SECOND ARTICLE.
We could relate many instances of the gratitude with which Indians repay a kindness, and of their firmness in friendship, but our limits restrain us. We must besides admit, that they are equally resentful of injury as mindful of favours, and persecute an enemy with as much constancy as they cherish a friend. Mr Catlin has preserved the portrait of a Mandan chief, named Mah-to-tôh-pa, or the Four Bears, whose life affords many singular illustrations of the above truths. We have room for one only. His brother had been surprised while asleep by a Riccaree, who left the spear with which he had murdered the sleeping man in the wound, and boasted of what he had done. The Four Bears took possession of the spear, preserved it carefully, with the blood of his brother encrusted on its point, and swore to cover that stain with the heart’s blood of the Riccaree. Many moons elapsed, many snows even went by, and the Four Bears had not yet found the much desired opportunity of revenge. At length the culpability of his enforced delay became too heavy a reproach, and he resolved on seeking the Riccaree in his distant home, to do which he had to steal his way through his enemy’s country for hundreds of miles; a task, the difficulty of which can be appreciated only by those who know the watchfulness of Indian habits, and the vigilance of those whom he had to circumvent. But “when Greek meets Greek,” we all know what “comes;” in this case, however, “diamond-cut-diamond” were perhaps the more appropriate metaphor: let our readers settle that point. The Four Bears accomplished his task; he had traversed many a weary plain, had threaded many a tangled forest, swam many a river; but at length he stood, famished and outworn, before the village of his enemy. This was surrounded by a stockade, but he overcame that with little difficulty. It was night, but the dwelling of the offender was known to him, and entering it, he sat down before the fire, over which hung a pot containing food, which the provident squaw had set to simmer through the night. The family were in their beds, which consist of skins stretched on low frames, and ranged around the walls of the hut. The Riccaree, the object of the Mandan’s visit, was also on his couch, with his arms close beside him, as is the custom. But he was not asleep; the flame as it rose fitfully was reflected from his glittering eyes, which rested, but with no particular interest, on his visitor. The latter, conscious that his then exhausted strength was not equal to the duty he became to perform, sat collected within himself for a certain time; he then took part of the food that filled the pot, and ate in such measure as he thought advisable. This done, he lighted his pipe, and sat to smoke it. The squaw meanwhile had asked her husband what man it was who was reposing at their hearth. “He is a hungry man, for thou seest he is eating; what matter for the rest?” was her husband’s reply, and the uninvited guest concluded his meal without interruption. Was the Mandan shaken by what we feel to be the most touching appeal of this deep confidence to his better sympathies? He scarcely felt that it was one. Among Indians, hospitality is neither offered nor accepted as a matter of favour, but of right, and of course; nor would he have replied to such an appeal could he have felt it. He believed himself to be in the performance of a most solemn duty, and would have scorned all vacillation as weakness. Nor shall we be just ourselves if we lose sight of this in our abhorrence of his deed.
The pipe of the Mandan exhausted, he adjusted his raiment for departure; he rose, collected his force, sprang on his unsuspecting host, whom he stabbed to the heart with the spear already named, then scalped him, and, springing from the hut, was out of the village, and deep in a neighbouring watercourse, by the time that his enemies’ dogs were upon him; again, by many a night march and day of hunger and suffering, he arrived in his village, his conscience set at rest by the act at which we shudder.
Mr Catlin, who knew this chief intimately, relates many stories of his bravery and general elevation of character, but we have room for the tale of his death only. In the year 1837, Mr Catlin had left the friendly Mandans some three years, when the small-pox was carried among them by the traders; the whole family of the Four Bears perished by this disease; wife, child, not one was left him; he stood alone in his desolation, and gathering the corpses together, he covered all with skins, after the manner of his people; the songs for the dead then performed, he seated himself by the mound he had raised, which he addressed from time to time in the most touching terms of endearment, as each individual composing the mournful group rose to his memory. This continued through nine days and nights, during all which he took neither food nor sleep, and on the tenth he was himself a corpse.
