Page
General Considerations[9]
Preliminary Observations on the Tales[31]
Ojeeg Annung; or, the Summer-maker[57]
The Celestial Sisters[67]
Tau-Wau-Chee-Hezkaw; or, the White Feather[74]
Peboan and Seegwun. An Allegory[84]
The Red Lover[87]
Iamo; or, the Undying Head[96]
Mon-Dau-Min; or, the Origin of Indian Corn[122]
Peeta Kway; or, the Tempest[129]
Manabozho[134]
Bokwewa; or, the Humpback[175]
Iena; or, the Magic Bundle[181]
Sheem; or, the Forsaken Boy[191]
Paup-Puk-Keewiss[200]
Iadilla; or, the Origin of the Robin[221]
The Enchanted Moccasins[226]
The Broken Wing[233]
The Three Cranberries. A Fable[238]
Paradise opened to the Indians; Pontiac's Tale[239]

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

It is proposed by the author to publish the result of his observation on the mythology, distinctive opinions, and intellectual character of the aborigines. Materials exist for separate observations on their oral tales, fictitious and historical; their hieroglyphics, music, and poetry; and the grammatical structure of the languages, their principles of combination, and the actual state of their vocabulary. The former topic has been selected as the commencement of the series. At what time the remaining portions will appear, will depend upon the interest manifested by the public in the subject, and the leisure and health necessary to the examination of a mass of original papers, the accumulation of nearly twenty years.

The character and peculiarities of the tribes have been studied under favourable circumstances and new aspects; offering, it is believed, an insight into their mental constitution, as yet but imperfectly understood. Hitherto our information has related rather to their external customs and manners, their physical traits and historical peculiarities, than to what may be termed the philosophy of the Indian mind. Such an examination required time and diligence. Much of the earlier part of it was necessarily devoted to clearing the ground of inquiry, by acquiring the principles of the languages, and obtaining data for generalization. This was to be done, too, at remote points of the Continent, away from all the facilities and encouragements of literary society, and with the aid of persons profoundly ignorant of the grammatical principles of the languages they spoke, and incapable of discriminating the fabulous from the true in the histories they related. The severe axioms of commerce had, from the first, caused the Indians to be regarded merely as the medium of a peculiar branch of trade, which was pursued at great hazards, excited deep animosity in the breasts of the respective commercial factors, and gave an absorbing interest to all that took place in the Indian country for two centuries. The interpretership of the languages became, of necessity, the business of a class of men who were generally uneducated, and who, imbued strongly with the feelings and prejudices of their employers, sought no higher excellence in their profession than to express the common ideas connected with the transactions of trade. The result was, then as now, that they comprehended the scope and genius of none of the languages they spoke. Whoever will submit to the labour of a critical examination into the subject, will soon become satisfied that the mediums of communication he is compelled to use are jargons, and not languages. It is impossible not to attribute to this imperfect state of oral translation, a considerable share of the errors and misunderstandings which have characterized our intercourse, political and commercial, with the tribes. Made sensible of this defect in the mode of communication, at an early period after my entrance into the Indian territories, my collections in Indian lexicography have been withheld from my journals of travel for further opportunity to examine the principles of the languages themselves. Notwithstanding this impression, and the care adopted to ensure accuracy, much of my earlier information, derived through the ordinary channels of interpretation, proved either wholly fallacious, or required to be tested and amended by a diligent course of subsequent scrutiny.

Language constituted the initial point of inquiry, but it did not limit it. It was found necessary to examine the mythology of the tribes as a means of acquiring an insight into their mode of thinking and reasoning, the sources of their fears and hopes, and the probable origin of their opinions and institutions. This branch of inquiry connected itself, in a manner which could not have been anticipated, with their mode of conveying instruction, moral, mechanical, and religious, to the young, through the intervention of traditionary fictitious tales and legends; and naturally, as the next effort of a barbarous people, to hieroglyphic signs to convey ideas and sounds. Rude as these characters were, however, they furnish very striking illustrations of their intellectual efforts, and exhibit evidences of that desire, implanted in the minds of all men, to convey to their contemporaries and transmit to posterity the prominent facts of their history and attainments. Nothing in the whole inquiry has afforded so ample a clew to their opinions and thoughts, in all the great departments of life and nature, as their oral imaginative tales; and it has, therefore, been deemed proper to introduce copious specimens of these collections from a large number of the tribes, embracing three of the generic stocks of language.

