mainland. Although called “red,” they are also said to have been unusually light in complexion, and the term was applied to them from their habit of smearing their bodies with a mixture of grease and red ochre. They are further described as of medium stature, with regular features and aquiline noses, the hair black and the beard scanty or absent.

In several elements of culture they had marked differences from the tribes of the adjacent mainland. Their canoes were of bark or of skins stretched on frames, and were in the shape of a crescent, so that they required ballast to prevent them from upsetting. The winter houses they constructed were large conical lodges thirty or forty feet in diameter, having a frame of light poles upon which was laid bark or skins, generally the latter. Hunting and fishing provided them with food, and they have left the reputation of irreclaimable savages. They had no dogs, and the art of pottery was unknown; yet they were not unskilled as artisans, carving images of wood, dressing stone for implements, and tanning deerskins for clothing. An examination of their language discloses some words borrowed from the Algonkin, and slight coincidences with the Eskimo dialects, but the main body of the idiom stands alone, without affinities. Derivation was principally if not exclusively by suffixes, and the general morphology seems somewhat more akin to Eskimo than Algonkin examples.[80]

3. THE ATHABASCANS (TINNÉ).

Few linguistic families on the continent can compare in geographical distribution with that known as the Athabascan, Chepewyan or Tinné. Of these synonyms, I retain the first, as that adopted by Buschmann, who proved, by his laborious researches, the kinship of its various branches.[81] These extend interruptedly from the Arctic Sea to the borders of Durango, in Mexico, and from Hudson Bay to the Pacific.

In British America this stock lies immediately north of the Algonkins, the dividing line running approximately from the mouth of the Churchill river on Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Fraser, on the Pacific. To the north they are in contact with the Eskimos and to the west with the tribes of the Pacific coast. In this wide but cold and barren area they are divided into a number of bands, without coherence, and speaking dialects often quite unlike. The Loucheux have reached the mouth of the Mackenzie river, the Kuchin are along the Yukon, the Kenai on the ocean about the peninsula that bears their name, while the Nahaunies, Secaunies and Takullies are among the mountains to the south. The Sarcees lived about the southern head-waters of the Saskatchewan, while other bands had crossed the mountains and wandered quite to the Pacific coast, where they appear as Umpquas near Salem, Oregon; as Tututenas on Rogue river; and in California as Hupas, on and about Trinity river. These are but a small fraction of the great southern migration of this stock. The Navajos belong to it, and the redoubted Apaches, who extended their war parties far into Mexico, and who were the main agents in destroying the civilization which ages ago began to reveal fair promise in the valleys of the Gila and its affluents, and who up to very recent years defied alike the armies of both Mexico and the United States. Their southern migrations beyond the valley of the Gila probably do not date far back, that is, much beyond the conquest. Although the Mexican census of 1880 puts the Mexican Apaches at ten thousand, no such number can be located. Orozco y Berra mentions one of their tribes in Chihuahua, which he calls Tobosos; but Spanish authors refer to these as living in New Mexico in 1583. The only Apache band now known to be in Mexico are the Janos or Janeros in Chihuahua, made up of Lipans and Mescaleros. (Henshaw.)

Wherever found, the members of this group present a certain family resemblance. In appearance they are tall and strong, the forehead low with prominent superciliary ridges, the eyes slightly oblique, the nose prominent but wide toward the base, the mouth large, the hands and feet small. Their strength and endurance are often phenomenal, but in the North at least their longevity is slight, few living beyond fifty. Intellectually they rank below most of their neighbors, and nowhere do they appear as fosterers of the germs of civilization. Where, as among the Navajos, we find them having some repute for the mechanical arts, it turns out that this is owing to having captured and adopted the members of more gifted tribes. Their temperament is inclined to be gloomy and morose; yet in spite of their apparent stolidity they are liable to panic terrors, to epidemic neuroses, temporary hallucinations and manias—a condition not at all rare among peoples of inferior culture.[82]

