X. ――INDIAN TRIBES
THE North American Indians are of a red copper color, with some diversity of shade. The men are of the middle stature, large boned, and well made; with small black eyes, lodged in deep sockets, high cheek bones, nose more or less aquiline, mouth large, lips rather thick, and the hair of the head black, straight, and coarse. In some tribes, they carefully extract the hair of the beard and other parts of the body, and hence were long believed destitute of that excrescence. The general expression of the countenance is gloomy and severe. Formerly, some tribes flattened the heads of their infants by artificial pressure; but at present, that practice is unknown to the east of the Rocky mountains. They have a sound understanding, quick apprehension, and retentive memory, with an air of indifference in their general behavior.
The women, or squaws, differ considerably from the men, both in person and features. They are commonly short, with homely, broad faces; but have often an expression of mildness and sweetness in their looks.
Except when engaged in war, hunting and fishing are the sole employments of the men. By means of these, by the spontaneous productions of the earth, and by a partial cultivation of the soil, they procure a precarious subsistence; feasting freely when successful in the chase, but capable of great abstinence, when provisions are less plentiful. Some of the tribes, when first visited by Europeans, raised considerable crops; and they taught the early settlers in New England to plant and dress maize. At present, several nations cultivate maize, beans, pumpkins, and water-melons; and in this way considerably increase their means of subsistence.
The sight, smell, and hearing of the Indians, being frequently and attentively exercised, are all remarkably acute. They can trace the footsteps of man or beast through the forest, and over the plain and mountain, where an inexperienced eye cannot discern the slightest vestige. They can often judge, with much accuracy, how many persons have been in the company, how long it is since they passed, and even, at times, to what nation they belonged. They can pursue their course through the pathless forest, or over the snowy mountain, with undeviating certainty, and are guided by marks which entirely escape the notice of an European.
Strangers to letters, and untutored by learning, their passions, which are little curbed by parental authority, grow up wild and unpruned, like the trees of their native forests. They are fickle and capricious; irascible and impetuous; kind to their friends, vindictive and cruel towards their enemies; and in order to execute their revenge, they readily exercise dissimulation and deceit, and shrink from no toil or danger. Their distinguishing qualities are strength, cunning, and ferocity; and as war is their first employment, so bravery is their first virtue.
The ancient weapon of the hunter was the bow and arrow; but most of them have now procured guns. Their dress differs considerably in different tribes. It consisted originally of skins; but many of them are now provided with blankets and different kinds of cloth. The dress of the Konzas, a tribe on the Missouri, may serve as a sample. They protect their feet with moccasons, or shoes made of dressed deer, elk, or buffalo skin: leggins of deer skin reach to the upper part of the thigh: a breech-cloth passes between the legs, and is attached to a girdle fastened round the loins. A blanket or skin covers the upper part of the body; but in warm weather it is laid aside. In some tribes, the hair is allowed to flow loosely over the face and shoulders; in others, it is carefully braided, knotted and ornamented, and is always well greased. In many cases, the head is bare, both in summer and winter; but in others, both men and women wear a cap like an inverted bowl. The men have also a war cap, which they put on as a symbol of mourning, or when preparing for battle. It is commonly decorated with the feathers of rare birds, or with the claws of beavers or eagles, or other similar ornaments. A quill or feather is also suspended from it for every enemy that the warrior has slain in battle. They often suspend from their ears wampum beads, silver and tin trinkets, and they are fond of bracelets and rings. The face and body are often besmeared with a mixture of grease and coal. They are very attentive to personal decoration; and vermilion is an important article at their toilet. The faces of the men are painted with more care than those of the women; and the latter have more pride in adorning the countenances of their husbands than their own. A tobacco pouch, attached to the girdle or carried in the hand, is a usual part of their equipment. The women’s dress is partly like that of the men; but their leggins only reach to the knee; they have sleeveless shifts, which come down to the ankle, and a mantle covers all.
The wigwams, tents, or lodges of the Indians, are differently constructed in different nations. The rudest are formed of branches, resting against each other at the top, covered with leaves or grass, and forming a very imperfect shelter against the weather. The nations on the west of the Rocky mountains have houses formed of a frame of sticks, covered with mats and dried grass. Many tribes erect long poles, in a circular form at the bottom, and resting against each other at the top, which they cover with skins; others have oblong lodges, consisting of a wooden frame, covered with grass mats and earth. The light is admitted by a small door, and by an aperture in the top, which serves also for the escape of the smoke. The fire is in the middle of the lodge, and the family sit round it on the bare ground; but they spread a skin for a stranger. They readily kindle a fire, by rapidly turning one piece of smooth wood upon another; but in the vicinity of Europeans, they are now generally provided with flint and steel.
Illustration: Movable Lodges of the Kaskaias.
Their scanty and simple furniture and culinary utensils are suited to their humble dwellings and homely manner of life. A kettle, a wooden bowl, a couple of wooden or horn spoons, a few skins for beds and covers, and a buffalo’s stomach for carrying water, are the chief articles of domestic accommodation. Formerly they used earthen pots; but these are now generally superseded by metallic pots and kettles, purchased from the white traders.
Many of the tribes are strangers to bread and salt. Besides fruits and roots, they feed on the flesh of the animals they kill, boiled or roasted. In travelling, pemmican is their favorite food. It consists of flesh cut into thin slices, dried in the sun or over a slow fire, beat to a coarse powder between two stones, mixed with grease, and then carefully packed up. In different nations it is known by different names.
Among the tribes who practise cultivation, maize is sometimes roasted in the ashes, and sometimes bruised and boiled, and is then called hominy. They also boil and eat wild rice, which grows in considerable quantities in some parts of the country. They have no fixed time for meals, but eat when they are hungry. They present food to a stranger, at what time soever he enters their dwelling.
Polygamy is very common among them; and the husband occasionally finds it necessary to administer a little wholesome castigation to his more quarrelsome or refractory squaws. But many are satisfied with one wife. The care of the tent, and the whole drudgery of the family, devolve on the women. They gather fuel, cook the provisions, and repair every article of dress; cultivate the ground, where any is cultivated; carry the baggage on a journey; and pitch the tent when they halt. In these and similar employments, their lordly fathers, husbands, and brothers think it degrading to assist them, and unworthy of warriors to engage in such employments.
The Indians never chastise their children, especially the boys; thinking that it would damp their spirits, check their love of independence, and cool their martial ardor, which they wish above all things to encourage. ‘Reason,’ say they, ‘will guide our children, when they come to the use of it; and before that, their faults cannot be very great.’ They avoid compulsory measures, and allow the boys to act with uncontrolled freedom; but endeavor by example, instruction, and advice, to train them to diligence and skill in hunting; to animate them with patience, courage, and fortitude in war; and to inspire them with contempt of danger, pain and death,――qualities of the highest order in the estimation of an Indian.
By gentleness and persuasion they endeavor to imbue the minds of their children with virtuous sentiments, according to their notions of virtue. The aged chiefs are zealous in this patriotic labor, and the squaws give their cordial co-operation.
Ishuchenau, an old Kanza warrior, often admonished the group of young auditors who gathered around him of their faults, and exhorted them never to tell a lie, and never to steal, except from an enemy, whom it is just to injure in every possible way. ‘When you become men,’ said he, ‘be brave and cunning in war, and defend your hunting grounds against all encroachments: never suffer your squaws and little ones to want; protect them and strangers from insult. On no occasion betray a friend; be revenged on your enemies; drink not the poisonous strong water of the white people, for it is sent by the bad Spirit to destroy the Indians. Fear not death; none but cowards fear to die. Obey and venerate old people, particularly your parents. Fear and propitiate the bad Spirit, that he may do you no harm; love and adore the Good Spirit, who made us all, who supplies our hunting grounds, and keeps all alive.’ After recounting his achievements, he was wont to add, ‘Like a decayed prairie tree, I stand alone:――the friends of my youth, the companions of my sports, my toils, and my dangers, rest their heads on the bosom of our mother. My sun is fast descending behind the western hills, and I feel it will soon be night with me.’ Then with hands and eyes lifted towards heaven, he thanked the Great Spirit for having spared him so long, to show the young men the true path to glory and fame.
Their opinions, in many instances, are false, and lead to corresponding errors in conduct. In some tribes, the young person is taught to pray, with various superstitious observances, that he may be a great hunter, horse-stealer, and warrior; so that thus the fountain of virtue is polluted.
The Indians are entirely unacquainted with letters; but they have a kind of picture-writing, which they practise on the inside of the bark of trees, or on skins prepared for the purpose, and by which they can communicate the knowledge of many facts to each other.
The Indian names are descriptive of the real or supposed qualities of the persons to whom they belong: they often change them in the course of their lives. The young warrior is ambitious of acquiring a new name; and stealing a horse, scalping an enemy, or killing a bear, are achievements which entitle him to choose one for himself, and the nation confirms it.
The Indian women are industrious wives and affectionate mothers. They are attentive to the comfort of their husbands, watch over their children with the utmost care and tenderness; and if they die, lament the loss in the most affecting manner. Chastity is not, in some tribes, reckoned a virtue; and, as the women are considered the property of the men, a deviation from it, with the consent of the father, husband, or brother, is not looked on as an offence. Nay, to countenance their wives, sisters, or daughters in conferring favors on strangers, is considered a strong expression of hospitality; and refusal of the proffered kindness is regarded by the lady as an unpardonable insult. But some husbands, on discovering unauthorized conjugal infidelity, punish it with severity; others treat it very lightly.
The Indians are kind and hospitable to their friends, and to those who are introduced to them in that character. Although they themselves sit on the bare ground, yet they courteously spread a buffalo skin for their visiter; smoke a pipe with him in token of peace and amity; and the squaw prepares something for him to eat. They are ready to share their last morsel with their friends.
They are immoderately addicted to intoxicating liquors, which they procure from the white traders, and which have been the means of destroying multitudes of them. Before their intercourse with white men, they had no intoxicating beverage; and, excepting the liquor which they procure from the merchants, their meals are temperate, and their habits of life active. Their diseases are few, and seldom of long duration. Many of them fall in battle, and multitudes are occasionally swept away by smallpox. To the healing art they are in a great measure strangers; although, by means of simples, they in some instances perform surprising cures. In general, however, these pretenders to medical skill are mere quacks and jugglers, who affect to chase away disease by howling, blowing on the patient, and by various incantations, slight-of-hand performances, and superstitious rites.
Some of their medical men pretend to have seen the Great Spirit, and to have conversed with him in some visible form, as of a buffalo, beaver, or other animal, and to have received from him some medicine of peculiar efficacy. The animal whose form had appeared is considered to be the remedy; and they imitate its cry in making their medical applications. The medicine bag, in which these savage physicians have a few herbs, entire or pulverized, and which they administer with a little warm water, is an indispensable requisite in Indian medical practice. Indeed, the head of every family has his medicine bag, which is a place of sacred deposit, and to the sanctity of which he commits his most precious articles. The value of its contents an Indian only can appreciate.
In every stage of society, persons appear who accommodate themselves to the state of the public mind. Of this description are the jugglers, conjurers, or powahs, among the ignorant and superstitious Indians. They are partly medical quacks, partly religious impostors. Many of them are dexterous jugglers and cunning cheats. They pretend to foretell future events, and even to influence the weather. It is likely that they are often, in some measure, the dupes of their own artifices.
The sweating houses of the Indians are often employed for medical purposes, although they are places of social recreation also. A hole is dug in the ground, and over it is built a small close hut, with an opening just large enough to admit the patient. A number of heated stones are placed in the bottom of the hole. The patient enters, having a vessel full of water along with him; and being seated on a place prepared for his reception, the entrance is closed. He sprinkles water on the heated stones, and is soon, by the steam, thrown into a state of profuse perspiration. After this has continued for some time, the person is taken out and plunged into cold water. This process is repeated several times, always ending with the steam-bath. The Indians use this as a general remedy; but its salutary effects are experienced chiefly in rheumatic diseases, in which its efficacy is at times very great.
The Indians bear disease with composure and resignation; and, when far advanced in life, often long for the hour of dissolution. ‘It is better,’ said an aged sachem, ‘to sit than to stand, to sleep than to be awake, to be dead than alive.’ The dying man exhorts his children to be industrious, kind to their friends, but implacable to their enemies. He rejoices in the hope of immortality. He is going to the land of spirits, that happy place where there is plenty of game and no want, where the path is smooth and the sky clear.
When the sick person expires, the friends assemble round the body, the women weep and clap their hands, and bewail their loss with loud lamentations. Different nations dispose of the bodies of departed friends, and express their grief in different ways. Many Indian tribes bury their dead soon after death. They wrap up the body carefully in a buffalo robe, or dressed skin, and carry it to the grave on the shoulders of two or three men. Along with the body, they bury a pair or two of moccasons, some meat, and other articles, to be used in the land of spirits. The favorite weapons and utensils of the warrior are also deposited by his side. It is believed by several tribes that unless this be done, the spirit of the deceased appears among the trees near his lodge, and does not go to its rest till the property withheld be committed to the grave. In some places, they discharge muskets, make a noise, and violently strike the trees, in order to drive away the spirit, which they imagine fondly lingers near its old abode. A mound is sometimes raised over the grave, proportioned in size to the dignity of the deceased; or the place is marked out and secured by short sticks driven into the ground over and around it. Some of those graves are commonly near each of their villages.
On the death of a relation, the survivors give way to excessive grief, bedaub themselves with white clay, blacken their faces, cut off their hair, and not unfrequently mangle themselves in a shocking manner, thrusting knives or arrows into the muscular parts of their thighs or arms, or cutting off a joint of one of their fingers. For a while they nightly repair to the place of sepulture to give expression to their grief; and may occasionally be seen affectionately plucking the grass from the grave of a deceased relation or friend.
Among those tribes where provisions are scarce, and procured with difficulty, it is not uncommon for an aged person, who is unable to provide for himself, to request his family to put him to death; and the request is complied with, or he is treated with much neglect. But this unnatural conduct results entirely from the pressure of circumstances, and the privations and sufferings to which those poor people are exposed; for in more favorable situations, they behave towards the aged and infirm with respect and tenderness.
Of the religion of the Indians we have no full and clear account. Indeed, of the opinions of a people who have nothing more than a few vague and indefinite notions, no distinct explanation can be given. On this subject, the Indians are not communicative; and to obtain a thorough knowledge of it would require familiar, attentive, unsuspected, and unprejudiced observation. But such observation is not easily made; and a few general, and on some points uncertain, notices only can be given.
On looking at the most renowned nations of the ancient heathen world, we see the people prostrating themselves before innumerable divinities; and we are ready to conclude that polytheism is the natural belief of man, unenlightened by revelation. But a survey of the vast wilds of America will correct this opinion. For there we find a multitude of nations, widely separated from each other, all believing in one Supreme God, a great and good spirit, the father and master of life, the maker of heaven and earth and of all other creatures. They believe themselves entirely dependent on him, thank him for present enjoyments, and pray to him for the good things they desire to obtain. They consider him the author of all good; and believe he will reward or punish them according to their deeds.
They believe in inferior spirits, also, both good and bad, whom they consider tutelary spirits. The Indians are careful observers of dreams, and think themselves deserted by the Master of life, till they receive a revelation in a dream; that is, till they dream of some object, as a buffalo, or beaver, or something else, which they think is an intimation that the Great Spirit has given them that object as a charm, or medicine. Then they are full of courage, and proud of their powerful ally. To propitiate the medicine, every exertion is made, and every personal consideration sacrificed. ‘I was lately the proprietor of seventeen horses,’ said a Mandan; ‘but I have offered them all to my medicine, and am now poor.’ He had turned all these horses, which constituted the whole of his wealth, loose into the plain, committed them to his medicine, and abandoned them forever. But, although they offer oblations to the medicines, they positively deny that they pay them any adoration, and affirm that they only worship the Great Spirit through them.
They have no regular periodical times either of private or public religious worship. They have neither temples, altars, stated ministers of religion, nor regular sacrifices; for the jugglers are connected rather with the medical art than with religious services. The Indians in general, like other ignorant people, are believers in witchcraft, and think many of their diseases proceed from the arts of sorcerers. These arts the jugglers pretend to counteract, as well as to cure natural diseases. They also pretend to predict the weather and to make rain; and much confidence is placed in their prognostications and their power.
The devotional exercises of the Indians consist in singing, dancing, and performing various mystical ceremonies, which they believe efficacious in healing the sick, frustrating the designs of their enemies, and securing their own success. They often offer up to the Great Spirit a part of the game first taken in a hunting expedition, a part of the first produce of their fields, and a part of their food. At a feast, they first throw some of the broth, and then of the meat, into the fire. In smoking, they generally testify their reverence for the Master of life, by directing the first puff upwards, and the second downwards, or the first to the rising, and the second to the setting sun; at other times, they turn the pipe to every point of the compass.
They firmly believe in the immortality of the soul, and in a state of future retribution; but their conceptions on these subjects are modified and tinged by their occupations in life, and by their notions of good and evil. They suppose the spirit retains the same inclinations as when in the body, and rejoices in its old pursuits. At times, an Indian warrior, when about to kill and scalp a prostrate enemy, addresses him in such terms as the following:――
‘My name is Cashegra: I am a famous warrior, and am going to kill you. When you reach the land of spirits, you will see the ghost of my father; tell him it was Cashegra sent you there.’ The uplifted tomahawk then descends upon his victim.
The Mandans expect, when they die, to return to the original subterraneous abode of their fathers: the good reaching the ancient village by means of the lake, which the weight of the sins of the bad will render them unable to pass. They who have behaved themselves well in this life, and been brave warriors and good hunters, will be received into the town of brave and generous spirits; but the useless and selfish will be doomed to reside in the town of poor and useless spirits.
The belief of those untutored children of nature has an influence on their conduct. Among them, the grand defect is, an erroneous estimate of good and evil, right and wrong. But how much soever we may lament their errors on these interesting points, we need not be surprised at them; for how many, even in more enlightened communities, and with clearer means of information, can scarcely be said to have sounder principles or a better practice? A reverential and grateful sense of the divine perfections and government, manifesting itself by a devout regard to his institutions and obedience to his will, by benevolence, integrity, candor and kindness towards men, and by sobriety and industry, is too little valued and practised by many who enjoy the light of revelation. Hitherto the Indians have learned little but vice by their intercourse with white men.
Although they have no regular system of religious worship, yet they have many superstitious notions; some of them of a more general, others of a more local nature. The Mandans have their medicine stone, which is their great oracle; and they believe with implicit confidence whatever it announces. Every spring, and occasionally during summer, a deputation, accompanied by jugglers, magicians, or conjurers, visits the sacred spot, where there is a large stone, about twenty feet in circumference, with a smooth surface: there the deputies smoke, taking a few whiffs themselves, and then ceremoniously offering the pipe to the stone. They leave their presents, and withdraw to some distance during the night. Before morning, the presents have disappeared, the Great Spirit having, according to their belief, taken them away; and they read the destinies of their nation in some marks on the stone, which the jugglers, who have made them, and secretly manage the whole transaction, can easily decipher. The Minnetarees have also a stone of the same kind.
On the northern bank of the lower part of the Missouri, there is a singular range of rocks, rising almost perpendicularly about two or three hundred feet above the level of the river. These rocks the Indians call Wakon, or spirit, and on or near them, the neighboring nations deposit most of their offerings to the Great Spirit, or Father of life; because they imagine he either inhabits or frequently visits those rocks, and offerings presented there will sooner attract his notice and gain his favor than any where else. Those offerings consist of various articles, among which eagles’ feathers are held in highest estimation; and they are presented in order to obtain success in war or hunting.
They believe also in the existence of evil spirits, but think these malevolent beings gratify their malignity chiefly by driving away the game, preventing the efficacy of medicine, or similar injuries. But they do not always confine their operations to such petty mischiefs; for Mackenzie, in his first voyage, was warned of a spirit, behind a neighboring island, which swallowed up every person who approached it: and near the White Stone river of the Missouri, there is an oblong mound, about seventy feet high, called by the Indians the Mountain of Little People, or Little Spirits which are supposed to be malignant beings in human shape, about eighteen inches high, with remarkably large heads. They are provided with sharp arrows, in the use of which they are very expert; and they are always on the watch to kill those who approach the mountain of their residence. The tradition is, that many persons have fallen victims to their malevolence; and such is the terror of them among the neighboring nations, that on no consideration will they approach the mound.
Among the Indians, society is in the loosest state in which it can possibly exist. They have no regular magistrates, no laws, no tribunals, to protect the weak or punish the guilty. Every man must assert his own rights, and avenge his own wrongs. He is neither restrained nor protected by any thing but a sense of shame and the approbation or disapprobation of his tribe. He acknowledges no master, and submits to no superior authority; so that an Indian community seems like a mound of sand on the sea-shore, which one gale has accumulated, and which the next may disperse.
But, amidst this apparent disunion, the Indian is strongly attached to his nation. He is jealous of its honor, proud of its success, and zealous for its welfare. Guided by a few traditionary notions, and by the opinion and example of those around him, he is ready to exert all his energies, and sacrifice even life itself for his country. Here sentiment and habit do more than wise laws can elsewhere accomplish.
Where all are equally poor, the distinctions founded on wealth cannot exist; and among a people where experience is the only source of knowledge, the aged men are naturally the sages of the nation. Surrounded by enemies, and exposed to continual peril, the strongest, boldest, and most successful warrior is highly respected; and the influence gained in youth by courage and enterprise is often retained in old age by wisdom and eloquence. In many of the tribes, the chiefs have a sort of hereditary rank; but, in order to maintain it, they must conciliate the good will of the most influential persons of the community. They have nothing like monarchical revenues, pomp, or authority, but maintain their distinction by bravery, good conduct and generosity.
