The Myths of the North American Indians Part 3

The Sioux

The Siouan or Dakota stock--Santees, Yanktons, a.s.siniboins, and Tetons--inhabited a territory extending from Saskatchewan to Louisiana.

They are the highest type, physically, mentally, and morally, of any or the western tribes, and their courage is unquestioned. They dwelt in large bands or groups. "Personal fitness and popularity determined chieftains.h.i.+p.... The authority of the chief was limited by the band council, without whose approbation little or nothing could be accomplished. War parties were recruited by individuals who had acquired reputation as successful leaders, while the _shamans_ formulated ceremonials and farewells for them. Polygamy was common....

Remains of the dead were usually, though not invariably, placed on scaffolds."[10]

[10] _Bulletin 30_, Bureau of American Ethnology.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Elderly Omaha Beau. By permission of the Bureau of American Ethnology]

Caddoan Family

The Caddoan family comprises three geographic groups, the northern, represented by the Arikara, the middle, embracing the p.a.w.nee Confederacy, once dwelling in Nebraska, and the southern group, including the Caddo, Kichai, and Wichita. Once numerous, this division of the Red Race is now represented by a few hundreds of individuals only, who are settled in Oklahoma and North Dakota. The Caddo tribes were cultivators of the soil as well as hunters, and practised the arts of pottery-making and tanning. They lacked political ability and were loosely confederated.

The Shoshoneans

The Shoshoneans or 'Snake' family of Nevada, Utah, and Idaho comprise the Root-diggers, Comanches, and {29} other tribes of low culture.

These people, it is said, "are probably nearer the brutes than any other portion of the human race on the face of the globe." "Yet these debased creatures speak a related dialect and partake in some measure of the same blood as the famous Aztec race who founded the empire of Anahuac, and raised architectural monuments rivalling the most famous structures of the ancient world."[11]

[11] Brinton, _Myths of the New World_.

Early Wars with the Whites

Numerous minor wars between the Indians and the colonists followed upon the settlement of Virginia, but on the whole the relations between them were peaceable until the general ma.s.sacre of white women and children on March 22, 1622, while the men of the colony were working in the fields. Three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children were slain in a single day. This holocaust was the signal for an Indian war which continued intermittently for many years and cost the colonists untold loss in blood and treasure. Inability to comprehend each other's point of view was of course a fertile source of irritation between the races, and even colonists who had ample opportunities for observing and studying the Indians during a long course of years appear to have been incapable of understanding their outlook and true character. The dishonesty of white traders, on the other hand, aroused the Indian to a frenzy of childish indignation. It was a native saying that "One pays for another," and when an Indian was slain his nearest blood-relation considered that he had consummated a righteous revenge by murdering the first white man whom he met or waylaid. Each race accused the other of treachery and unfairness. Probably the colonists, despite their {30} veneer of civilization, were only a little less ignorant than, and as vindictively cruel as, the barbarians with whom they strove. The Indian regarded the colonist as an interloper who had come to despoil him of the land of his fathers, while the Virginian Puritan considered himself the salt of the earth and the Indian as a heathen or 'Ishmaelite' sent by the Powers of Darkness for his discomfiture, whom it was an act of both religion and policy to destroy. Vengeful ferocity was exhibited on both sides. Another horrible ma.s.sacre of five hundred whites in 1644 was followed by the defeat of the Indians who had butchered the colonists. Shortly before that event the Pequot tribe in Connecticut had a feud with the English traders, and tortured such of them as they could lay hands on. The men of Connecticut, headed by John Mason, a military veteran, marched into the Pequot country, surrounded the village of Sa.s.sacus, the Pequot chief, gave it to the flames, and slaughtered six hundred of its inhabitants. The tribe was broken up, and the example of their fate so terrified the other Indian peoples that New England enjoyed peace for many years after.

King Philip's War

The Dutch of New York were at one period almost overwhelmed by the Indians in their neighbourhood, and in 1656 the Virginians suffered a severe defeat in a battle with the aborigines at the spot where Richmond now stands. In 1675 there broke out in New England the great Indian war known as King Philip's War. Philip, an Indian chief, complained bitterly that those of his subjects who had been converted to Christianity were withdrawn from his control, and he made vigorous war on the settlers, laying many of their towns in {31} ashes. But victory was with the colonists at the battle called the 'Swamp Fight,'

and Philip and his men were scattered.

