A history of the American people

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Indians i

II The Discovery of America g

Chapter I 1620-1 729

For ages before the discovery of this continent by Europeans, it was inhabited by a race of men distinguished by their copper-colored skins, their small black, bright eyes, their high cheek-bones, beardless faces, long, coarse, and straight black hair, and their lean, sinewy, and erect forms. Columbus, mistaking the new continent for India, called them Indians. The native races themselves had no name in common, and each man was nurtured in the belief that his tribe was the greatest on earth, and that he was the greatest of his tribe. Columbus, therefore, did what neither the savages themselves nor the most learned societies of civilized men would have agreed to do — he gave the original inhabitants of America one common name, Indians; for he thought he had reached India and that these strange people were some of its inhabitants. Time has partly corrected his error by designating the islands as the West Indies, but the native tribes, from Cape Horn to the Yukon River, have been called by the name Columbus first used, though it is a misnomer. Whence these people came is unknown.

The Indians are a strange people; they have traditions, but no history. Civilized people erect monuments of various kinds to commemorate their own deeds and those of their ancestors. Throughout the length and breadth of the United States there does not exist, and probably there never did exist, a monument of any kind deliberately erected by an Indian or a tribe to commemorate an event in Indian history. This is a highly interesting fact. Here, living to-day, is a people that builds no monuments; that writes no records; that leaves no intentional sign of its existence. Mankind in its earliest years could do no less. Unquestionably the American Indians are one of the oldest races of men on the earth. Compared with them, the Assyrians, the Chinese, the Egyptians, are children of yesterday.

Geologists tell us that America is older than Europe or Asia; that the oldest land in the world is the St. Lawrence valley; the oldest land in the United States, the Adirondacks. Thus the land and the native races of our country are the oldest on the globe. To study the characteristics of the American Indian is to find further proof of this. The Indian never laughs or jokes in the presence of a white man, or a stranger; whatever his years — boy, youth, or man — he has the saturnine touch of old age upon him. His moral sense is scarcely developed. He wholly lacks industrial invention ; had he possessed it, he would have been a builder. He was a wild animal in human form. Soon, the colonists discovered that he was far more dangerous than any wild beast. His intellect was wonderfully keen. Within the range of his activities it could not be surpassed. An American Indian differs from all other savages in being an intellectual wild man, cunning beyond the cunning of any other savage the world has ever seen.

Europeans found this country a scene of ancient feuds and perpetual war. It was a world of ceaseless bloodshed. In consequence, the native population of the continent was small. Some portions had no human inhabitants. This was true of the greater part of Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and Vermont. Smallpox and the Mohawks there had destroyed the native tribes. All down the Atlantic coast, as far as the Savannah River, the first colonists found few Indians, and these only remnants of once powerful tribes. The Five Nations called the Indians on the Delaware and the Susquehanna "women." It was fortunate for the first settlers that the tribes along the coast were so feeble. Had the seat of the Five Nations extended over rr 9

THEIR NUMBERS 3

this region, the settlement of America would have been long delayed.

There were many tribes and clans, but only three races of Indians east of the Mississippi. The division was never made by the Indians themselves, but by white men who base their opinions on the study of Indian languages. The three great race divisions were Algonquin, Iroquois, and Alobilion, or Maskokian. A fourth race division, the Sioux, or Dakota family, was represented in the tribes living between the Santee and Potomac rivers. At the time of the settlement of Jamestown, there were less than two hundred thousand Indians, within the present boundaries of the United States, east of the Mississippi River, Of the number to the west, there is no knowledge. There are about as many Indians within the United States to-day as there were east of the Mississippi, two centuries and a half ago.

Of the tribes that acted so important a part in the history of our country during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Five Nations numbered about ten thousand at the time of their greatest strength ; the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees, and Catawbas, about sixty thousand ; the tribes from Ohio to Lake Superior were far less numerous. Marquette and other French explorers, who first visited the old Northwest, passed over hundreds of miles of the wilderness and saw no signs of human population. It may safely be said that the original population of the continent has been greatly overestimated. An Indian war party of a hundred was seldom seen ; of a thousand, only a few times in our history; of ten thousand — never.