The most important concerns of the tribe are discussed in a council composed of the chiefs and warriors, in which the principal chief presides. Every member delivers his opinion with freedom, and is heard with attention. Their proceedings are considered sacred, and are kept a profound secret, unless it be thought the public good requires a disclosure. In that case the decision, with the reasons on which it is founded, is published by a member of the council, who recommends a compliance with it. In the stillness of the morning or evening, this herald marches through the village, solemnly communicating the information, and giving suitable exhortations. He also instructs the young men and children how to behave, in order to gain the esteem of good men, and the approbation of the Good Spirit.
The authority of the chiefs and warriors is hortatory rather than coercive. They have influence to persuade, but not power to compel. They are rather respected as parents and friends, than feared and obeyed as superiors. The chief is merely the most confidential person among the warriors; neither installed with any ceremony, nor distinguished by any badge. He may recommend, or advise, or influence; but he has no power to enforce his commands, or to punish disobedience. In many of the tribes he gradually acquires his rank by his own superior merit, and the good opinion of his companions; and he may lose his authority as he gained it.
The people commonly settle their controversies among themselves, and do not apply to their chiefs, except for advice. In some of the tribes, peace is preserved and punishment inflicted in a very summary manner by officers appointed by the chief for that purpose. These officers are distinguished by having their bodies blackened, and by having two or three ravens’ skins fixed in their girdles behind, so that the tails project horizontally. They have also a raven’s skin, with the tail projecting from their forehead. These officers, of whom there are two or three in a village, and who are frequently changed, beat any person whom they find acting in a disorderly manner. Their authority is held sacred, and none dares resist them. They often attend the chief, and consider it a point of honor to execute his orders at any risk.
The eloquence of the Indian orators occasionally displays itself in strong and figurative expressions, accompanied with violent but not unnatural gesticulations. Many of their speeches are on record; and some, for rhetorical effect, would do credit to the parliament of a refined nation.
The wars of the Indians most commonly originate in the stealing of horses, or in the elopement of squaws; sometimes in encroachments on their hunting grounds, or in the prosecution of old quarrels, and the desire of avenging the murder of relations. These wars are conducted in a predatory manner.
A single warrior sometimes undertakes an expedition against the enemy; but, in cases of great provocation, the whole tribe engages in the enterprise, under the conduct of the principal chief. Even in this case, however, none but volunteers join the army: no one is obliged to march against his will.
War is often carried on by a small predatory party, formed by the influence of some approved warrior. Among the Omawhas, the warrior paints himself with white clay, and marches through the village, crying aloud to the Wahconda, or Father of life, and entreating the young warriors of the nation to have pity on him, and to accompany him in an expedition against their enemies. He gives a feast to those who are willing to follow him; and it is distinctly understood that they who partake of his hospitality pledge themselves to be partners in his enterprise. At the feast he harangues them, and tells them they must gain celebrity by their martial prowess. This leader of the party, to whom the French gave the name of partisan, busies himself, before setting out, in making medicine, hanging out his medicine bag, fasting, attending to his dreams, and other superstitious observances. On the medicine bag, much reliance is placed for the successful termination of the adventure. It usually contains the skin of a sparrow-hawk, and a number of small articles, such as wampum beads and tobacco, all attached to a belt, neatly enveloped in bark, and tied round with strings of the same material. It is of a cylindrical shape, about one, or sometimes two feet long, and is suspended on the back of the partisan by its belt, which passes round his neck. The moccasons, leggins, and arms of the party are put in order, and each warrior furnishes himself with some provisions.
With the partisan at their head, the party set out, march cautiously, following each other in a line, at a distance of two or three paces, often treading in each others’ footsteps, that their number may not be discovered, and they send out spies to explore their route. They easily find out whether any persons have lately passed the same way, by discerning their footsteps on the grass; and as they have to deal with people whose organs of sense are as acute as their own, they are careful, as far as possible, to conceal their own tracks. On halting, the medicine bag is not allowed to touch the ground, but is suspended on a forked stick, firmly fixed in the earth for that purpose. They smoke to it, occasionally turning the stem of the pipe towards it, towards the heavens, and towards the earth. The partisan carefully attends to his dreams, and, if he think them ominous of evil, he at times abandons the enterprise.
When the spies bring information that they are near the enemy, the partisan opens his medicine bag, removes its barky envelope, and suspends the contents from his neck, with the bird skin, wampum, and other articles hanging down on his breast. This is the signal to prepare for action. If they have time, they paint themselves and smoke: they also paint their shields with rude representations of the objects on which they rely for success. The partisan gives the order to advance, and they move on with cautious steps, as their great aim is to fall upon the enemy by surprise. If they succeed in this, the attack begins with the horrible yell of the war-whoop. This is their only martial music. They kill, indiscriminately, all who fall in their way; but if discovered, they either make a hasty retreat, or rush to the attack with impetuous but disorderly fury. If in the forest, they shelter themselves behind trees; if on open ground, they leap nimbly from side to side, to prevent the enemy from taking a steady aim, and cover themselves with their bucklers.
Illustration: Otto Encampment.
It is not the mere killing of an enemy that confers the highest honor on an Indian warrior, but the striking the body of his fallen foe on the field of battle, and in presence of his friends, who are eager to avenge his death. Scalping is an act of no small celebrity in Indian warfare; and, in performing it, the victor sets one foot on the neck of his dead or disabled enemy, entwines one hand in his hair, and, by a few slashes of the scalping knife in his other, round the top of the head, is enabled to pull off the skin with the hair. Carrying away the scalp is simply a mark of victory, the taking of prisoners is reckoned a high honor.
The wounded of the vanquished party are killed by the conquerors on the field of battle, and their bodies shockingly mangled; the squaws so far overcoming by habit the tender feelings of the female breast as to take an active part in the inhuman scene. Indeed, they are more cruel than the men.
In his lodge, the Indian is indolent, sedate, and apparently callous; but in hunting, or in quest of an enemy, he is keen, indefatigable, persevering: on the field of battle, he seems an infuriated demon: so different are his appearances in different circumstances. The victorious party bury their dead, or cover them with bushes or stones. They remove their wounded in litters, borne on men’s shoulders; or, if they have horses, on a car of two shafts, with a buffalo skin stretched between them. They return rapidly to their village, and commonly halt on some elevated ground in its vicinity. Their friends, eager to be informed of the particulars of the expedition, hasten to meet them. The party enters the village with savage pomp, ostentatiously exhibiting the scalps which they have taken, raised on poles. Many of the warriors bear the mark indicative of having drunk the blood of an enemy. This consists in rubbing the hand all over with vermilion, and then pressing it on the face and mouth, so as to leave a complete impression. On those occasions, the wives of the warriors who have been engaged in the enterprise, attire themselves in the dress of their husbands, and, with rods in their hands, to which the scalps that have been taken are attached, dance round a large red post, and, in concert with the young warriors, sing the war and scalp songs. This barbarous dance, which is repeated every night for some weeks, is charming to the squaws; a circumstance which shows how far the human character may be perverted by fashion and habit.
The Indians dance and sing at the same time: they have, however, but little grace or variety in their movements, and little music in their notes. Their musical instruments are a sort of drum, and a rattle, or skin bag, with small shot or pebbles in it, which makes a noise when shaken.
It is dangerous to meet a disappointed or defeated war party on its return, as the warriors are apt to indemnify themselves for any disappointment, defeat, or loss they may have sustained, by taking the property and scalps of the first weak or unguarded party they may encounter.
No offence against society is inquired into by the chiefs: stealing from one of their own tribe, which is very rare, exposes the thief to contempt; but cowardice is marked by the highest reprobation. When they go to war, they keep a watchful eye on such of the young men as are making their first essay in arms. If they display the necessary qualifications, they are in due time admitted to the rank of warriors, or, as they express it, of brave men. But if any give clear indications of cowardice, on the return of the party, they are treated with neglect and contempt. A coward is at times punished even with death.
The female prisoners are made slaves, a condition scarcely worse than that of the other squaws. The young male prisoners are often adopted by the families of the tribe which have taken them, and supply the place of the members that have fallen in the expedition. Sometimes, on returning to their village, the party show their prisoner a painted red post, distant from twenty to forty yards, and bid him run and lay hold of it. On each side of his course stand men and women with axes, sticks, and other offensive weapons, ready to strike him as he passes. If he instantly spring forward with agility, he may perhaps reach the post without receiving a stroke, and is then safe, till a general council of the warriors determine his fate; but if he fall, he is probably despatched.
If the prisoner be rejected by the family to which he is offered, he is then put to death with every circumstance of cruelty; and the constancy and fortitude of the sufferer are as remarkable as the barbarity of his murderers. The victim, fastened to a stake, sings his death song, insults his tormentors, bears with unshrinking firmness the most dreadful tortures, and expires without a groan. He triumphs in his fortitude, not merely as a personal virtue, but chiefly as a national characteristic. We are to seek the cause of this patient endurance of the most excruciating pains, not in any nervous insensibility, any constitutional apathy, any muscular rigidity of the Indian, but in the sentiments which he has imbibed and the habits to which he has been trained. He has been taught, from infancy, to consider courage and fortitude as the glory of man; to endure privations and pain without a murmur, and with an unsubdued heart, and to despise tortures and death; and, in his last moments, he proves the efficacy of the education which he has received. In these tragical scenes, the women always take an active part; and their inhumanity, like the fortitude of the men, springs from education.
Previous to their intercourse with Europeans, the arms of the Indians were bows and arrows, spears, tomahawks, scalping knives, and war clubs. Most of them, however, are now provided with fire arms; and, being eager to procure them, their quantity is continually increasing. But the use of these original weapons is far from being entirely superseded.
At times, the bow is formed of pieces of horn neatly spliced; but it is more commonly made of wood. Formerly, the arrow was pointed with flint or bone, but now generally with iron: the spear is pointed in a similar manner. The tomahawk is a hatchet or war axe. The scalping knife is used to cut and tear off the scalp, or integuments of the upper part of the skull with the hair, of their fallen enemies, which the Indians display as trophies of their victory, with as much exultation as ancient heroes manifested in showing the arms of their vanquished foes. The head of the war club is globular, and at times hollow, inclosing pieces of metal, which make a gingling noise when a stroke is given. Occasionally, the blade of a knife, or some other sharp instrument, is fastened to the end of it at right angles. The tribes who dwell in the depth of the forest have no bucklers, but shelter themselves behind trees: those, however, who live in an open country, as on the banks of the Missouri, use bucklers or shields of a circular form, about two feet and a half in diameter, and composed of three or four folds of buffalo’s skin, dried in the sun and hardened. These shields are proof against arrows, but not against ball.
In all their acts of devotion, and on all occasions where their confidence is to be won or their friendship secured, smoking is regarded as an inviolable token of sincerity.
The pipe or calumet, as some have called it, is the symbol of peace and the pledge of friendship. Among the rude dwellers of the desert, it serves the same purposes as a flag of truce in the armies of more civilized communities. The pipe is about four feet long; the bowl made of stone or clay, and the stem of a light wood. It is differently ornamented in different nations. The bearer of this sacred symbol of friendship is seldom treated with disrespect, because they believe the Great Spirit would not allow such an iniquity to escape with impunity.
Peace is concluded, and treaties ratified, by smoking. Wampum, and wampum belts, are also commonly used on such occasions. Wampum, formerly, and now among some tribes, the current coin of the Indians, is formed of shells found on the coasts of New England and Virginia: some of those shells are of a purple color, others white; but the former are reckoned most valuable. They are cut into the shape of oblong beads, about a quarter of an inch long, perforated, and strung on a small leathern thong: several of these strings, neatly sewed together by fine sinewy threads, form a belt, consisting of ten, twelve, or more strings. The value of each bead, and, consequently, of each string or belt, is exactly known. The size of the belt, which is often about two feet long, and three or four inches broad, is proportioned to the solemnity and importance of the occasion on which it is given. The chiefs occasionally give strings to each other as tokens of friendship; but belts are reserved for the ratification of national treaties, every stipulation of which is recorded to posterity by the hieroglyphics on the belt.
Tribes in amity occasionally apply to each other for a supply of their wants. When one tribe is in need of any commodity with which another is well provided, the needy tribe send a deputation of their number to smoke with their wealthier neighbors, and to inform them of their wants; and it would be a breach of Indian courtesy to send them away without the expected supply. What they smoke is tobacco mixed with the inner bark of the willow.
The Shoshonees, a band on the Rocky mountains, before smoking with strangers, pull off their moccasons, in token of the sacred sincerity of their professions; and by this act they not only testify their sincerity, but also imprecate on themselves the misery of going barefooted forever, if they prove unfaithful to their word.
A number of different languages are spoken by the Indians; and, in some cases, different dialects of the same language are found among different tribes.
The original languages, beside that of the Esquimaux, are said to be principally three,――the Iroquois, the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware, and the Floridian. These languages are so distinct, as to have no perceivable affinity. The Iroquois was spoken by the Iroquois or Six Nations, and several other tribes. The Iroquois, or Six Confederated Nations, so famous in Indian history, and once so formidable by their numbers, laws, and military prowess, are the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagoes, and Tuscaroras. The Delaware language was spoken by many nations in the middle provinces; and the Floridian by the Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and other tribes in the southern states. Those languages are said to be copious and expressive: they often consist of long compounds, and comprise many ideas in one word.
The following observations on this interesting race of men are furnished by a person who has spent many years in intimate contact with several tribes of the north-west, and may, therefore, be considered good authority. He writes expressly for this work.
‘There are few topics on which so much has been written, and to so little purpose, as the character, manners, habits and origin of the aborigines of North America. Novelists, poets, travellers and philosophers have all failed to convey an adequate idea of them. This arises, in our opinion, in a great measure, from the modern propensity to generalization. A writer who has been present at an Indian council, has seen the nonchalant demeanor of the chiefs, and has heard the tropes and metaphors with which they garnish their discourse, gravely states that the self-possession of all Indians can never be disturbed by any circumstances, and that the refinements of poetry and oratory are as familiar in their mouths as household words. Another, who sees the women performing the hard labor of their families, while the men stand idly by, pronounces that squaws are regarded as slaves. Now our experience assures us that the premises, on which such general conclusions are based, are almost always fallacious.
‘Little need be said concerning the origin of the American natives. The most probable conclusion is, that they immigrated into the new continent via Behring’s strait; but whether they came by that route, or crossed the Atlantic from Wales, or the Pacific, from Japan, certain it is that their physical peculiarities plainly distinguish them from all the races of the old world. We judge it safe to entertain an opinion once expressed in our presence by an old Indian. ‘Why must we have descended from your fathers?’ said he. ‘Is it not as reasonable to suppose that God created the Indian where he now is, as that he made the white man in the garden you have been talking about?’ This idea, if not sanctioned by the Mosaic account of the creation is, at least, not contradicted by it. We count the resemblances, which exist between the customs and traditions of certain tribes in both continents, as of very little importance. People living in different countries by similar pursuits, most necessarily fall into similar observances. Every tribe that lives on the banks of a stream or the ocean, must have witnessed a high tide or an overflow, and hence the almost universal tradition of a deluge. In our opinion, no importance ought to be attached to the accounts of Indians of their own origin. Some septs, like the Pawnees and Choctaws, say they sprang from the earth, the Incas descended from the sun, the Osages are contented with such progenitors as a snail and a beaver.
‘The idea that the present race of aborigines dispossessed a race more advanced in civilization and less warlike than themselves, seems to us to rest on no real foundation. The articles found with skeletons exhumed from barrows, are still in use among the more remote tribes. Indians still, occasionally, construct rude fortifications. The pottery, on which antiquarians rely as illustrative of this favorite theory, is made and used to this day by the remote Dahcotahs and Assinneboins. If the field works found in different parts of the country be adduced as proofs of the civilization of the supposed former race, we answer that they do not betoken the tenth part of the ingenuity displayed in the construction of a birch canoe.
‘The aborigines of America have generally been esteemed to be divided into two distinct races, viz. the Esquimaux and the red Indians. We doubt that the races are distinct. The Esquimaux are, indeed, milder in character, and less perfect in physical conformation than their southern neighbors; but is not the difference owing to climate and mode of life? Fishermen, and especially such fishermen as the Esquimaux, whose whole time and care is requisite to preserve life, cannot be warriors. People who, like the Esquimaux, live upon scanty food in an inhospitable clime, must necessarily be dwarfish. Bear witness tribes who live in the same manner on the old continent. Besides, captain Franklin informs us that those of this people who inhabit a less inhospitable coast than their brethren (those east of the Coppermine river) are of the ordinary stature of mankind.
‘Turning round Icy cape, we find the tribes along the north-west coast gradually losing the characteristics of Esquimaux, and assuming those of the red Indians. We are at a loss to divine, from the accounts of Cook, Kotzebue and Jewett, which of the two races the tribes of that region most resemble. At Nootka Sound, the savages are fishermen like the Esquimaux, and hunters and warriors like the tribes of the Mississippi. Wherever we find a tribe relying upon fisheries as a principal means of subsistence, we find the moral and physical character approximating toward that of the Esquimaux. In short, we see no difference between the two races which may not have been produced by something less than the will of the Almighty.
‘The physical appearance of the Indians has been too often described to need notice here. It is impossible even to conjecture what their number may be. Some idea of this may be gained from the fact that the Dahcotahs, who are able to muster six or seven thousand fighting men, scarcely support themselves on a tract of land eight hundred miles long and as many in breadth. Other tribes, who rely in some degree upon agriculture and fishing, are more thickly settled. Others, who occupy less favored regions, are less so.
‘Two great families of Indians seem, from time immemorial, to have occupied the country between the Rocky mountains and the Atlantic, viz. the Dahcotahs, and the Chippeway, or Algonquin race. The former are divided into a great number of independent tribes, whose origin may be traced by similarity of language, habits and manners. The parent stock is divided into several septs, which are again subdivided into a great many minor hordes. The principal divisions are these: Munday Wawkantons, Sussetons, Wakhpaytons, Wawkhpaykootays, Yanktows and Tetons. These last live high upon the Missouri, and have little intercourse with the rest. The Assinneboins, a numerous and powerful tribe, who roam over the prairies between the Missouri and the Saskatchawayn, seceded from the Dahcotahs little more than a century ago, and a bloody war was long waged between them and the parent race. A woman was the cause of quarrel. The Winnebagoes and Otoes, renowned for desperate bravery, the Ioways, the Osages, the Omahaws and many other western tribes, claim affinity with the Dahcotahs, and speak dialects of their tongue. The tradition concerning their origin, to which we give most credit, says, that they all came from Mexico at the time of the invasion of Cortez. The Winnebagoes hold the Spaniards in abhorrence to this day. Such of these tribes as inhabit the prairie region are vagrant, and live mainly by hunting the buffalo. A description of one will be a description of all of them. They are, generally, of the middle stature of mankind, and it is rare to see a Dahcotah who much exceeds or falls short of it, or who is in any wise deformed. They are beautifully formed: it is as rare to see an ill-made Dahcotah as a well-made white man. They are not muscular, nor are they so agile as whites commonly are; but in recompense, their powers of endurance are very great. They seem utterly insensible of fatigue, and patient of hunger, pain, and all other hardships.
‘Neither these, nor any other Indians with whom we are acquainted, are at all remarkable for gravity in their social intercourse. They are more taciturn, indeed, than the whites; but this is the result rather of circumstance than of education. Spending much time alone, they acquire a habit of silence; having fewer ideas than civilized men, they have fewer inducements to discourse. The conversation that does take place among them, however, is by no means characterized by reserve or by the absence of hilarity. In councils and on solemn occasions, it is judged decorous and proper to give no indication of feeling, and hence an apathetic gravity has long been thought a distinguishing attribute of the Indian character. Even were the assumption just, the aborigines would be no more remarkable in this respect than most modern Asiatic nations.
‘The character of Indians in general seems to have been viewed by most writers through a false medium, and their qualities have been inferred from the nature of their intercourse with white men. This is a false standard; to know them, one should live long among them and watch their social relations. Thus seen, they appear to much greater advantage than when hanging upon the frontiers doing or suffering wrong, and debasing themselves by theft, beggary and intemperance.
‘It will not be denied by any who know them, that those Indians who have not been corrupted by the whites are sincerely pious. They universally believe in one all-wise, benevolent and powerful God, to whom, however, they never pray; for, they say, he knows better what is good for them than they do themselves. Nothing shocks them more than to hear his name mentioned with irreverence by the whites. They also believe in an evil principle, whom they pray to do them no harm. They people all animated nature with inferior spirits, and to these they offer prayers and sacrifices. Their superstitions are numberless. They believe in a future state, and the world of spirits is, in their opinion, a fine hunting-ground, where the vexations and sufferings of this life will be unknown. Each man has what he calls his medicine; that is, he thinks fit to consider his fate and fortunes dependent on some animal, and that animal he will neither kill, eat, or treat with disrespect. In short, they have an infinite variety of such observances, and there is little uniformity in the belief of individuals.
‘Their priests are mere jugglers, who practise various mummeries, and are also, as is common among savages, physicians and surgeons, and, indeed, they mix medicine and religion together. A cure is effected by songs and superstitious rites as well as by the use of simples. The juggler’s voice and rattle are seldom still near the couch of a sick man. We are yet to learn that these quacks are much respected in their sacerdotal character, or that any great importance is attached to their ceremonies by the majority of the laity. One merit they have, and that is their skill in rough surgery. We have seen them effect astonishing cures. It may not be amiss to mention one, by way of example. A hunter was grappled by a bear, that he had wounded, and dreadfully lacerated. His arm was broken in several places, and all who saw it thought he must die or submit to amputation. An Indian surgeon, however, undertook the cure and effected it. It is true that he was three years about it, and perhaps the abstemious habits of the patient were a main cause of his recovery.
