It is unnecessary to give further details respecting the adventures of De Soto and his companions. We need only say, that, having proceeded westward till he had crossed the Mississippi, this daring leader was seized with fever, of which he died after an illness of seven days. His band of followers, after experiencing great vicissitudes, succeeded in descending the Mississippi, amid hosts of enemies, and, though greatly reduced in numbers, they at length reached the Gulf of Mexico in 1543. Thus terminated this celebrated expedition, which occupied four years, and in which the troops are said to have marched between four and five thousand miles.
The subsequent history of the original Indian tribes of Florida affords nothing of interest. Under the oppression of the Spanish dominion, many of them were destroyed, and others driven off, so that but few remained. Most of them seem to have been conquered, incorporated with the later Seminoles, and intermingled with fugitive negroes. The recent painful history of these we shall hereafter notice. The greater part have been removed across the Mississippi, by the United States government, and only a remnant are left to occupy what is now the Territory of Florida.
THE INDIANS OF VIRGINIA.
When the Europeans began their settlements in what is now the territory of the United States, the whole country was occupied by a great number of separate and independent tribes. Upon the investigation of their languages, it has been found that they consisted of a few great families, or nations, which have been thus distributed by learned writers.
The Algonquins, or Chippewas, were spread over the entire continent east of the Mississippi and north of Cape Hatteras, with the exception of the regions inhabited by the Esquimaux, far to the north, and the territory claimed by the Hurons, or Wyandots. This latter family, which included the Iroquois, or Six Nations, spread themselves over the space now occupied by New York, a part of Ohio, and the whole of Upper Canada. The Mobilian, or Florida nations, included the tribes south of Cape Fear and west of the Mississippi, excepting the Natchez, inhabiting the country around the modern city of that name, and the Uchees, who held the country contiguous to the present town of Augusta, in Georgia. The Cherokees, Tuscaroras, and Catawbas, three considerable nations, occupied the territory of the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee. The Sioux, or Dahcotahs, dwelt along the western borders of the Mississippi.
These families, or nations, as we have already said, were broken into a multitude of distinct tribes, each having, for the most part, its particular dialect, and carrying on war against every other tribe. In some instances, several tribes were confederated together, either for the purposes of defence or aggression. Their whole number has been variously estimated, but it probably did not exceed 500,000 at the time of the settlement at Jamestown, in 1607.
When our ancestors came to these shores, they found the Indians thinly scattered over the country, though occasionally gathered in considerable groups in the more fertile valleys, and along the banks of rivers, lakes, and bays. They were in the rudest state of society, without science, without arts, without any metallic instruments, without domestic animals. They raised a little corn, which the women cultivated with a clam-shell, or the shoulder-blade of the buffalo. Devouring this with savage improvidence, they obtained a precarious supply for the rest of the year by gathering nuts and roots, or by hunting and fishing. Half clad in skins, or entirely naked, they roamed from place to place, passing their lives, alternately, in stupid idleness, and the fiercest excitements of war and the chase. Ignorant of the past, and improvident of the future, most of these tribes were sunk in the lowest depths of human degradation.
Such were the occupants of the soil, when the European settlers came to establish themselves here. Throughout the continent, the Indians appear to have been at first disposed to give a hospitable reception to the strangers who visited their shores; but they were soon taught to dread, and then to hate, a people, who shot them down, subjected them to slavery, and robbed them of their property and lands, without mercy or scruple. When the settlements began along our Atlantic coast, more than a century had passed since the discovery of the continent by Columbus, and ample time had elapsed for many of the tribes to experience, and all to know, the oppressive and formidable character of these European invaders.