A family lived in a tepee, lodge or wigwam, which was made by spreading bark or skins over poles usually like a tent, but among the Five Nations, like a house. The Seneca long-house usually consisted of twenty-four sections; those at the ends containing provisions; each of the others containing a family. There were no windows. Along the sides were the sleeping quarters. At intervals, down the midway, were fires for cooking and heating. The smoke found its way out through the roof. The Five Nations had a fixed home. The Indians of the Mississippi Valley used the tepee. The Mandans, on the upper Missouri, built a circular lodge, and covered the roof with clay which hardened in the sun like rock. The hearth fire was in a pit in the center of the floor; around this the families were arranged, each having a triangular section.

Among the Indians, all relationship was through the clan, which consisted of all families descended from the same female ancestor. Each clan was a unit, having its chiefs, sachems, warriors, medicine-man, its food, land, and name in common. Three famous clans of the Five Nations were the Wolf, the Bear, and the Turtle. The Wolf was the token of the Wolf clan, a sort of earmark to a large family group. All clans having a common ancestor made up a tribe and spoke a tribal tongue. The Five Nations were a league of tribes. The Indians were much given to debating all important matters in council. Here the tribes were represented by the older and most distinguished sachems. A chief was a leader of a war party. The most famed leader was usually the spokesman for a tribe.

The Indian women did all the work; moved the lodges and put them up at the new camps; kept the traditions of the tribe and owned all the land. The torturing of prisoners was their peculiar right. Indian women originated the most cruel tortures inflicted on that great company of white captives from the days of Captain John Smith to the days of General Custer. Indian children grew up with the dogs. Discipline among them was unknown. They differed from the elders only in size and strength. The women taught the children how to torture prisoners; the men taught them to hunt, to war, and to boast.

Down to the coming of the whites, the Indians dressed in skins, or ornamented themselves with feathers; colored their own skins with clay and the juice of plants, and were armed only with bows, arrows, spears, clubs, and tomahawks of stone. They lived almost solely on animal food, corn, beans, and pumpkins. They made bags of skins, filled them with water, heated this by throwing in hot stones, and then cooked their food. They made canoes of bark sewed with thongs of deerskin, and smeared the joints with

INDIAN IDEALS 5

the gum of trees. The women sometimes made crude pottery and clay pipes, ornamenting their work with stripes of color. All the tribes wandered about their own hunting-grounds as fancy or necessity led them.

The extent of the religion of the Indians has been a theme of much discussion. The wind, the thunder, the lightning, the clouds, the rain, the stars, even the streams and forests, the bear, the fox, and the buffalo, were in some vague sense gods to them. The idea of a supreme God, a moral Being, such as is depicted in the Bible, never occurred to them. No Indian language ever contained a word which conveyed to an Indian the meaning of the English word "God." The French priests, who were the first to establish missions among the Indians, soon discovered that the Indian languages did not contain words that would express Christian, or even moral, ideas. Of course this was also true of the incapacity of these languages to express ideas of civilization in general.

An Indian's ideal was to become a famous hunter and warrior. He was bred from infancy to be a master of woodcraft. He could imitate any bird or beast; he could outwit the fox, outrun the wolf, take the moose by surprise, and entrap the wildest animal. As a warrior, he was a wild beast that could think and plan. "It is doubtful that two tribes, or even two Indians, ever met in a fair open fight. To ambush the enemy, to kill him in his sleep — this was valor. To wear a scalp at the belt was a certificate of the skill of a veteran — a title to the chieftainship. No promise could hold or treaty bind such a people.