‘As to government, the Dahcotah race have no king, and every man does what seems right in his own eyes. They have chiefs, indeed, who have, by tacit consent, the power of making treaties, and of transacting the business of their followers. Sometimes they lead in war, but, save on such occasions, authority they have none. They may advise, but cannot command. They receive no reward for their services, nor do they wear any badge of their rank. Indeed they are usually worse dressed and provided than other individuals, because it is considered peculiarly the duty of chiefs to be generous. The office is hereditary in families, but not in the direct line of descent. If the heir apparent be notoriously ineligible, he is set aside, and a more worthy kinsman takes his place. Highly distinguished warriors become war chiefs through the respect paid to their valor. Each village has one of these, who is called the war chief, to distinguish him from the hereditary leader. He rules in war, but not in civil affairs. Sometimes a chief acquires absolute power, but of that kind which strong minds gain over weak ones, and it behoves every leader to bear his faculties meekly.
‘Laws the Dahcotahs have none; but they have customs which have the force of laws, and which are seldom broken. Thus a man may have as many wives as he can maintain. Adultery is punished by cutting off the nose of the offending wife; the wife cuts the clothes of the offending husband to pieces. Life is taken for life, unless the homicide can appease the friends of the dead by the payment of a ransom. The murderer invariably gives himself up to punishment, for to fear death is considered the acme of dishonor. When minor offences are committed, the injured party kills the dogs and horses of his enemy, or destroys his tent before his eyes, and in such cases no resistance is offered. Divorces are at the option of the husband. Theft is not regarded as a crime; indeed, property is nearly in common among them, so that no theft can be committed. They apply this standard of morals to the whites, and so get the reputation of thieves, while themselves are unconscious of wrong doing. It is, in our opinion, this very community of goods that is the principal obstacle to their civilization and improvement; for it cannot be expected that one man will sow for all the world to reap, or that he will weary his limbs in the chase to obtain what will not belong to him or his family. Those tribes who hold the right of property in most esteem, as, for example, the Saques and Foxes, have made the greatest advances in civilization.
‘Another obstacle to the civilization of our aborigines is their unconquerable indolence. The savage is content with the bare necessaries of life; he neither knows nor cares for its luxuries and superfluities. Necessity only will compel him to exertion. Tribes, whose limits have been so circumscribed by the whites that they cannot live by the chase, have resorted to labor for subsistence; but we think no other force of reason or circumstance will bring about such a result.
‘However strange such an assertion may appear, we confidently affirm that Indians are not more revengeful than other people. They have the same feelings and passions as other men, neither stronger nor weaker. They are kind to each other. Every offence but murder is readily forgiven, and even that crime seldom finds its due punishment. Nine murderers out of ten among them go down to the grave in peace. An Indian rarely goes much out of his way for revenge. Time and opportunity being ministered, an individual will wreak a long-smothered resentment, and so, we presume, would any other man, if freed from the restraints of law. We take it upon us to say that murders are not so frequent among them as with ourselves, and that these, as well as all minor injuries, are not so often or so fearfully avenged by Indians as by white men. As it regards wrongs committed by enemies of the tribe, the case is different. These, the savage is taught, it is his duty to requite upon any member of the hostile nation. Such vengeance it is his glory to take, and it is one of the first requisitions of his moral code.
‘The courage of Indians is not to be measured by our standard. In a mere clan, the loss of an individual is severely felt. It subtracts largely from the strength of the band and the happiness of his family. Discretion, therefore, is considered the better part of valor. The war chief who conquers the enemy does well; but he who conquers without loss to himself does infinitely better. It is thought honorable to avoid risk as much as possible, and the decision of quarrels by single combat is called folly and madness. But when they have resolved on battle, no people strive more valiantly. Our history bears witness of the furious energy of their valor. Their ideas of moral courage might be adopted with advantage by all who call them savages. They think it weak and cowardly to yield to grief or anger; misfortune and pain they scorn, and death they endure not only without a murmur, but with cheerfulness. Suicide under any circumstances they brand as the strongest evidence of lack of courage.
‘Of the cruelty of Indians to conquered enemies, this only can be said, that it is the vice of all barbarians, that they know not what they do, that it is only exercised on their avowed foes, and that it is almost always perpetrated in the heat of blood. Captives, once spared, fare no worse than their conquerors. The sense of honor among Indians is, in some respects, very strong; in others, not so. It will not prevent an individual from falsehood, treachery, promise-breaking, flattery, beggary and a multitude of other offences. It will deter him from labor, which he considers the exclusive business of women, it forbids him to shun death, it commands him to requite a disgraceful blow with a stab, it forbids him to boast of deeds he never achieved, it commands him to sacrifice himself for the good of his tribe. Its scope is not very extensive; but where it operates, it operates effectually.
‘In their domestic relations, they are essentially, but not ostensibly kind. They provide for their families, they love their wives and children; but thinking it womanish to manifest the affections, they are not fond husbands or fathers. Tatunkah Nazhee, the best hunter of the Dahcotahs, lost his wife and five children by the hands of the Chippeways. The only sign of grief he displayed was painting his face black. Yet he abandoned his usual occupations, and pursued the enemy till he had taken life for life. “This,” said he, “is the best way of mourning for the dead.”
‘Indian hospitality and charity have no limit. No stranger enters their tents to whom they do not give meat: no person goes to them in need whom they do not relieve to the extent of their ability, and often to their great inconvenience. They will not look upon an execution, they will not suffer a person who has wronged them to be whipped for it, and the idea of imprisoning a man for debt, or for a petty violation of the rights of property, fills them with horror.
‘Some years ago, the old chief of a Dahcotah band was robbed by a drunken soldier of eighteen ducks, which he had killed for the use of his family. The offender was detected, compelled to make restitution, and fastened to the whipping-post. When the old man comprehended the nature of the punishment about to be inflicted, he burst into tears, and threw down half his game before the commanding officer. “I will give you these,” said he, “if you will spare this man. Of what consequence are a few ducks?” The man had committed violence on the chiefs person. Which of the two best deserved to be called a savage?
‘In short, to end our remarks on the Dahcotah character, which is, with some trivial alterations, the character of most Indian tribes, we may say that their moral code is grievously defective, but that, such as it is, they adhere rigidly to it. Considering their ignorance, their extreme necessities and their wrongs, it is wonderful that their moral degradation is not deeper than it is. Their code is adapted to their mode of life, and it is only by applying it to others, who have more to lose and less to gain than themselves, that they become disagreeable and dangerous neighbors to the whites. An incessant irritation is the consequence, hatred succeeds, mutual wrong follows, and war consummates the drama.
‘Those of the tribes of Dahcotah origin who live on the Mississippi, and other wooded countries, live on the deer and other game of the forest. By entrapping the fur-clad animals, they get the means of buying guns, cloth and other articles, which have become indispensably necessary to them. In the summer, they live in permanent villages, and cultivate a little corn. The women perform this, as well as all other labors, and do not consider themselves aggrieved thereby. It is said that, as the men encounter the fatigues and perils of the chase, the dangers of war and the vicissitudes of the seasons, they have their full share of domestic duties. The women being unfit for these occupations, must fill the station which God has allotted to them, and neither party thinks the distribution of offices unjust or unreasonable. The women are sold, like the daughters of the patriarchs, by their parents to their husbands, and they are chastised or commended according to the degree of their industry or good conduct. Judging from their general cheerfulness, they see no hardship in their lot. Jealousy seems to be their chief annoyance, and often causes them to hang themselves.
‘In winter, the hunters leave their villages, and encamp in leathern tents on their hunting-grounds, removing from place to place as the game is more or less abundant. They are plentifully supplied by the traders with ammunition on credit, and pay their debts as they best can in the spring. This system is highly injurious to the Indians, and vexatious to the traders. As not more than half of the hunters pay their debts, the trader is obliged to charge a double price for his goods, in his own defence, and thus the honest and industrious Indians pay for the idle and vicious. Still this is the fashion of their fathers, and no persuasion will induce them to depart from it.
‘It only remains to be said of this portion of the race, that they live from hand to mouth, hunting and fishing when they feel so inclined, and fasting when the chances of the chase are against them. Few of them perish by starvation. The only circumstance that varies the monotony of their lives is war, and that they practise on so limited a scale that it has no perceptible effect on their population or happiness.
‘The roving tribes, who live in the great plains of the west, differ little in language or character from their more stationary brethren. They encamp near the vast herds of buffaloes, kill as many as they want, eat the flesh, dress in the skins, and sell as many robes to the traders as will procure them cloth and guns. They are wilder and more primitive than their neighbors, and more addicted to plunder and massacre those who are not of their blood. They are generally well mounted and armed with guns, bows and arrows, spears and shields. They kill the buffalo at full speed. If the drove removes, they pluck up their tents and follow. If any man frightens the cattle, certain police officers, called soldiers, punish him by stripes and the destruction of his horses and property. Their persons are held sacred, and no one thinks of resisting them. Some of these wanderers are like the children of Ishmael in that every man’s hand is against them, and their hand is against every man. The Assinneboins are an example. Their time is spent in indolence, war and the chase.
‘The wars of Indians among themselves are seldom very destructive. The war chief dreams or pretends to dream that the enemy will be delivered into his hands, and sets out for the field of strife with, perhaps, twenty followers. The greatest caution is observed, and if the party find reason to think that the enemy is apprised of their intention, they turn back. If, however, their plans succeed, a small number of the enemy are surprised and butchered. Few are ever spared. Within a few months, this paltry onslaught is repaid in kind, and the account is balanced. These wars have been from time immemorial, and will probably continue till time shall be no more. Such is the modern state of Indian warfare; but tradition tells of more serious hostilities. Hundreds of Dahcotahs and Mandans perished less than a century ago in a battle between the two tribes. The Assinneboins were once nearly exterminated by the former tribe. Those times are gone, and a mightier influence is sweeping the red men from the face of the earth.
‘The Algonquin or Chippeway race is even more widely extended than the Dahcotahs. Judging from the remains of the languages which have descended to our times, the entire aboriginal population of New England sprung from this stock. Their manners and habits corroborate this supposition. The Delawares are supposed to have had the same origin. The language of the powerful and chivalrous Iroquois is said to be allied to the Chippeway. The Saque and Fox tribes are evidently branches of the same tree. The Ottawas and Pottawattamies claim the same descent. It is thought that the Menomenies share the same blood. The Kinisteneaux speak a dialect of the same tongue, and many other tribes may be traced to the same origin. All these tribes are and have ever been dwellers in the woods, and save that they now dress in articles made by the whites and that they love rum, they are now very nearly what they were two hundred years ago. They have proved themselves possessed of some mechanical ingenuity by inventing the birch canoe, a vehicle which has been the admiration of all travellers.
‘The Chippeway race differ little from other tribes living in the woods, whose manners and habits are too well known to need comment here. They are a nation of hunters and warriors, skilful in the chase, bold in battle, eloquent in council, and, in a word, possessing all the half-formed virtues, all the vices, all the ignorance and all the barbarism already ascribed to the Dahcotahs. Those of them who live in high northern latitudes, are more needy, and consequently more industrious, than those who dwell in more favored climes. Between this great nation and the Dahcotahs, a war has been waged so long that tradition itself conveys no knowledge of its cause or the date of its commencement. The deadly feud has been transmitted from father to son with such inveteracy, that all efforts to staunch it have proved abortive. A great deal of inherited hatred, and the strong thirst for martial renown, which is an inherent part of Indian character, have co-operated to perpetuate this state of things.
‘The language of these two great races are like no forms of speech known in the old world. They are wonderfully expressive, both defective and redundant, and said to be difficult of acquisition. The verbs of the Dahcotah language appear to have no roots, and to be entirely irregular in their modifications. The nominative case neither precedes nor follows the verb, as in the languages of the old world, but is incorporated with it, sometimes at the end of the word, sometimes in the middle, sometimes abbreviated, and sometimes entire. We have known traders to fail to acquire it during a trial of thirty years. From the little acquaintance we were able to gain, we thought it a collection of phrases, with scarce the resemblance of rule or order, and conclude that, to be learned at all, it must be learned by rote.
‘We can give but brief notices of other tribes. The Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws are known to us by their wrongs, and by the advances they have made in civilization. The measures taken to remove them beyond the Mississippi, already partially successful, will probably ere long be fully so. It would be an ungrateful as well as a useless task to enter into a discussion of a subject so generally understood; nevertheless, it may not be impertinent to offer a few remarks on the probable future fate of these unfortunate tribes.
‘We have already expressed our views respecting what we think the only sure mode of civilizing Indians. That mode, or, in other words, the necessity of a change of manners, was in successful operation upon the four southern nations. By transferring them to an unlimited range of territory, that necessity has been removed, and if they do not relapse into their primitive barbarism, they are radically unlike any other Indians with whom we are acquainted, or farther advanced in civilization than we are prepared to believe. The influences which make and continue the hunter state of the Indians, operate on the whites also. For every Indian who has voluntarily relinquished the life of his fathers, ten whites may be found who have become hunters.
‘It is proposed, by placing these tribes west of the Mississippi, to protect them from the encroachments of the whites, an intention which is certainly not founded on precedent or analogy. If the most solemn treaties, if repeated retrocessions have not hitherto been adequate to protect the savage from the overpowering tide of white population, how can it be supposed that his new abode in Arkansas will be respected when he shall have made it valuable, if indeed, he ever should make it valuable? There, he is thrown in contact with other tribes, as warlike, and more barbarous than his own, and much misery and bloodshed has already been the consequence.
‘Moreover, it is proposed, by casting the lot of several distinct tribes together, to amalgamate them, and thereby preserve them from decay. If the experience of past times is to be trusted, this measure is much more likely to produce division than to prevent it. Who ever saw two Indian tribes amalgamate, unless when one, reduced to a mere handful, sought the protection of the other? Thus the remnant of the Saques sought protection of the Foxes, the Stockbridge Indians of the Six Nations. On the other hand, we have only to refer to the Dahcotah and Algonquin races, severally derived from two great roots, but now divided into an almost infinite number of petty hordes. If people, thus connected by the bonds of common origin and language, have so divided, what is to be expected from others, who have no basis of union, and who, in some instances, entertain hostile feelings toward each other? We hope the best; but to us the future prospect of the expatriated tribes appears overshadowed with clouds and darkness.
‘Beside the two great divisions already noticed, there are many other tribes, of whose origin and languages little is known, save that they are wholly distinct from each other. Such are the natives of the Columbia river, for an account of whom we must refer the reader to the travels of Lewis and Clarke, and of Roos Coxe. M’Kenzie and Franklin tell all that is known of the Dog-rib and Coppermine Indians, two feeble and miserable tribes which inhabit the frozen regions north of the Great Slave lake. The Flat-heads, who live on the upper waters of the Columbia, muster five hundred determined warriors, and derive their name from their custom of compressing the head, in infancy, into a hideously unseemly shape; a practice common to most of the tribes of Oregon, and formerly in use among the Caraibs. They war upon their eastern neighbors, the buffalo-following Blackfeet, a desperate and ferocious tribe, who are friendly to the English, and abhor the very name of an American. This animosity arose from the fact that one or two of them were killed, more than thirty years ago, by Lewis and Clarke. The Mandans and Minnetarees dwell in permanent villages on the Missouri, speak distinct languages from each other, and from all other tribes, and claim consanguinity with none. The Crows are a separate and powerful race of vagrant horsemen, and so are the Shiannes, who were formerly expelled by the Dahcotahs from the lands which the latter now occupy. The Pawnees and Arikarees compose three tribes who speak one language; the Pawnee Wolves are in no wise connected with them. The Shoshonees live and starve among the Rocky mountains. Among other distinct races may be numbered the Wyandots, or Hurons, the Comanches, the Appaches, and many others. All of these tribes, excepting the Wyandots, are more or less in the vagabond state, and ride over the boundless prairies, chasing the buffalo, and warring upon all whom they dare attack. All are bold warriors, skilful hunters, and inveterate horse-stealers, in all of which characters they glory. The manners of all are nearly alike; all practise the same indiscriminate hospitality; all have the same code of morals, religion, and policy; almost all detest the people of the United States, for what reasons it is unnecessary here to inquire. By classing all these hordes together, we do not mean to imply that there is no difference whatever in their habits, ideas, and characters; but that there is a very strong general resemblance between them all.
‘The Caraibs and the original inhabitants of the West Indies have passed away, thanks to the cruelties of their Spanish invaders. Nothing can be said of them which is, probably, not already known to the mass of our readers. For an account of the Mexicans, and the Indians of South America, we must refer to the pages of Humboldt, Robertson, and other writers. Nor can it be expected that we should enter into such details as may have come to our knowledge, respecting the tribes already mentioned. Many volumes larger than this would be requisite for such purpose. It is our duty, however, to caution our readers against trusting the statements of such travellers as Carver, who have galloped over the countries they describe with the speed of race-horses, without understanding a syllable of the languages of the Indians with whom they sojourned, and relying for information on the hearsay testimony of ignorant trappers and boatmen. There are but too many of this stamp. If we may say what authorities we consider unquestionable, we will mention M’Kenzie, Henry, Franklin, Tanner, and the English Long. These all sojourned long among the people they pretend to describe, and enjoyed the best opportunities for personal observation.
‘One topic connected with the aborigines only remains, which we must discuss briefly. It relates to their ultimate destiny, and the prospect of christianizing and civilizing them. Many obstacles to this desideratum exist, and we are sorry to add that they appear to us insuperable. To convert the adults must be excessively difficult, if not impossible. Firstly, their languages are so difficult of acquisition, and so barren of words expressing abstract ideas, that the greater part of a life is spent in learning them, and when acquired, they are scarcely adequate to convey the doctrines of Christianity. Secondly, the Indians are so constantly roaming about, and so scattered, that, to instruct them, a missionary would be needed for every family, who should accompany them in their peregrinations, avail himself of such opportunities as their caprice might allow, and above all, maintain himself; for, though no Indian would tell him so, the burthen of his support would, at times, be severely felt. He must then overcome that apathy and laziness which is the characteristic of savage life, break up the whole of his pupil’s long-revered rules of thought and action, and substitute others in their stead. A new ambition must be awakened, and the whole frame of Indian society must be changed entirely, for the ethics of our Savior will not apply to the present one. For example, it will be difficult to persuade the savage to meekness and long-suffering, while all his arts and exertions will scarce protect his wives and children from the knives of his neighbors, while all his companions tell him that revenge on the enemies of his tribe is a sacred duty, and that martial renown ought to be to him as the breath of his nostrils.
‘The missionary should not too much rely on the apparent impression he may have produced on his auditors. Indians seldom contradict, and, by an intuitive politeness, always receive what is addressed to them by one whom they respect, with approbation and assent. Therefore, when an Indian auditory may have listened to a discourse with marked attention and expressed approbation, the speaker is not to suppose that they believe a word of it. They only mean that he is entitled to respect. An Indian once agreed that man’s first disobedience was improper, and, being farther questioned, gave his reasons. “It was very foolish,” he said, “to eat apples: it was much better to make cider of them all.”
‘Some few adults have, indeed, become Christians; but where such conversions have taken place, the converts have either made some previous progress in civilization, or the change has been nominal. We never yet saw a savage hunter who had a rational idea of Christianity. The example of the Cherokees alone shows that the ground must be prepared to receive the seed. The missionaries have undoubtedly done them great good; but they made little or no progress before the tribe had turned to agriculture, framed laws and a regular government, and acknowledged a distinction of property. They are now fitted to receive the Word.
‘Indians taken from their tribe young, educated, and sent back, do not appear better qualified to teach than white missionaries. They are, in every thing but complexion, as much aliens among their people as the whites, and command no more sympathy, and rather less respect.
‘We believe there is no example on record of a tribe who have changed from hunters to farmers on any other consideration than compulsion of some kind or other. We constantly see them recede rather than labor. But when prevented from receding, they learn the value of time and labor, and a distinction of property necessarily takes place. Laws are then necessary to guard this distinction. Prodigality is no longer a principal virtue; war is no longer the chief pursuit of life; the mind acquires new ideas and new habits of exercise, and thus the way to entire civilization and Christianity is prepared. Could we see the coast of the Pacific settled by white men, who should advance into the interior, driving the western Indians before them as we have done the eastern, till the entire race should be hemmed within limits too narrow for their existence as hunters, we should entertain a hope of seeing a remnant of them saved and civilized. The same result must be brought about by driving them to the Pacific; but the operation will be so tardy, that most of the expatriated tribes will probably be destroyed by their intercourse with the whites, or by the tribes on whom they will be forced to intrude. How small a remnant remains of the millions who once dwelt in peace between the Atlantic and the Mississippi!
‘The children of Indians may be christianized, but only when they can be separated from their parents. The missionaries of Michilimacinac seem aware of this fact; for they have chiefly confined their instructions to the half-breed children of white men, who are at the disposal of their fathers. It was a wise policy, and their ministry has produced the most blessed results.
‘Consider this subject in what light we may, so many difficulties present themselves, that it is almost impossible to hope that any considerable portion of the aboriginal race will be in existence three centuries hence. The fate of individual tribes is beyond the reach of conjecture, and we have only to pray that the God alike of white and red men will preserve them from utter extermination.’
XI. ――AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.[84]
INDIAN MOUNDS. The old Mexican villages, it is said, were built of unbaked bricks, fourteen inches square, and covered with limbs of trees and turf, which, when they mouldered away, formed a mound, similar in shape to those which meet the traveller’s eye from the Red river of Hudson’s bay to the state of Missouri, and probably to the gulf of Mexico. The number of these barrows has, however, been greatly exaggerated. We have seen it stated, on grave authority, that for a length of five hundred miles, and a breadth of from eighty to two hundred, the mounds are seldom an acre apart, and on this enormous blunder was founded a conclusion that the population was once immense. We, who speak from knowledge, affirm that, judging from such data, the former population was not so great as the present. We have seen mounds on the tributaries of Hudson’s bay, and on the waters of the Mississippi, and their numbers warrant no such speculations. They are common enough, indeed, but by no means so common, or of such magnitude, as to make it certain that the ancestors of the present race of aborigines were very numerous. We draw this inference from several facts.