Captain Benjamin Church it was who first taught the colonists to fight the Indians in their own manner. He moved as stealthily as the savages themselves, and, to avoid an alarm, never allowed an Indian to be shot who could be reached with the hatchet. The Indians who were captured were sold into slavery in the West India Islands, where the hard labour and change of climate were usually instrumental in speedily putting an end to their servitude.

Step by step the Red Man was driven westward until he vanished from the vicinity of the earlier settlements altogether. From that period the history of his conflicts with the whites is bound up with the records of their western extension.

The Reservations

The necessity of bringing the Indian tribes under the complete control of the United States Government and confining them to definite limits for the better preservation of order was responsible for the policy of placing them on tracts of territory of their own called 'reservations.'

This step led the natives to realize the benefits of a settled existence and to depend on their own industry for a livelihood rather than upon the more precarious products of the chase. An Act of Congress was pa.s.sed in 1887 which put a period to the existence of the Indian tribes as separate communities, and permitted all tribal lands and reservations to be so divided that each individual member of a tribe might possess a separate holding. Many of these holdings are of considerable value, and the possessors are by no means poorly endowed with this world's {32} goods. On the whole the policy of the United States toward the Indians has been dictated by justice and humanity, but instances have not been wanting in which arid lands have been foisted upon the Indians, and the pressure of white settlers has frequently forced the Government to dispossess the Red Man of the land that had originally been granted to him.

The Story of Pocahontas

Many romantic stories are told concerning the relations of the early white settlers with the Indians. Among the most interesting is that of Pocahontas, the daughter of the renowned Indian chief Powhatan, the erstwhile implacable enemy of the whites. Pocahontas, who as a child had often played with the young colonists, was visiting a certain chief named j.a.pazaws, when an English captain named Argall bribed him with a copper kettle to betray her into his hands. Argall took her a captive to Jamestown. Here a white man by the name of John Rolfe married her, after she had received Christian baptism. This marriage brought about a peace between Powhatan and the English settlers in Virginia.

When Dale went back to England in 1616 he took with him some of the Indians. Pocahontas, who was now called 'the Lady Rebecca,' and her husband accompanied the party. Pocahontas was called a princess in England, and received much attention. But when about to return to the colony she died, leaving a little son.

The quaint version of Captain Nathaniel Powell, which retains all the known facts of Pocahontas' story, states that "During this time, the Lady Rebecca, _alias_ Pocahontas, daughter to Powhatan, by the diligent care of Master John Rolfe her husband, and his friends, was taught to speak such English as might well be {33} understood, well instructed in Christianity, and was become very formal and civil after our English manner; she had also by him a child which she loved most dearly, and the Treasurer and Company took order both for the maintenance of her and it, besides there were divers persons of great rank and quality had been kind to her; and before she arrived at London, Captain Smith, to deserve her former courtesies, made her qualities known to the Queen's most excellent Majesty and her Court, and wrote a little book to this effect to the Queen: An abstract whereof follows:

"'_To the Most High and Virtuous Princess, Queen Anne of Great Britain_

"'MOST ADMIRED QUEEN,

"'The love I bear my G.o.d, my King and Country, hath so oft emboldened me in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honesty doth constrain me to presume thus far beyond myself, to present your Majesty this short discourse: if ingrat.i.tude be a deadly poison to all honest virtues, I must be guilty of that crime if I should omit any means to be thankful.

"'So it is,

"'That some ten years ago being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the power of Powhatan their chief King, I received from this great savage exceeding great courtesy, especially from his son Nantaquaus, the most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit I ever saw in a savage, and his sister Pocahontas, the King's most dear and well-beloved daughter, being but a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, whose compa.s.sionate pitiful heart, of my desperate estate, gave me much cause to respect her; I being the first Christian this proud King and his grim attendants ever saw: and thus enthralled in their barbarous power, I cannot say I felt the {34} least occasion of want that was in the power of these my mortal foes to prevent, notwithstanding all their threats. After some six weeks fatting among these savage courtiers, at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conveyed to Jamestown: where I found about eight and thirty miserable poor and sick creatures, to keep possession of all those large territories of Virginia; such was the weakness of this poor Commonwealth, as had the savages not fed us, we directly had starved. And this relief, most gracious Queen, was commonly brought us by this Lady Pocahontas.