Nowhere do we find among them any form of government. Their chiefs are chosen without formality, either on account of their daring in war or for their generosity in distributing presents. The office is not hereditary, there is rarely even any war chief, their campaigns being merely hurried raids. A singular difference exists as to their gentile systems, and their laws of consanguinity. Usually it is counted in the female line only. Thus among the Takullies of the north a son does not consider his father any relation, but only his mother and her people. When a man dies, all his property passes to his wife’s family. The totems are named from animals, and as usual a wife must be selected from another totem. This does not stand in the way of a son being united to his father’s sister, and such a marriage is often effected for property reasons. Among the Sarcees the respect for a mother-in-law is so great that her son-in-law dares not sit at a meal with her, or even touch her, without paying a fine. Among the Navajo and Apache tribes the son also follows the gens of the mother, while in the Umpqua and Tutu branches in Oregon he belongs to that of his father. In all the southern tribes the gens is named from a place, not an animal.[83] Marriage is polygamous at will, wives are obtained by purchase, and among the Slave Indians the tie is so lax that friends will occasionally exchange wives as a sign of amity. Usually the position of the woman is abject, and marital affection is practically unknown; although it is said that the Nahaunies, a tribe of eastern Alaska, at one time obeyed a female chief.

The arts were in a primitive condition. Utensils were of wood, horn or stone, though the Takully women manufactured a coarse pottery, and also spun and wove yarn from the hair of the mountain goat. Agriculture was not practised either in the north or south, the only exception being the Navajos and with them the inspiration came from other stocks.[84] The Kuchin of the Yukon make excellent bark canoes, and both they and their neighbors live in skin tents of neatly dressed hides. Many of the tribes of the far north are improvident in both clothing and food, and cannibalism was not at all uncommon among them.

The most cultured of their bands were the Navajos, whose name is said to signify “large cornfields,” from their extensive agriculture. When the Spaniards first met them in 1541 they were tillers of the soil, erected large granaries for their crops, irrigated their fields by artificial water courses or acequias, and lived in substantial dwellings, partly underground; but they had not then learned the art of weaving the celebrated “Navajo blankets,” that being a later acquisition of their artisans.[85]

In their religions there was the belief in deified natural forces and in magic that we find usually at their stage of culture. The priests or shamans were regarded with fear, and often controlled the counsels of the tribe. One of their prevalent myths was that of the great thunder-bird often identified with the raven. On the Churchill river it was called Idi, and the myth related that from its brooding on the primeval waters the land was brought forth. The myth is found too widespread to be other than genuine. The Sarcees seem to have had some form of solar worship, as they called the sun Our Father and the earth Our Mother.

The Navajos, who have no reminiscence of their ancestral home in the north, locate the scene of their creation in the San Juan mountains, and its date about seven centuries ago. Their story is that the first human pair were formed of the meal of maize brought by the gods from the cliff houses in the cañons.[86]

The Athabascan dialects are usually harsh and difficult of enunciation. In reducing them to writing, sixty-three characters have to be called on to render the correct sounds.[87] There is an oral literature of songs and chants, many of which have been preserved by the missionaries. The Hupas of California had extended their language and forced its adoption among the half-dozen neighboring tribes whom they had reduced to the condition of tributaries.[88]

ATHABASCAN LINGUISTIC STOCK.

4. THE ALGONKINS.

The whole of the north Atlantic coast, between Cape Fear and Cape Hatteras, was occupied at the discovery by the Algonkin stock. Their northern limit reached far into Labrador, where they were in immediate contact with the Eskimos, and along the southern shores of Hudson Bay, and its western littoral as far north as Churchill river. In this vicinity lived the Crees, one of the most important tribes, who retained the language of the stock in its purest form. West of them were the Ottawas and Chipeways, closely allied in dialect, and owners of most of the shores of lakes Michigan and Superior. Beyond these again, and separated from them by tribes of Dakota stock, were the Blackfeet, whose lands extended to the very summit of the Rockies. South of the St. Lawrence were the Abnakis or Eastlanders, under which general name were included the Micmacs, Echemins and others. The whole of the area of New England was occupied by Algonkins, whose near relatives were the Mohegans of the lower Hudson. These were in place and dialect near to the Lenâpés of the Delaware valley, and to the vagrant Shawnees; while the Nanticokes of Maryland, the Powhatans of Virginia and the Pampticokes of the Carolinas diverged more and more from the purity of the original language.

These and many other tribes scattered over this vast area were related, all speaking dialects manifestly from the same source. Where their ancient home was situated has been the subject of careful investigations, the result of which may be said to be that traditions, archæology and linguistic analysis combine to point to the north and the east, in other words, to some spot north of the St. Lawrence and east of Lake Ontario, as the original home of the stock.

