CHAP. III. RELIGION, AND SOCIAL CEREMONIES. 29 knees, with their faces toward the rising luminary, and implored the god of day to grant them, the ensuing season, an abundance of fruit and grain as good as those which they then offered. The funeral ceremonies of these people, especially those on the death of a chief or prophet, were very peculiar. The body underwent a sort of embalming, when it was placed in the ground in a sitting posture by the nearest relatives of the deceased. Then food and money were placed by its side, and a conical mound of earth was piled over it, at the foot of which was 2 made a paleing of arrows stuck in the ground. Around this tomb the people gathered in great numbers, some standing, some sitting, and all howling. This ceremony continued three days and nights, after which, for a long time, chosen women visited the tomb three times a day, morning, noon and night. The chief, whilst he was alive, was held in the greatest veneration, for, like the Assyrian kings, he was both monarch and pontiff— the chief magistrate and the high priest. A cruel sacrifice was made to him of every first-born male child, a custom learned from the Central Americans. It symbolized the devotion and surrender of the entire strength of the nation to the chief. Sitting upon a bench on one side of a large circle, a block two feet in height was placed before him. The child was brought by a dancing-girl and placed upon the block, and the young mother, weeping in agony, was compelled to stand near it, to make the offering. A prophet dashed out its brains, and then a group of girls danced around the altar of sacrifice, singing songs. When a young chief desired to marry, he would send a few of his principal men to select from the daughters of the first families one of the youngest and most beautiful of the marriageable ones. The chosen bride was then painted and decorated in the most tasteful manner, preparatory to the nuptials. Brilliant colors, and costly pearls and shells, adorned her person. She was covered from her waist almost to her knees with a beautiful tunic of rich feathers. Then she was placed in a sedan chair, the top of which was an arch of green boughs festooned and garlanded with flowers. In that state she was conveyed to the presence of her future lord on the shoulders of six noblemen who were preceded by musicians and two men bearing magnificent feather fans, and followed by dancing-girls and the immediate relatives of the bride. When arrived at the residence of the chief, she was received by the lords in waiting, who conducted her to a seat by the side of her husband, on an elevated dais, where great pomp and ceremony were displayed by those in attendance. The bride and groom were constantly fanned by beautiful maidens, if the weather was warm; and they were regaled with the unfermented juice of the grape, in its season, or with a kind of sherbert made of orange juice, at other times. At near the sunsetting the chief and his young wife walked out into an open field, followed by all the people, and at the last parting ray of the luminary, they prostrated themselves toward the west and invoked the blessings of the Sun upon themselves and their children. From that moment until the stars appeared the people indulged in music and dancing-the music of the reed and a sort of tambourine and the dancing of young men and maidenswhen the chief and his bride retired to their dwelling, there, with friends, to - partake of a marriage-feast by the light of lamps. Such is an outline picture of the people with whom the Spaniards first came in contact on the continent after the discoveries of Columbus and his cotemporaries. These, with the Iroquois Confederacy, are the two notable exceptions spoken of, to the general character and habits of the dusky nations who then inhabited North America. We now have a tolerably correct impression of these barbarian and savage communities whose history, CHAP. III. DESTINY OF THE INDIANS. 31 down to the present time, forms an important part of that of our Republic. Some of them have gone up in the social scale, and others have gone down: some of them have disappeared, and other tribes have been discovered. All are gradually fading away from the earth; and the time cannot be far distant when the last of the dusky race may sit on the verge of the Pacific Ocean, with his face toward the setting sun, and chant the death-song of his people, saying: "We, the rightful lords of yore, Are the rightful lords no more. But they will leave behind them myriads of memories of their existence here, in their beautiful and significant names of our mountains and valleys, our lakes and rivers, our states, counties, villages and cities. We may say to our people, That, mid the forests where they warr'd, There rings no hunter's shout; But their name is on your waters Ye may not wash it out.” At this point in our story, the scene shifts, as in a dissolving view, to another continent, and presently appears the grand procession of discoverers who opened the way to settlements in this new-found land. We have remarked that from the period of the visits of the Northmen to Vineland (America) until Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean, great changes had taken place in Europe. The empire of the Franks, founded by Charlemagne, had been succeeded by that of the more