Travelling some years ago near the St. Peter’s river, we saw, at a distance of about a mile, an erection which looked like one of the conical tents of the Indians. A distinguished individual had lately died, and our guide informed us that the object above mentioned was an earthen lodge which his relatives had raised over him. Being pressed for time, we did not approach it nigher. Supposing it to have been, which we see no reason to doubt, what the guide stated, it must, when the top crumbled down, have assumed the shape of a mound.
The Indians of those regions do, to this day, bury at least half of their dead. They respect the dead highly, and to protect their remains from wolves and dogs, erect over them an edifice of stakes, which, as they possess axes, they can easily cut. Now is it not probable, that before they had the means to cut stakes without excessive toil, they raised a mound of earth in its stead? What corroborates this supposition is, that many, and indeed the greater number, of the mounds are not larger than would be required for such purpose. That they were ever intended for dwellings is out of the question; for we are to learn that any traces of bricks, timbers, or masonry, have ever been found in any of them. We have already said that the fragments of pottery found in them are precisely similar to the earthen pots still in use among the modern Assinneboins. Again, fragments of bone are found in most of them; but could bones have remained any great length of time in damp earth undecayed? We think not――at least, we have known instances where the human frame has been utterly resolved into its native elements within the lapse of a century. But some of the mounds, and especially those near St. Louis, are so large as to be esteemed beyond the powers and industry of the present race of Indians. Before we adopt this conclusion, we should remember that, as late as the discovery of the Mississippi, several tribes kept the bones of their friends for years, and then buried them together, a practice, the remains of which are still distinctly visible among the Dahcotahs. On such occasions, a large mound must have been raised, by the united efforts of a tribe. If we suppose that successive layers were from time to time deposited on the national burial heap, which is, surely, no extravagant theory, the objection that the red men had neither power, inclination, nor motive to raise such tumuli, vanishes.
‘On the banks of White river,’ says a writer in Silliman’s Journal, ‘where the earth had caved in, I found part of an earthen coffin, in which the neck bones and the skull were yet remaining; and on the top of the neck bone, as I dug to see what bone could be inserted thus in part of an earthen box, I found a parcel of pieces of bones cut round, and remaining on the neck in the exact position in which they had been used as a necklace. They were pierced, but the string had entirely disappeared; they were the one eighth of an inch thick, and three fifths in diameter; and the bones of which they were made were much better preserved than those of the skeleton. This, I was confident, did not belong to the modern tribes of Indians which inhabit some parts of that country.[85] I found, among the clay which rolled down from the same mound, several pieces of lead ore, (common galena,) which had been carried there. It is not uncommon to find this ore amongst human bones, throughout the whole country; probably they used trinkets made of lead, and this was a provision for them to dress in the other world.’
On the plantation of Mr. John Kain, of Knox county, near the north bank of Holston river, five miles above its junction with the French Broad, is a curious collection of mounds of earth, evidently the work of art, but of an almost antediluvian antiquity, if we may form any conjecture of their age from that of the forest which grows around and upon them. They are about half a dozen in number, and arise on about half an acre of level ground, without any seeming regularity. They are pyramidal in their shape, or rather sections of pyramids, whose bases are from ten to thirty paces in diameter. The largest one in this group rises about ten feet above the level ground, and is remarkably regular in its figure. A perpendicular section of this mound was made about a year since, but no important discovery was made. It was found to consist of the surface thrown up, and contained a good deal of ashes and charcoal.
This group of mounds is surrounded by a ditch, which can be distinctly traced on three sides, and inclosing, besides the mounds, several acres of ground. It is, like the mounds, covered with trees, which grow in it and about it. At every angle of this ditch, it sweeps out into a semicircle, and it appears in many respects well calculated for defence.
There are many other mounds of the same form in Tennessee. At the junction of the French Broad with the Holston, there is one in which human bones are said to have been found. Farther up French Broad, near Newport, is a very large mound. It reposes on a very level and extensive plain, and is itself the largest I ever saw. It is thirty feet high, and its base covers half an acre of ground. As it ascends from its base, there is a slight inclination from a perpendicular on all sides, and the upper surface is as level as the rest is regular. From the great size of this mound, its commanding situation, and the mystery which veils its history, it is a most interesting spot of ground. There are many other mounds of this description in the state of Tennessee.
A mound of large dimensions is situated in the interior of the Cherokee nation, on the north side of the Etowee, vulgarly called the Hightower river, one of the branches of the Coosa. It stands upon a strip of alluvial land, called River Bottom. It is described by the Rev. Elias Cornelius, who visited it in company with eight Indian chiefs. The first object which excited attention was an excavation, about twenty feet wide, and in some parts ten feet deep. Its course is nearly that of a semicircle; the extremities extending towards the river, which forms a small elbow. ‘I had not time,’ says this writer, ‘to examine it minutely. An Indian said it extended each way to the river, and had several unexcavated parts, which served for passages to the area which it incloses. To my surprise, I found no embankment on either side of it. But I did not long doubt to what place the earth had been removed; for I had scarcely proceeded two hundred yards, when, through the thick forest trees, a stupendous pile met the eye, whose dimensions were in full proportion to the intrenchment. I had at the time no means of taking an accurate admeasurement. To supply my deficiency, I cut a long vine, which was preserved until I had an opportunity of ascertaining its exact length. In this manner I found the distance from the margin of the summit to the base to be one hundred and eleven feet; and judging from the degree of its declivity, the perpendicular height cannot be less than seventy-five feet. The circumference of the base, including the feet of three parapets, measured one thousand, one hundred and fourteen feet. One of these parapets extends from the base to the summit, and can be ascended, though with difficulty, on horseback. The other two, after rising thirty or forty feet, terminate in a kind of triangular platform. Its top is level, and, at the time I visited it, was so completely covered with weeds, bushes, and trees of a most luxuriant growth, that I could not examine it as well as I wished. Its diameter, I judged, must be one hundred and fifty feet. On its sides and summit are many large trees, of the same description and of equal dimensions with those around it. One beech tree, near the top, measured ten feet and nine inches in circumference. The earth on one side of the tree was three and a half feet lower than on the opposite side. This fact will give a good idea of the mound’s declivity. An oak, which was lying down on one of the parapets, measured at the distance of six feet from the but, without the bark, twelve feet four inches in circumference. At a short distance to the south-east is another mound, in ascending which I took thirty steps. Its top is encircled by a breastwork three feet high, intersected through the middle with another elevation of a similar kind. A little further is another mound, which I had not time to examine.
‘On these great works of art, the Indians gazed with as much curiosity as any white man. I inquired of the oldest chief if the natives had any tradition respecting them, to which he answered in the negative. I then requested each to say what he supposed was their origin. Neither could tell; though all agreed in saying, “they were never put up by our people.” It seems probable they were erected by another race, who once inhabited the country. That such a race existed, is now generally admitted. Who they were, and what were the causes of their degeneracy, or of their extermination, no circumstances have yet explained. But this is no reason why we should not, as in a hundred other instances, infer the existence of the cause from its effects, without any previous knowledge of its history.
‘In regard to the objects which these mounds were designed to answer, it is obvious they were not always the same. Some were intended as receptacles for the dead. These are small, and are distinguished by containing human bones. Some may have been designed as sites for public buildings, whether of a civil or religious kind; and others, no doubt, were constructed for the purposes of war. Of this last description is the Etowee mound. In proof of its suitableness for such a purpose, I need only mention that the Cherokees, in their late war with the Creeks, secured its summit by pickets, and occupied it as a place of protection for hundreds of their women and children. Gladly would I have spent a day in examining it more minutely; but my companions, unable to appreciate my motives, grew impatient, and I was obliged to withdraw, and leave a more perfect observation and description to some one else.’
With all the respect due to the authorities above quoted, we beg leave to doubt their conclusions. That the Cherokees had no tradition respecting the origin of their great mound, proves nothing. Indian tradition reaches not far. Different tribes are constantly driving each other from their possessions, and the tumulus in question may have been the work of a clan dispossessed by the Cherokees. The trees growing on such mounds prove as little. In 1825, we discovered two skeletons under the roots of a very large elm, on the banks of the Mississippi. They were at once pronounced relics of the supposed former race, and that opinion was current until the iron parts of the handle of a clasp knife were found in the earth from which they were exhumed. The Indians of the vicinity wondered, like the Cherokees at their mound, and the tree appeared more than a century old. The skulls were discovered to be those of Dahcotahs, by a peculiar formation of the lower jaw, and as the tribe to which they belonged are not agreed about their own former dwelling-place, though they left it not more than two centuries ago, we cannot attach much weight to Indian tradition.
In a stone quarry at St. Peter’s, a copper wedge, weighing three pounds, was found, about ten years since, fifteen feet below the surface of the earth. It was perfectly formed, and still bore marks of the hammer which fashioned it. This, and the exsiccated body (it is no mummy) which was found in the great cavern in Kentucky, are the only things we have seen which in our opinion justify even a conjecture that there was formerly another race of inhabitants on this continent. It will not, we suppose, be disputed, that the Mexicans were unable to rear the pyramid of Cholula, or that they are not of the same stock with our aborigines.
We are unable to decide for what purpose the erections scattered over our country, and commonly called forts, were intended. They were probably fortifications, and very sufficient ones they must have been, before the natives were acquainted with fire arms. Whoever has seen with what incredible despatch a modern Indian throws up a work sufficient for the protection of his own body, with no better implement than his knife, will readily admit that a tribe were fully competent to erect these works of an antediluvian people.
The great work which the impostor Carver pretends to have seen on the Mississippi, never had existence, save in the pages of his deceitful book. We have often sought without finding it, and the Indians of the neighborhood know nothing about it.
On the eastern shore of lake Pepin, about three miles from its debouchure, is an extensive prairie, and on its edge, commanding the lake and the plain, are the ruins of a regular four-bastioned fort. The curtain and the two western bastions have crumbled away, and fallen into the lake; but the two other bastions and three curtains, with the corresponding ditches, scarps and counterscarps, are perfectly distinct, and might be repaired with little trouble. From its commanding situation, and its regularity, it is plain that cannon were mounted upon it, and that it was built by the early French traders or travellers. This assumption is confirmed by the fact, that asparagus still grows wild among the ruins, though it is found in no other part of the country. Yet Indian tradition knows nothing of the origin of the fort, or its uses.
OLD FORTS. Among what may be called the antiquities of America, there are few things which excite more interest than the fortifications of the Highlands of the Hudson. It will readily be remembered that this river was a pass of vast importance to the contending parties, inasmuch as it was, during the revolution, the only channel of communication between the British armies in Canada and those on the sea board. To prevent a junction, which would have been ruinous to the cause of freedom, general Washington occupied the Highlands, and made every height bristle with cannon. The remains of many of the fortifications are still distinctly visible to the traveller, as he passes up and down the river; but it is in vain, excepting in a few instances, that he inquires their history, or even their names. Those at and about West Point, however, are better known. It is needless to tell here how this post was well nigh betrayed by the traitor Arnold――the story is still fresh in the memory of all men, and it is our business to say what may be said of the works his treason would have surrendered.
West Point is situated at a bend, and the only abrupt one in the whole course of the Hudson from New York to Albany. It is a large plain, elevated several hundred feet above the level of the river. Directly opposite is a large island, called Constitution island, on which are many eminences commanding the river, which were crowned with fortifications. Fort Constitution, the principal of these, is still entire.
On a height below West Point may be observed the remains of fort Montgomery, the guns of which, it is believed, compelled the Vulture sloop of war to retire farther down the river, and was thus the cause of the land excursion and capture of André, and consequently of the safety of the post. The extremity of the Point is occupied by the ruins of fort Clinton, which commanded two ranges on the river, and was an extensive as well as a very strong and important work. It was just opposite this fort that an enormous iron chain was stretched across the river to obstruct the passage. It was broken by an English man of war under full sail; but the vessel was so injured in the attempt, as to be obliged to put back. There are many other fortifications of minor importance on and about the Point, which, as well as those already mentioned, are undergoing a rapid process of decay, and will probably disappear in less than a century.
But what strikes the eye of the traveller with most imposing effect, are the hoary ruins of fort Putnam, familiarly called Old Fort Put. They stand five hundred feet immediately above the plain of West Point, and once commanded all the batteries on and about it. They have very much the appearance of a dilapidated castle. The work is of small extent, but very strong. It stands on the apex of a steep hill, and the wall on the northern side hangs upon the edge of a perpendicular precipice. On the other sides, the walls are so high and steep, as to render escalade impracticable. The walls are solid and very thick, and contain within their mass apartments for the garrison, and furnaces for heating shot. There was once an excellent well within the area; but it is now choked and rendered useless by fragments of the crumbling masonry. One of the angles contains two cells, probably designed for prisoners, and for black holes. Tradition erroneously says that major André was confined in one of them. Altogether, the whole ruin has an imposing appearance, for it is in strict keeping with the grandeur and wildness of the surrounding scenery, and serves to awaken many pleasing historical recollections in the American spectator. In the midst of embattled heights it stands, ‘the key-stone of the arch.’ Of its strength we may say, that an enemy could not have taken it without overwhelming numbers, and loss proportionate, or without bombarding it. In short, it is, in many respects, like what we read of the hill forts of India. We hope the proverbial economy of our government will not suffer so interesting a historical monument to fall into utter decay, and the rather, that a very small expense would restore it to its original condition.
Illustration: Fort Putnam.
The remains of fort William Henry, at the head of lake George, are traced with much interest by every traveller. It was merely a sand fort, but of great extent. The exterior redoubt, which may still be traced, comprehends the whole plain between the mountain and the lake, and the inner works, commanding the water, are in some places very distinct. The plain pointed out as the parade ground, is extensive and beautiful. This was the scene of the most wanton and perfidious massacre which ever disgraced the annals of warfare. Not all the consecrated water which the French carried home from the ‘Sacremer,’ as they beautifully termed the crystal lake, could wash out the foul stain which this transaction left on the French arms and French faith. The garrison, consisting of three thousand English and provincials, under colonel Munro, surrendered, after a long and desperate resistance, to the French army of ten thousand men, commanded by the marquis de Montcalm, in 1757. By the terms of the capitulation, the garrison were to receive a safe escort to fort Edward. They accordingly marched out to the parade ground, stacked their arms, and awaited the escort. The Indians, to the number of several thousand, armed with tomahawks and knives, immediately surrounded them, and began to strip them by force of their clothing. Colonel Munro, who was in the French camp, anxiously demanded the escort; but Montcalm delayed it upon frivolous pretences, and finally refused it. The French stood with folded arms, and beheld the massacre within pistol shot of their camp. Some few of the devoted and defenceless soldiers wrested weapons from the hands of their murderers, and dearly sold their lives; but of the whole number, only two or three escaped. A young man by the name of Carver, from New England, of great strength and agility, grappled with and overthrew several Indians, broke through their ranks, fled into the swamp in the rear of the fort, and escaped. Strong representations of this affair were made to the government of France, and Montcalm was called to a formal account, but was not punished. In his defence, he stated that, by interfering to prevent the massacre, he would have lost the confidence of his Indian allies, and incurred their hostility. Musket balls, grape and chain shot, buttons, hatchets, and human bones, are frequently ploughed up on this ground. These relics are sometimes left for sale at the Lake House.
In the rear of fort William Henry, on a commanding eminence, stands fort George, a small, but, for the time when it was erected, a strong fortress. The walls are of limestone, twelve or fifteen feet thick, and thirty or forty feet high. The magazine and arches are of brick work; a part of the magazine is entire, but the entrance to it is filled up. The walls have been pulled down in many places by those who had use for the stone, and all the bricks which could be got at have been carried off. Several wells, now filled up, may be discovered in the vicinity, and the ruins of the hospital, arsenal, and other buildings. Fort George is completely commanded by the neighboring heights, and of Gage’s hill it is within fair musket-shot. On this hill, however, the English kept a fort, the remains of the redoubt being still visible. It is remarkable that every old fort from the Canada line to Albany is commanded by highlands in its vicinity. When they were built, there was but little apprehension of artillery. Even the strong and important fort of Ticonderoga was effectually commanded by mount Defiance, a circumstance which proved disastrous to the American arms. The prospect from fort George is extensive and diversified, embracing the village, the mountains, the islands, and the lake, for a great distance.
‘Passing Plattsburg,’ says a recent English traveller, ‘the scene of our defeat last war, we reached Crown Point, and then the lake contracted from four or five miles in breadth to a river channel. The point was green and elevated, and on it were the ruins of military works, principally greeted by the Canadian French, when they meditated and attempted the utter expulsion of the English colonists from the shores of the Atlantic. Stories are told of vaults and dungeons at Crown Point, where plots were hatched, in conjunction with the Indians, for burning the dwellings and massacring the families of the settlers; and here were displayed “long rows of scalps, white in one place with the venerable locks of age, and glistening in another with the ringlets of childhood and of youth.”
‘Next, at the entrance to lake George, with its clear waters, its picturesque islets, and steep shores, were the remains of the celebrated fort Ticonderoga, situated on a point of land, surrounded on three sides with water, and on the fourth, deep trenches cut into the morass, with high breastworks. It presented one of the most likely posts to make a gallant defence, that could well be conceived. The ruin of a barrack, like a “donjon keep,” was the most conspicuous object on the point.
Illustration: Old Fort Ticonderoga.
‘It is impossible, as an officer of the black watch, to think of Ticonderoga without strong emotion, for here, in 1758, the forty-second, after cutting their way with their claymores through a broad abattis of prostrate trees, under a heavy fire from the French garrison, made desperate efforts, for four hours, to scale a high work without scaling-ladders, by mounting on one another’s shoulders, and by making holes in it with their bayonets. They were so exasperated at being so unexpectedly checked; and by the heavy loss which they had sustained, that they refused to withdraw till ordered a third time to do so by their general; their loss on this occasion was more than half the men, and two thirds of the officers, killed or severely wounded; that is, twenty-five officers, nineteen sergeants, and six hundred and three privates. About this time, the regiment received the honorary distinction of royal.’
The remains of the fortifications at Pittsburg occupy a very interesting position, on the delta formed by the confluence of the rivers at that place. Of fort Du Quesne, but a small mound of earth remains. Fort Pitt may be more easily traced; part of three bastions, about breast high, stand within different private inclosures, and a piece of the curtain, which, within a few years, was in complete preservation, may still be discovered. ‘I expected,’ says an intelligent correspondent of the New York American, ‘to have seen the magazine of the fort, which I was told was an admirable piece of masonry, and still endured in the shape of a porter cellar; but upon arriving at the spot where it had stood but a few weeks before, a pile of rough stones was all that we could discover. In a country like ours, where so few antiquities meet the eye, it is melancholy to see these interesting remnants thus destroyed, and the very landmarks where they stood effaced forever. Occasionally, too, the works of which every vestige is thus painfully obliterated, were, especially when erected by the French, of a peculiarly striking character. The French engineers, who first introduced the art of fortification into this country, were of the school of Vauban, and the enduring monuments they raised were not less noble proofs of their skill, than were the sites selected of their high military discernment.’ In the vicinity are the remains of a mill-dam, constructed by the officers of fort Du Quesne, according to the most approved rules of the time, like a perfect fortification; a part of the curtain, with traces of some of the bastions, still rewards the search of the inquisitive.
An old fort on the island Canonicut, which formerly defended the passage up Narragansett bay, presents an interesting relic of past times. It is built in a circular form, and is well represented in the accompanying sketch.
Illustration: Fort Canonicut.
XII. ――RELIGION.[86]
THERE can scarcely be a doubt, that among all the political and social relations of a people, there is none of such primary and vital importance as their religion; and if this be true of nations generally, it is peculiarly so of the United States of America. These states present, in this point of view, a novel spectacle; that of an experiment, conducted on a scale commensurate with its importance. We have not here to describe the influence of religion upon savages, nor upon a race fettered with the shackles of superstition, and of a predominant church government. We find a civilized and intelligent community in a situation to which history shows no parallel. Save the effect of knowledge and principle, there is nothing to influence the faith of the American citizen, no form of worship prescribed by law, no predominance of sects, no physical intolerance, no advantage or disadvantage to hope or fear from difference of opinion. The experiment has been fully successful; it has proved that a nation may be moral and religious without any external agency to direct or control the mind. It may safely be considered to have demonstrated the inexpediency of a union between church and state.
The constitution expressly forbids the general government to make any laws with regard to religion, and though the several states have reserved the right, they seem resolved never to use it. They do, indeed, sometimes allot portions of new land for the support of public worship, but the use of the grant is always left to the discretion of the inhabitants. Such state laws as relate to religious qualifications for office, &c. are almost a dead letter, if we except those which, in some states, render the clergy ineligible to the legislature, probably on the principle that civil and religious duties are incompatible with each other.
We find religion in the United States free from legal support or restriction, and, if the experience of fifty years is to be trusted, this non-interference is favorable to good morals and rational piety. There is no intolerance, no persecution, little controversy; yet the people are as religiously given as those of any other country, though not scrupulous with regard to forms. It has lately been demonstrated by statistical facts, that religious institutions exist in a much larger proportion to the population in this country than in any other; and in no country is the spirit of Christianity manifested more than in this. Benevolent societies for meliorating the condition of our race in this and other lands are numerous and increasing, and they display all the characteristic energy and enterprise of the Americans. The American missionary is now seen bending his course to the ‘islands of the sea,’ that ‘they may rejoice in the salvation of God,’ and to the ‘utmost parts of the earth,’ that they too may know the way of life. The Bible society, having supplied so far as possible every family in this land with the word of life, is now sending it through the missionaries to the heathen world; while the Tract society is despatching its little messengers of ‘glad tidings’ through the earth. Home Missionary, for the supplying destitute places in the United States with the ordinances of the gospel, Sabbath School, Prison Discipline, and numerous kindred societies are also lending their aid; and there seems to be a spirit of philanthropy pervading all denominations of evangelical Christians, which knows no bounds but the ends of the earth. May this spirit be increased a thousand fold!
