The native American is deeply imbued with religious feeling; no Indian who maintains a fair character in his tribe is without some place of retirement for worship and meditation; a lonely tree, a nook in the bank of a stream, the hollow of a rock, are frequently selected for this purpose; nor is the habit confined to such tribes as have no fixed religious ceremonies; it was practised by the Mandans and others, many of whom possessed oratories such as we have just described, in addition to their “medicine” or “mystery lodges,” which may be called their public temples. The Osages, Kansas, and other tribes west of the Mississippi, never fail to implore the blessing of the Great Spirit on breaking up their encampments, and they return thanks devoutly for the food they have found, and the preservation they have experienced, on arriving at the end of their journey. Thanks and praises are also publicly offered at every new moon, at the commencement of the buffalo hunts in spring, and at the ingathering of the corn; at which latter period a feast is held, called the corn feast: over this, among some tribes, the oldest woman presides. The Minatarrees boil a large kettle full of the new corn in presence of all the people, four medicine men, painted with white clay, dancing round the kettle until its contents are well boiled; these are next burnt to ashes as an offering to the Great Spirit; the fire is then extinguished; new fire is immediately created by rubbing two sticks together; with this they cook the corn for their own feast, and the remainder of the day is spent in festivity.
Dances are also performed to the Great Spirit on various occasions, as among the Ojibbeways on the first fall of snow; this is danced in snow-shoes. All believe in a future state of existence—in the reward of the good by an eternal residence in pleasant and plentifully supplied hunting grounds beyond the great waters—and in the punishment of the wicked by transformation into some loathsome beast, reptile, or insect, and by banishment to barren, parched, and desolate regions, the abodes of bad spirits, for a period proportionate to the enormity of their guilt. Prayers are also offered to the evil spirit in deprecation of his enmity, but on none of these ceremonies is attendance compelled; that Indian is, however, less respected, who is known constantly to absent himself from all.
The “medicine man” of the Indians is at once prophet, priest, and physician; he has sometimes great influence. The ceremony by which this dignity is attained among the Sioux, is one involving no little suffering. The candidate for this honour has innumerable splints of wood driven through the most sensitive parts of his flesh, and being suspended by some of these to a pole, with his medicine bag in his hand, he is expected to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the sun from its rising to its setting, when he is taken down, and entitled to be called a medicine or mystery man for the remainder of his life; but he has to make ceaseless efforts for the support of his character, since the failure of either his cures or his prophecies renders him liable to universal contempt.
Almost every family has its medicine or mystery bag, which consists of a beaver or otter skin curiously ornamented; this contains the medicinal stores and smaller consecrated articles of the family; it is considered a great disgrace to sell or otherwise part with an article once consecrated, and the medicine bag is always held sacred and inviolate to every hand but that of its owner. When a warrior of the Sac and Fox tribe falls in battle, his widow suspends his mystery bag on the pole before his tent, and sits herself within the lodge; the warriors, returned from the battle, and adorned with the scalps they have taken from the enemy, then assemble before the lodge; they dance to the medicine bag of their lost brother, and throw presents to his widow, of such articles as they think may best console her for her loss.
The Indian dwelling is much varied in its form and manner among the various tribes; the Pawnees, for example, live in lodges thatched with prairie grass, and which are not unlike immense bee-hives.
The Sioux, the Camanchees, the Crows, and others inhabiting a vast tract on the upper waters of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and extending to the base of the Rocky Mountains, have moveable tents formed of buffalo skins richly ornamented, according to Indian notions of ornament, and fastened to poles sometimes twenty-five feet high; some of these tents will shelter eighty persons, and require from thirty to thirty-five buffalo skins to cover them.
The Riccarees, Mandans, &c. are, or were, lodged in villages fortified by strong stockades eighteen feet high; their huts are formed of poles covered closely and smoothly with earth, and this in process of time becomes so compact and hard, that men, women, and children, recline and play on their tops.
It has been sometimes asserted that the Indian people have a common language, but this is not the case; scarcely any two of their nations between whom no intercourse exists, possess a language understood by both, but this inconvenience is obviated by a “language of signs,” so effective and eloquent that by this every Indian is enabled to communicate with his brother of whatever nation or tribe, and hence perhaps has arisen the supposition that all speak a common language. The mode of writing among Indians is entirely hieroglyphic, and is of course liable to wide misconstruction; but they lay down maps with no mean degree of accuracy, and the chiefs wear the boundaries of their hunting-grounds traced on their robes; a counterpart being kept in the public lodge among such other records as the nation may possess, and those are referred to if any dispute arise among neighbouring tribes.
Their manufactures are of course few and simple. Stones are cut into pestles and mortars, tomahawks, knives, pipes, &c.; pottery is formed for domestic purposes from the clays furnished by all parts of their country; mats are woven from grass or rushes, and blankets from the hair of the buffalo. These articles are mostly the work of the women, who with the children plant, cultivate, and gather in the crops, collect wild rice and pash-e-quah, a large bulbous root, in form like the sweet potato and in taste like the chesnut, but more juicy. Nuts of many sorts, several kinds of plums, osage oranges, gooseberries, strawberries, and many sorts of grapes, are also collected in their season. Besides this, the women dress buffalo skins, procure wood and water, and in some tribes fetch home the game which the hunter, having tracked and killed, then leaves to their further disposal.
Beaver and other skins, belts of wampum, and coloured shells ground to an oval form, serve as coin; but the most important wealth of the Indian is in his horses and dogs, which assist him in the chase, and of which some possess great numbers. Many tribes of Indians are exceedingly bold and expert horsemen, the Camanchees more particularly, many of whom perform feats of dexterity on their wild horses that would astonish our boldest equestrians. These men are often seen to throw themselves on one side of their horses, to avoid the arrows of an enemy or the attack of an enraged buffalo, in such a manner that the extremity of one foot only seems to hold by the animal, and that while he continues to move at full speed; nay, some have been even known to shoot arrows while in that position, the tenure of which is altogether inconceivable to the European rider.