The Indians. 24. "The continent of North America was then one continued forest. There were no horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, or tame beasts of any kind; but a plenty of deer, moose, bears, elks, buffaloes, and a variety of other wild animals. There was no domestic poultry; but the woods were full of turkeys, partridges, pigeons, and other birds. Wild-geese, ducks, teal, and other water-fowl abounded in the bays, creeks, rivers, and ponds. There were no gar dens, orchards, public roads, meadows, or cultivated fields; but the Indians so often burned the woods that they could advantageously plant their patches of corn. They were clothed with the skins of wild beasts. Their houses were generally made of small young trees bent and twisted together, and so curiously covered with mats or bark as to be tolerably dry and warm. 25. The Indians made their fire in the centre of the house, which had an opening at the top for the escape of the smoke. Their food was coarse and simple, without any kind of seasoning. They had neither spice, salt, bread, butter, cheese, nor milk. Their drink was water. They fed on the flesh and entrails of moose, deer, bears, beasts, and birds of all kinds; on fish, eels, and creeping things. Nothing came amiss. In the hunting and fishing seasons they had venison, moose, fat bears, raccoons, geese, turkeys, ducks, and fish of all kinds. In the summer they had green corn, beans, squashes, and the various fruits which the country naturally produced. In the winter they subsisted on corn, beans, fish, nuts, ground-nuts, and acorns. 26. They had not set meals, but ate when they were hungry and could find anything to satisfy the cravings of nature. Sometimes, from necessity, they lived without food for several river O-ri-no'-co, in South America. He died in Spain, in 1506, at about the age of seventy, and his body was deposited in a convent at Val-lado-lid, Spain, but was afterward removed to Seville. Twenty-three years after, it was taken across the Atlantic to Hispaniola, and, finally, two hundred and sixty years later, was carried with great ceremony to the cathedral of Havana, Cuba, its present resting-place. days; but when well supplied they gourmandized. Very little of their food was derived from the earth, except what it spontaneously produced. Indian corn, beans, and squashes were the chief articles for which they labored. The ground was both their seat and table. Trenchers, knives, forks, and napkins were unknown. Their best bed was a mat or a skin. They had neither chair nor a stool; but they sat upon the ground, commonly with their elbows on their knees. A few wooden and stone vessels and instruments served all the purposes of domestic life. 27. They had neither steel, iron, nor any metallic instrument. Their knife was a sharp stone, shell, or reed, which they sharpened in such a manner as to cut their hair and make their bows and arrows. They made their axes of stones. These they sharpened somewhat like common iron axes, with this difference that they were made with a neck instead of an eye, and fastened with a withe, like a blacksmith's chisel. They had mortars, stone pestles, and chisels. They dressed their corn with a clam-shell, or with a stick made flat and sharp at one end. 28. Their only weapons were bows and arrows, the tomahawk, and the wooden sword or spear. Their bow-strings were made of the sinews of deer or of Indian hemp. Their arrows were constructed of young elder or of other straight sticks and reeds. These were headed with a sharp flinty stone or with bones. The arrow was cleft at one end, and the stone or bone was put in and fastened with a small cord. The tomahawk was a stick of two or three feet in length with a knob at the end. Sometimes it was a stone hatchet, or a stick with a piece of deer's horn at one end. Their spear was a straight piece of wood sharpened and hardened in the fire or headed with bone or stone. 29. They had made no improvement in navigation beyond the construction and management of the hollow trough or canoe. They made their canoes of the chestnut, white-wood, and pine trees. As these grew straight to a great length, and The Mou.d-builders. . 27 were exceedingly large as well as tall, they scooped out some which would carry fifty or sixty men. The construction of these with such miserable tools as the Indians possessed was a great curiosity. When they had found a suitable tree they made a fire at the root and continued burning it and cutting it with their stone axes till it fell. They then kindled a fire at such distance from the buct as they chose, and burned it off again. By burning and working with their axes, and scraping with sharp stones and shells, they made it hollow and smooth. In the same manner they shaped the ends, and finished it so that it could cut its way with ease through the water.' 