‘Shall we, whose souls are lighted With wisdom from on high, Shall we to men benighted The lamp of life deny?’――Heber.
It is almost unnecessary to say, the religious aspect of different parts of the great confederacy is far from uniform. This would be the natural result of the freedom of religious opinions, and the circumstances of the early settlement of the country. New England, settled by the Puritans, retains much of the strong impress of the character of her fathers. Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics, Pennsylvania by Quakers, and other states by Episcopalians, while colonies of Swedes, French, and Dutchmen formed the starting points of others. Some persons are disposed to mourn over the fact, that Christians are divided into such a number of denominations, which they conceive to be an evil, and they earnestly long for the time to come when all these things shall be done away. It is indeed to be regretted that a greater degree of harmony and charity does not prevail among the great denominations which compose the mass of Christians, and that the time should come speedily when all shall ‘love one another with a pure heart fervently,’ is ‘most devoutly to be wished.’ Still these differences of opinion are the inevitable consequences of freedom of opinion on any subject; and as the Bible has not clearly marked out any form of church order and discipline, in which the chief difference consists among evangelical Christians, it can never be expected that all will agree upon this subject any more than upon any other. And on the whole it is best they should not; and it was wise in the great Head of the church to leave these things, non-essential, as he has, that different denominations may by a holy rivalry ‘stir each other up to good works.’ What a safeguard against intolerance, and the evils of bigotry and oppression, when several large and balancing sects exist in a community at the same time――a mutual check, and mutually operating on each other to prevent corruption. We should fear the result in our own land of the great predominance of any sect, but most of all that which, owning allegiance to a foreign civil and ecclesiastical potentate, is even now seeking to gain possession of our fair inheritance――we mean the Roman Catholic. While their right to propagate their opinions by all fair and constitutional means equally with others is freely admitted, the influence of their principles on our institutions, should they finally prevail, cannot but be dreaded. What popery has been it ever must be, the very foundation-stone being the infallibility of the church, which of course can never have done wrong, and can never change in any of its great characteristics. (See note at the end of this article.)
We will now proceed to notice the principal sects existing in this country.
METHODISTS. The Methodists are the most numerous denomination in the United States, being found in all parts of the Union in considerable numbers. They count more than six hundred thousand members of their churches. There are two principal classes of Methodists:――the Wesleyan, who are Arminians, and the most numerous. They are named from John Wesley, one of the founders of the sect. The other class, to which Whitfield belonged, are Calvinistic in their doctrines. They are also divided into two bodies on the question of church order and discipline,――the Methodist Episcopal and the Protestant Methodist;――the latter are seceders from the former body. Attached to the former there were, in 1833, five bishops, twenty-two hundred and thirty travelling preachers, and nearly five hundred thousand members of the churches; to the latter, four hundred ministers and fifty thousand communicants.
BAPTISTS. This denomination is second in the United States as to numbers. They estimate from four to five hundred thousand members of their churches. They are chiefly Calvinistic in doctrine, and independent or congregational in their form of church government, differing little in any respect from the latter denomination, except that they administer baptism by immersion, and only to adult believers.[87]
PRESBYTERIANS. This is the third numerically of the religious sects of this country. It is the offspring of the church of Scotland. Their doctrines are strictly Calvinistic. At the first meeting of the general assembly, in 1789, there were but about one hundred and eighty or ninety ministers belonging to the whole body, in four synods and seventeen presbyteries. In 1834 it embraced twenty-three synods, one hundred and eighteen presbyteries, two thousand six hundred and forty-eight congregations, one thousand nine hundred and fourteen ordained ministers, and two hundred and fifty licentiates, and more than two hundred and forty-seven thousand nine hundred and sixty four communicants. Of these ministers, about one-third reside in the state of New York, the next largest number in Pennsylvania, and the next largest in Ohio; some are found in every state.
CONGREGATIONALISTS. This denomination, differing from the Presbyterian only in regard to church order and government, abounds chiefly in New England, where they are the most numerous sect, although there are churches of this order in other states. According to their principles, each congregation of Christians is a complete church, which may commune with other churches if it pleases, and may appoint its own officers, to exercise discipline within itself. These Christians have sometimes been called Independents, from whom, however, they differ in some respects. Congregationalist and Independent are synonymous terms in England. They have pastors and deacons, the latter having the care of the secular concerns of the church, and not being allowed to preach. Their doctrines are the same as those of the Presbyterians, with whom they are united in all the great benevolent societies and movements of the day. Number of members, about one hundred and fifty thousand.
EPISCOPALIANS. The organization of the American Episcopal church took place during the war of the revolution, and (to secure the uninterrupted apostolic succession, as they say) the first bishop procured ordination from the Scottish bishops at Aberdeen, and two others were soon afterwards consecrated by the archbishop of Canterbury in England, and thus the succession was preserved unbroken. They have ten bishops, fifteen dioceses, and five hundred and twenty-eight clergy, priests, and deacons. The highest dignitary recognised is the Bishop. Priests and Deacons are the only other clergy known. The supreme authority is vested in a general convention, composed of a house of bishops and a house of lay delegates. Each diocese has a convention for the regulation of its own affairs. The state conventions consist of the clergy of the diocese, and a lay delegation from each church. No salary is given to bishops, as such; they are supported as rectors of churches.
The influence of republican principles is thus strikingly manifest in many of the features of American Episcopacy. The people always choose their own ministers, the bishops are elected by a procedure, according to which the laity have a vote through their delegates, and no salaries are independent of a similar vote. In all these particulars, the American church differs from that of England, but in doctrine and principles they are the same.
UNITARIANS; a small body chiefly in the state of Massachusetts, and mostly in and around Boston. They are Independents in church government. In doctrines they are mostly either ultra Universalists, or hold the belief of the final restoration of all men. They reject the doctrine of the Trinity, and the doctrines called Calvinistic altogether. The congregation of the King’s Chapel, in Boston, was probably the first which cherished these principles. It was originally an Episcopalian society, and they now use the liturgy, altered in some points to adapt it to their views.
UNIVERSALISTS are a considerably numerous body. They are divided into two classes――Ultra, or those who reject altogether the idea of future punishments, and Restorationists, or those who believe in a punishment after death, but which is not eternal.
QUAKERS. Pennsylvania is the strong-hold of the Quakers, although there are considerable numbers in New Jersey, the city of New York, &c. There are two sects, the one orthodox, the other followers of Elias Hicks, or Hicksites. They dispute between themselves which has seceded from the original principles of the denomination. The Quakers of England sent forth an epistle in 1829, containing a confession of faith, which acknowledged the inspiration of the Scriptures, the divinity of the Savior, his atonement, &c. The Hicksites are generally considered the seceders.
The DUTCH REFORMED was the established church in New York until its surrender to England. Its first classes was formed in America in 1757. Its government is vested in consistories, classes, and synods. Members of the German Reformed church are found principally in Pennsylvania, and also in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and other states. There are more than five hundred congregations of them. The American Lutheran church has eight hundred congregations. The United Brethren, or Shakers, a singular, harmless, inoffensive and industrious race, are found in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Massachusetts, and other states. There may be about six thousand of them. The Swedenborgians also hold an annual convention.
INFIDELS. It is proper to mention under the head of religion, in order to give a correct view of the religious state of the country, a class of persons, divided into several subdivisions, and generally looked upon with pity by professing Christians of all denominations, and viewed with concern by all the rational friends of liberty. We speak of the Owenites, Fanny Wrightites, Harmonites, Deists, or, according to a very common form of parlance, Freethinkers, Infidels, or Atheists. All of them, we believe, affirm that a community of property, labor, and education, is necessary to the well-being of mankind, and hold that a belief in divine revelation is unnecessary and absurd. They hold, too, that the marriage covenant is binding only during the pleasure of the contracting parties. Rapp, who brought a colony of foreigners of this faith to the banks of the Ohio, acquired an almost unlimited authority over them. He forbade the intercourse of the sexes for a year or more, and was obeyed. He divided the lands among his followers, instituted regulations for manual labor, and the products of the common exertion was thrown into a common stock. Mr. Owen’s settlement, called Harmony, was conducted on nearly the same principles of equality. This gentleman possessed a large property in Scotland, which he abandoned to found a colony, and disseminate the doctrines of Voltaire and Paine, in America, in which he was very efficiently aided by the celebrated Miss Frances Wright. Both of them went about the country several years, lecturing against Christianity and revelation; but with no very great success. They finally showed that practice does not always conform to principle, by marrying one another. Mr. Owen’s settlement has long been abandoned, his followers not having attained that degree of moral and social perfection requisite for its success!
Such principles as those of Mr. Owen, striking, as they do, at the very root of society, will never, it is to be hoped, prevail to any great extent in any part of the world.[88] The Freethinkers are at present but a small body, without order or government as a party, and little respectable as individuals. They are probably not more than five or six thousand. They have newspapers and places of meeting, in New York, Boston, and elsewhere. Many of them are avowed atheists. Had they been persecuted, molested, or opposed in any degree, it is probable they would have multiplied much faster than they have.
PAPISTS or Roman Catholics. This sect is rapidly increasing in the United States; a fact which ought to alarm all the friends of liberty and true religion.[89]
In 1632, a priest of the order of the Jesuits accompanied the early settlers to Maryland, and since that time the Catholic population have been supplied with instructers of their own persuasion from England. A see was constituted, and a bishop consecrated, in 1790. In 1810, it became an archiepiscopal see, and four new suffragan dioceses were established, viz.: in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, in Kentucky, to which some more have since been added, in New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, and Cincinnati, &c. Regular missions are also established all over the country, and it would seem, from the zeal of the missionaries, as well as by the language of the pope, that very great importance is attached to the future religious faith of America by the court of Rome. Nor have the devoted exertions of the priests failed of much success, for it has been computed that half a million of the people of the United States are Roman Catholics, of which not less than ten thousand are in the city of Boston, being one sixth of its population. It is stated that bishop England, of Baltimore, is an officer of the Inquisition!
XIII. ――MANNERS AND AMUSEMENTS
THE dispositions and feelings of the inhabitants of the different portions of the United States have been modified by a great variety of circumstances. Difference of descent has operated with its usual power. The stern Puritan, the open-hearted and honest Dutchman, the light-hearted and easy Frenchman, the German, the Spaniard, the Catholic, the Huguenot, all have their representatives in various portions of the country. The distinctive national peculiarities have in some measure been worn off, and the varying elements have been amalgamated by constant intercourse, intermarriage, removals from one part to another, and the gradual effects of time. Still the national character is very distinct in distinct sections of the country, and in the following account of the various manners and customs, we have uniformly followed what we consider the best authority.
The people of New England are grave, though they are not without humor; many of their amusements are of a reflecting kind, and their conversation tends rather to useful than to light or gay subjects. They are moral and pious, and the descendants of the Puritans retain much of the strictness of their fathers. If not ardent, they are to a great degree persevering, and though inquisitive, they are equally communicative. They are shrewd and calculating, yet not deceitful. They are no ‘granters of propositions;’ with them almost all things are subjects for discussion, in which they manifest much ingenuity. They have a caution that prevails in all things, and they seldom answer directly an abrupt question, without knowing why it is asked. They have the impress of Franklin; Poor Richard’s maxims of thrift fall upon a congenial soil, and no proverbs are oftener quoted, or more followed. They are like Franklin, to a great degree inventive in practical things, and far the greater number of inventions in the patent office are from New England. It is peculiar to these people, that they are seldom found without a pocket knife, which they use with dexterity; and boys at school are frequently seen whittling, or cutting wood into some shape, for a wind-mill or other toy. It is a universal trait, and it is said that a gentleman in Havana, who invited a large company to dine, gave each man from New England a shingle to cut, that they might not carve his furniture.
One of the first traits developed in the New England character is, if not a love of gain, at least a disposition to traffic. It commences at an early age, and children at school not only exchange or ‘swap’ knives, and other things, but make lotteries, in which the prizes are paid in gingerbread and raisins, and which leave a little profit to the manager and proprietor. The farmers too, though not the most industrious kind, sometimes bring up horses and cattle for a ‘swap’ to the village inn; and the tin pedlars, whose wheels are in every road in the United States, are to a man from New England.
Another trait of character is the readiness with which the people of New England admit the equality of all men with themselves, and the steadiness with which they deny, both in theory and practice, that any are superior. It would raise a tempest in the breast even of a female domestic, to ask for her mistress, nor would she be satisfied to be called a servant, or even a domestic. Help is the word by which servants reconcile their pride with their interest or employment, as it denotes, that though the assistants, they are the equals of their employers. A foreigner probably finds some ground for dissatisfaction on the score of domestics, for among house-wives it is a subject of universal complaint at home; the best servants are English, who have been more familiar with the distinction of classes.
The people of New England are distinguished for their celebrations. They are interlocked with each other by innumerable societies and associations, and one man is a member of many. These have their anniversaries, which, with the national and other holidays, make a great many processions, public dinners, and addresses. It is also usual to offer public dinners to those who have done acceptable services in high public stations.
A town meeting is perhaps the best place wherein to see the self-control of the people, when highly excited on questions of general or local interest. Every town is within certain limits a pure democracy, and its doings are attended with perfect decorum under the moderator, who is chosen, as the word implies, to mollify any over-zealous excitement. If, on these occasions, any citizen becomes turbulent, or abusive in language, the sense of the assembly is so strongly expressed against him, that he is at once reduced to order. Generally speaking, there are no mobs or riotous assemblies. The interference of a few constables, or the reading of the ‘riot act’ by a magistrate, is sufficient to disperse any tumultuous throng. A tumult at a town meeting or election, is a thing unheard of among us.
Some of the most peculiar manners and customs of New England are found in the island of Nantucket, and the neighboring part of the continent. Nantucket is a happy settlement; not that it has precious metals in its bosom, or fertility in its soil, but because the people are simple, innocent, and contented. The sea is their patrimony, and they gather its bounties in the most distant ports. The whale fishery in New England was commenced by six persons in Nantucket; one watched on an eminence for the spouting of the whale, and when he discovered it, all would pursue in a small boat, and they seldom failed to tow the leviathan ashore. Gains extended the adventure, ships were fitted out, and the whale was chased from the temperate regions to the arctic seas, and followed to the remotest shores of the Pacific ocean.
Among the people, there are none idle, and few destitute. The vices of commercial places are hardly known, and it is admitted all over New England to be a great presumption in favor of a man’s honesty, that he comes from Nantucket. The Friends or Quakers give to the language a simplicity of diction truly Doric, and though they take some liberties with the commonwealth’s English, yet in a person brought up with them, to speak in a more classic manner would be held to savor of affectation and pretension. The various relationships, and the kindly feelings, have introduced the custom of calling elderly people uncle or aunt, and the younger, cousin. Even a stranger soon falls into this habit. The people generally marry young, and few live in celibacy. They are social to a great degree, and are eminently distinguished for their frequent visitings, to sup at each other’s houses. They live more as though they made a large family, than a small community.
The following tribute to the New England character is from Captain Hall, whom no one can accuse of a desire to overpraise what he saw in this country. ‘I had, however, many sharp amicable discussions with my friends at Boston, on the thousand and one topics that arose between us, but I must do them the justice to say, that I never met a more good-natured, or perhaps I should say, good-tempered people; for, during the whole course of my journey, though I never disguised my sentiments, even when opposed to the avowed favorite opinions of the company, I never yet saw an American out of temper. I fear I cannot say half so much for myself, for I was often a good deal harassed by these national discussions, when the company and I took our station on the opposite poles of the question. But it is pleasant to have it in my power to say that I cannot recall a single instance in which any thing captious, or personally uncivil, was ever said to me, though I repeated openly, and in all companies, every thing I have written in these volumes, and a great deal more than upon cool reflection I choose to say again.’
In general, the amusements are of a thoughtful rather than a gay character, and games of skill are preferred to those of chance. The character of the Puritans has given some tone to the amusements and holidays. Theatres are seldom even fashionably attended, and there are many who hold it unlawful to enter them. There are places, too, in the country, where dancing is considered to be a ‘vain, idle, and sinful amusement.’
The active sports are principally games of ball, and sometimes running and wrestling; formerly, different towns and parishes had their champions in wrestling, to try their superiority by matches, in which several fatal accidents occurred; but the sport is now almost entirely disused. Boxing, which is so universal in England, is almost unknown, and horse-racing and cock-fighting are seldom seen. In winter, when there are delightful moonlight nights, sleigh-rides are a favorite amusement. Parties of both sexes sit in large sleighs, as closely as they can be packed, and sometimes in each others’ laps, scour over several miles at a rapid rate, and at some hotel, find not only a supper but a fiddler in attendance, whose gains are much enhanced in the season of sleighing. There are several holidays, but none that are observed in England. Election day is that on which the governor is declared to be elected, and has heretofore been one of the most ‘time-honored’ days in the calendar. On this day, the young men often take sides, in what is called a ‘bird shoot,’ to destroy the birds most mischievous to crops, and the party bringing in the least number of heads is vanquished, and gives a dinner to the other.
Fast day is an observance that has descended from the pilgrims, and is kept with a decent solemnity. The governors appoint one day in the year, in all the New England states, for ‘fasting, humiliation, and prayer;’ there is little business transacted, and the people generally attend in the churches, which are called more generally, from an old dislike to Episcopacy, meeting-houses. Thanksgiving is also a day appointed by the same authorities, and the intent of the edict or proclamation is carried into full effect by the disposition of the people. It is always appointed in the fall or autumn, after the harvests, when the garners are full; and poor indeed is the inmate of the hovel that has not on that day plenty and luxury on his board. The preparations for thanksgiving continue several days, and for many more the prepared viands are not exhausted. It is the day for family meetings, and it is then that members of the same family often come hundreds of miles to meet again, to renew the bands of affinity and affection under the paternal roof. It is at this feast that the simplicity and patriarchal character of a New England grandsire is pre-eminent.
Before and after thanksgiving, there are held all over the country ‘shooting matches,’ which are announced by printed placards, headed ‘sportsmen attend,’ and which set forth that geese, turkeys, and fowls, will be set up for marksmen. They are shot at, generally after they are killed, with rifles, at certain distances, and rates are paid for every shot. If they are hit, the marksman has the game. These sports are commonly held in some retired spot, or at some deserted house, by which there is little passing, and where a day or two is spent as in an encampment. A bear or deer is sometimes shot at in the same way.
Autumn also brings other holiday observances, one of which is ‘husking,’ when the men of a neighborhood meet to husk the Indian corn of one of the number, that is, to separate it from the sheaf. A good supper, and sometimes a dance, ensues. The females have also similar meetings, called ‘quilting bees,’ when many assemble to work for one, in padding or quilting bed coverings or comforters. Militia musters or reviews collect many people, but they are happily growing out of date; they generally display the most repulsive traits of the New England character. An ordination of a clergyman over a society discloses better characteristics. It is a time when every house in the society is invitingly open, when the master generally ‘provides’ for more guests than he has the good fortune to secure; and when he may be seen forestalling his neighbors, by asking visiters to dine, before they arrive at the church. Persons of all creeds and conditions are pressed, nothing loath, to the feasts that smoke upon a hundred tables.
Ploughing matches and cattle shows are held only in autumn; they attract many people, and give a favorable impulse to the interests of agriculture. The celebration of the fourth of July, or, as it is called, Independence, is not peculiar to New England; it is the great national holiday, honored by salutes of cannon, fireworks, processions, addresses, dinners, in all cities, and in the most secluded corners of the republic.
In the middle states there is little general or peculiar character. In Pennsylvania, society takes a tone from the Friends, particularly in Philadelphia and some other towns; in the interior, German influence is equally perceptible. New York has the air and character of all great commercial cities. One abominable custom deserves to be mentioned with reprobation. Swine are by law permitted to range at large, and these quadruped scavengers are, of course, intolerable nuisances. Philadelphia and Baltimore seem to have escaped, in some measure, from the moral evils which appear almost inseparable from great cities. In these places, the manner of life is far more quiet and domestic than in New York, and in the former city the arts and sciences meet with a more assiduous cultivation. The Wistar parties of this city, assemblies held at gentlemen’s houses, where the conversation is chiefly on literary and scientific subjects, are much praised by intelligent strangers.[90]
The amusements of the middle states are more various than the other sections of the country. As the three largest cities in the union are distant one from the other but about a hundred miles, there are of course greater facilities and encouragement for scenic exhibitions; and the theatres, especially in New York, are much attended. The actors are generally English, and the best English performers often come over for a season. There is a French opera company, also, who at times perform in the cities, where they give general pleasure, and a splendid opera house has been recently erected in New York. In the latter city, there are several expensive public gardens, in which a great variety of costly fireworks, shows, and amusements, are offered in the warm seasons; when lighted up at night, they are very brilliant, and they attract crowds of people. There are many small gardens, where refreshments are sold; and in Philadelphia the number of these is considerable, though some of them contain little else than a few alcoves, covered with creeping plants.
Horse racing, which in New England is almost unknown, is more honored in the middle states; and some of the matches on Long Island and in Dutchess county, have been attended by vast crowds of people. Boat races also are sometimes held in the calm waters about New York.
Skating is practised with great animation, and thousands of people collect on the Delaware, at Philadelphia, when the stream is frozen. An ox, on such occasions, has sometimes been roasted on the ice, near the Mariners’ hotel, which is the hull of a large vessel, moored in the river. Skating is very general amusement in the northern parts of the United States, and there are few boys who have not a pair of skates. Coasting is another winter pastime, in which, as in many other games, the labor seems to be at least equal to the pleasure. When the snow covers the earth, a troop of joyous boys assemble on the top of a long and steep hill, and each one sitting upon a little sled, gives it an impulse which carries him to the bottom with accelerating velocity, and far into the plain below. The motion is sometimes so swift that it is like the sweep of an eagle. In the cities, fatal accidents occur in following this amusement, and there are generally penalties imposed by law for pursuing it there.