The Algonkins may be taken as typical specimens of the American race. They are fully up to the average stature of the best developed European nations, muscular and symmetrical. The distinguished anthropologist Quetelet measured with great care six members of the Chipeway tribe, and pronounced them as equaling in all physical points the best specimens of the Belgians.[89] Their skulls are generally dolichocephalic, but not uniformly so. We have in the collection of the Academy seventy-seven Algonkin crania, of which fifty-three are dolichocephalic, fourteen mesocephalic, and ten brachycephalic.[90] The eyes are horizontal, the nose thin and prominent, the malar bones well marked, the lips thin. The color is a coppery brown, the hair black and straight, though I have seen a slight waviness in some who claim purity of blood. The hands and feet are small, the voice rich and strong. Physical endurance is very great, and under favorable circumstances the longevity is fully up to that of any other race.

The totemic system prevailed among the Algonkin tribes, with descent in the female line; but we do not find among them the same communal life as among the Iroquois. Only rarely do we encounter the “long house,” occupied by a number of kindred families. Among the Lenâpés, for example, this was entirely unknown, each married couple having its own residence. The gens was governed by a chief, who was in some cases selected by the heads of the other gentes. The tribe had as permanent ruler a “peace chief,” selected from a particular gens, also by the heads of the other gentes. His authority was not absolute, and, as usual, did not extend to any matter concerning the particular interests of any one gens. When war broke out, the peace chief had no concern in it, the campaign being placed in charge of a “war chief,” who had acquired a right to the position by his prominent prowess and skill.

While the Mohegans built large communal houses, the Lenâpés and most of the eastern Algonkins constructed small wattled huts with rounded tops, thatched with the leaves of the Indian corn or with sweet flags. These were built in groups and surrounded with palisades of stakes driven into the ground. In summer, light brush tents took the place of these. Agriculture was by no means neglected. The early explorers frequently refer to large fields of maize, squash and tobacco under cultivation by the natives. The manufacture of pottery was widespread, although it was heavy and coarse. Mats woven of bark and rushes, deer skins dressed with skill, feather garments, and utensils of wood and stone, are mentioned by the early voyagers. Copper was dug from veins in New Jersey and elsewhere and hammered into ornaments, arrowheads, knives and chisels. It was, however, treated as a stone, and the process of smelting it was unknown. The arrow and spear heads were preferably of quartz, jasper and chert, while the stone axes were of diorite, hard sandstone, and similar tough and close-grained material.[91] An extensive commerce in these and similar articles was carried on with very distant points. The red pipe-stone was brought to the Atlantic coast from the Coteau des Prairies, and even the black slate highly ornamented pipes of the Haidah on Vancouver Island have been exhumed from graves of Lenâpé Indians.

Nowhere else north of Mexico was the system of picture writing developed so far as among the Algonkins, especially by the Lenâpés and the Chipeways. It had passed from the representative to the symbolic stage, and was extensively employed to preserve the national history and the rites of the secret societies. The figures were scratched or painted on pieces of bark or slabs of wood, and as the color of the paint was red, these were sometimes called “red sticks.” One such, the curious Walum Olum, or “Red Score,” of the Lenâpés, containing the traditional history of the tribe, I was fortunate enough to rescue from oblivion, and have published it with a translation.[92] The contents of others relating to the history of the Chipeways (Ojibways) have also been partly preserved.

The religion of all the Algonkin tribes presented a distinct similarity. It was based on the worship of Light, especially in its concrete manifestations, as the sun and fire; of the Four Winds, as typical of the cardinal points, and as the rain bringers; and of the Totemic Animal. Their myths were numerous, the central figure being the national hero-god Manibozho or Michabo, often identified with the rabbit, apparently from a similarity in the words. He was the beneficent sage who taught them laws and arts, who gave them the maize and tobacco, and who on his departure promised to return and inaugurate the Golden Age. In other myths he is spoken of as the creator of the visible world and the first father of the race. Along with the rites in his worship were others directed to the Spirits of the Winds, who bring about the change of seasons, and to local divinities.

The dead as a rule were buried, each gens having its own cemetery. Some tribes preserved the bones with scrupulous care, while in Virginia the bodies of persons of importance were dried and deposited in houses set apart for the purpose.

