Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8) / Aboriginal America

by Unknown

And so it comes to pass that, if we attempt to define at any period during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the conflicts between the savages and Europeans on this continent, we have to look for the explanation of any special change in the relations of the Indian tribes to the varying interests and collisions of the different foreign nationalities in rivalry here. The hostilities between the French and the English were chronic and continuous. Frenchman’s Bay, at Mt. Desert, preserves the memorial of the first collision, when Argall, from Virginia, broke up the attempted settlement of Saussaye.[1340] As to the later developments of the antagonism, resulting in the extinction of French possession here, we are to refer them in about equal measure to two main causes,—the jealousy of the home governments, and the keen rivalry of the respective colonists for the lucrative spoils of the fur trade. The profit of traffic may be regarded as furnishing the prompting for strife on this side of the water, while the passion for territorial conquest engaged the intrigues and the armies of foreign courts in the stakes of wilderness warfare.

In tracing the course of such warfare we must take into our view two very effective agencies, which introduced important modifications in the methods and results of that warfare. In its progress these two agencies became more and more chargeable with very serious consequences. The first of these is the change induced in the warfare of the Indians by their possession of, leading steadily to a dependence upon, the white man’s firearms and supplies. The second is the usage, which the Indians soon learned to be profitable, of reserving their white prisoners for ransom, instead of subjecting them to death or torture.

When we read of some of the earliest so-called “deeds” by which the English colonists obtained from the sachems wide spaces of territory on the consideration of a few tools, hatchets, kettles, or yards of cloth, we naturally regard the transaction as simply illustrating the white man’s rapacity and cunning in tricking the simplicity of the savage. But we may be sure that in many such cases the Indian secured what was to him a full equivalent for that with which he parted. For, as the whites soon learned by experience, the savages supposed that in such transactions they were not alienating the absolute ownership of their lands, but only covenanting for the right of joint occupancy with the English. And then the coveted tools or implements obtained by them represented a value and a use not measurable by any reach of wild territory. A metal kettle, a spear, a knife, a hatchet, transformed the whole life of a savage. A blanket was to him a whole wardrobe. When he came to be the possessor of firearms and ammunition, having before regarded himself the equal of the white man, he at once became his superior. We shall see how the rivalry between the French and the English for traffic with the Indians, the enterprise of traders in pushing into the wilderness with pack-horses, the establishment of trucking houses, the facility with which the natives could obtain coveted goods from either party, and the occasional failure of supplies in the contingencies of warfare, were on many occasions the turning-points in the fights in the wilderness, and in the shifting of savage partisanship from one side to the other, as the fickle allies found their own interests at stake.

It was in 1609, when Champlain invaded the Iroquois country, on the lake that bears his name, that the astounded savages first saw the flash and marked the deadly effect of his arquebuse. But the shock soon spent itself. The weapon was found to be a terrestrial one, made and put to service by a man. The Dutch on the Hudson very soon supplied the Mohawks with this effective instrument for prosecuting the fur trade. The French began the general traffic with the Indians near the St. Lawrence, in metal vessels, knives, hatchets, awls, cotton and woollen goods, blankets, and that most coveted of all the white man’s stores, the maddening “fire-water.” But farther north and west for full two hundred years, from 1670 quite down to our own time, annual cargoes of these commodities were imported through Hudson Bay by the chartered company, and had been distributed by its agents among those who paid for them in peltries, in such abundance that the savages became really dependent upon them, and gradually conformed their habits to the use of them. Of course, in their raids upon English outposts, the spoils of war in the shape of such supplies added rapacity to their ferocity. It was with a proud flourish that Indian warriors, enriched by the plunder on the field of Braddock’s disastrous defeat, strutted before the walls of Fort Duquesne, arrayed in the laced hats, sashes, uniform, and gorgets of British officers.

When Céloron was sent, in 1749, by the governor of Canada, to take possession of interior posts along the Alleghanies, he found at each of the Indian villages, as at Logstown, a chief centre, from a single to a dozen English traders, well supplied with goods for a brisk peltry traffic. He required the chiefs, on the threat of the loss of his favor, to expel them and to forbid their return. But the Indians insisted that they needed the goods. Some of these traders were worthless reprobates, mostly Scotch-Irish, from the frontiers of Pennsylvania. When Christopher Gist was sent, the next year, by the Ohio Land Company, to follow Céloron and to thwart his schemes, he complained strongly of these demoralized and demoralizing traders. In the evidence given before the British House of Commons on the several occasions when the monopoly and the mode of business of the Hudson Bay Company were under question, the extent to which the natives had come to depend upon European supplies was very strongly brought into notice. It was urged that some of the tribes had actually, by disuse, lost their skill in their old weapons. It was even affirmed that in some of the tribes multitudes had died by freezing and starvation, because their recent supplies had failed them. This dependence of the natives upon the resources of civilization, observable from the opening of their intercourse with the whites, has been steadily strengthening for two hundred years, till now it has become an absolute and heavy exaction upon our national treasury.

