Peace is concluded, and treaties ratified, by smoking. Wampum, and wampum belts, are also commonly used on such occasions. Wampum, formerly, and now among some tribes, the current coin of the Indians, is formed of shells found on the coasts of New England and Virginia: some of those shells are of a purple color, others white; but the former are reckoned most valuable. They are cut into the shape of oblong beads, about a quarter of an inch long, perforated, and strung on a small leathern thong: several of these strings, neatly sewed together by fine sinewy threads, form a belt, consisting of ten, twelve, or more strings. The value of each bead, and, consequently, of each string or belt, is exactly known. The size of the belt, which is often about two feet long, and three or four inches broad, is proportioned to the solemnity and importance of the occasion on which it is given. The chiefs occasionally give strings to each other as tokens of friendship; but belts are reserved for the ratification of national treaties, every stipulation of which is recorded to posterity by the hieroglyphics on the belt.
Tribes in amity occasionally apply to each other for a supply of their wants. When one tribe is in need of any commodity with which another is well provided, the needy tribe send a deputation of their number to smoke with their wealthier neighbors, and to inform them of their wants; and it would be a breach of Indian courtesy to send them away without the expected supply. What they smoke is tobacco mixed with the inner bark of the willow.
The Shoshonees, a band on the Rocky mountains, before smoking with strangers, pull off their moccasons, in token of the sacred sincerity of their professions; and by this act they not only testify their sincerity, but also imprecate on themselves the misery of going barefooted forever, if they prove unfaithful to their word.
A number of different languages are spoken by the Indians; and, in some cases, different dialects of the same language are found among different tribes.
The original languages, beside that of the Esquimaux, are said to be principally three,—the Iroquois, the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware, and the Floridian. These languages are so distinct, as to have no perceivable affinity. The Iroquois was spoken by the Iroquois or Six Nations, and several other tribes. The Iroquois, or Six Confederated Nations, so famous in Indian history, and once so formidable by their numbers, laws, and military prowess, are the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagoes, and Tuscaroras. The Delaware language was spoken by many nations in the middle provinces; and the Floridian by the Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and other tribes in the southern states. Those languages are said to be copious and expressive: they often consist of long compounds, and comprise many ideas in one word.
The following observations on this interesting race of men are furnished by a person who has spent many years in intimate contact with severaltribes of the north-west, and may, therefore, be considered good authority. He writes expressly for this work.
‘There are few topics on which so much has been written, and to so little purpose, as the character, manners, habits and origin of the aborigines of North America. Novelists, poets, travellers and philosophers have all failed to convey an adequate idea of them. This arises, in our opinion, in a great measure, from the modern propensity to generalization. A writer who has been present at an Indian council, has seen the nonchalant demeanor of the chiefs, and has heard the tropes and metaphors with which they garnish their discourse, gravely states that the self-possession of all Indians can never be disturbed by any circumstances, and that the refinements of poetry and oratory are as familiar in their mouths as household words. Another, who sees the women performing the hard labor of their families, while the men stand idly by, pronounces that squaws are regarded as slaves. Now our experience assures us that the premises, on which such general conclusions are based, are almost always fallacious.
‘Little need be said concerning the origin of the American natives. The most probable conclusion is, that they immigrated into the new continent via Behring’s strait; but whether they came by that route, or crossed the Atlantic from Wales, or the Pacific, from Japan, certain it is that their physical peculiarities plainly distinguish them from all the races of the old world. We judge it safe to entertain an opinion once expressed in our presence by an old Indian. ‘Why must we have descended from your fathers?’ said he. ‘Is it not as reasonable to suppose that God created the Indian where he now is, as that he made the white man in the garden you have been talking about?’ This idea, if not sanctioned by the Mosaic account of the creation is, at least, not contradicted by it. We count the resemblances, which exist between the customs and traditions of certain tribes in both continents, as of very little importance. People living in different countries by similar pursuits, most necessarily fall into similar observances. Every tribe that lives on the banks of a stream or the ocean, must have witnessed a high tide or an overflow, and hence the almost universal tradition of a deluge. In our opinion, no importance ought to be attached to the accounts of Indians of their own origin. Some septs, like the Pawnees and Choctaws, say they sprang from the earth, the Incas descended from the sun, the Osages are contented with such progenitors as a snail and a beaver.
‘The idea that the present race of aborigines dispossessed a race more advanced in civilization and less warlike than themselves, seems to us to rest on no real foundation. The articles found with skeletons exhumed from barrows, are still in use among the more remote tribes. Indians still, occasionally, construct rude fortifications. The pottery, on which antiquarians rely as illustrative of this favorite theory, is made and used to this day by the remote Dahcotahs and Assinneboins. If the field works found in different parts of the country be adduced as proofs of the civilization of the supposed former race, we answer that they do not betoken the tenth part of the ingenuity displayed in the construction of a birch canoe.
‘The aborigines of America have generally been esteemed to be divided into two distinct races, viz. the Esquimaux and the red Indians. We doubt that the races are distinct. The Esquimaux are, indeed, milder in character, and less perfect in physical conformation than their southernneighbors; but is not the difference owing to climate and mode of life? Fishermen, and especially such fishermen as the Esquimaux, whose whole time and care is requisite to preserve life, cannot be warriors. People who, like the Esquimaux, live upon scanty food in an inhospitable clime, must necessarily be dwarfish. Bear witness tribes who live in the same manner on the old continent. Besides, captain Franklin informs us that those of this people who inhabit a less inhospitable coast than their brethren (those east of the Coppermine river) are of the ordinary stature of mankind.