CHAP. I.

TRADITIONS ABOUT VOYAGES TO AMERICA.

9

language. Humboldt refers to this tradition; and Southey, the English poet, made it the theme of one of his finest productions. Until the translation of the Icelandic Chronicles revealed the story of the Norwegian voy.. agers, the Chronicles of Wales claimed for Madoc the honor of being the discoverer of America. There are traditions of voyages to this country in the fourteenth century, but they are so vague and improbable that I will not weary you with a recital of them.

During the centuries whilst America again lay hidden from Europe, great changes had taken place among the nations of the Eastern hemisphere. The wild tribes of this portion of our continent had evidently been subjects of great changes, too. Stronger bands of warriors and women had displaced the weaker ones; and when the Europeans again appeared on our shores, the dwarfed Esquimaux, whom the Northmen encountered, had been annihilated by a nobler race or driven toward the frozen regions of the Arctic Circle. There had evidently been great migrations from one part of the continent to the other, during which half-civilized barbarians had been expelled from fertile territories by savages, whilst once savage regions seem to have been colonized by sun-worshippers from Central and South America. They have left remains of art, in buildings and pottery, which tell of a rude civilization.

We know that in South America there existed a native empire that compared favorably with any one in the Eastern hemisphere at that time. We know that between the Rio Grandé, or Grand River, which divides our country from Mexico, to the Isthmus of Darien, there was an Empire whose rulers and people displayed many of the nobler virtues and some of the arts and sciences of civilized life, and whose laws evinced as profound respect for the great principles of morality as is to be found in the most civilized nation. We know, too, that the softening influences of that empire were beginning to spread among the ruder tribes of the North, when Cortez and his followers-civilized ruffians from Spain-overturned that empire. They extinguished the light that was beginning to shine in the darker regions within the present domain of our Republic. With professed Christian zeal they barred the way to the advance of a civilization more practically Christian than that which the Spanish conquerors displayed

Whence came these dusky inhabitants of our land? is an unanswered and seemingly unanswerable question. Out of isolated facts-facts like the following-bold theories have been formed. Remains of fortifications like those of ancient European nations have been discovered. An idol, composed of clay and gypsum, representing a man without arms, resembling one found in Southern Russia, was dug up near Nashville, in Tennessee. A

Roman coin was found in Missouri; a Persian coin in Ohio; a bit of silver in the Genesee country, New York, with the year of our Lord 600 engraved on it; split wood and ashes, thirty feet below the surface of the earth, at Fredonia, New York; a silver cup, finely gilded, within an ancient mound near Marietta, Ohio, and in a tomb near Montevideo, in South America, two ancient swords, a helmet and shield, with Greek inscriptions upon them, showing that they were made in the time of Alexander the Great, more than three hundred years before Christ. The mysterious mounds found in various parts of our country have made strange revelations: such as weapons and utensils of copper; catacombs with mummies; ornaments of silver, brass, and copper; stones with Hebrew inscriptions; traces of iron utensils wholly reduced to dust; mirrors of isinglass and glazed pottery, and other evidences of the existence of a race here far more civilized than the tribes found by Europeans. And nearly all of these modern Indian nations have traditions respecting their origin. Some of them told of a partial or universal deluge; and some said their particular progenitor came in a bark canoe after that terrible event.

These facts have been the texts of long argumentative discourses. One theorist tells you that they came originally from Phonecia; another that they are Egyptians, Hindoos or Chinese; while others insist with great pertinacity that they are the descendants of the ten "Lost Tribes of Israel," who made their way from Asia to our Continent, over the Aleutian Islands or across Behring's Straits. Others dismiss the question with the positive assertion that they are the products of this continent alone-that they originated here as did the plants and trees. "The land you sleep on is ours," said a Micmac chief, in Nova Scotia, to Colonel Cornwallis, of the British army, a century and a quarter ago. We sprung out of the Earth like the trees, the grass and the flowers." Who knows? Ethnology, history, revelation and reason are all dumb before the questioner concerning these mysteries. The pious and superstitious parson, Cotton Mather, of Boston, who wrote more than one hundred and fifty years ago, took a short method of solving the question by shrewdly guessing that "the Devil [whom he called the old usurping landlord of America] decoyed these miserable salvages hither, in hopes that the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them." But the mounds and their contents, the relics and the theories have not solved the great question. The mounds scattered all over the continent-huge interrogation points of deep significance-and the mound-builders are yet the subjects of sharp speculation; and we might show wisdom if we should follow the example of Parson

CHAP I.

