Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

[72] League of the Iroquois, p. 294.

[73] It was a journey of ten days from earth to heaven for the departed spirit, according to Iroquois belief. For ten days after the death of a person, the mourners met nightly to lament the deceased, at which they indulged in excessive grief. The dirge or wail was performed by women. It was an ancient custom to make a fire on the grave each night for the same period. On the eleventh day they held a feast; the spirit of the departed having reached heaven, the place of rest, there was no further cause for mourning. With the feast it terminated.

[74] Iliad, ii, 362.

[75] Bancroft’s Native Races of the Pacific States, I, 109.

[76] O-tä′-was.

[77] The Ojibwas manufactured earthen pipes, water jars, and vessels in ancient times, as they now assert. Indian pottery has been dug up at different times at the Sault St. Mary, which they recognize as the work of their forefathers.

[78] The Potawattamie and the Cree have diverged about equally. It is probable that the Ojibwas Otawas and Crees were one people in dialect after the Potawattamies became detached.

[79] As a mixture of forest and prairie it was an excellent game country. A species of bread-root, the kamash, grew in abundance in the prairies. In the summer there was a profusion of berries. But in these respects it was not superior to other areas. That which signalized the region was the inexhaustible supply of salmon in the Columbia, and other rivers of the coast. They crowded these streams in millions, and were taken in the season with facility, and in the greatest abundance. After being split open and dried in the sun, they were packed and removed to their villages, and formed their principal food during the greater part of the year. Beside these were the shell fisheries of the coast, which supplied a large amount of food during the winter months. Superadded to these concentrated advantages, the climate was mild and equable throughout the year—about that of Tennessee and Virginia. It was the paradise of tribes without a knowledge of the cereals.

[80] It can be shown with a great degree of probability, that the Valley of the Columbia was the seed land of the Ganowánian family, from which issued, in past ages, successive streams of migrating bands, until both divisions of the continent were occupied. And further, that both divisions continued to be replenished with inhabitants from this source down to the epoch of European discovery. These conclusions may be deduced from physical causes, from the relative conditions, and from the linguistic relations of the Indian tribes. The great expanse of the central prairies, which spread continuously more than fifteen hundred miles from north to south, and more than a thousand miles from east to west, interposed a barrier to a free communication between the Pacific and Atlantic sides of the continent in North America. It seems probable, therefore, that an original family commencing its spread from the Valley of the Columbia, and migrating under the influence of physical causes, would reach Patagonia sooner than they would Florida. The known facts point so strongly to this region as the original home of the Indian family, that a moderate amount of additional evidence will render the hypothesis conclusive.

The discovery and cultivation of maize did not change materially the course of events, or suspend the operation of previous causes; though it became an important factor in the progress of improvement. It is not known where this American cereal was indigenous; but the tropical region of Central America, where vegetation is intensely active, where this plant is peculiarly fruitful, and where the oldest seats of the Village Indians were found, has been assumed by common consent, as the probable place of its nativity. If, then, cultivation commenced in Central America, it would have propagated itself first over Mexico, and from thence to New Mexico and the valley of the Mississippi, and thence again eastward to the shores of the Atlantic; the volume of cultivation diminishing from the starting-point to the extremities. It would spread, independently of the Village Indians, from the desire of more barbarous tribes to gain the new subsistence; but it never extended beyond New Mexico to the Valley of the Columbia, though cultivation was practiced by the Minnitarees and Mandans of the Upper Missouri, by the Shyans on the Red River of the North, by the Hurons of Lake Simcoe in Canada, and by the Abenakies of the Kennebec, as well as generally by the tribes between the Mississippi and the Atlantic. Migrating bands from the Valley of the Columbia, following upon the track of their predecessors, would press upon the Village Indians of New Mexico and Mexico, tending to force displaced and fragmentary tribes toward and through the Isthmus into South America. Such expelled bands would carry with them the first germs of progress developed by Village Indian life. Repeated at intervals of time it would tend to bestow upon South America a class of inhabitants far superior to the wild bands previously supplied, and at the expense of the northern section thus impoverished. In the final result, South America would attain the advanced position in development, even in an inferior country, which seems to have been the fact. The Peruvian legend of Manco Capac and Mama Oello, children of the sun, brother and sister, husband and wife, shows, if it can be said to show anything, that a band of Village Indians migrating from a distance, though not necessarily from North America direct, had gathered together and taught the rude tribes of the Andes the higher arts of life, including the cultivation of maize and plants. By a simple and quite natural process the legend has dropped out the band, and retained only the leader and his wife.