30. The Indians had no kind of coin, but they had a sort of money which they called wampum. It consisted of small beads most curiously wrought out of shells, and perforated in the centre so that they might be strung on belts in chains and bracelets. "With respect to religion, the Indians believed that there was a Great Spirit or God, but they worshipped a variety of gods. They paid homage to the fire and water, thunder and lightning, and to whatever they imagined to be superior to themselves or capable of doing them an injury. They paid their principal homage to an Evil Spirit, and from fear worshipped him to keep him in good humor.” 31. "Behind these Indians, who were in possession of the country when it was discovered by the Europeans, is dimly seen the shadowy form of another people who have left many remarkable evidences of their habits and customs, The moundand of a singular degree of civilization, but who, builders. many centuries ago, disappeared, either exterminated by pestilence or by some powerful and pitiless enemy, or driven from the country to seek new homes south and west of the gulf of Mexico. 32. The evidences of the presence of this ancient people are found almost everywhere upon the North American continent, except perhaps upon the Atlantic coast. They consist of mounds, sometimes of imposing size, and other earthworks, so numerous that in Ohio alone there are, or were till quite recently, estimated to be not less than ten thousand of the mounds, and fifteen hundred inclosures of earth and stone, all evidently the work of the same people. In other parts of the country they were found in such numbers that no attempt has been made to count them all. MOUND NEAR WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA 1 33. There are no data by which the exact age of these singular relics of a once numerous and industrious people, living a long-sustained agricultural life, can be fixed; but it is evident from certain established facts that this must date from a very remote period. The chief seat of their power and population seems to have been in the Mississippi valley. The signs of their occupation are many along the banks of its rivers. It is very seldom that the human bones found in these mounds, except those of later and evidently intrusive 1 This, known as the Grave Creek Mound, is one of the most notable in the Ohio valley. It is seventy feet high and nine hundred in circumference. In it were found two vaults containing human skeletons. One of these skeletons was surrounded by about seven hundred shell beads. Another skeleton, besides a profusion of shell beads, had copper rings, and more than two hundred and fifty plates of mica. "These facts," says Foster, "show that the principal occupant of this mound was a royal personage." 66 English Discoveries. 29 removal, as they These works are burial, are in a condition to admit of their crumble into dust on exposure to the air. often also covered by the primeval forests, which are known to have grown undisturbed since the country was first occupied by the whites, and the annular growth of these trees has been ascertained to be sometimes from five to eight centuries.' 34. "A broad chasm is to be spanned before we can link the mound-builders to the North American Indians. They were essentially different in their form of government, their habits, and their daily pursuits. The Indian, since known to the white man, has spurned the restraints of a sedentary life which belongs to agriculture, and whose requirements, in his view, are ignoble. He was never known to erect structures which should survive the lapse of a generation. His lodges consist of a few poles, one end planted in the ground and the other secured with withes at the top, and over which are stretched plaits of matting or of birch bark, or the skins of the buffalo. This frail structure is his shelter from the elements. Were the In mound builders? 35. The domestic economy of the Indians, as contrasted with that of the mound-builders, exhibits two widely different conditions of society. In the one case the people had fixed habitations and methodical pursuits, and the day's labor was crowned with definite and accumulative results. In the other case the people led a nomadic life-a feast followed a famine; and, with their shifting habitations the accumula tion of personal property would prove an encumbrance rather than a convenience.' coveries. 36. The tidings of Columbus's discoveries produced astonishment and excitement not only in Spain, but in English DisPortugal, England, France, and other countries of Europe; and at once preparations were made for discovery and exploration in the new lands.' 1 "The discovery of a strait into the Indian ocean is the true key to the maritime movements of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century."-Prescott. |