progressive Germans, in the mastery of Europe, with Otho the Great as the initial Emperor. The Crusades had broken up the inertia or stagnation of European society. They had unbarred the gates of the East, and let in a flood of light from the sources of science and philosophy. The Northmen or Normans had taken possession of some of the fairest regions of France (Normandy), and had invaded, conquered, and refined England. The feudal system--a system in which lands are held by a few nobles who farm them out as a privilege secured by military service-had given way to an established political system in the form of monarchies or powerful republics. Commercial cities were gathering and distributing the products of industry and flecking the seas with white sails, proving that the arts of peace are far more productive of happiness than the pursuit of war. Over all Europe, from the Carpathian mountains to the sea, and from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, there was wonderful intellectual, moral and physical activity at the middle of the fifteenth century. Trade had linked various peoples in bonds of mutual interest and sympathy, and Europe, with the birth of the printing-press at that time, was prepared to enter upon that new and bright era of scientific investigation and maritime discovery which speedily appeared. When Lief came to America, the gloom of the dark ages was most intense-it was the world's midnight. When at near the close of the fifteenth century Columbus crossed the Atlantic, the faint gleam was seen of the dawn of that glorious day in the history of civilization, whose sunrise was heralded by the bold assertion that man had an inalienable right to the free exercise of his reason in faith and practice, whether in religion, politics, or morality. Early in the fifteenth century, commerce had stimulated maritime adventure which led to maritime discoveries. Its most wonderful activity was seen in the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas. For the control of this commerce, Genoa on the Mediterranean and Venice on the Adriatic, both in Italy, were powerful and zealous rivals. The commerce of India was very profitable, and for the monopoly of it, these rivals fiercely contended through diplomacy and arms. That commerce found its chief communications with Genoa by way of the Indus, the Oxus, and the Caspian and Black Seas. It found its chief communications with Venice by way of the Persian Gulf, the CHAP. III. COMMERCE AND SCIENCE. 33 river Euphrates and the Red Sea to Syrian and Egyptian ports. To these and the ports of the Black Sea the Italian vessels resorted for the silks, and spices, and other rich commodities of the Orient. ܀܀ In the sharp contests of these rival republics for commercial supremacy, the Venetians finally outgeneraled the Genoese. They acquired by diplomacy and business activity such influence over the ports of the Black Sea and the Levant, that the Genoese saw ruin before them; and they began to look in other directions for relief and continued prosperity. With the revival of learning which the Crusades (or the wars of Christians for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus, at Jerusalem, from the hands of the Turks) had been chiefly instrumental in producing, came into Europe a knowledge of the theories and demonstrations of the Arabian astronomers, concerning the globular form of the earth. Intelligent mariners and others had become satisfied that it was globular; and the idea was finally impressed as truth upon the minds of the Genoese merchants, whilst the clergy vehemently opposed it. Reason and Faith came into collision. Reason prevailed, and the Genoese merchants were willing to allow the navigators of their ships to sail westward in quest of India. Meanwhile the merchants of Western Europe, who were wholly excluded from direct participation in the commerce of the East through the Mediterranean by the jealous Italians, were seeking other channels of communication with India. In this enterprise they had the powerful aid of Prince Henry, son of John the First, King of Portugal and the English princess Philippa of Lancaster, sister of King Henry the Fourth of England. Whilst Prince Henry was with his father on an expedition into Africa, he received much information from the Moors concerning the coast of Guinea and other parts that were then unknown to Europeans. He believed that important discoveries might be made by navigating along the western coast of that continent, and on his return home the idea absorbed his whole attention. He retired from court, and at a beautiful country seat near Cape St. Vincent, in full view of the ocean, he drew around him men of science and learning. Being a studious and profound mathematician himself, he had become master of all the astronomy then known to the Spaniards. With these scientific men and scholars, he studied every branch of learning connected with maritime art, and they became satisfied, from ancient chronicles and fair induction, that Africa was circumnavigable-that India might be reached by going around the southern shores of that continent. This idea was contrary to the assertions of Ptolemy, the standard geographer at that time, and of many learned men; but Prince Henry adhered to his belief in the face of threats of the priests and the sneers of learned professors. |