214.—CROW INDIANS IN COUNCIL.
“And even there will industry and the arts spring up? How poorly the Red race is gifted for music and singing is well known: the fine arts have remained in infancy among them; and writing, unless it consists in rude pictorial images, is utterly unknown. They barely know how to trace a few bead patterns on skins, and although these designs are undoubtedly often happily grouped and the colours blended with a certain harmony, that is all. Industry, apart from a coarse preparation of victuals and the tanning of hides and dressing of furs, is also entirely null. The Indian is less advanced than the African negro, who knows at least how to weave cloths and dye them. The Navajoes, alone, manufacture some coverings with wool.
“The free Indians of the Prairies, scattered between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, may be reckoned at about a hundred thousand, while all the Indians of North America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are estimated at four times that number. These calculations may possibly be slightly defective, statistics or any accurate census being quite wanting. The Red men themselves never give more than a notation of their tents or lodges, but the assemblage of individuals contained in each of these differs according to the tribe, and sometimes in the same tribe; hence the impossibility of any mathematically exact computation.
“In the north of the Prairies the great family of the Sioux numbering thirty-five thousand is remarkable above all others. The Crows, Bigbellies, Blackfeet, &c., who occupy Idaho and Montana, form, when taken altogether, a smaller population than the Sioux—probably about twenty thousand. In the centre and south, the Pawnees, Arapahoes, Shiennes, Yutes, Kayoways, Comanches, Apaches, &c., united, certainly exceed forty thousand in number. The territories of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico are those which these hordes overrun. The Pawnees are cantoned in Nebraska, in the neighbourhood of the Pacific Railway, and the Yutes in the ‘parks’ of Colorado.
“These races possess many characteristics in common; they are nomadic, that is to say, they occupy no fixed place, live by fishing, or above all by hunting, and follow the wild buffalo in its migrations everywhere.
“A thoroughly democratic régime and a sort of communism control the relations of members of the same tribe with each other. The chiefs are nominated by election, and for a period, but are sometimes hereditary. The most courageous, he who has taken the greatest number of scalps in war or has slain most bisons, the performer of some brilliant exploit or a man of superior eloquence, all these have the right to be chosen chiefs. As long as he conducts himself well a chief retains his position; if he incur the least blame his successor is appointed. Chiefs lead the tribes to battle, and are consulted on occasions of difficulty, as are also the old men. The braves are the lieutenants of the chiefs, and hold second command in war. There is no judge in the tribes, and each one administers justice for himself and applies the law at his own liking.