The tribe that wandered the furthest from the primitive home of the stock were the Blackfeet, or Sisika, which word has this signification. It is derived from their earlier habitat in the valley of the Red river of the north, where the soil was dark and blackened their moccasins. Their bands include the Blood or Kenai and the Piegan Indians. Half a century ago they were at the head of a confederacy which embraced these and also the Sarcee (Tinné) and the Atsina (Caddo) nations, and numbered about thirty thousand souls. They have an interesting mythology and an unusual knowledge of the constellations.[93]

The Lenâpés were an interesting tribe who occupied the valley of the Delaware river and the area of the present State of New Jersey. For some not very clear reason they were looked upon by the other members of the stock as of the most direct lineage, and were referred to as “grandfather.” Their dialect, which has been preserved by the Moravian Missionaries, is harmonious in sound, but has varied markedly from the purity of the Cree.[94] It has lost, for instance, the peculiar vowel change which throws the verb from the definite to the indefinite form. The mythology of the Lenâpés, which has been preserved in fragments, presents the outlines common to the stock.

ALGONKIN LINGUISTIC STOCK.

5. THE IROQUOIS.

When the French first explored the St. Lawrence River, they found both its banks, in the vicinity where the cities of Montreal and Quebec now stand, peopled by the Iroquois. This tribe also occupied all the area of New York state (except the valley of the lower Hudson), where it was known as the Five Nations. West of these were the Hurons and Neutral Nation in Canada, and the Eries south of Lake Erie, while to the south of the Five Nations, in the valley of the Susquehanna and pushing their outposts along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac, were the Andastes and Conestogas, called also Susquehannocks. Still further south, about the head-waters of the Roanoke River, dwelt the Tuscaroras, who afterwards returned north and formed the sixth nation in the league. West of the Apalachians, on the upper waters of the Tennessee River, lived the Cherokees who, by their tradition, had moved down from the upper Ohio, and who, if they were not a branch of the same family, were affiliated to it by many ancient ties of blood and language. The latest investigations of the Bureau of Ethnology result in favor of considering them a branch, though a distant one, of the Iroquois line.

The stock was wholly an inland one, at no point reaching the ocean. According to its most ancient traditions we are justified in locating its priscan home in the district between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. If we may judge from its cranial forms, its purest representatives were toward the east. The skulls of the Five Nations, as well as those of the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, are distinctly dolichocephalic, and much alike in other respects, while those of the Hurons are brachycephalic.[95] Physically the stock is most superior, unsurpassed by any other on the continent, and I may even say by any other people in the world; for it stands on record that the five companies (500 men) recruited from the Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war stood first on the list among all the recruits of our army for height, vigor and corporeal symmetry.

In intelligence also their position must be placed among the highest. It was manifested less in their culture than in their system of government. About the middle of the fifteenth century the Onondaga chief, Hiawatha, succeeded in completing the famous league which bound together his nation with the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, and Cayugas into one federation of offence and defence. “The system he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives to be elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the federation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether.”[96]

Certainly this scheme was one of the most far-sighted, and in its aim beneficent, which any statesman has ever designed for man. With the Iroquois it worked well. They included in the league portions of the Neutral Nation and the Tuscaroras, and for centuries it gave them the supremacy among all their neighbors. The league was primarily based upon or at least drew much of its strength from the system of gentes; this prevailed both among the Iroquois and Cherokees, descent being traced in the female line. Indeed, it was from a study of the Iroquois system that the late Mr. Morgan formed his theory that ancient society everywhere passed through a similar stage in attaining civilization.

It is consonant with their advanced sentiments that among the Iroquois women had more than ordinary respect. They were represented by a special speaker in the councils of the tribe, and were authorized to conduct negotiations looking towards making peace with an enemy. Among the Conestogas we have the instance of a woman being the recognized “Queen” of the tribe. With the Wyandots, the council of each gens was composed exclusively of women. They alone elected the chief of the gens, who represented its interests in the council of the tribe.[97]

In sundry other respects they displayed an intelligent activity. In many localities they were agricultural, cultivating maize, beans and tobacco, building large communal houses of logs, fortifying their villages with palisades, and making excellent large canoes of birch bark. According to traditions, which are supported by recent archæological researches, the Cherokees when they were upon the Kanawha and Ohio had large fields under cultivation, and erected mounds as sites for their houses and for burial purposes. When first encountered in East Tennessee they constructed long communal houses like the Five Nations, had large fields of corn, built excellent canoes and manufactured pottery of superior style and finish. Although no method of recording thought had acquired any development among the Iroquois, they had many legends, myths and formal harangues which they handed down with great minuteness from generation to generation. In remembering them they were aided by the wampum belts and strings, which served by the arrangement and design of the beads to fix certain facts and expressions in their minds. One of the most remarkable of these ancient chants has been edited with a translation and copious notes by Horatio Hale.[98] The Cherokees had a similar national song which was repeated solemnly each year at the period of the green corn dance. Fragments of it have been obtained quite recently.