The Indians may be said to have welcomed Europeans. The Hurons at once took Champlain into their confidence, made him their ally, and had him turn his guns upon their ancient foes, the Five Nations. The next acquisition was of guns, powder, ball, and scalping-knives. Then the Indians were ready to follow their old foes and destroy the new-comers. But the whites brought with them a weapon that cut off the Indians more quickly than war. This was rum, which the Indians called "firewater." They speedily practiced all the vices of civilization. They did not take to its virtues.

During the seventeenth century, the settlers were usually on friendly terms with their Indian neighbors, who with few exceptions were the remnants of once strong tribes. They were enfeebled by decay, broken in spirits, and quite ready to receive the protection and help of the whites. This condition of affairs continued till the Franco-English struggle began, in 1689. There were exceptions, however, as the war with the Pequots in Connecticut, in 1636; with the Mohicans in Massachusetts, in 1637; with King Philip in 1675, and with the Tuscaroras at the close of the seventeenth century. But with the opening of the seventy years' war between France and England for the possession of the continent, the Indian tribes suddenly became important military factors. The ancient feud between Algonquin and Iroquois was resumed ; the Five Nations kept pretty steadily with the English; all the other tribes, sooner or later, joined the French. These alliances greatly affected all the tribes from the Hudson to the Mississippi, and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. The bow and arrow gave place to the rifle; the tribes were greatly decreased in numbers by drunkenness, endless broils, and smallpox.

The Indians gained nothing by the French and Indian wars. When in 1763 the country east of the Mississippi became English s(3il, it seemed, for a time, that the Indians west of the Allegheny were to be left forever undisturbed within their vast domain. This was the plan of the British government. It was also the plan of Pontiac, "king and lord of all the Northwest," and in a famous conspiracy he planned, in 1765, to drive the English into the sea; but in spite of King George and Pontiac, the settlers pressed over the mountains and sought homes in the Mississippi Valley. For the first time the English government and the colonies were united against the Indians, and the year that witnessed the imposition of the stamp tax (1765) witnessed the utter overthrow of Pontiac.

The war for the independence of the United States again divided the Indian tribes, and this time by a new division: allegiance to Congress or to the king. In the Declaration of Independence the king was accused of endeavoring "to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian

1763] RESERVATIONS 7

savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions." With the establishment of a national government, all the Indians within the United States became subject to its authority; and their history is best told in connection with the acquisition and settlement of the south and west.

There is probably not a county in the United States which does not show vestiges of this vanished and vanquished race. Streams, mountains, rivers, states, cities, preserve many Indian names. In some places, as in Ohio and Missouri, curious mounds and earthworks in rude order attest the antiquity of this strange people. Museums are now filled with Indian collections, gathered to preserve some relic of their language, their customs, and their traditions. The dead Indian, like the Egyptian mummy, is treasured as a vestige of an ancient world. But no one should confound fact with fiction by reading into Indian life and character qualities which the race never possessed. For four hundred years it has resisted civilization. During the three centuries of its close contact with Europeans, it has preserved all its ancient character, except in those limited areas, called reservations, where the compulsion of civilization has forced a change. In the course of our narrative we shall meet with great Indians — eloquent, like Red Jacket, or politic, like Tecumseh. But even these have displayed only the characteristics of their race and remained intellectual barbarians.

The history of the Indians is that of a vanishing race. We know that they completely possessed the country at the time when the colonies were first settled. A century and a half later, at the close of the French and Indian war (1763), the Proclamation Line was the frontier. Westward lay the Indian Country. Up to this time the tribes had figured as allies of the English or of the French in the long struggle for the continent. England won, and the Indian Country was set apart by the king as a western and permanent Indian reservation. Pontiac then made a league of the tribes to exterminate the whites. His conspiracy failed. Soon after the war for independence broke out, and the tribes divided, some fighting for Congress, others for the king. Congress took up the Indian question when it made treaties of peace with the Six Nations, and secured their neutrality during the Revolution.

