The mental powers of the Indian constitutes a topic which we do not design to discuss. But it must be manifest that some of their peculiarities are brought out by their system of mythology and spirit-craft. War, public policy, hunting, abstinence, endurance and courageous adventure, form the leading topics of their mental efforts. These are deemed the appropriate themes of men, sages and warriors. But their intellectual essays have also a domestic theatre of exhibition. It is here that the Indian mind unbends itself and reveals some of its less obvious traits. Their public speakers cultivate a particular branch of oratory. They are careful in the use of words, and are regarded as standards of purity in the language. They appear to have an accurate ear for sounds, and delight in rounding off a period, for which the languages afford great facilities, by their long and stately words, and multiform inflexions. A drift of thought—an elevation of style, is observable in their public speaking which is dropt in private conversation. Voice, attitude and motion, are deemed of the highest consequence. Much of the meaning of their expressions is varied by the vehement, subdued, or prolonged tone in which they are uttered. In private conversation, on the contrary, all is altered. There is an equanimity of tone, and easy vein of narration or dialogue, in which the power of mimicry is most strikingly brought out. The very voice and words of the supposed speakers, in their fictitious legends, are assumed. Fear, supplication, timidity or boasting, are exactly depicted, and the deepest interest excited. All is ease and freedom from restraint. There is nothing of the coldness or severe formality of the council. The pipe is put to its ordinary use, and all its symbolic sanctity is laid aside with the wampum belt and the often reiterated state epithets, “Nosa” and “Kosinan,” i.e. my father and our father.
Another striking trait of the race is found in their legends and tales. Those of the aboriginal race who excel in private conversation, become to their tribes oral chroniclers, and are relied on for historical traditions as well as tales. It is necessary, in listening to them, to distinguish between the gossip and the historian, the narrator of real events, and of nursery tales. For they gather together everything from the fabulous feats of Manebozho and Misshozba, to the hair-breadth escapes of a Pontiac, or a Black Hawk. These narrators are generally men of a good memory and a certain degree of humor, who have experienced vicissitudes, and are cast into the vale of years. In the rehearsal of their tales, transformations and transmigrations are a part of the machinery relied on; and some of them are as accurately adapted to the purposes of amusement or instruction, as if Zoroaster or Ovid himself had been consulted in their production. Many objects in the inanimate creation, according to these tales, were originally men and women. And numerous animals had other forms in their first stages of existence, which they, as well as human beings, forfeited, by the power of necromancy and transmigration. The evening star, it is fabled, was formerly a woman. An ambitious boy became one of the planets. Three brothers, travelling in a canoe, were translated into a group of stars. The fox, lynx, hare, robin, eagle and numerous other species, retain places in the Indian system of astronomy. The mouse obtained celestial elevation by creeping up the rainbow, which Indian story makes a flossy mass of bright threads, and by the power of gnawing them, he relieved a captive in the sky. It is a coincidence, which we note, that ursa major is called by them the bear.
These legends are not confined to the sky alone. The earth also is a fruitful theatre of transformations. The wolf was formerly a boy, who, being neglected by his parents, was transformed into this animal. A shell, lying on the shore, was transformed to the raccoon. The brains of an adulteress were converted into the addikumaig, or white fish.
The power of transformation was variously exercised. It most commonly existed in magicians, of whom Abo, Manabosh or Manabozha, and Mishosha, retain much celebrity. The latter possessed a magic canoe which would rush forward through the water on the utterance of a charm, with a speed that would outstrip the wind. Hundreds of miles were performed in as many minutes. The charm which he uttered, consisted of a monosyllable, containing one consonant, which does not belong to the language; and this word has no definable meaning. So that the language of magic and demonology has one feature in common in all ages and with every nation.
Man, in his common shape, is not alone the subject of their legends. The intellectual creations of the Indians admit of the agency of giants and fairies. Anak and his progeny could not have created more alarm in the minds of the ten faithless spies, than do the race of fabulous Weendigos to the Indian tribes. These giants are represented as cannibals, who ate up men, women and children. Indian fairies are of two classes, distinguished as the place of their revels is either the land or water. Land-fairies are imagined to choose their residences about promontories, water-falls and solemn groves. The water, besides its appropriate class of aquatic fairies, is supposed to be the residence of a race of beings called Nibanaba which have their analogy, except as to sex, in the mermaid. The Indian word indicates a male. Ghosts are the ordinary machinery in their tales of terror and mystery. There is, perhaps, a glimmering of the idea of retributive justice in the belief that ghosts and spirits are capable of existing in fire.
INDIAN ARROW HEADS, &c.
By far the most numerous relics of the Red Race, now found in those parts of our country from which it has disappeared, are the small stones with which they headed their arrows. Being made of the most durable substances, they have generally remained in the soil, unaffected by time and the changes of season. They most abound in those rich meadows which border some of our rivers, and in other spots of peculiar fertility, though of less extent, where the pasture, or other attractions, collected game for the Red men. The stones most commonly used were quartz and flint, which were preferred on account of the facility of shaping them, the keenness of the points and edges, which they readily present under the blows of a skilful manufacturer, as well as their superior hardness and imperishable nature. Multitudes of specimens still exist, which show the various forms and sizes to which the Red men reduced stones of these kinds: and they excite our admiration, by their perfect state of preservation, as well by the skilfulness of their manufacture.
Other stones, however, were not unfrequently used: and a collection which we have been making for many years, presents a considerable variety of materials, as well as of sizes, shapes and colors. Hard sandstone, trap or graacke, jasper and chalcedony, appear occasionally; some almost transparent. One of the larger size is made of steatite, and smooth, as if cut or scraped with a knife, contrary to the common method, of gradually chipping off small fragments of more brittle stone, by light blows often repeated. These arrow heads were fastened to the shaft, by inserting the butt into the split end, and tying round it a string of deer's sinews. A groove or depression is commonly observable in the stone, designed to receive the string. But it is sometimes difficult to imagine how the fastening was effected, as some perfect arrow-heads show no such depressions, and their forms are not well adapted to such a purpose. This peculiarity, however, is most frequently to be observed in specimens of small size, the larger, and especially such as are commonly supposed to have been the heads of spears, being usually well shaped for tying.