The Iroquois myths refer to the struggle of the first two brothers, the dark twin and the white, a familiar symbolism in which we see the personification of the light and darkness, and the struggle of day and night.

IROQUOIS LINGUISTIC STOCK.

6. THE CHAHTA-MUSKOKIS.

The various nations who are classed under the Muskoki stock occupied the broad and pleasant lowlands stretching from the terminal hills of the Apalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and even beyond that mighty barrier. The remains of a few other stocks in the eastern portion of this area indicate that the Muskokis were not its original occupants, and this was also their own opinion. Their legends referred to the west and the northwest as the direction whence their ancestors had wandered; and the Choctaw legend which speaks of Nani Waya, the Bending Mount, a large artificial mound in Winston county, Mississippi, as the locality where their first parents saw the light, is explained by another which describes it as the scene of their separation from the Chickasaws.

Of the main division of the stock, the Choctaws lived furthest west, bordering upon the Mississippi, the Chickasaws in the centre, and the Creeks on the Atlantic slope. The Seminoles were a branch of the latter, who, in the last century, moved into Florida; but it is probable that the whole of the west coast of that peninsula was under the control of the Creeks from the earliest period of which we have any knowledge of it.

The various members of this stock presented much diversity in appearance. The Creeks were tall and slender, the Chickasaws short and heavy; the skulls of both have a tendency to dolichocephaly, but with marked exceptions, and the custom among many of them to deform the head artificially in various ways adds to the difficulties of the craniologist.[99] The color of all is called a dark cinnamon.

The gentile system with descent in the female line prevailed everywhere. The Creeks counted more than twenty gentes, the Choctaws and Chickasaws about twelve, united in phratries of four. In the towns each gens lived in a quarter by itself, and marriage within the gens was strictly prohibited. Each had its own burying place and sepulchral mound where the bones of the deceased were deposited after they had been cleaned. The chief of each town was elected for life from a certain gens, but the office was virtually hereditary, as it passed to his nephew on his wife’s side unless there were cogent reasons against it. The chief, or miko, as he was called, ruled with the aid of a council, and together they appointed the “war chief,” who obtained the post solely on the ground of merit. Instances of a woman occupying the position of head chief were not unknown, and seem to have been recalled with pleasure by the tribe.[100]

The early culture of these tribes is faithfully depicted in the records of the campaign of Hernando De Soto, who journeyed through their country in 1540. He found them cultivating extensive fields of maize, beans, squashes and tobacco; dwelling in permanent towns with well-constructed wooden edifices, many of which were situated on high mounds of artificial construction, and using for weapons and utensils stone implements of great beauty of workmanship. The descriptions of later travellers and the antiquities still existing prove that these accounts were not exaggerated. The early Muskokis were in the highest culture of the stone age; nor were they deficient wholly in metals. They obtained gold from the uriferous sands of the Nacoochee and other streams and many beautiful specimens of their ornaments in it are still to be seen.

Their artistic development was strikingly similar to that of the “mound-builders” who have left such interesting remains in the Ohio valley; and there is, to say the least, a strong probability that they are the descendants of the constructors of those ancient works, driven to the south by the irruptions of the wild tribes of the north.[101] Even in the last century they built solid structures of beams fastened to upright supports, plastered on the outside, and in the interior divided into a number of rooms. The art of picture-writing was not unknown to them, and some years ago I published their remarkable “national legend,” read off from its hieroglyphics painted on a skin by their chief Chekilli in 1731.[102]

The religious rites of the Creeks were so elaborate that they attracted early attention, and we have quite full accounts of them. They were connected with the worship of the principle of fertility, the chief celebration, called the busk (puskita, fast), being solemnized when the young corn became edible. In connection with this was the use of the “black drink,” a decoction of the Iris versicolor, and the maintenance of the perpetual fire. Their chief divinity was referred to as the “master of breath” or of life, and there was a developed symbolism of colors, white representing peaceful and pleasant ideas; red, those of war and danger. The few Seminoles who still survive in the southern extremity of the peninsula of Florida continue the ceremonies of the green corn dance and black drink, though their mythology in general has become deeply tinged with half-understood Christian teachings.[103]

THE MUSKOKI LINGUISTIC STOCK.