With the organization of the United States, the national government was given sole power to make treaties with the Indians, and from 1789 to the present time they have been the subject of a vast amount of legislation by Congress. The policy of the government has been to treat each Indian tribe as a nation; to remove the tribes east of the Mississippi to the Indian Country west of it; to establish Indian reservations and keep the tribes within them; to purchase the reservations, or parts of them, and open them to white settlers; to consolidate the tribes in new, smaller, and more remote reservations; to pay the Indians annuities for their lands, and thus to make most of the tribes dependent upon the government for food and clothes, and to allow churches and schools among them.

The effect of this policy has been the disappearance of the Indians almost entirely east of the Mississippi, and the concentration of the remaining tribes on the reservations. Thus the Indian of to-day is wholly dependent on the United States government for all his supplies. There are exceptions, as the five civilized tribes of the Indian Territory practice all the trades and follow the usual occupations of white men, and have a government organized much like that of white territories. They have their laws, books, and newspapers in their own language. But most of the Indians on the western reservations are degraded. On reservations east of the Mississippi, few pure blooded Indians can now be found. A map of Indian reservations to-day shows at a glance the striking contrast between the Indian Country now and its extent just before the American Revolution. Then it stretched an unbroken wilderness westward from the Alleghanies ; now it consists of a few dozen reservations scattered from Maine to Oregon.

Chapter II The Discovery Of America 986-1520

To this vast wilderness, '*the under-half of the world," sparsely inhabited by barbarous tribes and savage clans, the people of Europe were bound, eventually, to find their way and to extend civilization, as, ages ago, the people of Asia spread civilization over Europe. We do not know how the native races of America came here. This continent may once have been a peninsula of Asia, as Europe now is, and its original inhabitants may have wandered eastward from Asia to this country about the time when the first inhabitants of Europe wandered from Asia westward. The study of primitive speech, of ancient ruins, and of folk-lore throws a dim light on the subject, but nothing is known to which an exact date can be given till the tenth century. Adventurous Northmen, of whom one Eric the Red is most famous, in the year 986, having passed westward over the Sea of Darkness, as the Atlantic was then called, sighted the coast of Labrador, sailed along the Grand Banks and visited portions of the New England coast, which from the abundance of its wild grapes they called Vinland. This may have been the shores of Long Island Sound. These voyages were sung in the Norse poems, called the sagas, but were soon forgotten. It has been said that some tradition of these adventures was known to Columbus, but this is doubtful.

By the middle of the fifteenth century, geographical knowledge of the world was greatly extended. Trade and commerce then centered around the Mediterranean. Florence, Genoa, Venice, and Lisbon were the commercial centers of Europe. A rich overland trade with Asia had been carried on uninterruptedly for centuries. The chief commercial center in the East was Constantinople, but in lo THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA [1459

1453 this city was captured by the Turks, who suddenly stopped the ancient course of trade and threatened the commercial towns of Europe with ruin. Bej^ond Constantinople and the Turkish Empire lay the rich marts of Asia, eager as ever to maintain commercial relations with Europe. Mow could the masters of Constantinople be circumvented? How could Europe reach the rich Orient as before? By land no longer, because the heavy duties imposed by the Turks barred the way. By water? But none had gone that way. The Portuguese had long been trading down the coast of Africa, and as a result of their voyages, Fra Mauro, in 1459, ^^^*^ made a map of the world, which, drawn in colors on oxhide, may be seen to this day in the library of the Doge's Palace in Venice. According to this map, Asia might be reached by way of the African coast; but the voyage would be very long and perilous. What ship could stand it? What sailors be induced to go? Fierce monsters lay in wait; poisonous winds blew; and even if a ship sailed safely down the world so far as the southern point of Africa, how could it sail up so far as Cathay — of Asia? When we reflect that as late as the time of Queen Anne, when Benjamin Franklin was a boy, it was commonly believed that the ocean abounded in terrible monsters which might seize and sink the largest and strongest ship, we can more easily understand the force of these superstitions about the sea which prevailed when Columbus was a boy. In our day, many people believe in the sea serpent, which they expect will some day coil itself about one of our largest steamships in midocean and settle with it to the bottom of the sea. On Fra Mauro's map, sea monsters were depicted in great variety ; but in spite of this portrayal of ignorance and superstition, the map showed the known world with wonderful accuracy. It depicted the principal features of Asia, Africa, and Europe, though it lacked North America, South America, and Australia. It was the of^cial map of the world, issued when Columbus was about twenty-three years of age. At this time, men believed that the sun revolved about the earth and that the earth was the center of the universe.