The coasting is performed, however, in the country, upon a grander scale; the great ox sled, or sledge, is carried up with commendable perseverance and toil, and so covered with youth of both sexes, that little of the timber appears. When fitted, it is launched; but when adrift it is more difficult to be guided than the single sledge, and the whole freight is sometimes turned topsy turvy into a snow bank half way down the hill. This, however, seems to increase the enjoyment. This practice of coasting is even more common in New England than in the middle states.
There are some traits of character which run through the southern states, modified by a variety of circumstances, but most obviously and generally by the system of domestic slavery. The character of Virginia and South Carolina is perhaps, in many respects, superior to that of the Southern states, yet the principal characteristics are common to all. In Virginia, many of the old English modes of life are retained, and the domains of the landed proprietors have the extent of English baronies. Attachment to home, family connections, and profuse hospitality, eminently distinguish this high-minded and honorable class.
The people of Carolina, who dwell in the lower country, are annually compelled to leave their homes, however attached to them. None can travel without gaining knowledge, and losing prejudices, and the Carolinians are, to a great degree, liberal and intelligent. To remain in summer on the plantations, is at the risk of life; they are therefore found, at that season, in the northern and eastern states, and in Europe. They are social, and in general closely united. In New England, gentlemen of neighboring towns are often unacquainted with each other; but in Carolina, the acquaintance extends over the state. This arises from the intercourse of the capital, where all are found in spring, and from the fellowships that are formed in packets, or while residing or travelling in other states.
It may be thought that the life of a southern agriculturist is one of indolence and ease. It is the very reverse; it is one of far greater activity than is led by gentlemen of wealth elsewhere. The cares of a plantation are sufficient to consume the day, and the planter is often on horseback in his fields, till evening. His notions of space are so liberal, that he will readily ride a dozen miles to dine, and he engages in the chase with his characteristic ardor. No men ride so fearlessly; and the game is followed at full speed in thick woods, among holes, horizontal branches, and prostrate trunks. The social relations are admirable. The season for visiting is never over, and as the social is as much increased as any other principle, by cultivation, here it attains to its best growth. There is, among relatives, great kindliness of feeling, and the circle it embraces is wider than in New England. Any one may, as far as affinity can be traced,
‘Claim kindred there, and have his claim allowed.’
Gentlemen meet at frequent intervals in club houses, often built in the woods, where the entertainment is furnished by each one in turn.
The people of the south have more haughtiness, courtesy, and a higher estimation of personal dignity, than those of the north. Pride is the natural consequence of superiority of station, though it is generally incompatible with meanness. A planter would be more apt to do what he would be sorry for, than what he would be ashamed of. A slight wound of pride is more strictly avenged, than a greater injury to property; and a lack of courtesy is perhaps as much reprobated as a breach in morals. Duelling is the natural growth of such a state, and though it is not frequent, it is but too well established by custom. The challenged is held to fight, even if he feel no resentment, or has done no injustice; and he sometimes perils his life for mere expediency: as he would put it to some risk to preserve his property, he is led to believe that he must do it also to save his character.
‘The poles,’ says a recent traveller, ‘are not more diametrically opposed, than a native of the states south of the Potomac, and a New Englander. They differ in every thing of thought, feeling, and opinion. The latter is a man of regular and decorous habits, shrewd, intelligent, and persevering; phlegmatic in temperament, devoted to the pursuits of gain, and envious of those who are more successful than himself. The former――I speak of the opulent and educated――is distinguished by a high-mindedness, generosity, and hospitality, by no means predicable of his more eastern neighbors. He values money only for the enjoyments it can procure, is fond of gayety, given to social pleasures, somewhat touchy and choleric, and as eager to avenge an insult as to show a kindness. To fight a duel in the New England states would, under almost any circumstances, be disgraceful. To refuse a challenge, to tolerate even an insinuation derogatory from personal honor, would be considered equally so in the South.
‘In point of manner, the southern gentlemen are decidedly superior to all others of the union. Being more dependent on social intercourse, they are at greater pains, perhaps, to render it agreeable. There is more spirit and vivacity about them, and far less of that prudent caution, which, however advantageous on the exchange, is by no means prepossessing at the dinner-table, or in the drawing-room. When at Washington, I was a good deal thrown into the society of members from the South, and left it armed, by their kindness, with a multitude of letters, of which I regret that my hurried progress did not permit me to avail myself. Many of them were men of much accomplishment, and I think it probable that Englishmen, unconnected with business, would generally prefer the society of gentlemen of this portion of the union, to any other which the country affords.’
The amusements and occupations of the people inhabiting the valley of the Mississippi afford no great scope to the pen of the true chronicler, though they have often furnished materials for the foreign traveller and the novelist. A new country, inhabited by what may be called, in some sort, a new people, must, however, present some scenes which may serve to amuse, if not to instruct.[91]
New Orleans seems, by common consent, to be the focus in which the eccentricities of Missouri, Kentucky, and the rest of the western country concentrate. Here are seen the Spaniard with his lazo, the Kentuckian with his broad-horn, or flat-bottomed ark, the merchant from Europe or the New England states, stepping stately from the deck of his ship, the slave with his burthen on his shoulders, and the gambler looking out for his prey. Not the least interesting of the classes of this heterogenous population, are the women who have not the pure white complexion of the Atlantic coast, or the crisp locks and bent limbs of their remote African ancestors. These females hold an anomalous position among the races by whom they are surrounded, which will require some further comment. They are called quadroons, mustees, mulattoes, &c. as the purity of their parentage or the circumstances of their birth may require.
These women, being generally the offspring of white men of standing and respectability, are left in singularly unfortunate circumstances. They have the feelings, and, in a considerable degree, the education and sentiments of their more pure-blooded countrywomen. Nevertheless, the prejudice, or feeling, be it natural or not, which inclines every free white American to view the whole African race as an inferior order of mankind, prevents any legitimate union with them. So situated, they make the best of the condition into which the accident of birth, and not their own fault, has thrown them. They form temporary connections with such respectable whites as are able to maintain them in ease, and attachments are often formed, which are not surpassed, or scarcely equalled, by any of which we read in romance. However, the connection is generally considered in the light of a bargain. The mother promenades with her fairer daughter on the levee, till some white stranger, smitten with the charms of the latter, makes a proposal. A bargain is made, limited in time, or unlimited, according to circumstances, and a breach of faith, thus plighted, rarely occurs. This connection, infamous as it seems, involves no disgrace in New Orleans. It is the most respectable condition to which a female, who is conscious of the taint of black blood, can aspire. She is neither shunned nor scorned, and may hold up her head in any company into which she may happen to enter.
Strange scenes sometimes occur, in consequence of the mixture of races on the banks of the levee of New Orleans. The small trader tries to take advantage of all with whom he is thrown in contact. The Indian begs, the over-wrought slave groans, the backwoodsman bullies. ‘Twenty dollars,’ cried a Kentuckian boatman, stepping upon the levee, ‘to any man who stops my moderate head-way.’ A Mexican hunter of wild horses, who rode quietly behind him, threw his lazo over his head, wheeled his horse short round, and gallopped up the levee, dragging the boaster after him.
Gaming is practised in New Orleans, probably to a greater extent than in any other part of the United States. The vice being considered little or no shame, houses are kept openly. This may be considered one great well-spring of social corruption.
The inhabitants of the states on the Ohio and Mississippi raise great quantities of grain, not to speak of pork and other commodities which bring profit to American agriculturists. New Orleans is the mart where these articles find a vent, and the principal object of a western farmer is to get them thither. To this effect, he builds what he calls a flat boat, that is to say, a large square box, without a lid, capable of containing and transporting many tons. The materials of this vehicle are found in abundance all over the valley of the Mississippi, and the cost of building it is therefore small. In this bark the farmer commits himself to the waters, and if he escapes snags, sawyers, &c. which usually happens, he arrives in New Orleans, where he disposes of his produce. Keel boats are also used for the transportation of goods and produce, but since steamboats have become common on the Mississippi waters, they have in a great measure superseded the aforesaid means of conveyance. Still, the keel and flat boats may merit a description. The former were nearly in the form of the packets used on the Erie and Middlesex canals, and were propelled by poles, oars, and sails. The latter were unmanagable hulks, which floated at the mercy of the current, and could only be diverted from rocks, snags, and other perils of river navigation, by the use of sweeps, which, however, could only move them in a lateral direction. On arriving at New Orleans, their owners broke them up, as no human power could have taken them up stream, and sold them for fire wood. They then returned to their homes by land. Flat and keel boats are now rarely seen on the western waters; but when they were the only means of transportation, they reared a hardy class, fit to fight with Indians, or to subdue the wilderness. This class, thanks to steam navigation, is now on the verge of extinction, and the valley of the Mississippi has seen ‘the Last of the Boatmen.’
‘King balls’ are still in vogue in this region, both in the white and free colored classes. A ball is given, precisely like those known in other parts of the United States, excepting in one particular. He who gives the ball, singles out a lady whom he designates his ‘queen,’ to whom he gives, and who receives, his exclusive attention, for the remainder of the season. The other guests do likewise, and the queens frequently receive presents to a large amount, before the temporary connection is dissolved. Evil is seldom, if ever, known to come of this custom.
Rough athletic sports, racing and shooting matches, are the most common amusements of the men of the west. It is common for parties to test their marksmanship by squirrel shooting, with the western weapon, the rifle. The hunter aims solely at the head of the little animal, and the shot which takes effect in any other part is reckoned as nothing. The rifle used in this and other sports, is very different from those used by volunteer companies in the eastern states, the barrel being very heavy, the bore small, and the sights adjusted with scrupulous accuracy. Hence the proverbial marksmanship of the backwoodsmen, so apparent at New Orleans and elsewhere. The feats of individual hunters almost transcend belief. Some have been known to throw two apples into the air, and strike them both with a single bullet as they crossed each other, and it is not uncommon for one man to hold up a small object for another to shoot at. The celebrated ‘Mike Fink’ used to amuse himself by shooting off the tails of swine, as they ran, and hitting his wife’s comb upon her head.
A pastime is sometimes practised at weddings and other high festive occasions, which is called a goose or gander pulling. The manner is this. The toughest goose is selected from the flock, and its neck is stripped of its feathers, and then well soaped or greased. A suitable tree is next selected, an oak or hickory being preferred. The feet of the fowl are then made fast to the extremity of a pliant limb, about as high as a man on horseback can reach. Bets are made, and a prize proposed. The first sportsman rides under the tree at full speed, and snatches at the neck of the devoted fowl as he passes. If he succeeds in pulling off its head, he gains the prize; but this rarely happens at the first trial. The neck is too slippery, the animal sees and avoids the horseman’s grasp, and the swaying branch aids its efforts. Besides, the exploit requires no little strength of arm, and is seldom accomplished without sundry falls and bruises; all of which are considered matter of merriment.
The slaves of that section have little amusement, save what they derive from their constitutional good humor. Dances and corn huskings, or shuckings, are their chief pastimes. After laboring hard all day, the negro will cheerfully run to a dance, half a score of miles off, and get back to his toil before morning. A corn shucking is a matter of more importance. The sable helots sit in a circle round the heap of maize, keeping time with head and hand to some rude ditty like the following:――
‘O I wish that I had the wings of an eagle! Ho! ho! he――ho――ho! I’d fly away to a wild-goose country, Ho, ho, he――ho――ho!’
This is sometimes accompanied by the banjoe, a kind of rude fiddle. ‘Possum up a gum stump,’ is a great favorite with these choristers.
Buffalo hunting was once, as deer hunting is now, a favorite amusement of the backwoodsmen. The wild cattle have long since receded beyond the Mississippi, and now furnish sport only to the wandering Indians, their traders, and the no less hardy bands of trappers and hunters. Some account of the manner of taking this huge animal may not be out of place here.
The scent of the buffalo, though otherwise it is a very stupid animal, is exceedingly acute. It will scent a man more than a league, and flee in alarm, though it is not terrified at the sight of the human race. Hence it is necessary for the pedestrian hunter to get to leeward of the object of his pursuit. Having approached the animal as nearly as he well may, he stoops, then gets upon all fours, and finally drags himself along prone, pushing his firelock before him. If there be long grass, or if, in winter, the snow be deep, the circumstance much facilitates his operations. If the animal ceases to feed to look at him, he stops and remains motionless till it begins to graze again. By observing these precautions, the buffalo may be approached to within a few yards. When the hunter is nigh enough, he directs his aim behind the beast’s fore-shoulder, and inflicts a mortal wound. This, however, is but a slow and unsatisfactory mode of hunting, inasmuch as it consumes much time, and only one buffalo can be killed in many hours. The best and most experienced hunters follow the chase on horseback.
The mounted sportsman dashes into the thick of the herd, and singles out the best and fattest. The buffalo, when frightened, runs fast, but awkwardly. His gait is that of a swine, and this peculiar gait the trained horse acquires, and assumes when beside the game, obeying the least pressure of the rider’s foot or knee. The hunter takes care to keep at least his horse’s length from the buffalo, in order that, if the latter should turn upon him, which he will certainly do if wounded, he may have time and space to escape. All precautions being duly taken, the horseman throws the reins on his steed’s neck, holds his gun stiffly with both hands, and fires. The horse swerves at the flash, and the rider directs him to new game, himself loading at full speed. An expert huntsman will kill as many as half a score of buffaloes at one race, and rarely misses the heart.
When an Indian wounds a buffalo, he leaves it to die or separate from the herd, and his companions never interfere with what has thus become his property. Few of the skins of the animals so killed are taken, and the greater part of the flesh remains a prey to the wolves and ravens. When the cattle are in plenty, they are slain merely for their tongues, humps, and other delicate morsels. Vast havoc is made of them every year.
The more remote Indians, not being provided with fire arms, use bows and arrows in the chase, and with great effect. A single arrow is often known to go through and through a buffalo, and it is seldom a shaft stops short of the feather. But whether it strike deep or not, if it does but stick, the animal’s fate is sealed. It works inward as he runs, and eventually reaches the vitals.
It is a cheering sight to see an Indian buffalo hunt. The tread of the herd shakes the solid earth; the hunters animate each other with loud shouts, and the guns flash incessantly. Here a rider is seen fleeing for life before some infuriated animal; there a buffalo stands at bay. Altogether, the scene produces an excitement which those only who have felt can conceive. The passion for this chase increases with time, and few professed buffalo hunters leave it before age disables them.
There are many apparent dangers in buffalo hunting. The prairies are full of holes dug by badgers and other burrowing animals, in which the horse may stumble, and there is some risk from the horns of the chase. Nevertheless, it is seldom that any serious accident occurs.
Another mode of taking the buffalo was formerly in use among the Indians of the Mississippi. Two rows of stakes were planted in the prairie, gradually converging, till at their extremity they barely left a passage into an inclosure of a few yards in area. These rows were a league or more in length, and on the top of each stake was placed a piece of turf, which frightened the cattle, and prevented them from attempting to escape in a lateral direction. The herd, being pursued by horsemen to the entrance of this artificial defile, were driven onward till they reached the pound, when the entrance was closed, and the work of destruction began. Few ever escaped, for the buffalo has little sagacity, and, being thus shut up, will run round and round, without attempting to break through the barriers which inclose them. This mode of hunting is still practised by some of the more remote tribes.[92]
Deer are hunted on the Mississippi, both by whites and Indians, in a way unknown in the eastern states. In the hot nights of summer, the deer resort to streams and ponds, to escape from the myriads of mosquitoes with which the woods teem, and stand immersed in the water for hours. Sportsmen take advantage of this habit to destroy them. A board is placed in the front of a canoe, before which burns a torch. The board serves to deflect the light from the person of the hunter, who paddles as silently as possible along the margin. The devoted deer seems to be fascinated by the glare of the torch, and suffers the canoe to approach within five yards of him. Nay, even the sound of a gun close at hand will scarce startle him. Two or three are often killed within a stone’s throw of each other.
We are not aware that, besides the particulars already noticed under this head, there are any occupations or amusements peculiar to the people of the west, of sufficient importance to require description.
XIV. ――PENITENTIARY SYSTEM
MOST of the improvements made in the manner of punishing and reforming persons convicted of enormous crimes in the United States may justly be attributed to the studies and exertions of enlightened members of the Prison Discipline Society. To their reports and publications, therefore, must we look for a correct synopsis of this system, so highly appreciated among ourselves, so much decried by the high-priest of British prejudice, captain Basil Hall.
The first annual meeting of the above-named society took place on the second of June, A. D. 1826, in Boston. The report declares that its object was the improvement of public prisons. It contained many lucid remarks on the existing state of these prisons, but, as it is with the present, rather than with the past, that we have to do, we shall pretermit these. It appears, however, that many of the jails of that time were very insecure――that solitary confinement gave the best promise of the desirable security, and prevented prisoners from corrupting each other――that frequent inspections were necessary, to prevent plans of escape――that prisons, from mere humanity, should be better ventilated, and so lighted as to enable the convicts at least to read the word of God――that cleanliness had, in many instances, been neglected――that amended means of instruction in the mechanic arts were highly desirable――that the condition of the sick was much neglected――and, in short, that the condition of the jails and penitentiaries of the United States was little better than that of European places of punishment. The improvements which have since been made will better appear from positive, authenticated facts, than from the idle speculations of theorists and travellers.
When the above society was formed, there were but two prisons on the principle of solitary confinement in the United States,――at Thomaston, Maine, and Auburn, New York, containing between three and four hundred night rooms, and four or five thousand convicts. Full six thousand solitary cells have since been built. The prisons now constructed on this principle are twenty-nine in number, and are all on the general plan of the Auburn prison, with some slight varieties of construction. As many of the prisons are nearly identical in construction with this last, a description of it will probably not be unacceptable.
The external wall of this establishment comprises an area of upwards of sixteen thousand feet, in which is contained the prisons, yards, lumber yard, (very large,) garden of about four thousand five hundred feet, keeper’s house, guard room, a great number of shops, bathing pools, and other offices. Two large buildings, on the old plan, and which were formerly used as night rooms, are no longer dedicated to that purpose. These, together with the keeper’s house and the prisons, form three sides of a square, which opens upon an area, surrounded, first by the shops, and then by the exterior wall.
The external wall of the principal prison, (that in the northern wing,) is thirty feet high, two hundred and six feet long, forty-six feet wide, and three feet thick. It incloses an area of five hundred feet. The long barrack, thus surrounded by this external wall, is divided from end to end by a solid and continuous wall of masonry, two feet thick. On each side of this, the cells designed for the prisoners are arranged. To explain this more fully; a long, narrow building, of solid granite and lime, is equally divided, from end to end, by a solid wall. On each side of this wall, and within the outer wall of the building, are a great number of cells, so arranged as to effect the greatest economy of room. Outside the exterior walls of these cells, is another wall, ten feet distant from them, and thirty feet high. Beyond this second wall are certain yards, surrounded by a third wall, and in the said wall, as well as in the ten-foot-wide gallery between the cells and the thirty-foot wall, keepers and sentinels are constantly moving. Thus, if a prisoner should break out of his cell, he must first pass or kill a sentinel, then force a second wall, then pass through a yard in which other sentinels are stationed, and then climb over another wall. So great is the security thus afforded, that during many years, it is believed that in prisons thus constructed, but one serious attempt at escape has occurred, and in that instance it was unsuccessful.
Prisons built on this plan are thought to combine the advantages of security, solitary confinement, inspection, ventilation, light, cleanliness, instruction, and proper attendance on the sick.
The exterior wall of the cells, which looks upon the area ten feet wide, is two feet thick. The walls which separate the cells are one foot thick. Thus a recess is formed at each door, which deadens the sound, should one prisoner attempt to hold communication with another. The only opening from each cell is an open grate in the upper part of the door, twenty inches long by eighteen wide, and defended by thick iron bars. Through this glazed grate, light, air, and heat are admitted to the cell. The door is fastened by a strong latch, connected with a hook and a bar of iron. It is thus almost impossible for one prisoner to communicate with another, even if there were no sentinel present to listen.[93]
The economy of this mode of building is evident. A convenient hospital may be made, by dispensing with the partition walls between four of the cells in the upper story. Thus constructed, four hundred cells, seven feet long seven high, and three and a half feet wide, cover only two hundred and six by forty-six feet of ground. At Auburn, five small stoves and eighteen lamps, great and small, placed in the ten-feet area, beyond the reach of the prisoners, give light and heat to five hundred and forty cells. One sentinel suffices to guard four hundred prisoners, and to prevent communication between them. The space in front of the cells is, like the ear of Dionysius, a perfect sounding gallery, so that the sentinel, in the area, can hear a whisper from a distant cell, in the upper story. The experiment has been often tried, and always with the same result.
The rules and regulations found most effectual in this and other prisons, are as follows: On entering, a criminal should undergo a thorough cleansing. It should be a part of the regulations to classify the prisoners. Men and women should be separated, as also old and young, condemned and uncondemned, debtors and criminals. Prisoners should be comfortably clothed, and fed with wholesome food. Employment should be provided for such as have trades, and trades should be taught to such as have none, so that they may not be a burthen to the society they have offended, or be compelled to resort to crime for subsistence when discharged. All these, and many other desirable ends, are believed to have been attained in Auburn, and other prisons conducted on the same plan.
