We turn from the rude arts of men to their still ruder thinking—to customs springing from some sentiment or some strange imagination. Of these the most universal and the most significant are customs connected with the burial of the dead. To the habit of interring with the dead man the implements he most valued in life—his tools or weapons—we owe the little knowledge we possess of our very primitive ancestors. It is generally said that these articles were buried with the man, that he might have them ready for use in another world; and, no doubt, some vague idea of this kind has extensively prevailed: but if we may speculate on a subject so obscure as the imaginations of the savage, we should say that this idea grew out of the custom of burying with the dead man his own previous possessions, and that the custom itself at first originated in simple regret and respect for the dead. We cannot have any strong sentiment without feeling the desire in some way to manifest it. The dead man was loudly lamented—wept and wailed over—and the mourners often cut and wounded themselves as an exhibition of their grief. Well, at such a moment, instead of appropriating to themselves the possessions of the deceased, the survivors threw them into the grave with him. They were still in a manner his property. It would manifest a disrespect to the dead if at once, as soon as the hand of his chief was cold, another man had seized upon his spear and carried it to his own hut. Thus this one passionate desire to manifest grief and respect to a late friend or chief would sufficiently account for the act of interring with the body the instruments or weapons he had been in the habit of using. The custom once adopted, superstition would step in and enforce it, and the imagination would invest it with a new significance. Some poet of the land would first suggest that, if the dead man rose from his tomb, he would find himself equipped for the chase or for war. Sometimes the buried arms, vessels, or other implements, were broken before they were deposited in the grave, which does not seem to accord with the idea that they were laid there for any future use. It looks like the interpretation of a subsequent generation when it is said that the savage expected the broken tool or perforated vessel, like the decayed human body, to be restored again and made fit for his use. Here is an Indian, a Chinook, buried in his canoe. Within the canoe a broken sword is deposited. Am I to gather that the Chinook expected a maritime life hereafter, and even to revive floating upon the waters? Does not the whole act seem, at least in its initiation, to be symbolical? All was at an end. The man would float no more—would fight no more. The canoe was buried, the sword was broken.
But whether we are right or not in our supposition as to the origin of this idea—namely, that the articles buried in the tomb with the deceased would be useful to him in an after life—it is plain that such an idea has been entertained, and certainly all our learned writers upon these ancient customs of burial attribute this motive to our imaginative forefathers. When, in the old pagan burrows of the wold of Yorkshire or elsewhere, some British or Saxon charioteer has been exhumed, with the iron wheel-tires and bronzed horse-furniture (the wreck of the decayed war-chariot), and the skeletons of the horses, eloquent antiquarians have not failed to say (as Mr Wilson does) that the dead chief was buried thus “that he might enter the Valhalla of his gods, proudly borne in the chariot in which he had been wont to charge amid the ranks of his foes.” We presume they find themselves justified in this interpretation.
Here, again, we find that the new continent sets almost before the eyes of our traveller scenes similar to those which, as a European archæologist, he had been laboriously endeavouring to reconstruct in some remote antiquity.
“Upwards of forty years since, Black Bird, a famous chief of the Omahaws, visited the city of Washington, and on his return was seized with smallpox, of which he died on the way. When the chief found himself dying, he called his warriors around him, and, like Jacob of old, gave commands concerning his burial, which were as literally fulfilled. The dead warrior was dressed in his most sumptuous robes, fully equipped with his scalps and war-eagle’s plumes, and borne about sixty miles below the Omahaw village to a lofty bluff on the Missouri, which towers far above all the neighbouring heights, and commands a magnificent extent of landscape. To the summit of this bluff a beautiful white steed, the favourite war-horse of Black Bird, was led; and there, in presence of the whole nation, the dead chief was placed with great ceremony on its back, looking towards the river, where, as he had said, he could see the canoes of the white men as they traversed the broad waters of the Missouri. His bow was placed in his hand, his shield and quiver, with his pipe and medicine-bag, hung by his side. His store of pemmican and his well-filled tobacco-pouch were supplied, to sustain him on the long journey to the hunting-grounds of the great Manitou, where the spirits of his fathers awaited his coming. The medicine-men of the tribe performed their most mystic charms to secure a happy passage to the land of the great departed; and all else being completed, each warrior of the chiefs own band covered the palm of his right hand with vermilion, and stamped its impress on the white sides of the devoted war-steed. This done, the Indians gathered turfs and soil, and placed them around the feet and the legs of the horse. Gradually the pile arose under the combined labour of many willing hands, until the living steed and its dead rider were buried together under the memorial mound; and high over the crest of the lofty tumulus which covered the warrior’s eagle plumes a cedar post was reared, to mark more clearly to the voyagers on the Missouri the last resting-place of Black Bird, the great chief of the Omahaws.”