"'Notwithstanding all these pa.s.sages, when inconstant Fortune turned our peace to war, this tender virgin would still not spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jars have been oft appeased, and our wants still supplied. Were it the policy of her father thus to employ her, or the ordinance of G.o.d thus to make her His instrument, or her extraordinary affection to our nation, I know not; but of this I am sure: when her father, with the utmost of his policy and power, sought to surprise me, having but eighteen with me, the dark night could not affright her from coming through the irksome woods, and with watered eyes gave me intelligence, with her best advice to escape his fury; which had he known, he had surely slain her.

"'Jamestown with her wild train she as freely frequented as her father's habitation; and during the time of two or three years [1608-9]

she, next under G.o.d, was still the instrument to preserve this Colony from death, famine and utter confusion; which if in those times it had once been dissolved, Virginia might have lain as it was at our first arrival to this day.

"'Since then, this business having been turned and {35} varied by many accidents from that I left it at: it is most certain, after a long and troublesome war after my departure, betwixt her father and our Colony, all which time she was not heard of;

"'About two years after she herself was taken prisoner, being so detained near two years longer, the Colony by that means was relieved, peace concluded; and at last rejecting her barbarous condition, she was married to an English gentleman, with whom at this present she is in England; the first Christian ever of that nation, the first Virginian ever spoke English, or had a child in marriage by an Englishman: a matter surely, if my meaning be truly considered and well understood, worthy a prince's understanding.

"'Thus, most gracious Lady, I have related to your Majesty, what at your best leisure our approved Histories will account you at large, and done in the time of your Majesty's life; and however this might be presented you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a more honest heart, as yet I never begged anything of the state, or any: and it is my want of ability and her exceeding desert; your birth, means and authority; her birth, virtue, want and simplicity, doth make me thus bold, humbly to beseech your Majesty to take this knowledge of her, though it be from one so unworthy to be the reporter, as myself, her husband's estate not being able to make her fit to attend your Majesty.

The most and least I can do is to tell you this, because none so oft has tried it as myself, and the rather being of so great a spirit, however her stature: if she should not be well received, seeing this kingdom may rightly have a kingdom by her means; her present love to us and Christianity might turn to such scorn and fury, as to divert all this good to the worst of evil: whereas finding so great a Queen should do her some honour {36} more than she can imagine, for being so kind to your servants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endear her dearest blood to effect that, your Majesty and all the King's honest subjects most earnestly desire.

Captain Powell continues:

"The small time I staid in London, divers courtiers and others, my acquaintances, have gone with me to see her, that generally concluded, they did think G.o.d had had a great hand in her conversion, and they have seen many English Ladies worse favoured, proportioned, and behavioured; and as since I have heard, it pleased both the King and Queen's Majesty honourably to esteem her, accompanied with that honourable Lady the Lady de la Ware, and that honourable Lord her husband, and divers other persons of good qualities, both publicly at the masques and otherwise, to her great satisfaction and content, which doubtless she would have deserved, had she lived to arrive in Virginia.

"The Treasurer, Council and Company, having well furnished Captain Samuel Argall, the Lady Pocahontas alias Rebecca, with her husband and others, in the good s.h.i.+p called the _George_; it pleased G.o.d at Gravesend to take this young Lady to His mercy, where she made not more sorrow for her unexpected death, than joy to the beholders to hear and see her make so religious and G.o.dly an end. Her little child Thomas Rolfe, therefore, was left at Plymouth with Sir Lewis Stukly, that desired the keeping of it."

Indian Kidnapping

Many are the tales of how Indians raiding a white settlement have kidnapped and adopted into their families the children of the slain whites, but none is {37} more enthralling than that of Frances Sloc.u.m, who was carried away from home by a party of Delawares when but five years of age, and who lived with them until her death in 1847. When discovered by the whites she was an old woman of over seventy years of age. The story is told by the writer of a local history as follows:

"The Sloc.u.ms came from Warwick, Rhode Island, and Jonathan Sloc.u.m, the father of the far-famed captive girl, emigrated, in 1777, with a wife and nine children. They located near one of the forts, upon a spot of ground which is at present covered by the city of Wilkes-Barre.

"The early training of the family had been on principles averse to war, and Jonathan was loath to mix with the tumult of the valley. A son by the name of Giles, of a fiery spirit, could not brook the evident intentions of the Torys and British, and consequently he shouldered his musket, and was one to take part in the battle of July 3, 1778.