In the Indian tongue there is no distinction of masculine or feminine gender, but simply of animate and inanimate beings.
"The freedom of manners, and the uncertainty of life, from the various hazards to which it is inevitably exposed, imparts to the character of savages a species of liberality, under which are couched many benevolent principles; a respect for the aged, and in several instances a deference to their equals. The natural coldness of their temperament, admits of few outward demonstrations of civility. They are, however, affable in their mode, and are ever disposed to show towards strangers, and particularly towards the unfortunate, the strongest marks of hospitality. A savage will seldom hesitate to share with a fellow-creature oppressed by hunger, his last morsel of provisions."—Vide Heriot, p. 318.
CHAPTER VI
On our return to Illinois from Missouri, we visited the tumuli in the "American bottom," for the purpose of more closely investigating the form and disposition of these sepulchral mounds. Their shape is invariably hemispherical, or of the mamélle form. Throughout the country, from the banks of the Hudson to a considerable distance beyond the Mississippi, tumuli, and the remains of earthen fortifications were dispersed. Those of the former which have been removed, were found to contain human bones, earthen vessels, and utensils composed of alloyed metal; which latter fact is worthy of particular notice, as none of the Indians of North America are acquainted with the art of alloying. The vessels were generally of the form of drinking cups, or ewer-shaped cans, sometimes with a flange to admit a cover. One of those which I saw in a museum at Cincinnati, had three small knobs at the bottom on which it stood, and I was credibly informed that a dissenting clergyman, through the esprit de metier, undertook to prove from the circumstance, that the people who raised these mounds and fortifications must have been acquainted with the doctrine of the Trinity. How far the reverend gentleman is correct in his inference, I leave for theologians to decide.
The Indians do not claim the mounds as depositories for their dead, but are well aware of their containing human bones. They frequently encamp near them, and visit them on their journeys, but more as land marks than on any other account. They approach them with reverence, as they do all burial places, no matter of what people or nation. The Quapaws have a tradition, that they were raised "many hundred snows" ago, by a people that no longer exists; they say, that in those days game was so plenty that very little exertion was necessary to procure a subsistence, and there were then no wars—these happy people having then no employment, collected, merely for sport, these heaps of earth, which have ever since remained, and have subsequently been used by another people, who succeeded them, as depositories of their dead. Another tradition is, that they were erected by the Indians to protect them from the mammoths, until the Great Spirit took pity on his red children, and annihilated these enormous elephants. Most of the Indian nations concur in their having been the work of a people which had ceased to exist before the red men possessed those hunting grounds.
The numerous mounds, fortifications, and burial caverns, and the skeletons and mummies, that have been discovered in these catacombs, sufficiently establish the fact, that a people altogether different from the present aborigines once inhabited these regions. At what period this by-gone people flourished still remains a matter of mere conjecture, for to the present time no discovery has been made that could lead to any plausible supposition.