But there is one passage in Mr Wilson’s book which, we think, to the student of the ancient myth or religious legend must be replete with interest. It occurs in the chapter which treats on the use of tobacco and that custom of smoking which we have imported from the savage, much to the delectation, no doubt, of those who inhale the fumes of what they are pleased to call the fragrant weed, and much, assuredly, to the disgust and suffering of those who are involved, most unwillingly, in the smoke which others are exhaling around them. Never were two parties more sharply divided than the smokers and the non-smokers. The first will doubtless agree with the Indian in the belief that tobacco was of divine origin. Did not two hunters of the Susquehannas share their venison with a lovely squaw who mysteriously appeared before them in the forest? and did they not, “on returning to the scene of their feast thirteen moons after, find the tobacco-plant growing where she had sat?” and do not Indians tell us that the Great Spirit freely indulges in the intoxicating fumes which they themselves love so well? The non-smokers hold a different faith. They see no celestial gift in this black, fuliginous amusement; and if they do not ascribe to it a devilish origin, they assert that it is enjoyed with a devilish indifference to those to whom their beloved smoke is but stench and sickness. Into this custom of tobacco-smoking Mr Wilson enters at large, and bestows much learning on the inquiry; but it is especially to the institution of the pipe of peace amongst the Indians that we would now direct the attention of the reader.
We have, as Mr Wilson tells the story, the complete dissection of a myth; we see how a legend arises, or may arise, partly from the most trivial causes, and partly from generous impulses and high imaginations. Between the Minnesota and the Missouri rivers there stands a bold perpendicular cliff, “beautifully marked with distinct horizontal layers of light grey and rose or flesh-coloured quartz.” Near this a famous red pipe-stone is procured; a material, we presume, better fitted than any other for making pipes. Traces of both ancient and modern excavation prove that it has been the resort, during many generations, of Indian tribes, seeking this famous red pipe-stone. A spot to which independent tribes came for this purpose, and for this only, became neutral ground; became a spot on which they might meet in peace—perhaps to discuss their points of difference. But in process of time it became a sacred spot, and the peace between hostile tribes was preserved by a religious sanction. There are marks on the rock resembling the track of a large bird. These were converted into the footsteps of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit, therefore, at one time descended upon the rock and taught—what else could he be supposed to teach?—the sacred neutrality of the spot, and the privilege and duty of all tribes to renew their pipes there, and especially the calumet, or pipe of peace. The last version of the tradition runs thus:—
“Many ages,” say the Sioux, “after the red men were made, when all the different tribes were at war, the Great Spirit called them all together at the Red Rocks. He stood on the top of the rocks, and the red nations were assembled in infinite numbers in the plain below. He took out of the rock a piece of the red stone, and made a large pipe. He smoked it over them all; told them that it was part of their flesh; that though they were at war they must meet at this place as friends; that it belonged to them all; that they must make their calumets from it, and smoke them to him whenever they wished to appease him or get his goodwill. The smoke from his big pipe rolled over them all, and he disappeared in the cloud.”
The Sioux, notwithstanding this good teaching of the very tradition which they still repeat to the stranger, have, by the right of the strongest, taken possession of the sacred neutral ground; and they, and all other tribes of the red race, are either being absorbed into the white population or exterminated by it. The development of the myth and the people of the myth has been therefrom alike arrested. But how clearly we see its growth and formation! To what a mystical faith that flesh-coloured quartz was conducting! And what mingling of the divine and human would have been suggested by the act recorded of the Great Spirit! If these Indian tribes had finally coalesced in one nation, the myth would have been exalted, and the Great Spirit would have taught them an eternal bond of peace and brotherhood. If civilisation and culture had still further advanced, this peace and brotherhood would have embraced all mankind, and assumed the form of the highest moral teaching.
A considerable portion of Mr Wilson’s book is occupied with those ancient remains, whether in the valley of the Mississippi or in the forests of Central America, which speak of a civilisation, or at least of nations and of cities that had existed and left their ruins behind them, anterior to what we call the discovery of the New World. The subject is highly interesting, and it loses none of its interest in the hands of our author. He speaks very decidedly on the great antiquity of the mounds and the earthworks of the valley of the Mississippi; less decidedly on the antiquity of the monumental pillars and other architectural remains which were first brought to the knowledge of the English public through the travels of Mr Stephens in Central America. The work of Mr Squiers still contains, we believe, the fullest account we possess of those vast circular mounds, and other extraordinary earthworks, discovered within the territory of the United States. Both these writers, Mr Stephens and Mr Squiers, produced at the time of the publication of their several works a very vivid impression on the reading public of England. Both of them broke ground into quite new fields of inquiry, but both of them left the mind rather excited than informed. This was to be expected when the subject was of so novel and surprising a character. Mr Squiers saw evidences of serpent-worship and of other religious rites which his study of the antiquities of the Old World had made familiar to his imagination, in the circular mounds which he traced in the open field: and Mr Stephens, as he broke his way through the forests, saw the ruins of another Egypt stand before him.
That no tradition should exist amongst the present race of Indians with respect to these primitive “mound-builders,” is not surprising; nor would this alone indicate any very great antiquity. Mr Wilson thinks the state in which the skeletons were found within the tumuli—crumbling to dust on being touched—is sufficient proof of their great age. One must know all the circumstances of the burial, all the influences to which the skeleton has been exposed, before any safe conclusion can be drawn from this fact. But, leaving undetermined the antiquity of these remains, we think it plain that the first discoverers of them, whether of the mounds or of the ruined cities, have, with the natural enthusiasm pertaining to all discoverers, exaggerated the evidence they display of civilisation, or progress in the arts. After all, the soundest opinion seems to be that the “mound-builders” and the builders of the deserted cities were but the intellectual progenitors of those half-civilised Mexicans and Peruvians whom the Spaniards encountered and destroyed. It is not likely that any higher or equal state of civilisation had been attained and lost before the arrival of the Spaniards.