The government of Auburn is confided to five inspectors, a keeper, a deputy keeper, a clerk, sixteen assistant keepers, who are master workmen in the shops, five sentinels, a porter, a physician, and a chaplain. The inspectors receive no compensation; that of the officers amounts to an aggregate of four thousand and thirty-two dollars per annum. No spirituous liquors are used by any officer, or are allowed to be introduced into the establishment by the guard, when on duty, nor is any officer to invite the others together for the purpose of drinking, or treating, as it is called. All the turnkeys are required to attend divine service excepting two, who cannot be spared from the prison and the kitchen. A uniform gravity and dignity are constantly maintained by the officers in presence of the convicts, and they are expected, at all times, to treat each other with that respect and kindness which are calculated to advance the best interests of the institution.
The convicts march to and from their rest, food, and labor, at stated times, in profound silence. The order of their march is in single file, to the lock-step, keeping their faces toward the keeper, that he may detect conversation, if it should be attempted. The same silence and good order are enforced, as far as possible, in every business, and in every department. The duty of the keepers is to prevent conversation, looking at spectators, and idle diversion; for this purpose, as well as to keep the convicts at work, they are continually walking about the shops. The stillness and order of divine service are truly impressive, and during the night the area about the cells is a scene of peculiar solemnity and gloom. A hundred or more young convicts acquire the rudiments of learning in the Sunday school.
A valuable experiment on the subject of temperance was first made in this prison, and has since been carried into effect in all the rest. The convicts being strictly debarred the use of tobacco, ardent spirits, and all other stimulants, it was found that the health of the most abandoned drunkards did not suffer, contrary to the common idea that the grossly intemperate cannot at once break off from the use of spirits without danger. It appears that, for a few days, they are uneasy, and lose their appetite, after which they eat heartily, and uniformly improve in health and appearance.
The mode of punishment in this and similar prisons merits some attention. Stripes, fetters, solitary confinement, and hunger are used, and there is much difference of opinion respecting their respective degrees of utility. In some extensive establishments, stripes and chains are not used at all; in others, recourse is had to stripes only. It is so in Auburn. In Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Charlestown, and Concord, solitary confinement, with a reduced allowance of bread and water, is preferred. In Connecticut, all the above methods are practised, and severe hunger is often found efficacious. If the efficacy of the different modes is to be tested by the results they produce on discipline, Auburn seems to show that stripes are better than other punishments. The difference in the order, industry, and subdued feeling of the prisoners, is in favor of Auburn, though perhaps, this is as much to be ascribed to their separation by night, and other salutary regulations, as to the mode of physical correction. The advocates for whipping urge, that it requires less time than other punishments, that the mind of the sufferer does not so long dwell on it, that it is less severe, and that it can more easily be proportioned to the offence. On the other hand, it is said that solitary confinement will subdue men hardened against all other inflictions, and no doubt it has so operated in very many cases. Be the question decided as it may, the remark of the London Prison Discipline Society’s seventh annual report is undeniably untrue, viz. that ‘solitary confinement, unmitigated by employment either of body or mind, is the most prominent feature in the discipline now recommended in the United States.’
We are unable, both from the want of space and of sufficient means of information, to enter into minute details respecting the government of many of the prisons. At Sing-sing, on the Hudson river, the convicts are awakened in the morning by a bell; but before they are let out of their cells, the chaplain reads a prayer that may be heard by all on one side, the space between the cells and the external wall being a perfect sounding gallery. The doors are then opened, and the prisoners step forth, at the word of command, into the gallery. They are then marched to the workshops, stopping on the way to wash themselves. One party cleanses the whole establishment, another attends to washing, and another to cooking. The whole body then go to their fixed tasks, such as hewing stone, sawing marble, forging iron, and the various mechanic arts with which they may be acquainted. Each shop is superintended by a turnkey, who must himself be a trustworthy master-workman, in order that he may instruct those under his charge. While in the shops, the prisoners are placed with their faces all in one direction, so that there can be no communication by looks or signs. From twenty to thirty are engaged in each shop, and one good man is found able to keep that number of hardened villains in order.
A narrow, dark passage runs along the back of the shops, with narrow slits in the wall, through which the superintendent may observe the conduct of both the convicts and the turnkeys, himself unseen by either. This certainty of being at all moments liable to an authorized espionage, cannot fail to keep all parties careful of their behavior.
At eight, at the sound of the bell, the convicts are again marched to their cells, at the doors of which their breakfasts have already been placed. They are locked in, and eat in solitude and silence. In twenty minutes, they are again marched to their work, and at noon they go to dinner in precisely the same manner, and at night to supper. At a fixed hour, the bell warns them to undress and go to bed, after having heard the chaplain’s prayer, as in the morning. The next day brings the same dull, unvaried round, convincing them that they are indeed cut off from mankind, and that for the purpose of punishment. It should seem that if any thing could make the wicked turn from his wickedness, it would be the prospect of passing years in this manner.
It is the practice of Mr. Barrett, the resident clergyman, every evening to read a portion of the Scriptures to the convicts, from the gallery, then to offer explanatory remarks, and to conclude with prayer. After divine service on Sundays, he spends a considerable portion of time in talking with them in their cells, and, hardened as they are, none of them have shown any want of respect, or unwillingness to hear.
The inspectors of the Auburn prison stated to the legislature of New York, in 1828, that the labors of the convicts had become so much more productive than in former times, they thought no further appropriations would be necessary for the support of that establishment. In the same year, the earnings of the Wethersfield (Connecticut) prison gave, in six months, a net gain of one thousand and seventeen dollars over and above the expenses of their government and support. A large gain is believed to be obtained in other penitentiaries. The following facts will show the superiority of United States prisons, in this particular, to those of England. In one year, twelve of the most productive prisons in England contained three thousand, six hundred and ninety-nine convicts, who earned forty-one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-seven dollars. In five prisons in the United States, during the same length of time, there were but nine hundred and ninety-nine convicts, and they earned eighty-one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-nine dollars. That is, a little more than a fourth of the number of American convicts earn more than double the amount of nearly four times the number of convicts in England. This difference depends, no doubt, greatly on discipline, and also on difference of diet. In the five American prisons to which we have referred, at least a pound of animal food is given to each man, per diem. In England, the quantity is from a pound to half a pound per week, scarcely sufficient to keep up the strength of a laboring man.
In some of the penitentiaries, if not in all, a Bible is placed in each cell; the only book the prisoner is permitted to see. It is not required that he should read it; but it can scarcely be supposed that he will long neglect to do so, since it is the only amusement he can possibly hope for, and the only occupation which can relieve the soul-subduing monotony of his solitude. ‘I should like to see what sort of stuff the Bible is made of,’ said one very obdurate sinner to the chaplain. With the same feeling will the convict, who at first scoffs at religion, find that this privilege is the only link of kindness which connects him with his species, and perhaps eventually find inestimable profit in it.
Some of the convicts, especially the foreigners, being unable to read, it was thought expedient, at Auburn, to establish the Sunday school. Fifty of the most ignorant convicts were placed in it, and they embraced the privilege with eagerness and thankfulness. The school has since been increased to a hundred and twenty-five scholars. They are divided into classes of five or six, and instructed by students in the Auburn Theological Seminary, who benevolently give their services. However, no greater relaxation of the ordinary discipline than is absolutely necessary takes place on these occasions. While the classes are under the superintendence of the chaplain, they are also closely watched by the officers. The annual report of 1828 shows that nearly a fourth of the whole number of convicts attended the Sunday school.
It will not be supposed that the effects of the system of which we have given a brief sketch, are beneficial in all cases; but it cannot be denied that they are often so, and that a great many convicts have been reformed. One great advantage is gained, at any rate: the men who would, in England, be put to a shameful death, are made to live and be harmless, if not, indeed, actually serviceable to society. The persons subjected to this discipline are the most depraved and ignorant men in the land. Many of them have learned vice as a science, and have become unable, from the force of habit, to control their wicked propensities. It is not to be hoped that all, or even a great portion of such a class, can be radically reformed; but they can, at least, be rendered less wicked. Beside this, the safe custody of the culprit is combined with enough punishment to make an impression on the mind, and deter others from his offences. The system is also entitled to much praise for having joined economy with humanity. It may have faults, but, taken as a whole, we think the wisdom of man may safely be challenged to make a better.
A late English traveller has offered a suggestion on this head, which we think entitled to attentive consideration. He says, in substance, that a powerful motive to virtue might easily be introduced into our penitentiaries; namely, hope. At present, severe coercion is the only means of preserving discipline, and indeed it is indispensable. But hope may come in play with fear. If disobedience be punished, obedience can be rewarded, and thus the convicts would have a direct interest in conforming to the rules of the prison. If a prisoner were sentenced for several years, and should behave well for a week, one day might be subtracted from the period of his confinement; if he should still continue to do aright, his detention might be further shortened, and in any ratio that might be thought expedient. By this procedure, the seeds of virtue might be sown, and good habits formed.
It will not probably be thought amiss to conclude this article with a glance at certain institutions, called houses of reformation for juvenile offenders. There are several of them in the country, all designed to reclaim children from incipient habits of vice, and they have certainly saved many from state prison and gallows here, and perdition hereafter. The principal two of these are in New York and South Boston.
In the South Boston school of reform, the boys are divided into grades, and are promoted or degraded, as they improve or retrograde in morals. When their reformation is supposed to be complete, they are apprenticed to respectable citizens, who become bound to feed and clothe them, to give them the means of instruction, to teach them some useful art, and, at the expiration of their indentures, to give them a small sum of money to begin the world with. As they generally come very ignorant to the institution, and do not stay long in it, it cannot be expected that they should receive very thorough instruction, but they are nevertheless taught the elements of English education. They were formerly taught several mechanical arts, (as they still are in New York,) but this having been thought to interfere with the great business of moral reform, the plan has been abandoned. Many boys have been discharged as cured of their former habits and feelings, most of whom have given entire satisfaction, and very few indeed have relapsed. The institution has unquestionably been of great benefit to society.[94]
The other institutions of the same nature are conducted on the same general principles. There are differences in their governments, endowments, and discipline, but there is a strong general resemblance. It is not for us to say which is best conducted, and we have only selected that in South Boston, because, having witnessed its operation, we are able to bear witness of its peculiar utility, and of the skill, patience, and integrity of the gentlemen who have hitherto had charge of it.
XVI. ――LITERATURE AND EDUCATION
THE language of the United States differs little or nothing from that of the middle and southern counties of England. The slight peculiarities are chiefly such as relate to accent and intonation, and do not affect the sense. Most of the expressions which are now peculiar to the Americans, and especially to the Yankees, were in use by the ‘pilgrim fathers,’ at the time of their emigration, and to them, probably, ought to be attributed the nasal drawl of the least educated inhabitants of New England. The peculiar words of the Americans are too few to deserve particular notice. The educated men of all the states, and especially the inhabitants of the larger cities and towns, speak a language scarcely to be distinguished from that of the higher classes of the mother country. It is yet a question, in what part of the union it is spoken in its greatest purity, each of the different sections arrogating that praise to itself. A practised ear, however, can distinguish a difference between them, so as to decide at once to what division the speaker belongs. The want of a capital, by which the standard can be fixed, is probably the cause of this variety. It may truly be asserted, that, on the whole, English is as well spoken in the United States as in the mother country, and that the jargon put into the mouths of Americans by foreign travellers, bears the same relation to the tongue actually spoken, that a gross caricature does to its original.
Education has met with few obstacles in the United States. Neither the interests and prejudices of an aristocracy, nor poverty and dependence of working classes have checked it in the least. State has vied with state in giving the means of instruction to the humblest individuals. Large tracts of land have been granted by the general government, for the support of schools in the new states, and a reservation is made in every new township for that purpose. In the old states, the legislatures have, by legal enactments, compelled every township to provide for the instruction of its population by assessment, and a punishment is provided for neglect. In the New England and some other states, education at the public expense is accounted one of the rights of freeborn citizens.[95] It appears from the returns from a hundred and one of the towns of Massachusetts to the legislature, that the amount annually paid in those towns for instruction is one hundred and seventy-seven thousand, three hundred and forty-two dollars. Twelve thousand, three hundred and ninety-three pupils attend private schools in the same towns, at an expense of one hundred and seventy thousand, three hundred and forty-two dollars. In all these towns, the whole number of persons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, who cannot read and write, is only fifty-eight. In one considerable town, there are but three persons of the above-mentioned age who cannot read and write, and those three are deaf and dumb.
Infant schools have been established all over the union, with great benefit, and great attention has been given to the improvement of seminaries of all descriptions, as well as to the means of rendering teachers competent to their office. The press teems with myriads of books for the use of children, institutions for the improvement of teachers are established, thousands of associations for mutual instruction are formed, countless lectures are delivered, libraries are accumulated, and, in short, no means of disseminating knowledge is neglected.
The elements of knowledge being thus accessible to all, it follows naturally, that the wealthy should be desirous to give their children a more perfect education than elementary public schools can afford. There are, therefore, an almost infinite number and variety of private schools, in which children may be educated in conformity to the views which their parents may entertain for them. In some instances, public schools have intrenched materially upon private academies; in others, the case has been reversed. Females are not neglected in the same degree as in other countries――in some of the seminaries, they are taught Greek, Latin, the exact sciences, philosophy, botany, chemistry, &c. &c. The great fault of American instruction in general is, that it is superficial, some knowledge of many subjects being communicated, without a very thorough knowledge of any particular one. There are, however, many distinguished exceptions to this remark, and eminent scholars are yearly becoming more numerous.
There are more than sixty colleges in the United States, besides many academies, several theological seminaries, and numerous medical and law schools. Of all these, the most distinguished are Harvard university and Yale college. The object of nearly all of them is to give a thorough education, in languages, mathematics, and the sciences, and it cannot be doubted that most of them afford to the diligent student all the necessary means of acquiring such knowledge. Yet it is not to be denied, that very many of the students leave college studies for the more active pursuits of life, without having given sufficient time or pains to their studies, and in this respect, our universities will not, certainly, compare advantageously with those of England. The reason is obvious――in the old country, few students would spend the best of their years in celibacy and seclusion, in the pursuit of knowledge, were they not supplied with the luxuries of life by endowments, and cheered by the prospect of comfortable future establishments by provision of law. We may console ourselves for this manifest inferiority by the reflection, that if we have fewer great scholars than European nations, neither have we peasants or beggars.
The consequences of the superficial but universal diffusion of literature and science in the United States are remarkably singular. Literary productions of the lowest order exist in excess. We think we should not speak much amiss in saying, that more newspapers are published in this country than in all Europe. A great number of them are of an inferior character, being filled with virulent and crude political speculations, religious controversy, or rather vituperation, items of common-place intelligence, such poetry and literature as may be expected from writers beneath their majority, advertisements, puffs, and trash of all kinds. Some, which are purely political, mistake abuse for the energy of eloquence; others, which are devoted to the interests of the commercial classes, are chiefly filled with advertisements; some contain little beside invective against masonry or antimasonry, and not a few disgrace religion, under pretence of promoting its progress. The cause of this perversion of the press is very simple. The expense of starting a newspaper is so trifling, that any successful apprentice can establish one on arriving at his majority; and an excellent printer may make a very indifferent editor. Having once began to publish a print, he must conduct it on his own mental resources, for there are few establishments of this kind which can afford to pay for really valuable assistance. Yet, every state can boast of some public journals of higher character. There is also another class of journals which are really valuable, and which partake of the nature of magazines. These are periodical records of facts connected with trade, commerce, internal improvement, mechanical inventions, and matters connected with the proceedings of the national and state legislatures. Such are Niles’s Register, Blount’s Annual Register, and a few others of the same character.
The present number of magazines and reviews would seem to indicate a very rapid improvement in American taste and knowledge. Some years since, many abortive attempts were made to establish an American review, and the North American was the first to maintain its ground, and its improvement has been constant. It is now very well known, and often quoted in Europe. Silliman’s Journal of the Sciences is deservedly esteemed. There are also several monthly magazines of a very respectable character. The Knickerbocker, issued in New York, has acquired considerable notoriety. The New York Review, conducted by Professor Henry and J. C. Cogswell, Esq., is fast gaining a high reputation. “Colman’s Monthly Miscellany,” just issued, under the editorial direction of Grenville Mellen and William Cutter, gives promise of a good progress. Even the new western states are not wholly without periodical literature. Theological magazines are very numerous, and some of them are ably conducted. The Christian Examiner and Unitarian Advocate are the organs of Unitarianism. The Christian Spectator and Spirit of the Pilgrims are Calvanistic works, and, indeed, almost every sect in the union has its particular organ. Christians of all denominations will be disposed to question the merits of many of these; but none will deny that they are all useful in some degree, as they serve to awaken a spirit of inquiry. The annual publications are, the American Almanac, the merits of which are denied by none, and which is constantly improving; and the Annual Register, also a very useful work. The beautiful books of the New Year, as the Annuals may perhaps be called, can receive no other notice here of course, than as they may be considered as evidence of improvement in the arts.
Literature, in the form of both poetry and prose, is certainly taking a ground, in the United States, increasingly honorable to writers and to the cause. Still, our novels, though many are striking, and some powerful, want the vigor of another day, as exemplified in Brown. Useful books can have no better champion than they find in the name of Sedgwick. The drama, it may be observed, has been illustrated in latter days, by efforts that reflect honor on some of our poetical writers. Meritorious law books of American production are not rare. The labors of Chancellor Kent are an honor to the science of jurisprudence. In history, we have Judge Marshall’s Life of Washington, Belknap’s History of New Hampshire, and well-written histories of most of the old states. Many more writers we have, whose pens have been employed merely on matters of local and temporary interest. Still, however, our literature has not kept pace with that of the mother country. Little has been done to encourage it, and many causes have contributed to retard its growth. It has been in a great measure superseded by foreign publications, which the American bookseller can republish without paying the author, and which he therefore prefers. There is little honor and less profit in the pursuits of our writers. Our mechanics become wealthy by hard labor, whereas our writers might starve, did they depend on their pens. There is a great demand for all things which are of practical, tangible, every-day utility, but a very limited one for fine reading. Few of our people have the leisure and fortune which might enable them to cultivate literature and science advantageously. Under these circumstances, most of what is written is done hastily, and consequently badly done. But notwithstanding the great number of discouraging circumstances, enough has been well done to indicate the existence of much talent and learning.[96]
We have already alluded to the general feeling in regard to education. The strength of this is exhibited in the great number of common schools and colleges. Institutions by this name are to be found perhaps more frequently than the cause of sound scholarship requires. If the funds which are now distributed through so many small establishments were concentrated on a few universities, advantages might be enjoyed which will now be in vain sought. It is much to be regretted that measures have not been taken for the erection of a national university, which the general government of the country might endow with privileges and means sufficient for its permanent success.
At the head of the collegiate institutions in the United States, is Harvard university, originally styled Harvard college, at Cambridge, three miles west-north-west of Boston. In the year 1636, the general court advanced four hundred pounds towards the establishment of a college, which was incorporated in 1638; and the same year, the Rev. John Harvard died, leaving a legacy of seven hundred and seventy-nine pounds, seventeen shillings, and two pence, to the college, which, on account of this donation, was named Harvard college. Its endowments have since, from time to time, been greatly increased by donations from the state, and many munificent private benefactors. The university comprises the collegiate department for undergraduates, or the college, properly so called, and the theological, law, and medical departments. It has four halls, four stories high, for the accommodation of undergraduates; two halls containing the library, cabinet of minerals, the chapel, and various other public rooms; a divinity hall, a law hall, and a medical hall, (which last is situated in Boston,) and other buildings. The university library contains upwards of forty thousand volumes, of which thirty-five thousand, five hundred, are in the general library, three thousand in the law, one thousand in the medical, six hundred and fifty in the theological library: and there are libraries belonging to the students, which contain four thousand, five hundred volumes. The philosophical and chemical apparatus, and the cabinet of minerals, are extensive, and very valuable. The property in possession of the university, exclusive of the college buildings, library, apparatus, and grounds adjoining to the buildings, according to the treasurer’s report, dated October, 1832, amounted to:
$460,814.87 Funds in trust for other uses than those of the college 65,125.45 ――――――――――― 395,689.42 Funds for theological department 36,277.92 Funds for law department 17,943.63 54,221.55 ――――――――― ――――――――――― Giving for the more immediate use of the college 341,467.87
The institution is under the legislative government of a corporation, consisting of seven members, and of a board of overseers, consisting of thirty elected members, together with the governor, lieutenant governor, the members of the council and senate, the speaker of the house of representatives, and the president of the university, ex officio.
Yale college was established in 1700, at Saybrook; incorporated in 1701; and removed to New Haven in 1716: the first commencement at Saybrook was in 1702; the first at New Haven, in 1717. It derives its name from Elihu Yale, of London, (but a native of New Haven,) governor of the East India company, who was one of its principal benefactors; it received from bishop Berkeley one thousand volumes of books; and since its foundation it has, from time to time, received benefactions from various individuals, and also from the state. It has, for some years past, had a greater number of students than any other college in the United States. It possesses ten valuable buildings, two of them of stone, the others of brick; four of which are college halls, one hundred feet by forty, four stories high, containing thirty-two rooms each for students; and another hall is soon to be erected. It has the finest cabinet of minerals in the United States, a good chemical and philosophical apparatus, and a library of eight thousand, five hundred volumes; and there are libraries, belonging to the students, containing ten thousand, five hundred volumes. The funds of this institution, considering its reputation and number of students, are small; and it is supported chiefly by tuition fees. The whole amount of the funds of the different departments, exclusive of buildings, library, apparatus, &c. is stated at eighty or ninety thousand dollars. According to the statement of the treasurer, subscriptions have lately been made for the benefit of the college, by six hundred and eighteen individuals, of one hundred and seven thousand dollars, of which forty-one thousand dollars have already been paid. The college is under the legislative government of a corporation, consisting of the president of the college, the governor and lieutenant governor of the state, and the six senior senators, ex officio, and ten clergymen.
Connected with this institution, is a law school, theological department and medical institution.