The native American is deeply imbued with religious feeling; no Indian who maintains a fair character in his tribe is without some place of retirement for worship and meditation; a lonely tree, a nook in the bank of a stream, the hollow of a rock, are frequently selected for this purpose; nor is the habit confined to such tribes as have no fixed religious ceremonies; it was practised by the Mandans and others, many of whom possessed oratories such as we have just described, in addition to their “medicine” or “mystery lodges,” which may be called their public temples. The Osages, Kansas, and other tribes west of the Mississippi, never fail to implore the blessing of the Great Spirit on breaking up their encampments, and they return thanks devoutly for the food they have found, and the preservation they have experienced, on arriving at the end of their journey. Thanks and praises are also publicly offered at every new moon, at the commencement of the buffalo hunts in spring, and at the ingathering of the corn; at which latter period a feast is held, called the corn feast: over this, among some tribes, the oldest woman presides. The Minatarrees boil a large kettle full of the new corn in presence of all the people, four medicine men, painted with white clay, dancing round the kettle until its contents are well boiled; these are next burnt to ashes as an offering to the Great Spirit; the fire is then extinguished; new fire is immediately created by rubbing two sticks together; with this they cook the corn for their own feast, and the remainder of the day is spent in festivity.
Dances are also performed to the Great Spirit on various occasions, as among the Ojibbeways on the first fall of snow; this is danced in snow-shoes. All believe in a future state of existence—in the reward of the good by an eternal residence in pleasant and plentifully supplied hunting grounds beyond the great waters—and in the punishment of the wicked by transformation into some loathsome beast, reptile, or insect, and by banishment to barren, parched, and desolate regions, the abodes of bad spirits, for a period proportionate to the enormity of their guilt. Prayers are also offered to the evil spirit in deprecation of his enmity, but on none of these ceremonies is attendance compelled; that Indian is, however, less respected, who is known constantly to absent himself from all.
The “medicine man” of the Indians is at once prophet, priest, and physician; he has sometimes great influence. The ceremony by which this dignity is attained among the Sioux, is one involving no little suffering. The candidate for this honour has innumerable splints of wood driven through the most sensitive parts of his flesh, and being suspended by some of these to a pole, with his medicine bag in his hand, he is expected to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the sun from its rising to its setting, when he is taken down, and entitled to be called a medicine or mystery man for the remainder of his life; but he has to make ceaseless efforts for the support of his character, since the failure of either his cures or his prophecies renders him liable to universal contempt.
Almost every family has its medicine or mystery bag, which consists of a beaver or otter skin curiously ornamented; this contains the medicinal stores and smaller consecrated articles of the family; it is considered a great disgrace to sell or otherwise part with an article once consecrated, and the medicine bag is always held sacred and inviolate to every hand but that of its owner. When a warrior of the Sac and Fox tribe falls in battle, his widow suspends his mystery bag on the pole before his tent, and sits herself within the lodge; the warriors, returned from the battle, and adorned with the scalps they have taken from the enemy, then assemble before the lodge; they dance to the medicine bag of their lost brother, and throw presents to his widow, of such articles as they think may best console her for her loss.
The Indian dwelling is much varied in its form and manner among the various tribes; the Pawnees, for example, live in lodges thatched with prairie grass, and which are not unlike immense bee-hives.
The Sioux, the Camanchees, the Crows, and others inhabiting a vast tract on the upper waters of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and extending to the base of the Rocky Mountains, have moveable tents formed of buffalo skins richly ornamented, according to Indian notions of ornament, and fastened to poles sometimes twenty-five feet high; some of these tents will shelter eighty persons, and require from thirty to thirty-five buffalo skins to cover them.
The Riccarees, Mandans, &c. are, or were, lodged in villages fortified by strong stockades eighteen feet high; their huts are formed of poles covered closely and smoothly with earth, and this in process of time becomes so compact and hard, that men, women, and children, recline and play on their tops.
It has been sometimes asserted that the Indian people have a common language, but this is not the case; scarcely any two of their nations between whom no intercourse exists, possess a language understood by both, but this inconvenience is obviated by a “language of signs,” so effective and eloquent that by this every Indian is enabled to communicate with his brother of whatever nation or tribe, and hence perhaps has arisen the supposition that all speak a common language. The mode of writing among Indians is entirely hieroglyphic, and is of course liable to wide misconstruction; but they lay down maps with no mean degree of accuracy, and the chiefs wear the boundaries of their hunting-grounds traced on their robes; a counterpart being kept in the public lodge among such other records as the nation may possess, and those are referred to if any dispute arise among neighbouring tribes.
