South Portion of the Tewa Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico.
Photograph by U. S. Bu. Eth.
Their manufactures covered a considerable range. They made clothing and blankets, of wool, skins, and cotton. They were unsurpassed in basketry; they made excellent pottery. They originally used as weapons the bow and arrow, the lance, and various kinds of war clubs. Their beverage was mainly water, though some knew how to concoct intoxicating drink. Where the maple tree grew, its sap and syrup were utilised, and they also made sugar from it. Salt they obtained from briny lakes. Of mining they had no knowledge whatever, nor did they have metals, excepting, near the Missouri, an occasional fragment of copper.
Cooking was done in pits previously heated by large fires, or in wicker jugs by means of hot stones put inside; or it was done in earthenware pots. Bread, when made of corn, or of grass-seed meal, was baked on hot stones. Their musical instruments were drums, rattles, flutes, and whistles. Of ceremonials they had a great many. Sometimes these were sickening ordeals, like the now famous Sun Dance of the Omaha; or the Moki Snake Dance, where live rattlesnakes form part of the ritual and are carried about by the Snake priests, even in their mouths.
Notwithstanding an intermittent and desultory sort of warfare kept up between tribes of the same stock, as well as of different stocks, comparatively few were killed in this way before the European came. Night attacks were seldom made and in day attacks not many at one time were injured. The ordinary routine was one of peace. It is probable that in the American Civil War alone more men were killed than ever at one time in aboriginal days occupied the same area. Almost four thousand were destroyed at the battle of Shiloh, and in the battles of the Wilderness fully fifteen thousand. Even proportionately the wars of the "savages" were mere child's play compared to this. But when the white man crossed the Mississippi and began to encroach from the east and then from the west and one tribe was forced back upon another as the wind beats the combing waves upon a lee shore, matters began to change. A large infusion of inferior white blood aided this change. Then came the horse! It was a deficiency suddenly and completely supplied. The warrior on horseback was quite a different being from the one on foot. The boundless Plains were circumscribed. And the gun! Another void by this was so admirably filled that horse and gun and Amerind instantly merged into one; an indissoluble trio. Henceforth he supplied himself with an abundance of horses and with the best guns and ammunition he could get, till at the fearful moment on the Little Big Horn, he was better armed than the white soldiers sent to overpower him. It is exceedingly difficult always to view things dispassionately from our antagonist's standpoint, but when we succeed in doing so we invariably discover that he has some of the justice and virtue on his side. The Amerind seen in this way was not half as bad as he has been painted by his conqueror, who was prone to gloss over and forget his own shortcomings.
South-western Baskets—Apache, Pima, etc. Navajo Blankets behind.