7. THE CATAWBAS, YUCHIS, TIMUCUAS, NATCHEZ, CHETIMACHAS, TONICAS, ADAIZE, ATAKAPAS, ETC.

Within the horizon of the Muskoki stock were a number of small tribes speaking languages totally different. We may reasonably suppose them to have been the débris of the ancient population who held the land before the Muskokis had descended upon it from the north and west. The Catawbas in the area of North and South Carolinas were one of these, and in former times are said to have had a wide extension. South of them was the interesting tribe of the Yuchis. When first heard of they were on both banks of the Savannah river, but later moved to the Chatahuche. They call themselves “Children of the Sun,” which orb they regard as a female and their mother. Their gentes are the same as those of the Creeks, and are evidently borrowed from them. Descent is counted in the female line. Women are held in honor, and when De Soto first met them they were governed by a queen.[104]

Some of both these tribes still survive; but this is not the case with the Timucuas, who occupied the valley of the St. John river, Florida, and its tributaries, and the Atlantic coast as far north as the St. Mary river. They have been extinct for a century, but we have preserved some doctrinal works written in their tongue by Spanish missionaries in the seventeenth century, so we gain an insight into their language.[105] It is an independent stock.

Near the Choctaws were the Natchez, not far from the present city of that name. An account of them has been preserved by the early French settlers of Louisiana. They were devoted sun-worshippers and their chief was called “The Sun,” and regarded as the earthly representative of the orb. They constructed artificial mounds, upon which they erected temples and houses, and were celebrated for their skill in weaving fabrics from the inner bark of the mulberry tree and for their fine pottery. In their religious rites they maintained a perpetual fire, and were accustomed to sacrifice captives to their gods, and the wives of their chieftain at his death.

The Taensas were a branch of the Natchez on the other bank of the Mississippi. Attention has been drawn to them of late years by the attempt of a young seminarist in France to foist upon scholars a language of his own manufacture which he had christened Taensa, and claimed to have derived from these people.[106] The Natchez language contains many words from the Muskoki dialects, but is radically dissimilar from it.[107] A few of the nation still preserve it in Indian Territory.

The Chetimachas lived on the banks of Grand Lake and Grand River, and were but a small tribe. They are said to have been strictly monogamous, and to have had female chieftains. Their chief deity was Kut-Kähänsh, the Noon-day Sun, in whose honor they held sacred dances at each new moon.

The Tonicas are frequently mentioned in the early French accounts of the colony of Louisiana. They lived in what is now Avoyelles parish, and were staunch friends of the European immigrants. Their language is an independent stock, and has some unusual features in American tongues, such as a masculine and a feminine gender of nouns and a dual in three pronouns.

The Adaize or Atai were a small tribe who once lived between Saline river and Natchitoche, La. They spoke a vocalic language, differing from any other, though including a number of Caddo words, which was owing to their having been a member of the Caddo confederacy.

The Atakapas had their hunting grounds about Vermilion river and the adjacent Gulf coast. Their name in Choctaw means “man-eaters,” both they and their neighbors along the Texan coast having an ugly reputation as cannibals, differing in this from the Muskokis and their neighbors east of the Mississippi, among whom we have no record of anthropophagy, even of a ritual character. The later generations of Atakapas have been peaceful and industrious. Their language, though in the main quite alone, presents a limited number of words evidently from the same roots as their correspondents in the Uto-Aztecan family.

The coast of Texas, between the mouths of the Colorado and Nueces rivers, was the home of the Carankaways. The Spaniards gave them a very black character as merciless cannibals, impossible to reduce or convert; but the French and English settlers speak of them in better terms. In appearance they were tall and strong, with low foreheads, hooked noses, prominent cheek bones, tattooed skins, and wore their black hair long and tangled. The older writers affirm that they spoke Atakapa, and were a branch of that tribe; but the scanty material of their idiom which we possess seems to place them in a stock by themselves.

