CHAPTER VI.
ABORIGINES.
Conjecture respecting their former numbers and condition. Present number and state.—Indian Territory appropriated as their permanent residence.—Plan and operations of the U. S. Government.—Missionary efforts and stations. Monuments and Antiquities.
The idea is entertained, that the Valley of the Mississippi, was once densely populated by aborigines;—that here were extensive nations,—that the bones of many millions lie mouldering under our feet. It has become a common theory, that previous to the settlement of the country by people of European descent, there were two successive races of men, quite distinct from each other;—that the first race, by some singular fatality, became exterminated, leaving no traditionary account of their existence. And the second race, the ancestors of the existing race of Indians, are supposed to have been once, far more numerous than the present white population of the Valley.
Some parts of Mexico and South America, were found to be populous upon the first visits of the Spaniards; but I do not find satisfactory evidence that population was ever dense, in any part of the territory that now constitutes our Republic. Mr. Atwater supposes, from the mounds in Ohio, the Indian population far exceeded 700,000, at one time in that district. Mr. Flint says, "If we can infer nothing else from the mounds, we can clearly infer, that this country once had its millions." Hence, a principal argument assigned for the populousness of this country is, the millions buried in these tumuli, the bones of which, in a tolerable state of preservation, are supposed to be exhibited upon excavation. The writer has witnessed the opening of many of these mounds, and has seen the fragments of an occasional skeleton, found near the surface. Without stopping here to enter upon a disquisition on the hypothesis assumed, that these mounds, as they are termed, are as much the results of natural causes, as any other prominences on the surface of the globe: I will only remark, that it is a fact well known to frontier men, that the Indians have been in the habit of burying their dead on these ridges and hillocks, and that in our light, spongy soil, the skeleton decays surprisingly fast. This is not the place to exhibit the necessary data, that have led to the conviction, that not a human skeleton now exists in all the western Valley, (excepting in nitrous caves,) that was deposited in the earth before the discovery of the New World, by Columbus.
The opinion that this Valley was once densely populous, is sustained from the supposed military works, distributed through the West. This subject, as well as that of mounds, wants re-examination. Probably, half a dozen enclosures, in a rude form, might have been used for military defence. The capabilities of the country to sustain a dense population, has been used to support the position, that it must have been once densely populated. This argues nothing without vestiges of agriculture and the arts. With the exception of a few small patches, around the Indian villages, for corn and pulse, the whole land was an unbroken wilderness. Strangers to the subject have imagined that our western prairies must once have been subdued by the hand of cultivation, because denuded of timber. Those who have long lived on them, have the evidences of observation, and their senses, to guide them. They know that the earth will not produce timber, while the surface is covered with a firm grassy sward, and that timber will spring up, as soon as this obstruction is removed.
To all these theories, of the former density of the aboriginal population of the Valley, I oppose, first, the fact that but a scattered and erratic population was found here, on the arrival of the Europeans,—that the people were rude savages, subsisting chiefly by hunting, and that no savage people ever became populous,—that from time immemorial, the different tribes had been continually at war with each other,—that but a few years before the French explored it, the Iroquois, or Five nations, conquered all the country to the Mississippi, which they could not have done had it been populous, and that Kentucky, one of the finest portions of the Valley, was not inhabited by any people, but the common hunting and fighting grounds of both the northern and southern Indians, and hence called by them, Kentuckee, or the "Bloody ground."[7]