Their manufactures are of course few and simple. Stones are cut into pestles and mortars, tomahawks, knives, pipes, &c.; pottery is formed for domestic purposes from the clays furnished by all parts of their country; mats are woven from grass or rushes, and blankets from the hair of the buffalo. These articles are mostly the work of the women, who with the children plant, cultivate, and gather in the crops, collect wild rice and pash-e-quah, a large bulbous root, in form like the sweet potato and in taste like the chesnut, but more juicy. Nuts of many sorts, several kinds of plums, osage oranges, gooseberries, strawberries, and many sorts of grapes, are also collected in their season. Besides this, the women dress buffalo skins, procure wood and water, and in some tribes fetch home the game which the hunter, having tracked and killed, then leaves to their further disposal.
Beaver and other skins, belts of wampum, and coloured shells ground to an oval form, serve as coin; but the most important wealth of the Indian is in his horses and dogs, which assist him in the chase, and of which some possess great numbers. Many tribes of Indians are exceedingly bold and expert horsemen, the Camanchees more particularly, many of whom perform feats of dexterity on their wild horses that would astonish our boldest equestrians. These men are often seen to throw themselves on one side of their horses, to avoid the arrows of an enemy or the attack of an enraged buffalo, in such a manner that the extremity of one foot only seems to hold by the animal, and that while he continues to move at full speed; nay, some have been even known to shoot arrows while in that position, the tenure of which is altogether inconceivable to the European rider.
Their weapons for hunting are lances five or six feet long, and tipped with stone or the bone of some animal, and bows with arrows similarly pointed. The buffalo is sometimes hunted by men who have partially concealed their persons in the skin of the white wolf, and who creep to within shot of their game by favour of this disguise; for the buffalo, accustomed to the white wolf, and safe from his attack unless, when, separated from the herd, he becomes the prey of a pack, permits the approach of the Indian thus masked, the latter being careful to keep to leeward of his game, whose scent is very acute.
Indians sometimes drive whole herds of buffalo, elk, and deer, into impassable ravines or to the brink of precipices, when they slaughter as many as they may need; but none were ever destroyed wantonly before the introduction of whisky; whereas at this time whole herds are killed merely for their skins, the flesh being left to decay on the prairies; and this, by depopulating the hunting-grounds, induces famine, and is another cause of Indian suffering and final extinction.
Buffaloes are often destroyed by the panther; solitary individuals sometimes fall a prey to a pack of wolves; others perish in the burning prairies, that awfully peculiar feature of the American solitudes; a few are drowned every season in attempting to cross the ice of rivers not firmly frozen; but the principal element of their destruction is in the rapacity of the trader; and it has been calculated that the activity of this last-named agent will ensure the extermination of this most valuable creature within a very short period of time.
The education of the Indian child is an object of the most profound interest, not only to his own family but to the whole tribe. He is taught to love his country and tribe, to contemn falsehood, to reverence age, to be modest and silent; he is strictly enjoined to reward a kindness, but also to avenge an injury; to aid and guard a friend, but also to injure, by every means in his power, and relentlessly to persecute, an enemy; to abhor theft, unless it be practised on the property of an enemy, when it is called highly meritorious. The sports of youth are watched attentively by their elders, and all evidences of cowardice, meanness, &c., are followed by the needful discipline. The Indian usually retains his mother’s name until he has entitled himself, by some remarkable act of prowess, endurance, &c., to choose one for himself, or been distinguished by some appellation bestowed by the tribe. Some of these “names” are sufficiently amusing, as, for example, “He who jumps over every one,” “The very sweet man,” “The man of good sense,” “No fool,” “The bird that goes to war,” “He who strikes two at once,” &c. The names of women are not always inelegant. Take as a specimen of Indian taste in this matter, “The bending willow,” “The pure fountain,” “The sweet-scented grass.” Others are scarcely so complimentary, as, “The female bear,” “The woman who lives in the bear’s den,” “The creature that creeps,” &c.
The constancy with which an Indian endures tortures, is among the best known traits of his character, but his power of enduring labour has been less insisted on; nay, it has been denied by those who despair of the civilization of the race, or who believe that its destruction is a consequence inevitable to the white man’s progress: but those who so judge know little of our Red brothers. We could adduce many facts in proof of this, were our space not wholly exhausted; but we must defer these, as well as the account we had purposed giving of the very extraordinary religious ceremonies practised among some of the tribes. We may, however, possibly return to the subject at some other time.