The Story of Our Country / Every Child Can Read

by Unknown

These people lived in a very wild fashion. They spent much of their time in hunting, fishing, and fighting. They raised some Indian corn and beans, and were fond of tobacco, but most of their food was got from wild animals killed in the woods. They were as fond of fighting as they were of hunting. They were divided into tribes, some of which were nearly always at war with other tribes. They had no weapons but stone hatchets and bows and arrows, but they were able with these to kill many of their enemies. People say that they were badly treated by the whites, but they treated one another worse than the whites ever did.

The Indians were very cruel. The warriors shaved off all their hair except one lock, which was called the scalp lock. When one of them was killed in battle this lock was used to pull off his scalp, or the skin of his head. They were very proud of these scalps, for they showed how many men they had killed.

When they took a prisoner, they would tie him to a tree and build a fire round him and burn him to death. And while he was burning they would torture him all they could. We cannot feel so much pity for the Indians when we think of all this. No doubt the white men have treated them very unjustly, but they have stopped all these terrible cruelties, and that is something to be thankful for. In this country, where once there was constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and burning of prisoners, now there is peace and kindness and happiness. So if evil has been done, good has come of it.

At the time I am speaking of, forests covered much of this great continent. They spread everywhere, and the Indians lived under their shade, and had wonderful skill in following animals or enemies through their shady depths. They read the ground much as we read the pages of a book. A broken twig, a bit of torn moss, a footprint which we could not see, were full of meaning to them, and they would follow a trail for miles through the woods where we would not have been able to follow it a yard. Their eyes were trained to this kind of work, but in time some of the white men became as expert as the Indians, and could follow a trail as well.

The red men lived mostly in little huts covered with skins or bark, which they called wigwams. Some of the tribes lived in villages, where there were large bark houses. But they did not stay much in their houses, for they liked better to be in the open air. Now they were hunting deer in the woods, now fishing or paddling their bark canoes in the streams, now smoking their pipes in front of their huts, now dancing their war dances or getting ready to fight.

The men did nothing except hunting and fighting. The women had to do all other work, such as cooking, planting and gathering corn, building wigwams, and the like. They did some weaving of cloth, but most of their clothes were made of the skins of wild animals.

In war times the warriors tried to make themselves as ugly as they could, painting their faces in a horrid fashion and sticking feathers in their hair. They seemed to think they could scare their enemies by ugly faces.

I have spoken of the tribes of the Indians. Some of these tribes were quite large, and were made up of a great number of men and women who lived together and spoke the same language. Each tribe was divided up into clans, or small family-like groups, and each clan had its sachem, or peace-chief. There were war-chiefs, also, who led them to battle. The sachems and chiefs governed the tribes and made such laws as they had.

Every clan had some animal which it called its totem, such as the wolf, bear, or fox. They were proud of their totems, and the form of the animal was tattooed on their breast; that is, it was picked into the skin with needles. All the Indians were fond of dancing, and their war dances were as fierce and wild as they could make them.

The tribes in the south were not as savage as those in the north. They did more farming, and had large and well-built villages. Some of them had temples and priests, and looked upon the sun as a god. They kept a fire always burning in the temple, and seemed to think this fire was a part of their sun-god. They had a great chief who ruled over the tribe, and also a head war-chief, a high-priest, and other rulers.