The legislature of Virginia, at the session of 1817–18, adopted measures for establishing an institution, then proposed to be named Central College, and twenty-four commissioners were appointed to select a site for it. They accordingly selected a pleasant and elevated spot, nearly two miles from Charlottesville, in the county of Albemarle, not far from the centre of the population of the state. Their choice was confirmed by the legislature in 1819, and an act was passed, incorporating the institution, by the title of the University of Virginia, which went into operation in 1825. It was erected and endowed by the state; and it owes its origin and peculiar organization chiefly to Mr. Jefferson. It has a fine collection of buildings, consisting of four parallel ranges, about six hundred feet in length, and two hundred feet apart, suited to the accommodation of nine professors, and upwards of two hundred students; which, together with the real estate, cost three hundred and thirty-three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six dollars. It possesses a very valuable library of eight thousand volumes, and a philosophical apparatus, which, together, cost thirty-six thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight dollars. The state gives annually fifteen thousand dollars for the support of the institution. The whole annual income of the university is about eighteen thousand, five hundred dollars. The professors are paid, partly by a fixed salary, and partly by fees received from the students; but the sums which they severally receive are widely different, varying, in ordinary years, from sixteen hundred to three thousand, five hundred dollars.
Illustration: University of Virginia.
The plan of this university differs materially from that of other institutions of the kind in the United States. The students are not divided into four classes, with a course of studies embracing four years; but the different branches of science and literature here taught are styled schools. The following particulars are extracted from the ‘Regulations,’ &c. Students are not admitted under sixteen years of age; every one is free to attend the schools of his choice, and no other than he chooses; provided, that if under the age of twenty-one, he shall attend at least three professors, unless he has the written authority of his parents or guardian, or the faculty shall, for good cause shown, allow him to attend less than three. In each school, there are three regular lectures a week; besides which, there are, in most of them, extra lectures, suited to the several classes into which the school is divided. The mode of instruction is by text-books and lectures accompanied by rigid examinations.
Three honorary distinctions are conferred by this institution; a certificate of proficiency,――that of graduate of any class,――and that of master of arts of the University of Virginia. No particular period of study is prescribed for the acquisition of these honors. The student obtains them whenever he can undergo the rigid examination to which the candidates for them are subjected. The title of doctor of medicine is conferred on the graduates of the medical department.
There is but one session annually, commencing on the tenth of September, and ending on the twentieth of July. Commencement is on the last day of the session, when there are public exercises, and at the same time the certificates and diplomas are awarded. Number of students, in 1833, one hundred and fifty-seven.
Kenyon college, at Gambier, in the central part of a tract of land belonging to it, five miles east of Mount Vernon, and fifty-two north-east of Columbus, was founded, in 1828, by the exertions of bishop Chase, who went to England in 1823, and returned in 1825, having there obtained for it about thirty thousand dollars; and he gave to the college the name of ‘Kenyon,’ from lord Kenyon, one of its principal benefactors, and to the town the name of ‘Gambier,’ from lord Gambier, another of its benefactors. It has received considerable additions to its funds from individuals in several of the states; and it possesses eight thousand acres of land. The college edifice, which is of stone, contains thirty-six rooms, and forms only one third part of the entire design. The library contains two thousand, three hundred volumes. The college is under the direction of a board of sixteen trustees, of which the bishop of Ohio is president ex officio. The college has connected with it a theological department and a grammar school.
Illustration: Kenyon College, Ohio.
It does not fall within our plan to give a particular description of the numerous collegiate institutions throughout the country. In addition to this account of the most prominent establishments, we have added a list of colleges in the appendix, for which, as well as the previous descriptions, we have been indebted to the American Almanac for 1834. To that valuable work we refer the reader for a collection of much useful and interesting matter on the subject of education in the United States.
‘Less attention,’ says Mr. Cooper, ‘is paid to classical learning here than in Europe; and, as the term of residence (at our colleges) rarely exceeds four years, profound scholars are by no means common. This country possesses neither the population nor the endowments to maintain a large class of learned idlers, in order that one man in a hundred may contribute a mite to the growing stock of general knowledge. There is a luxury in this expenditure of animal force, to which the Americans have not yet attained. The good is far too problematical and remote, and the expense of man too certain, to be prematurely sought. I have heard, I will confess, an American legislator quote Horace and Cicero; but it is far from being the humor of the country. I thought the taste of the orator questionable. A learned quotation is rarely of any use in an argument, since few men are fools enough not to see that the application of any maxim to politics is liable to a thousand practical objections, and, nine times in ten, they are evidences of the want of a direct, natural, and vigorous train of thought. They are the affectations, but rarely the ebullitions, of true talent. When a man feels strongly, or thinks strongly, or speaks strongly, he is just as apt to do it in his native tongue, as he is to laugh when he is tickled, or to weep when in sorrow. The Americans are strong speakers and acute thinkers, but no great quoters of the morals and axioms of a heathen age, because they happen to be recorded in Latin.
‘The higher branches of learning are certainly on the advance in this country. The gentlemen of the middle and southern states, before the revolution, were very generally educated in Europe, and they were consequently, in this particular, like our own people. Those who came into life during the struggle, and shortly after, fared worse. Even the next generation had little to boast of in the way of instruction. I find that boys entered the colleges so late as the commencement of the present century, who had read a part of the Greek Testament, and a few books of Cicero and Virgil, with, perhaps, a little of Horace. But great changes have been made, and are still making, in the degree of previous qualification.
‘Still, it would be premature to say, that there is any one of the American universities where classical knowledge, or even science, is profoundly attained, even at the present day. Some of the professors push their studies, for a life, certainly; and you well know, after all, that little short of a life, and a long one too, will make any man a good general scholar. In 1820, near eight thousand graduates of the twelve oldest colleges of this country (according to their catalogues) were then living. Of this number, one thousand, four hundred and six were clergymen. As some of the catalogues consulted were several years old, this number was, of necessity, greatly within the truth. Between the years 1800 and 1810, it is found that of two thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two graduates, four hundred and fifty-three became clergymen. Here is pretty good evidence that religion is not neglected in America, and that its ministers are not, as a matter of course, absolutely ignorant.
‘But the effects of the literary institutions of the United States are somewhat peculiar. Few men devote their lives to scholarship. The knowledge that is actually acquired, is, perhaps, quite sufficient for the more practical and useful pursuits. Thousands of young men, who have read the more familiar classics, who have gone through enough of mathematics to obtain a sense of their own tastes, and of the value of precision, who have cultivated belles lettres to a reasonable extent, and who have been moderately instructed in the arts of composition, and in the rules of taste, are given forth to the country to mingle in its active employments. I am inclined to believe that a class of American graduates carries away with it quite as much general and diversified knowledge, as a class from one of our own universities. The excellence in particular branches is commonly wanting; but the deficiency is more than supplied by variety of information. The youth who has passed four years within the walls of a college, goes into the office of a lawyer for a few more. The profession of the law is not subdivided in America. The same man is counsellor, attorney, and conveyancer. Here the student gets a general insight into the principles, and a familiarity with the practice of the law, rather than any acquaintance with the study as a science. With this instruction, he enters the world as a practitioner. Instead of existing in a state of dreaming retrospection, lost in a maze of theories, he is at once turned loose into the jostlings of the world. If, perchance, he encounters an antagonist a little more erudite than himself, he seizes the natural truth for his sheet-anchor, and leaves precedent and quaint follies to him who has made them his study and delight. No doubt he often blunders, and is frequently, of necessity, defeated. But in the course of this irreverent treatment, usages and opinions, which are bottomed in no better foundation than antiquity and which are as inapplicable to the present state of the world, as the present state of the world is, or ought to be, unfavorable to all feudal absurdities, come to receive their death-warrants. In the mean time, by dint of sheer experience, and by the collision of intellects, the practitioner gets a stock of learning, that is acquired in the best possible school; and, what is of far more importance, the laws themselves get a dress which brings them within the fashions of the day. This same man becomes a legislator, perhaps, and, if particularly clever, he is made to take an active part in the framing of laws, that are not to harmonize with the other parts of an elaborate theory, but which are intended to make men comfortable and happy. Now, taken with more or less qualification, this is the history of thousands in this country, and it is also an important part of the history of the country itself.’
We may not inappropriately introduce in this connection the following account of the Military academy at West Point, for which we have been indebted to an able article in the North American Review for January, 1832.
Illustration: West Point.
The main object of the institution is to qualify the pupil for the performance of all the duties of a military life; and, by way of preparation, he is carefully disciplined in the various duties of a soldier and officer, from the handling of a musket, to the commanding of armies. The use of the various instruments of attack and defence; the construction of military works, both permanent and temporary, and the most approved methods of attacking and defending these works; the manner of conducting the marches of armies, and of disposing of the different arms, with a view to their mutual protection and assistance in cases of emergency; minor tactics, or the evolutions of troops, whether in small or large numbers; and the more complicated and exalted principles of grand tactics, or strategy, are each in turn carefully attended to, so far as theory and the lessons of experience extend.
Besides these military subjects, studies of a different nature are made to engage a large portion of the pupil’s attention during the last year. Civil engineering, in its multifarious departments, viz. the construction of roads, canals, bridges, and rail-roads, together with the elements of carpentry and architecture, holds an important rank. As architecture is becoming daily more interesting to the public at large, its encouragement and advancement cannot be too strongly recommended. A deficiency of taste and information upon this subject is but too evident in many parts of our country; and any institution, which tends to diffuse the correct and chaste principles of this art, deserves to be cherished and encouraged. A fine collection of casts, representing the most celebrated buildings of antiquity has recently been procured from France for the Military academy; and there is every reason to hope, that it will tend materially to improve the department of architecture.
Illustration: Military Academy at West Point.
The studies that have now been enumerated, together with rhetoric and national and constitutional law, embrace the chief objects of attention at this institution. A cursory glance at this course of instruction will be sufficient to convince the observer, that it comprehends much useful information. Yet there are many, who profess to believe the academy not only useless, but absolutely injurious, in its effect upon the public interests. They maintain, that genius and courage alone are enough to insure distinction in the military profession. They say, that all our citizens are soldiers, and that competent officers can be selected from among them, whenever military services are necessary; and they, doubtless, honestly believe, that to become an able officer is not a very difficult matter. But, with due respect for the sincerity of these opinions, we must confess our preference for the doctrine of our illustrious Hamilton; who says, that ‘war, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perseverance, by time, and by practice.’ These few words, coming as they do from a statesman of acknowledged genius and wisdom, are entitled to the most respectful and deliberate attention. That great man had investigated, with the most keen and discerning scrutiny, the many and complicated causes of national grandeur and infirmity. He had especially weighed the mighty causes, which had elevated, sustained, and overthrown the various contrivances of men for self-government; and he was of the unqualified opinion, that a national military establishment was indispensable to our peace and security. The reasons which led him to this conclusion are, doubtless, familiar to most of our readers, and still operate with undiminished influence. All, however, must acknowledge, that a military establishment without skilful officers, would be about as inefficient as powder and bullets without a gun, or a vessel without helm or compass. But how is this skill to be ‘acquired and perfected?’ Doubtless, ‘by diligence, by perseverance, by time, and by practice.’ These objectors should hesitate, before they destroy one of the most useful instruments by which this benefit is to be secured.
Such an instrument is the Military academy. Before they attempt to subvert so noble an edifice, they should reflect, that it is not always wise to suffer speculation to prevail over experience. They should remember the consequences, which have heretofore resulted from the want of military science and skill, before they labor to expose us anew to similar evils. They ought not to forget, that nations, as well as individuals, are liable to be overwhelmed by adverse events, whose approaches cannot be foreseen, or guarded against by any sudden exertion of art or power; that a hitherto unknown responsibility rests upon the citizens of this republic, an obligation greater than ever was imposed upon any other political society; and that we ought, at least, to pause, before we divest ourselves of any of those securities, upon which the peace, the progress, and the stability of our institutions may depend.
XVII. ――FINE ARTS
The progress of the arts in the United States has depended, in a great measure, on their practical reference to the essential comforts of life. In the mechanical arts, we yield to no other nation, as our ships, steamboats, engines of every description, and vast internal improvements, sufficiently testify. The prevailing taste in architecture is much better than it was twenty years ago, and it is now considered of great importance to have regard to the appearance of a public edifice. Many private houses of much splendor have also been erected within a short period. Our churches and state-houses are built after better models, and the eye of taste is no longer shocked by unsightly piles, without even the recommendation of antiquity to compensate for their defects.
Of the fine arts, however, painting has been most successfully cultivated, and many artists have won, in this department, very considerable eminence. The materials for an account of the history and present condition of painting in this country, are so scattered and unsatisfactory, that we shall be able to present but a brief sketch. We are pleased to learn that a gentleman of New York, distinguished as a dramatic author and as an artist, has a work in preparation, that will effectually supply this deficiency in our literature. This work is expected with much interest by the lovers of art. In the mean while, we must look to the leading review of the country, for some of the most valuable notices of American art. For the remainder of this chapter, we have been entirely indebted to the North American Review, for October, 1830.
It is stated by an able writer in that work, that few countries have done more in the way of painting, during the last half century, than our own. There is no nation which, during that period, can produce a more respectable list of artists than is composed by the names of Copley, West, Trumbull, Allston, Leslie, Newton, Stuart, Sully, Morse, Doughty, Peale, Harding, Fisher, and Weir. Several of these artists have been, and still continue to be, the chief ornaments of the British school, which, for the time in question belongs at least as much to the United States as to the mother country. The style of painting in France, during this period, has been decidedly vicious, and although it has obtained there a temporary popularity, it is not approved by competent judges, who have been educated under the influence of a better taste. In the rest of Europe, there has been little or no activity in this branch of the arts; so that the United States have done as much for painting during the last fifty years, as any other country.
In estimating the merits of our various painters, the article to which we have referred, places West at the head of the list. ‘The length of his career,’ continues this writer,――‘his conspicuous position at the head of the British Academy, and the indefatigable perseverance with which he pursued his labors up to the very close of his protracted life――all these circumstances placed him in full relief before the public, and perhaps raised his reputation a little higher than it will be maintained by the impartial judgment of posterity. Perceiving or supposing that his merit was exaggerated, a certain number of persons were induced, as always happens in similar cases, by a sort of re-action, to depreciate the value of his works, and even to deny altogether his pretensions to excellence. Without speaking of Peter Pindar, who attacked him merely because he was patronized by the king, we may find the feeling to which we allude exhibited in a quarter where we had a right to look for good taste and political impartiality. Lord Byron, in one of his poems, describes our illustrious countryman as
――――“the dotard West, Europe’s worst dauber, and poor England’s best.”
But even here the noble bard, however opposite may have been his intention, has borne a sort of involuntary testimony to the high deserts of the painter. The British school, which, in his wayward humor, he represents as the worst in Europe, was undoubtedly at that time, and still is, the best, and by putting West at the head of it, he rendered him, in fact, all the justice which his warmest friends could possibly have claimed for him. His real merit was very considerable, although he may not have risen precisely to the level of the greatest masters of other times. It was sufficiently evinced by the great popularity and success of his last and best pieces, the Christ Rejected, and the grand composition of Death on the Pale Horse. We had the pleasure of seeing these noble paintings, when they were first brought out at London, and witnessed the enthusiasm which they excited among the lovers of the arts, and the public at large. The sum of ten thousand pounds was offered for the latter work――a higher price, probably, than was ever commanded by any other picture. As there was nothing meretricious in the style of West, and as the public of a city like London is not often very widely mistaken in matters wholly unconnected with any accidental or temporary interest, it is impossible to account for this extraordinary vogue, without allowing to the artist a talent of a very high order. His works exhibit, in reality, almost all the qualities that designate a first-rate painting. His walk lay in the highest department of the art. His subjects were always of a poetical cast, and he treated them all in a large, free and generous spirit; and while he possessed the principal requisites of a great painter, his manner was almost wholly free from faults. He had, in particular, the great merit of avoiding the unnatural style of coloring which prevailed in the neighboring kingdom, and seemed likely, at one time, to corrupt the taste of the rest of Europe. His excellent moral character contributed much to his talent, and still more to his fortune. It kept him steady to his profession, during a period of violent political convulsions, which swept away from their natural occupation almost all the high and stirring spirits. It recommended him to the favor of the king, and through that to the presidency of the academy, and it preserved his health and capacity for constant employment, to the last moment of a very long life. He enjoyed the rare happiness of realizing, in his life-time, his full deserts on the score of reputation――perhaps something more――and of laboring with undiminished activity, and a constant increase of fame, beyond the ordinary term of human existence. We had the satisfaction of seeing him frequently in his last days, and have seldom known a more striking example of a serene and happy old age. He was then, at nearly eighty, a healthy, handsome man, busily occupied upon his last and greatest works, and enjoying the vogue which they successively obtained on their first exhibition. The natural simplicity and modesty of his manner were mingled with a slight air of self-importance, and conscious satisfaction with his recent success, which appeared rather graceful than otherwise in one so much respected, and so far advanced in years. The freshness and vigor of his mind were truly remarkable. He was still alive to every means of improving himself, and when the Athenian marbles were received in England, he addressed a printed letter to lord Elgin, in which he spoke of this event as forming a sort of epoch in his life, and anticipated the great advantage which he should derive from the study of these admirable remains of antiquity in the further prosecution of his labors, which, however, were very soon after brought to a close.
‘We have said above that the manner of West was almost wholly free from faults. His conceptions are noble, his drawing correct, his coloring true, and his composition skilful and spirited. If we miss any thing in his paintings, it is, perhaps, the secret indescribable charm of coloring, which, like the curious felicity of language in some writers, seems to be a sort of natural “grace, beyond the reach of art,” but affording, at the same time, a higher delight than any of those beauties, which can be more distinctly analyzed and defined. Of this, Sir Joshua Reynolds possessed a larger share than West, and will, probably, on that account, be always ranked above him in the general scale of merit.
‘The paintings of West, which remained in his possession at his death, were offered for sale soon after, and we have anxiously desired, that the whole or a portion of them should have taken the direction of this country. They would have formed a most interesting and valuable addition to our collections, and would then have reached what may fairly be considered their natural destination, the birth-place and original home of their author. We are not exactly informed what disposition has been made of them, and venture to hope that the expectation we have expressed may still, in part, at least, be realized.
‘The general reputation of Trumbull is hardly equal to that of West, although the Sortie from Gibraltar is perhaps superior in effect to any single production of the latter artist. This noble picture may justly be ranked with the finest productions of the pencil, and would forever secure to its author, had he done nothing else, a rank with the greatest masters of the art. If his success has been, on the whole, inferior to that of his illustrious contemporary, it is probably because his devotion to his profession has not been so exclusive. The important military and political occupations, in which he was engaged during a considerable portion of the most active part of his life, diverted his attention for the time from painting, and when he afterwards resumed the pencil, he seemed to have lost, in some degree, the vigor and freshness of his youthful talent. Hence his reputation has not continued to increase with his years, and his last works have not, like those of West, been regarded as his best. The four great paintings, on subjects connected with the revolutionary war, which he executed for congress, have, on the whole, hardly satisfied the public expectation, and for that reason have, perhaps, been depreciated below their real worth. They are all valuable pieces, and the Declaration of Independence, which we look upon as the best of the series, is one of a very high order. They derive a great additional interest from exhibiting portraits, as far as they could be obtained, of the signers of the declaration, and of the other patriots and warriors, who took a part in the memorable action of the revolution. We incline to believe that these paintings, should the liberality of congress allow the appropriation necessary for keeping them in existence, will gradually gain upon the public opinion, both as works of art, and as historical memorials, and be viewed by the next generation with more interest than they are by the present one.
‘Of our living native artists, Mr. Allston is the one, to whose future productions the country looks, with reason, for the most brilliant exhibitions of talent, and the most valuable accessions to our public and private collections. Few painters have ever possessed, at his age, a higher reputation, or one acquired by nobler means; and from his character and habits, there is room to suppose that his fame will continue to increase, like that of West, to the last period of his labors. Inspired by that exclusive and passionate love for his profession, which is the sure characteristic of a real genius for it, and by a lofty and generous disinterestedness, which has prevented him from consecrating his pencil to its lower and more lucrative departments, he has, under some discouragements, steadily confined himself to historical, scriptural, and poetical subjects, and has formed his manner upon the highest standard of excellence. His conceptions are uniformly happy, and, when the subject requires it, sublime; his taste and skill, in the mechanical details of his art, complete; and he knows how to give his works the secret charm to which we alluded before, and which adds the last finish to every other beauty. If there be any thing to complain of in him, it is that he is not satisfied himself with the degree of merit, which would satisfy every one else, and employs in correcting, maturing, and repainting a single piece, not always, perhaps, with any real accession of effect, the time and labor which would have been sufficient for completing a dozen. This extreme fastidiousness may have been, at an earlier period of life, a virtue, and is probably one of the qualities, which have enabled the artist to realize the high idea of excellence, which originally warmed his young fancy. But, if we might venture to express an opinion on the subject, we should say that the time has now arrived, when he might throw it off with advantage, and allow himself a greater rapidity of execution. His manner is formed. He possesses his talent, whatever it is, and, as we remarked above, when we treated the same question in general terms, the more freely and fearlessly he exercises it, the more natural and spirited, and, on the whole, the better will be the product. We trust that he will not permit another year to pass over, without putting the last hand to the grand heroic composition, upon which he has been employed so many, and that this will be followed by a series of others, of equal merit, and of a rather more rapid growth. By this change in his manner of working, we believe that he would gain in ease and spirit, without sacrificing any real beauty, and would labor, on the whole, with infinitely more satisfaction and profit to himself and the public, than he does now. We offer these remarks, however, with all the deference that is due from mere amateurs to an artist of consummate genius, who is, after all, the only true judge of effect in his art, and of the best means of producing it.’