The custom which soon came in, to soften the atrocities of Indian warfare by the holding of white prisoners for ransom, was grafted upon an earlier usage among the natives of adopting prisoners or captives. There was a formal ceremonial in such cases, and after its performance those who would otherwise have been victims were treated with all kindness. The return of a war-party to its own village was attended with widely different manifestations according to the fortune which had befallen it. If it consisted only of a baffled and flying remnant that had failed in its hazardous enterprise, its coming was announced, and received by the old men, women, and youths in the village with howls and lamentations. If, however, it had been successful, as proved by rich plunder, reeking scalp-locks, and prisoners, some runners were sent in advance to announce its approach. Then began a series of orgies, in which the old squaws were the most demonstrative and hideous. While the scalp-locks were displayed and counted, the well-guarded prisoners were exultingly escorted by their captors, the squaws gathering around them with taunts and petty tormentings. The woful fate which was waiting these prisoners was foreshadowed in prolonged rehearsals for its final horrors. One by one they were forced to run the gauntlet from goal to goal, between lines of yelping fiends, under blows and missiles, stones, sticks, and tomahawks, while efforts were made to trip them in their course, that they might be pounded in their helplessness when maddened with pain. Any exhibition of weakness or dread did but intensify the malignant frenzy of their tormentors. Those who lived through this ordeal, which was intended to be but a preliminary in the barbaric entertainment, and to stop short of the actual extinction of life, were afterwards, by deliberate preparations made in full view of the prisoners, subjected to all the ingenuities of rage and cruelty which untamed savage fiendishness could devise. The hero who bore the trial without flinching, singing his song of defiance, and in his turn mocking his tormentors because they failed to break his spirit, was most likely to find mercy in a finishing stroke dealt by a magnanimous foe.

Anything like an alleviation of these dread revenges of savage warfare being unallowable, there was open one way of complete relief in the usage of adoption, just referred to. This, however, was never available to the prisoner from his own first motion or prompting. He was wholly passive in the matter. It came solely from the inclination of any one in the village, a warrior or a squaw who, having recently lost a relative, or one whose service was necessary, might select a prisoner from the group as desirable to supply a place that was vacant. There would seem to have been a large liberty allowed in the exercise of this privilege, especially for those who were mourning for a relative lost in the encounter in which the prisoner was taken. Sometimes the merest caprice might prompt the selection. Scarcely, except in the rare case of some proud captive who would haughtily scorn to avail himself of a seeming affinity with the tribe of a hated or abject enemy, would the offered privilege of adoption be refused. For, in any case, an ultimate escape from an enforced durance might be looked to. Of course those who were thus adopted were mostly the young and vigorous. The little children were not especially favored in the process,—except, as soon to be noted, the children of the whites. The ceremonial for adoption was traditional. Beginning generally with somewhat rough and intimidating treatment, the captive was for a while left in suspense as to his fate. When at length the intent of the arbiter of his life was made known to him, the method pursued has been very frequently described to us in detail by the whites who were the subjects of it.[1341] The candidate was plunged and thoroughly soused in a stream to rinse out his white blood; the hair of his head, saving the scalp-lock, was plucked out; and after some mouthings and incantations, completing the initiation, all winning blandishments, arts, and appliances were engaged to secure the confidence of the adopted captive, and to draw from him some responsive sign of affection. He was arrayed in the choicer articles of forest finery, and nestled in the family lodge. The father, the squaw, or the patron, in whatever relation, to whom he henceforward belonged, spared no effort to engage and comfort him. Watchful eyes, of course, jealously guarded any restless motions looking towards an escape. The final aim was to secure a fully nationalized and acclimated new member of a tribe, ready to share all its fortunes in peace and war.

Naturally there were differences in this whole process and its results, as they concerned these attempted affiliations between the members of Indian tribes and in the adoption of white captives.[1342]

In their early conflicts with the whites, the Indians generally practised an indiscriminate slaughter. There were a few exceptions to the rule in King Philip’s war.[1343] In the raids of the French, with their Indian allies, upon the English settlements, prisoners taken on either side came gradually to have the same status as in civilized warfare, and to be held for exchange. This, however, would proceed upon the supposition that both parties had prisoners. But before there was anything like equality in this matter, the captives were for the most part such as had been seized from among the whites in inroads upon their settlements, not in the open field of warfare. A midnight assault upon some frontier cabins, or upon the lodge of some lonely settler, left the savages to choose between a complete massacre or upon a selection of some of their victims for leading away with them to their own haunts, if not too cumbersome or dangerous for the wilderness journey. It soon came to be understood among the raiding parties of Indians in alliance with the French in Canada that white captives had a ransom value. Contributions were often gathered up in neighborhoods that had been raided, and in the meeting-houses of New England on Sundays, for redeeming such captives as were known to be in Canada. And, curiously enough, Judge Sewall in his journal records appeals for charity in the same form for the redemption of captives in the hands of our own savages, and for the ransom of our seamen and traders who were kept in durance by African corsairs.