In adopting an original nominative for the series, the object has been to convey definite general impressions. The term Algic[1] is introduced, in a generic sense, for all that family of tribes who, about A.D. 1600, were found spread out, with local exceptions, along the Atlantic, between Pamlico Sound and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, extending northwest to the Missinipi of Hudson's Bay, and west to the Mississippi. The exceptions embrace the Yamassees and Catawbas on the coast, and the Tuscaroras, Iroquois, Wyandots, and Winnebagoes, and a part of the Sioux, in the interior, all of whom appear to have been intruders within the circle, and three of which, namely, the Tuscaroras, Iroquois, and Wyandots, speak dialects of a generic language, which we shall denominate the Ostic.[2] The Winnebagoes are clearly of the Abanic[3] stock, and the Yamassees and Catawbas—extinct tribes, of whom but little has been preserved, of the restless and warlike Muscogee race. The latter, who, together with the Cherokees and Choctaws, fill up the southern portion of the Union, quite to the banks of the Mississippi, exist in juxtaposition to, and not as intruders within, the Algic circle. The Chickasaws are a scion of the Choctaws, as the Seminoles are of the Muscogees. The Choctaw and Muscogee are, radically, the same language. The Cherokees do not appear to have put forth any distant branches, and have come down to our times, as a distinct people. It thus appears that four mother stocks occupied the entire area of North America, east of the Mississippi, and lying between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson's Bay, with the exception of a single tribe and a portion of another. The Winnebagoes, who are of the Abanic race, had, however, merely crossed from the west to the east banks of the Mississippi, but never proceeded beyond the shores of Green Bay. The Dacotahs had crossed this stream higher north, and proceeded to the west shores of Superior, whence they were beat back by the van of the Algics under the name of Odjibwas.

The object of inquiry is thus defined with general precision, although it is not intended to limit the inquiry itself to geographical boundaries. It will be perceived that the territory formerly occupied by the Algic nations comprehended by far the largest portion of the United States east of the Mississippi, together with a large area of the British possessions. They occupied the Atlantic coast as far south as the river Savannah in Georgia, if Shawnee tradition is entitled to respect, and as high north as the coast of Labrador, where the tribes of this stock are succeeded by the Esquimaux. It was into the limits of these people [Algics] that the Northmen, according to appearances, pushed their daring voyages previous to the discovery of Columbus;[4] and it was also among these far-spreading and independent hordes that the earliest European colonies were planted. Cabot, and Hudson, and Verrizani made their principal landings among the tribes of this type. The Pilgrims first set foot ashore in their midst, and they landed near the spot where, several centuries before, Thorwald Ericson had fallen a sacrifice to the spirit of Norwegian and Icelandic discovery. If the country had ever been occupied by Esquimaux, as indicated by Scandinavian history, there was not an Esquimaux there at that period. The entire coast of New-England was possessed by the Algics. They extended north of it to Cape Breton. Cartier found them in the Bay of Chaleur, the Pilgrims at Plimouth, Hudson at the island of Manhattan, Barlow and Amidas on the coasts of Virginia. They lined the seaboard; they appear to have migrated along its borders from southwest to northeast, and were probably attached to the open coast by the double facility which it afforded of a spontaneous subsistence, having the resources of the sea on one side and of the forest on the other. It is probable that these advantages led them to underrate the interior, which, being left unguarded, their enemies pushed in from the west, and seated themselves in Western New-York and Pennsylvania on the sources of the principal streams. It is evident that the Algics did not penetrate the interior to a great extent, their camps and towns forming, as it were, but a hem or cordon along the Atlantic. At the only points where this edging was penetrated, the discoverers found tribes of the Ostic stock, a fierce and indomitable race, of a sanguinary character, and speaking a harsh and guttural language. Such were the Iroquois, who were encountered on the Upper Hudson and the Mohawk, and the Wyandots found by Cartier at the islands of Orleans and Hochelaga. Regard these two leading races of the north in whatever light we may, it is impossible to overlook the strong points of character in which they differed. Both were dexterous and cunning woodsmen, excelling in all the forest arts necessary to their condition, and having much in their manners and appearance in common. But they spoke a radically different language, and they differed scarcely less in their distinctive character and policy. The one was mild and conciliating, the other fierce and domineering. They were alike in hospitality, in their misconception of virtue, and their high estimate of bravery. Independence was strikingly characteristic of both; but the one was satisfied with personal or tribal freedom, while the other sought to secure it by general combination. And if the two races be closely compared, there appears to be grounds for the opinion, that one is descended from a race of shepherds or pastoral nomades, and the other from a line of adventurers and warlike plunderers. It may, perhaps, be deemed among the auspicious circumstances which awaited the Europeans in this hemisphere, that they planted their earliest colonies among the former race.

In giving this enlarged signification to the terms Algic and Ostic, reference has been had to the requisitions of a general philological classification. But it is proper to remark of the Algic tribes, to whom our attention is to be particularly directed, that they were marked by peculiarities and shades of language and customs deemed to be quite striking among themselves. They were separated by large areas of territory, differing considerably in their climate and productions. They had forgotten the general points in their history, and each tribe and sub-tribe was prone to regard itself as independent of all others, if not the leading or parent tribe. Their languages exhibited diversities of sound, where there was none whatever in its syntax. Changes of accent and interchanges of consonants had almost entirely altered the aspect of words, and obscured their etymology. Some of the derivates were local, and not understood beyond a few hundred miles, and all the roots of the language were buried, as we find them at this day, beneath a load of superadded verbiage. The identity of the stock is, however, to be readily traced amid these discrepancies. They are assimilated by peculiar traits of a common physical resemblance; by general coincidence of manners, customs, and opinions; by the rude rites of a worship of spirits, everywhere the same; by a few points of general tradition; and by the peculiar and strongly-marked features of a transpositive language, identified by its grammar, alike in its primitive words, and absolutely fixed in the number and mode of modification of its radical sounds.

One or two additional remarks may be made in relation to the general traits of the Algic race. It was the chiefs of these nomadic bands who welcomed the Europeans to the shore. They occupied the Atlantic States. They everywhere received the strangers with open arms, established pacific relations with them, and evinced, both by their words and their policy, the abiding sense they had of the advantages of the intercourse. They existed so completely in the hunter state as to have no relish for any other kind of labour, looking with an inward and deep contempt on the arts of husbandry and mechanics. They had skill enough to construct their canoes; knew sufficient of the elementary art of weaving to make bags and nets of bark, and the simple tapestry or mats to cover their lodges; and, above all, they were expert in fabricating the proper missiles of war and hunting. They had no smiths, supplying their place by a very considerable skill in the cleavage of silicious stones. They knew enough of pottery to form a mixture which would stand the effects of repeated and sudden heating and cooling, and had probably retained the first simple and effectual arts of the human race in this branch. They had but little knowledge of numbers, and none of letters; but found a substitute for the latter in a system of hieroglyphics of a general character, but quite exact in their mode of application, and absolutely fixed in the elements. They were formal, and inclined to stateliness in their councils and public intercourse, and very acute and expert in the arrangement and discussion of minor matters, but failed in comprehensive views, deep-reaching foresight, and powers of generalization. Hence they were liable to be called cunning rather than wise. They were, emphatically, men of impulse, capable of extraordinary exertions on the instant, but could not endure the tension, mental and physical, of long-continued exertions. Action appeared to be always rather the consequence of nervous, than of intellectual excitement. Above all, they were characterized by habits of sloth, which led them utterly to despise the value of time; and this has appeared so constant a trait, under every vicissitude of their history, that it may be regarded as the probable effect of a luxurious effeminacy, produced upon the race under a climate more adverse to personal activity. It should be borne in mind, that the character first drawn of the Algic race is essentially that which has been attributed to the whole of the North American tribes, although it is not minutely applicable to some of the interior nations. The first impressions made upon the strangers from the Old World, sank deep; and there was, naturally, but little disposition to re-examine the justice of the conclusions thus formed. These people were, from the outset, regarded as of eastern origin; and, if nothing before adverted to had been suited to give colouring to the idea, it would have resulted, almost as a matter of course, from their having, in all their tribes and every band of them, a class of Magii, who affected to exert the arts of magic, offered sacrifices to idolatrous things, and were consulted as oracles both in peace and war. These pseudo priests were called Powows by the English, Jongleurs by the French, and by various other terms by themselves and by others; but their office and general character were identical. They upheld a spurious worship, and supported it by all sorts of trick and deception. There was no regular succession in this priesthood, so far as is known; but the office, like that of the war-captain, was generally assumed and exercised by men of more than ordinary acuteness and cunning. In other words, it was conferred by the election of opinion, but not of votes.