The effect of such a system, admirable as it was in many particulars, practically placed a premium upon idleness. Under such communal rights and privileges a potent spur to industry and thrift is wanting.
There is an obverse side to this problem, which a long and intimate acquaintance with the Indians in their villages has forced upon the writer. The communal ownership of food and the great hospitality practiced by the Indian have had a very much greater influence upon his character than that indicated in the foregoing remarks. The peculiar institutions prevailing in this respect gave to each tribe or clan a profound interest in the skill, ability and industry of each member. He was the most valuable person in the community who supplied it with the most of its necessities. For this reason the successful hunter or fisherman was always held in high honor, and the woman, who gathered great store of seeds, fruits, or roots, or who cultivated a good corn-field, was one who commanded the respect and received the highest approbation of the people. The simple and rude ethics of a tribal people are very important to them, the more so because of their communal institutions; and everywhere throughout the tribes of the United States it is discovered that their rules of conduct were deeply implanted in the minds of the people. An organized system of teaching is always found, as it is the duty of certain officers of the clan to instruct the young in all the industries necessary to their rude life, and simple maxims of industry abound among the tribes and are enforced in diverse and interesting ways. The power of the elder men in the clan over its young members is always very great, and the training of the youth is constant and rigid. Besides this, a moral sentiment exists in favor of primitive virtues which is very effective in molding character. This may be illustrated in two ways.
Marriage among all Indian tribes is primarily by legal appointment, as the young woman receives a husband from some other prescribed clan or clans, and the elders of the clan, with certain exceptions, control these marriages, and personal choice has little to do with the affair. When marriages are proposed, the virtues and industry of the candidates, and more than all, their ability to properly live as married couples and to supply the clan or tribe with a due amount of subsistence, are discussed long and earnestly, and the young man or maiden who fails in this respect may fail in securing an eligible and desirable match. And these motives are constantly presented to the savage youth.
A simple democracy exists among these people, and they have a variety of tribal offices to fill. In this way the men of the tribe are graded, and they pass from grade to grade by a selection practically made by the people. And this leads to a constant discussion of the virtues and abilities of all the male members of the clan, from boyhood to old age. He is most successful in obtaining clan and tribal promotion who is most useful to the clan and the tribe. In this manner all of the ambitious are stimulated, and this incentive to industry is very great.
When brought into close contact with the Indian, and into intimate acquaintance with his language, customs, and religious ideas, there is a curious tendency observable in students to overlook aboriginal vices and to exaggerate aboriginal virtues. It seems to be forgotten that after all the Indian is a savage, with the characteristics of a savage, and he is exalted even above the civilized man. The tendency is exactly the reverse of what it is in the case of those who view the Indian at a distance and with no precise knowledge of any of his characteristics. In the estimation of such persons the Indian’s vices greatly outweigh his virtues; his language is a gibberish, his methods of war cowardly, his ideas of religion utterly puerile.
The above tendencies are accentuated in the attempt to estimate the comparative worth and position of individual tribes. No being is more patriotic than the Indian. He believes himself to be the result of a special creation by a partial deity and holds that his is the one favored race. The name by which the tribes distinguish themselves from other tribes indicates the further conviction that, as the Indian is above all created things, so in like manner each particular tribe is exalted above all others. “Men of men” is the literal translation of one name; “the only men” of another, and so on through the whole category. A long residence with any one tribe frequently inoculates the student with the same patriotic spirit. Bringing to his study of a particular tribe an inadequate conception of Indian attainments and a low impression of their moral and intellectual plane, the constant recital of its virtues, the bravery and prowess of its men in war, their generosity, the chaste conduct and obedience of its women as contrasted with the opposite qualities of all other tribes, speedily tends to partisanship. He discovers many virtues and finds that the moral and intellectual attainments are higher than he supposed; but these advantages he imagines to be possessed solely, or at least to an unusual degree, by the tribe in question. Other tribes are assigned much lower rank in the scale.
The above is peculiarly true of the student of language. He who studies only one Indian language and learns its manifold curious grammatic devices, its wealth of words, its capacity of expression, is speedily convinced of its superiority to all other Indian tongues, and not infrequently to all languages by whomsoever spoken.
If like admirable characteristics are asserted for other tongues he is apt to view them but as derivatives from one original. Thus he is led to overlook the great truth that the mind of man is everywhere practically the same, and that the innumerable differences of its products are indices merely of different stages of growth or are the results of different conditions of environment. In its development the human mind is limited by no boundaries of tribe or race.
Again, a long acquaintance with many tribes in their homes leads to the belief that savage people do not lack industry so much as wisdom. They are capable of performing, and often do perform, great and continuous labor. The men and women alike toil from day to day and from year to year, engaged in those tasks that are presented with the recurring seasons. In civilization, hunting and fishing are often considered sports, but in savagery they are labors, and call for endurance, patience, and sagacity. And these are exercised to a reasonable degree among all savage peoples.
It is probable that the real difficulty of purchasing quantities of food from Indians has, in most cases, not been properly understood. Unless the alien is present at a time of great abundance, when there is more on hand or easily obtainable than sufficient to supply the wants of the people, food can not be bought of the Indians. This arises from the fact that the tribal tenure is communal, and to get food by purchase requires a treaty at which all the leading members of the tribe are present and give consent.