The Blackfeet, the Crows (their inveterate enemies), the Crees, the Assinneboins, occupying the country from the mouth of the Yellow Stone River to Lake Winnipeg, the Ojibbeways or Chippeways, holding the southern shores of Lake Superior, the Lake of the Woods, and the Athabasca; the Flatheads, on the head-waters of the Columbia; and the Cherokees, removed from Georgia to the upper waters of the Arkansas, are also important tribes; as are the Muskogee or Creek Indians, recently transplanted from Georgia and Alabama to the Arkansas, seven hundred miles west of the Mississippi.
The Seminolees are also in process of removal to the Arkansas, as are the Enchees, once a powerful tribe, but now merging into the above, and with them forming one people. Most of these tribes, as well as others that we have not room even to specify, have been reduced, by the different scourges before alluded to, in a manner frightful to contemplate. The Delawares, for example, have lost 10,000 by small-pox alone; and from a large and numerous tribe, now reckon 824 souls only! The Senecas, Oneidas and Tuskaroras, once forming part of that great compact known as the “Six Nations,” are now a mere name. The Kaskaskias, the Peorias, and the Piankeshaws, have fallen victims to the practice of drinking spirits, and to the diseases this fearful habit engenders, so that all are now reduced to a few individuals. Some tribes are totally extinguished;—as, for example the hospitable and friendly Mandans, of whom even the traders themselves report that no one of them was ever known to destroy a white man. These afford a melancholy instance of the rapidity with which the extermination before alluded to is effected. In the year 1834, when Mr Catlin visited these warlike and spirited, yet kindly dwellers of the woods, their number was 2000; three years after, they were infected by the traders with small-pox; and this, with certain suicides committed by individuals who could not survive the loss of all they loved, destroyed the whole tribe, some forty excepted, who were afterwards cut off by their enemies of a neighbouring tribe, so that at this moment not a Mandan exists over the whole wide continent, where, before the baleful appearance of the white man, his free ancestors ranged so happily.
This is bad, but a still more melancholy element of decay is the habit of drinking spirituous liquors, which is daily gaining ground among these hapless Americans; this produces an amount of crime and suffering that, even in our own country, could find no parallel; not only is the excitable nature of the Red man stirred to actual madness by these atrocious poisons; but because, unlike his brother of civilized countries, he depends on his own unassisted physical powers for the most immediate and pressing wants of life—no grazier or butcher, no miller or baker, has he to provide for a time against improvidence on his part; from no accommodating “shop” can his wife gain credit for the moment—his family starves at once if his own resources are destroyed; and an eloquent writer of the day has well remarked, that “it is dreadful to reflect on the situation of a poor Indian hunter, when he finds, he knows not why, that his limbs are daily failing him in the chase, that his arrow ceases to go straight to the mark, and that his nerves tremble before the wild animals it was but lately his pride to encounter.” We have been furnished by intelligent eye-witnesses with fearful instances of wrong and outrage committed by the unhappy Indians on each other while under the influence of the poison which we Christians—ah, woe for the profanation!—have bestowed on our Red brothers; but our limits do not permit their insertion.
We call the native American, “Indian,” in compliance with established custom; but there is no propriety in the term as applied to these people, who call themselves “Red men,” and nothing else. They are for the most part of robust make and of fair average size, except the Esquimaux inhabitants of the extreme north, who are dwarfish, and the Abipones, natives of the southern extremity of this vast continent, who are of great height; they have prominent features, high cheek-bones, and small deeply set black eyes; their complexion is a cinnamon colour, varying in its shades, and esteemed handsome among themselves in proportion as it is dark, but with a clear, warm, coppery hue, which last they esteem an evidence of the divine favour, for they believe that the Great Spirit loved his Red children better than their white brethren, and so breathed a more vivid life into their veins; a distinction of which the visible sign is the glowing complexion we have alluded to.
