A Brief History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

In the far West and Southwest, where the rivers had cut deep beds, were the cliff dwellers. In hollow places in the rocky cliffs which form the walls of these rivers, in Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, are found to- day the remains of these cliff homes. They are high above the river and difficult to reach, and could easily be defended. [1]

[Illustration: TOTEM POLE IN ALASKA.]

TRIBES AND CLANS.—The Indians were divided into hundreds of tribes, each with its own language or dialect and generally living by itself. Each tribe was subdivided into clans. Members of a clan were those who traced descent from some imaginary ancestor, usually an animal, as the wolf, the fox, the bear, the eagle. [2] An Indian inherited his right to be a wolf or a bear from his mother. Whatever clan she belonged to, that was his also, and no man could marry a woman of his own clan. The civil head of a clan was a "sachem"; the military heads were "chiefs." The sachem and the chiefs were elected or deposed, and the affairs of the clan regulated, by a council of all the men and women. The affairs of a tribe were regulated by a council of the sachems and chiefs of the clans. [3]

CONFEDERACIES.—As a few clans were united in each tribe, so some tribes united to form confederacies. The greatest and most powerful of these was the league of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in central New York. [4] It was composed of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida (o-ni'da), and Mohawk tribes. Each managed its own tribal affairs, but a council of sachems elected from the clans had charge of the affairs of the confederacy. So great was the power of the league that it practically ruled all the tribes from Hudson Bay to North Carolina, and westward as far as Lake Michigan. Other confederacies of less power were: the Dakota and Blackfeet, west of the Mississippi; the Powhatan, in Virginia; and the Creek, the Chickasaw, and the Cherokee, in the South.

[Illustration: INDIAN HATCHET AND ARROWHEAD, MADE OF STONE.]

HUNTING.—One of the chief occupations of an Indian man was hunting. He devised traps with great skill. His weapons were bows and arrows with stone heads, stone hatchets or tomahawks, flint spears, and knives and clubs. To use such weapons he had to get close to the animal, and to do this disguises of animal heads and skins were generally adopted. The Indians hunted and trapped nearly all kinds of American animals.

ANIMALS AND IMPLEMENTS UNKNOWN TO THE INDIANS.—Before the coming of the Europeans the Indians had never seen horses or cows, sheep, hogs, or poultry. The dog was their only domesticated animal, and in many cases the so-called dog was really a domesticated wolf. Neither had the Indians ever seen firearms, or gunpowder, or swords, nails, or steel knives, or metal pots or kettles, glass, wheat, flour, or many other articles in common use among the whites.

[Illustration: INDIANS IN FULL DRESS.]

CLOTHING.—Their clothing was of the simplest kind, and varied, of course, with the climate. The men usually wore a strip of deerskin around the waist, a hunting shirt, leggings, moccasins on the feet, and sometimes a deerskin over the shoulders. Very often they wore nothing but the strip about the waist and the moccasins. These garments of deerskin were cut with much care, sewed with fish-bone needles and sinew thread, and ornamented with shells and quills.

Painting the face and body was a universal custom. For this purpose red and yellow ocher, colored earths, juices of plants, and charcoal were used. What may be called Indian jewelry consisted of necklaces of teeth and claws of bears, claws of eagles and hawks, and strings of sea shells, colored feathers, and wampum. Wampum consisted of strings of beads made from sea shells, and was highly prized and used not only for ornament, but as Indian money.