The Tonkaways are a small tribe who lived in northwest Texas, speaking a tongue without known relationship. A curious feature of their mythology is the deification of the wolf. They speak of this animal as their common ancestor, and at certain seasons hold wolf dances in his honor, at which they dress themselves in wolf skins and howl and run in imitation of their mythical ancestor and patron. A branch of them, the Arrenamuses, is said to have dwelt considerably to the south of the main body, near the mouth of the San Antonio river.

The lower Rio Grande del Norte was peopled on both its banks by a stock which was christened by Orozco y Berra the Coahuiltecan, but which Pimentel preferred to call the Texan. The latter is too wide a word, so I retain the former. There is not much material for the study of its dialects, so we are left in the dark as to the relationship of many tribes resident in that region. They were small in size and rich in names. Adolph Uhde gives the appellations and locations of seventy-four, based on previous works and personal observations.[108] The missionary Garcia, in his Manual of the Sacraments, published in the last century, names seventeen tribes speaking dialects of the tongue he employs, which appears to be a branch of the Coahuiltecan.[109]

It is useless to repeat the long list, the more so as the bands were unimportant and have long since become extinct, with a few exceptions. They were in a savage condition, roving, and depending on hunting and fishing. The following appear to have been the principal members of the

COAHUILETCAN LINGUISTIC STOCK.

Among the extinct dialects of Tamaulipas was the Maratin, which at one time had considerable extension. The only monument which has been preserved of it is a wild song, in which the natives celebrated all too early their victories over the Spaniards. The text contains several Nahuatl words, but the body of the roots appear to have been drawn from some other source.[110] Uhde locates the Maratins near Soto la Marina and along the Gulf between the Rio Panuco and the Rio Grande.[111]

8. THE PAWNEES (CADDOES).

The Pani[112] stock was scattered irregularly from the Middle Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico. The Pawnees proper occupied the territory from the Niobrara River south to the Arkansas. The Arikari branch had separated and migrated to the north at a comparatively recent period, while the Wichitas, Caddoes and Huecos roamed over Eastern Louisiana and Western Texas. The earliest traditions of all these peoples assign their priscan home toward the south, and the Pawnees remembered having driven the Dakota tribes from the hunting grounds of the Platte Basin.

The stock as a rule had an excellent physique, being tall and robust, with well-proportioned features, the lips thin and the eyes small. Longevity however was rare, and few of either sex reached the age of sixty. The division of the tribes was into bands and these into totems, but the gentile system did not prevail with much strength among them. The chieftainship of the bands was hereditary in the male line, and the power of the chief was almost absolute. He was surrounded by a body of retainers whom he supported, and who carried out his orders. When he wished a council these messengers carried the summons. Property as well as power passed to the family of the male, and widows were often deprived of everything and left in destitution. Marriage was a strictly commercial transaction, the woman being bought from her parents. The purchase effected, the bridegroom had a right to espouse all the younger sisters of his wife as they grew to maturity, if he felt so inclined. The laxity of the marriage rules of the stock was carried to its limit by the Arikaris, among whom it is said fathers united with their daughters and brothers with their sisters, without offending the moral sense of the community. This may have arisen after corruption by the whites.

Agriculture among them was more in favor than generally on the plains. Maize, pumpkins and squashes were cultivated, each family having its own field two or three acres in extent. For about four months of the year they were sedentary, dwelling in houses built of poles and bark covered with sods, while the remainder of the time they wandered over their hunting grounds, carrying with them tents of skins which were stretched on poles. The women manufactured a rude pottery and the men implements and weapons of wood and stone. The Arikaris were skilled in the construction of boats of skin stretched over wooden frames, an art they may have learned from the Mandans.

The information about their religion is vague, but it seems in some respects to have resembled that of the Mexican nations. One of their chief divinities was the morning star, Opirikut, which was supposed to represent the deity of fertility and agriculture. At the time of corn-planting a young girl, usually a captive, was sacrificed to this divinity. The victim was bound to a stake and partly burned alive; but before life had ceased, her breast was cut open, her heart torn out and flung in the flames. Her flesh was then cut into small pieces and buried in the cornfield. This was believed to secure an abundant crop. The similarity of the rite to that in vogue among the Mexicans, who also worshipped the morning star as the goddess of fertility, is interesting.

The dead were buried with their possessions, and the customs of mourning continued sometimes for years.[113]

PANI LINGUISTIC STOCK.