Among the Italian sailors of these days was Cliristopher

1474] TERRORS OF THE SEA ii

Columbus, a native of Genoa, though his parents, like himself, changed their abode several times, so that the place of his birth has been disputed. He said in his will that it was Genoa. Familiar with all the important ports of the Mediterranean, and witnessing the rapid decay of their once flourishing trade, he early began thinking how it might be regained. As he was a sailor-boy at nine, he probably first thought of the subject in his eighteenth or nineteenth year, for we know that he spent over thirty years in getting powerful princes interested in his plans. A hundred years before Columbus, Marco. Polo, an Italian, after long residence in Asia, wrote a book of travels and adventures which were so wonderful as to be considered fabulous by the wise men of Europe, although Marco Polo returned to Venice with great riches in proof of his story. Familiar with this book, with Fra Mauro's map, and with the anxious wishes of the merchant princes of Europe, Columbus conceived the idea that Asia could be reached in a few days by sailing west, thus saving the long, dangerous voyage around Africa. In demonstration of his ideas he constructed maps and globes; he collected the opinions of the greatest philosophers: he gathered facts from his fellow-sailors who had seen strange objects such as bits of carved wood, branches of trees, and as some said, bodies of men, that had drifted across the Sea of Darkness.

Brooding over all this evidence, Columbus was convinced that he could reach Asia by sailing west; could establish new routes of trade, and if heathen nations were found, he might be instrumental in converting them to the Christian faith. Did not all philosophers teach that the world was round like a ball? Did not Ptolemy compute its circumference at twenty-one thousand six hundred miles at the equator? And it would be much less on the parallel of Lisbon. But Columbus got greatest comfort from a philosopher and map-maker of Florence — famous throughout Europe — named Toscanelli, who, entering heartily into the idea, constructed a sailing-chart, on the basis of Fra Mauro's map. This was in 1474. For nearly twenty years Columbus treasured this chart; displayed it in evidence of the practicability of his ideas, and at last actually used it in his

13 THE DISCOVERV OV AMERICA [1492

voyaG[c, the most famous in tlic history of the world. Dining all those years, he let no chance slip by which promised help. Most men who met him thought him a lunatic or a dreamer. He would have fitted out a ship himself, but he was too poor. Therefore, for thirty-five years he sought a patron. The princes and merchants of Italy refused, the king and queen of Spain refused, and Portugal was interested in an eastern route to Asia by way of Africa. Charles \'III. of France and Henry Yll. of England refused, but Columbus did not give up. Spain was struggling to expel the Moors, and Columbus foUowctl the camp of Ferdinand and Isabella, hoping for a victory that would move them to assist him. At length the queen, agitated by the desire to spread the Christian faith over Asia, and also stirred by Columbus to believe that great riches might be won for Spain in the west, ordered a fleet to be equipped at public expense and commissioned Columbus as admiral and governor of what lands he might discover. Three ships, the Pinta, the NiAa, and the largest, the Santa Maria, of about one hundred tons, were fitted out at Palos. Ninety sailors were gathered, but only by emptying the jails, at last. Some thirty gentlemen, adventurers, joined the expedition. Columbus superintended the equipment and bore part of the expense. A part was borne by the brothers Pinzon, owners and captains of the Pinta and Nifia.