The meaner vices are held in especial contempt among the yet uncontaminated Indians: slanderers, cowards, liars, misers, and debtors who refuse to pay when the means are in their power, are shunned as persons in whose society no respectable man should be seen. On the subject of debt, in particular, Indian notions differ widely from ours. Should his debtor be unable to meet his engagements in consequence of illness or want of success in the chase, he scrupulously conceals the inconvenience this may occasion, and is careful never to name debt in the defaulter’s presence.
But, on the other hand, should the inability of the debtor proceed from indolence or intemperance, or should he be indisposed to pay when his means permit, he is then characterised as a “bad man”—his friends gradually abandon him, he becomes an object of public contempt, and nothing could after this induce his creditor to accept from him even his just demand. He is no longer permitted to pay; he has forfeited the privilege of the upright man, and must remain in the contempt into which he has sunk; but such instances, it will be readily supposed, are extremely rare.
Cowardice is not punished by loss of reputation alone in some tribes; as, among the Kansas, if the coward be found incorrigible, he is destroyed. Te-pa-gee was a young warrior of this tribe, who had been more than once charged with this fatal defect. He returned on a certain occasion with his brethren from an expedition that had been eminently successful, but in which he had himself behaved disgracefully. The whole tribe, except those who had lost relations, were engaged the next day in the usual rejoicings; but Te-pa-gee, conscious that cold looks were upon him, had withdrawn from the public ceremonials, and seated himself sullenly on the trunk of a tree by the river side. Shortly after, the dances of the squaws and children having led them into his neighbourhood, the great mass of the tribe were again around him, when E-gron-ga-see, one of their wisest men and bravest warriors, came forth from the festive group, and the sports being suspended, he declared to the offender, in a voice audible to all, that his cowardice had forfeited his life. Te-pa-gee instantly bared his breast, and the avenger, drawing his knife from beneath his robe, plunged it deep into the culprit’s bosom. Another warrior of equal authority then addressed the people, expatiating on the necessity of punishing such crimes as that committed by Te-pa-gee, who had meanwhile died before them almost without a groan. This fact is related by an eye-witness, who does not, however, tell us whether the unhappy man’s constancy in death did not go far to convince his judges that his fault was rather a defect of nerve than the absence of power to endure.
It is the custom of Indians at war with each other to imitate the cries of various animals of the chase, for the purpose of luring unwary hunters into an ambush. Three young warriors of the Ottawas being thus decoyed into a wood, two of them were shot and scalped; the third ran for his life, without discharging his piece, setting up the yell of defeat as he ran. The men of his tribe were alarmed, and went instantly in pursuit of the enemy, whom they could not overtake; but on their return, they fell in with a hunting party of the same tribe, whom they fell upon by surprise and scalped. The usual rejoicings of the women and children took place on their return; they were seated under the shade of broad trees to smoke with the old men, and Shembagah, the one who had escaped by running, went towards them with looks congratulating their success; but no one deigned him a look, or a word of notice, and he had scarcely got among them before all rose and left, the place. This punishment was too great for him to bear; he left his people without saying a word or taking leave of any one, and was never more heard of, while the relater of this anecdote remained with the tribe.
A girl of the Ottawas being taken prisoner by a party of the Kansas, was adopted into the family of a Kansas chief, and soon afterwards betrothed to his son, a youth named Moi-bee-she-ga, or the Sharp Knife. A few days before the espousals were to be solemnised, it happened that a party of the Mahaws came and fell upon the horses of the Kansas, which were grazing in a neighbouring prairie, and which they succeeded in carrying off; they were detected in the act by some Kansas women who were gathering wood, and the warriors being apprised, set off in pursuit. The old chief, now laden with many snows, was unable to accompany his warriors, whom Moi-bee-she-ga ought to have headed, but this last chose to remain with his bride. This so enraged his father, that he seized the arms which the recreant son shrank from using, and destroyed them before his face, declaring that Moi-bee-she-ga had become a squaw, and needed no arms. The Ottawa girl, equally shocked by the dereliction of her lover, to whom she had been warmly attached, refused to fulfil her engagement of marriage; and the delinquent, abandoned on all hands, was driven in disgrace from his people, and joined a party of the wandering Pawnees.