Their weapons for hunting are lances five or six feet long, and tipped with stone or the bone of some animal, and bows with arrows similarly pointed. The buffalo is sometimes hunted by men who have partially concealed their persons in the skin of the white wolf, and who creep to within shot of their game by favour of this disguise; for the buffalo, accustomed to the white wolf, and safe from his attack unless, when, separated from the herd, he becomes the prey of a pack, permits the approach of the Indian thus masked, the latter being careful to keep to leeward of his game, whose scent is very acute.
Indians sometimes drive whole herds of buffalo, elk, and deer, into impassable ravines or to the brink of precipices, when they slaughter as many as they may need; but none were ever destroyed wantonly before the introduction of whisky; whereas at this time whole herds are killed merely for their skins, the flesh being left to decay on the prairies; and this, by depopulating the hunting-grounds, induces famine, and is another cause of Indian suffering and final extinction.
Buffaloes are often destroyed by the panther; solitary individuals sometimes fall a prey to a pack of wolves; others perish in the burning prairies, that awfully peculiar feature of the American solitudes; a few are drowned every season in attempting to cross the ice of rivers not firmly frozen; but the principal element of their destruction is in the rapacity of the trader; and it has been calculated that the activity of this last-named agent will ensure the extermination of this most valuable creature within a very short period of time.
The education of the Indian child is an object of the most profound interest, not only to his own family but to the whole tribe. He is taught to love his country and tribe, to contemn falsehood, to reverence age, to be modest and silent; he is strictly enjoined to reward a kindness, but also to avenge an injury; to aid and guard a friend, but also to injure, by every means in his power, and relentlessly to persecute, an enemy; to abhor theft, unless it be practised on the property of an enemy, when it is called highly meritorious. The sports of youth are watched attentively by their elders, and all evidences of cowardice, meanness, &c., are followed by the needful discipline. The Indian usually retains his mother’s name until he has entitled himself, by some remarkable act of prowess, endurance, &c., to choose one for himself, or been distinguished by some appellation bestowed by the tribe. Some of these “names” are sufficiently amusing, as, for example, “He who jumps over every one,” “The very sweet man,” “The man of good sense,” “No fool,” “The bird that goes to war,” “He who strikes two at once,” &c. The names of women are not always inelegant. Take as a specimen of Indian taste in this matter, “The bending willow,” “The pure fountain,” “The sweet-scented grass.” Others are scarcely so complimentary, as, “The female bear,” “The woman who lives in the bear’s den,” “The creature that creeps,” &c.
The constancy with which an Indian endures tortures, is among the best known traits of his character, but his power of enduring labour has been less insisted on; nay, it has been denied by those who despair of the civilization of the race, or who believe that its destruction is a consequence inevitable to the white man’s progress: but those who so judge know little of our Red brothers. We could adduce many facts in proof of this, were our space not wholly exhausted; but we must defer these, as well as the account we had purposed giving of the very extraordinary religious ceremonies practised among some of the tribes. We may, however, possibly return to the subject at some other time.
THE IRISH FIDDLER.
BY W. CARLETON.
What a host of light-hearted associations are revived by that living fountain of fun and frolic, an Irish fiddler! Every thing connected with him is agreeable, pleasant, jolly. All his anecdotes, songs, jokes, stories, and secrets, bring us back from the pressure and cares of life, to those happy days and nights when the heart was as light as the heel, and both beat time to the exhilarating sound of his fiddle.
The old harper was a character looked upon by the Irish rather as a musical curiosity, than a being specially created to contribute to their enjoyment. There was something about him which they did not feel to be in perfect sympathy with their habits and amusements. He was above them, not of them; and although they respected him, and treated him kindly, yet was he never received among them with that spontaneous ebullition of warmth and cordiality with which they welcomed their own musician, the fiddler. The harper, in fact, belonged to the gentry, and to the gentry they were willing to leave him. They listened to his music when he felt disposed to play for them, but it only gratified their curiosity, instead of enlivening their hearts—a fact sufficiently evident from the circumstance of their seldom attempting to dance to it. This preference, however, of the fiddle to the harp, is a feeling generated by change of times and circumstances, for it is well known that in days gone by, when Irish habits were purer, older, and more hereditary than they are now, the harp was the favourite instrument of young and old, of high and low.
The only instrument that can be said to rival the fiddle, is the bagpipe; but every person knows that Ireland is a loving country, and that at our fairs, dances, weddings, and other places of amusement, Paddy and his sweetheart are in the habit of indulging in a certain quiet and affectionate kind of whisper, the creamy tones of which are sadly curdled by the sharp jar of the chanter. It is not, in fact, an instrument adapted for love-making. The drone is an enemy to sentiment, and it is an unpleasant thing for a pretty blushing girl to find herself put to the necessity of bawling out her consent at the top of her lungs, which she must do, or have the ecstatic words lost in its drowsy and monotonous murmur. The bagpipe might do for war, to which, with a slight variation, it has been applied; but in our opinion it is only fit to be danced to by an assembly of people who are hard of hearing. Indeed, we have little doubt but its cultivation might be introduced with good effect as a system of medical treatment, suitable to the pupils of a deaf and dumb institution; for if any thing could bring them to the use of their ears, its sharp and stiletto notes surely would effect that object.