9. THE DAKOTAS (SIOUX).

The western water-shed of the Mississippi river was largely in the possession of the Dakota or Sioux stock. Its various tribes extended in an unbroken line from the Arkansas river on the south to the Saskatchewan on the north, populating the whole of the Missouri valley as far up as the Yellowstone. Their principal tribes in the south were the Quapaws, Kansas and Osages; in the central region the Poncas, Omahas and Mandans; to the north were the Sioux, Assiniboins and Crows; while about Green Bay on Lake Michigan lived the Winnebagoes.

The opinion was formerly entertained that this great family moved to the locations where they were first met from some western home; but the researches of modern students have refuted this. Mr. Dorsey has shown by an analysis of their most ancient traditions that they unanimously point to an eastern origin, and that the central and southern bands did not probably cross the Mississippi much before the fourteenth century.[114] This is singularly supported by the discovery of Mr. Horatio Hale that the Tuteloes of Virginia were a branch of the Dakotas; and further, the investigations of Catlin among the Mandans resulted in showing that this nation reached the Missouri valley by travelling down the Ohio. They therefore formed a part of the great easterly migration of the North Atlantic tribes which seem to have been going on for many centuries before the discovery. In the extreme south, almost on the gulf coast of Louisiana, lived some small bands of Dakotas, known as Biloxis, Opelousas, Pascagoulas, etc. They were long supposed to speak an independent tongue, and only of late years has their proper position been defined.

Their frames are powerful, and the warriors of the Sioux have long enjoyed a celebrity for their hardihood and daring. The massacre of General Custer’s command, which they executed in 1876, was the severest blow the army of the United States ever experienced at the hands of the red man. With reference to cranial form they are dolichocephalic, sixteen out of twenty-three skulls in the collection of the Academy[115] offering a cephalic index under 80.

The northern Dakotas do not seem to have had the same system of gentes which prevailed in most of the eastern tribes. Mr. Morgan was of the opinion that it had existed, but had been lost; this, however, requires further proof. There are many societies among them, but not of the nature of clans. Their chiefs hold their position by hereditary descent in the male line, though among the Winnebagoes the early traveller, Carver found the anomaly of a woman presiding over the tribe. The central bands, the Mandans and Minnetarees, recognized gentes with descent in the female line; while among the Poncas and Omahas there were also gentes, but with descent in the male line. The condition in this respect, of the members of this family, as also of that of the Athabascan, seems to prove that the gentile system is by no means a fixed stadium of even American ancient society, but is variable, and present or absent as circumstances may dictate.

A few members of this family, notably the Mandans, attained a respectable degree of culture, becoming partly agricultural, and dwelling most of the year in permanent abodes; but the majority of them preferred depending on the bounties of nature, pursuing the herds of buffaloes over the boundless pastures of the plains, or snaring the abundant fish in the myriad streams which traversed their country.

The mythology of the Dakotas is concerned with the doings of giants in whom we recognize personifications of the winds and storms. One of these is Haokah, to whom the warrior sends up an invocation when about to undertake some perilous exploit. The thunder is caused by huge birds who flap their wings angrily and thus produce the portentous reverberations. The waters are the home of Unktahe, a mighty spirit who lurks in their depths. Indeed, to the Dakotas, and not to them alone, but to man in their stage of thought, “All nature is alive with gods. Every mountain, every tree is worshipped, and the commonest animals are the objects of adoration.”[116]

DAKOTA LINGUISTIC STOCK.

10. THE KIOWAYS.

The upper basin of the Canadian branch of the Arkansas River was the home of the Kioways. At the middle of this century they were estimated to be over three thousand, all given to a wild hunting life over the great plains on which they lived. In close proximity to the Comanches and other tribes of Shoshonian lineage, their language presents many affinities to the Shoshonian stock, but not sufficient in the opinion of those who have examined both to justify classing them together as from a common source.

The Kioways are light in color, broad shouldered and strong armed, and for generations were the Arabs of the Great American Desert, depending on hunting and robbery for a subsistence. Their homes were light skin lodges, which they spread on poles about twelve feet long. With plenty of ponies and without fixed habitations, it was easy for them to move rapidly over the Plains. According to their traditions they came originally from the North, from some cold country, where they had to walk on snow shoes, definitely located near the Black Hills, Dakota, where they were associated with the Apaches. They were idol worshippers, their priesthood consisting of ten medicine-men. The dead were buried in deep graves. At present they have been reduced to about one thousand souls.[117]