The Indians were all passionately fond of games and were mostly inveterate gamblers, yet, according to authority, they cultivated among themselves a most scrupulous honesty, always kept their promises, insulted no one, were hospitable to strangers and faithful to their friends even unto death.
On the subject of the Indians’ devotion to gambling the following may be pardoned. Bret Harte, in one of his humorous and purposely ungrammatical wild western poems, speaking of his friend Bill Nye’s visit to a mining camp, said:
“For the camp has gone wild
On this lottery game,
And has even beguiled
Injin Dick’ by the same.”
and, later on,
“When Nye next met my view
Injin Dick was his mate;
And the two around town was a-lying
In a frightfully dissolute state.”
and, continuing,
“Which the war dance they had
Round a tree at the Bend
Was a sight that was sad;
And it seemed that the end
Would not justify the proceeding
As I quiet remarked to a friend.”
The Indians never forgot and rarely forgave an injury. They imitated the wild beasts in their cruelty and ferocity in wreaking vengeance on a foe. Their crude idea of justice included an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and so on. By their unwritten code the thief was compelled to restore the stolen article or its value, and for a second offense he was stripped of all his goods. When one killed another it was left to the dead Indian’s relatives to slay the offender, but unless this was done within twenty-four hours, it was usual to accept a pecuniary recompense, payable in wampum.
The simple savage, living in close contact with nature, sees only health as the normal condition of man. When the form, once animated and vigorous, lay still and cold, it was an unfathomable mystery to him, and, according to Dr. Brinton, in all the Indian tribes, there was no notion of natural death. No Indian “died,” he was always “killed.” Death in the course of nature was unknown to the Indians. When one died by disease they supposed he had been killed by sorcery, or some unknown venomous creature.
The Indians’ dread of death would lead them to speak of it by circumlocution or euphemism, as “You are about to see your grandfathers,” or, as among the whites, “If anything should happen.” They had a vague belief that the spirit of the dead haunted their earthly homes, which Philip Freneau has thus apostrophized: