Notes on the Iroquois / or, Contributions to the Statistics, Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology of Western New-York

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

To denote the state of art among the aboriginal race, it is necessary closely to examine such monuments of it, as exist. The word “monument” is used to denote any remains of art. Such are their relics in the form of worked shells and amulets, pottery, carved implements and utensils of stone, and other antiquarian remains found in their mounds, graves, fortifications, and other places of ancient occupancy in our latitudes. Of architectural ruins in stone, which constitute so striking a portion of aboriginal antiquities, in central and South America, particularly in the ruins of their temples and teocalli, (the only form of such architecture indeed, which survives,) we have no remains north of the latitude of the mouth of the Mississippi, unless they shall be disclosed in some of the large mounds yet unopened, or in portions of the country north of such a line, which yet remains unexplored, west of the extreme sources of the Red river and the Rio Del Norte.

From this inquiry, we may peremptorily exclude, all articles and remains of metal (not gold, silver or native copper) and all sculpture and inscriptions (not picture writing) which have been found and commented on, with an air of wonder, in various places, but which are one and all, undoubtedly of European, or to give the greatest scope to conjecture, of trans-atlantic origin. Such are, to begin with the highest object, the Grave creek inscription in apparently Celtiberic characters, the stone with a rude inscription in Roman letters and Arabic figures found in Onondaga county, and now deposited in the Albany Academy; the amulets of coarse enamel colored pastes and glass, of the imperfect fabric of the 15th and 16th centuries, found in Indian graves; or old village and fort sites, together with the flattened gun barrels, broken locks, artists’ tools and other articles of iron, brass, or semi-vitrified earthenware, which are found over so considerable an extent of country in western New-York. The latter are undoubtedly, evidences of either earlier, or more systematic attempts to settle, if not to found colonies, amongst the Red Race from abroad, than we are yet prepared fully to comprehend. But there need be no question as to the general era and character of art to which they belong; they are too clearly European in every instance to admit of scruple.

The introduction of the fabrics of European art, among the tribes of this continent, had the inevitable and speedy effect to destroy the prior Indian arts. It is astonishing to find how soon the aborigines of our latitudes, lost the art of making culinary vessels of clay; of carving amulets and pipes out of steatites and other fissile mineral bodies; of perforating, dissecting and forming sea shells into the various shapes of wampum, gorgets, pendants, necklaces, belt and pouch ornaments, and other ornamental fabrics. They no sooner obtained the light brass, copper, iron, and tin kettle, than they laid aside the more clumsy and frail Akeek, or clay pot; their women relieved from the labor of selecting and tempering the clays, and forming it into pots and dishes, were advanced one step in the art of housewifery, and took the first lesson in European civilization.

The maker of arrow and javelin heads, for this was a distinct art, was superceded by the superior efficacy of fire arms; and his red descendant at this day, as well as the gleaner of antiquities, is alike at a loss to find, where the ancient artist in chert and hornstone procured his materials of so suitable a quality and fracture, and how he obtained the skill to chip and form them into such delicate and appropriate patterns. The small and slender axe of iron, with a steel edge, and pipe-head, at once took the place of the crescent-shaped stone tomahawk, which had alone been appropriated to war; while the larger half-axe, so called, supplanted the clumsy stone Agakwut before employed rather as a gouge to detach coal in the process of felling trees by fire, than an axe proper. By the application of the common lathe and turning chisel, those species of thick sea shells, which the natives had, with so much labor, converted into seawan and wampum, were manufactured with such superior skill, expedition and cheapness, (although this is an article which the trader always held comparatively high) that the old Indian art of the wampum-maker, sunk, like that of the arrow-maker, never to be revived. But of all the exchanges made between civilized and savage life, the gift of the steel-trap, in replacing the Indian trap of wood, was the most eagerly sought, and highly prized by the hunter, although it hastened the period of the destruction of the whole class of furred animals, and thus in effect, brought to a speedy close the Indian dominion.

Pottery was an art known universally among all the tribes from Patagonia to the Arctic ocean, but was practised with very different degrees of skill. The northern tribes who bordered on the great lakes, and thence reached down to the Atlantic, made a rude article, which just answered the simple purposes of the culinary art. The clay, or argillaceous material used for it, was such as is common to diluvial and tertiary soils. It was tempered with silex, in the form of pounded quartz, or often quartz and field-spar, as it exists in granite, in quite coarse particles. This mixture prevented shrinkage and cracks in drying, and enabled the mass to withstand the application of heat—an art which has resulted, and would very soon result, in any given case, from experience. There were no legs to the Indian akeek, or pot. It was designed to be used, to use a chemical phrase, as a sand-bath. Being set on the ashes, a fire was built around it. It might also admit of suspension, by a bark cord tied below the lip, which flared out well, and thus could be attached to the ordinary Indian cooking-tackle, namely; a long-legged tripod, tied at the top with bark.

There is no evidence in the structure of any of this species of pottery, at least, in these latitudes, that it had been raised or formed on a potter’s wheel. The fact that prepared clay placed on a revolving horizontal circle, would rise, by the centrifugal force, if resisted by the hand, or a potter’s stick or former, was not known to these tribes; although it is admitted to be one of the oldest arts in the world. Some skill was consequently required to form the mass and shape the vessel, without machinery. It was essential to its utility, and to prevent unequal shrinkage in drying, that the body should be of uniform thickness; and this art was also, if we may judge from fragments, and one or two entire vessels examined, very well attained.

It is believed that this art, in this quarter, was in the hands of females; but every female or mistress of a lodge, was not adequate to it. It must have been the business of a class of persons in each village, who were professed potters. Tradition says that it was the practice to mingle some blood in wetting and tempering the clay.

It was impossible that this art, so rude and laborious, and so ill-suited to perform its offices when done, could survive and continue to be practised for any length of time after the tribes had been made acquainted with the products of the European potteries, rude as these were comparatively speaking, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Architecture, as it existed in the north and west, was confined, we may suppose, to earthen structures, crowned with wood, in the shape of beams and posts. And it is only as it exhibited a knowledge of geometry, in the combination of squares and circles, to constitute a work of defence, that it is deserving of notice. The knowledge of the pyramid and its durability, is one of the most ancient geometrical discoveries in the world, and it is quite clear, in viewing the mounds and teocalli of North America, that the aborigines possessed, or had not forgotten it. In most of the works of defence, in the western country, the circular pyramid, or mound of earth of various sizes, formed a striking feature; whilst in relation to the mounds used for religious ceremonies, as we must suppose the larger mounds to have been, its completeness of plan and exact truncation, parallel to the plain or basis, denotes the prevalence among them, of this ancient architectural idea. We detect also, in a survey of the old works, the square, the parallelogram, the circle, and the ellipsis. And these figures were variously employed in the arrangement of masses of earth, to produce a rampart and a moat.

The domestic economy required implements to perform the arts which we express by the words sewing and weaving.