On Friday, August 3, 1493, the fleet sailed.* Leaving the Canaries, Columbus struck out boldly into the Sea of Darkness, expecting to sight Asia within a week. But five weeks passed. The men mutinied. Terror and treachery possessed them. To gain time, Columbus falsified the reckoning; but the men could not be deceived much longer. He viewed with alarm the variation of the needle from the true north, lie explained it to the sailors so as to quiet their fears. The fact of the variation was previously unknown. Signs of land were seen. A flock of land birds caused the admiral to change his course more to the south. He had been sailing towartl that part of the coast now known as Carolina.

•Aniont:; tho coninioii sailors were William Irish (or Harris ?\ of Cilwav, Ireland, and Anhnr Laws (or l.arkins?), of Kniriand. For a list of tho crews, see Fiske's Discovery of America, \'ol. II, .Appendix, 6.

1493] DEPARTURE OF TME FLEET 13

On the morning of I'^riday, October I2th, at two o'clock, tliere was a cry of "Land! land!" A light as of a torch signaling was detected in the distance. It was the open fire of a native, and the flickering effect was caused by the rise and fall of the waves between the ship and the shore. At dawn the land apjieared : a low, barren coast, one of the islands of the Bahama group. The exact spot is unknown. Probably it was Watling's Island.

With all the i)om[> he could command, Columbus landed, and planting the Si)anish Hag, took possession of the land in the name of his sovereigns. He believed that he had reached an island off the coast of Asia and that India was just beyond. The natives, who received the Spaniards in friendly awe, he called Indians; and the name thus erroneously given came at last to be applietl to all the native races of the New World.

For five months Columbus explored the islands, discovering the principal member of the West India group, Cuba, and believed it to be the peninsula of Asia. Everywhere he inquired for gold nnnes. The natives pointed to the west. He kept a journal, which he supplemented by letters to the king and tpieen, and to others in authority. In one of these letters he described the Indians, and said that they had no beds, but used JiaDiacas. This was the first word from a language of the New World that was translated to the people of the Old. Great was the astonishment in Europe when the news of the admiral's discovery was heard. He had returned with strange fruits and plants and minerals, and with stranger people, called Indians. And he had found Asia and unlimited quantities of gold, and the king and queen had received him like a royal prince.

At once he was asked to make another expediti(^n, anil it seemed as if half of the kingdom was eager to accompany him. In September, 1493, he started with a splendidly equipped fleet and a great company of adventurers, each of whom expected to find fabulous riches in the New World. He had left a colony on the island of Hayti, but not a trace of it was found, save a heap of stones and a rusty cannon. Those whom he left had taken no thought of agriculture. They had pillaged the natives, and in return had been over-

14 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA [1498, 1502

powered and destroyed. Like the adventurers clamoring around Columbus, Spain clamored for gold. This was the great object of search, and this he failed to find, except in the ornaments of the natives. He enslaved the natives, and treated them with great cruelty. They fled at the approach of the Spaniards, but Columbus continued his explorations. His letters vividly describe new scenes. He mentions that it was common among the Indians to supply themselves with a small amount of food and long, hollow reeds, through which they inhaled the smoke of a plant. It was tobacco they were using. At this time tobaccosmoking was unknown to Europeans. They took the habit from the New World, but not till a hundred years after Columbus. On his return, he found himself the most unpopular, the most villified man in Spain. His second voyage had been a failure. Meanwhile, England, France, and Portugal were planning western voyages.

Still believing that he had found Asia, Columbus set out on his third voyage in 1498. Cuba was his first point; thence, coasting southwestward, on the ist of August he sighted the mainland of what he supposed to be Asia, and discovered the Orinoco River. In his letter describing this discovery, he declared his belief that the Orinoco flowed from the Garden of Eden, and that if any one could surmount its swift current, he could gain entrance to Paradise. Moreover, as the result of his three voyages he announced his belief that the world was shaped like a pear and that the Garden of Eden was located, as it were, at the stem of the pear.