MOUNDS AND MOUND-BUILDERS.

I I

Mather, who, when the delusion of witchcraft had made him ridiculous, declared that the subject was "too deep for ordinary comprehension," and referred its decision "to the day of judgment." We can afford to dwell, without further inquiry for the present, in the dim light reflected by Bryant's soliloquy :

"And did the dust

Of these fair solitudes once stir with life

And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds

That overlook the rivers, or that rise

In the dim forests, crowded with old oaks,
Answer. A race that long has passed away

Built them; a disciplined and populous race

Heaped with long toil the earth, while yet the Greek

Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms

Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock

The glittering Parthenon."

CHAPTER II.

INDIAN POPULATION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-THEIR LANGUAGE, RELIGTHEIR ION, GOVERNMENT, RECORDS, LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND MILITARY HABITS, AND PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS-THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY-THEIR CIVIL AND MILITARY GOVERNMENT~THE FIVE NATIONS-THE STORY OF HI-A-WAT-HA-ORIGIN OF THE CONFEDERACY-GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE INDIANS.

Τ'

HE number of human inhabitants of the entire continent of America, from the Frozen Ocean to Cape Horn, did not exceed five million, it is supposed, when Columbus sailed from Spain; and that within the present domain of our Republic-THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA—-there were only a little more than one million souls, or one to each three and a half square miles of territory. The people of the latter region seemed to have all come from the same original stock, excepting some on the borders of the Gulf of Mexico. They had high cheek bones and broad faces; heavy dark eyes; jet black hair, lank and incapable of curling because of its peculiar structure; and skins of a dull copper color. They spoke more than a hundred dialects, or peculiar forms of expressing language, all springing, evidently, from a common root. They were all taciturn or habitually silent, in society, and could endure great mental or physical suffering without visible emotion. Their plan of government was simple, and there were very few transgressors of the law. Their theology or religious system was as simple as their civil government. They believed in a great GoOD SPIRIT and a great EVIL SPIRIT, each supreme in its sphere; and they deified, or made God, the sun, moon, stars, meteors, fire, water, thunder, wind, and everything else which seemed to be superior to themselves. There were no unbelievers among them. They had no written language, excepting rude picture-writings made on rocks, barks of trees or the dried hides of beasts. Their historical records were made upon the memory from parent to child, as were their legends, and so transmitted from one generation to another. Their dwellings were rude huts made of poles leaning to a common centre, and covered with bark or the skins of beasts. The men were engaged in war, hunting. and fishing, whilst the women did all of the domestic drudgery. The

CHAP. II.

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

13

women also bore all burdens during long journeys; put up the tents, or the wigwams, as their dwellings were called; prepared the food and clothing; wove mats for beds, and planted, cultivated, and gathered the scanty crops of corn, beans, peas, potatoes, melons and tobacco, wherever these products were raised. In winter the skins of wild beasts formed the clothing of these rude people, and in summer the men wore only a wrapper around the loins. They sometimes tattooed themselves, that is, pricked the skin in lines to form shapes of objects, and making them permanent by coloring matter put in the punctures; and they were generally ornamented with the claws of bears, the pearly parts of shells, and the plumage of birds. Their money

consisted of little tubes made of shells, fastened upon belts or strung on little thongs of deers' hide, which was called wampum. These collections were used in traffic, in treaties, and in giving tokens of friendship. Their weapons of war were bows and arrows, tomahawks or hatchets, war-clubs, and scalping knives. Some wore shields of bark, and also corselets of hides, for protection.

The civil governor of a tribe or nation was called a Sachem; the military leader was called a Chief. They were naturally proud and haughty, and had great respect for personal dignity and honor. It was offensive to a Chief or Sachem to ask him his name, because it implied that he was unknown. Red Jacket, the great leader of the Seneca nation, was once asked his name, in court, in compliance with the legal form. He was very indignant, and replied: "Look at the papers which the white people keep most carefully"-(land cession treaties)" they will tell you who I am.”

Elevated as were their conceptions of the dignity of the men, they utterly degraded the women to the condition of abject slaves. They made