East Indians

“ In 1853, the government of the United States, which has ever acted paternally toward the Indians, treating with them—Great Britain did the same with the East Indians—as though they were a civilized people, availed itself of the savages’ desire to sell lands encroached upon by the whites, and set apart for a general reservation 181,171 square miles. Here, in the Far West, were collected into what was then believed to be a permanent habitation, the indigenes of the land, and the various bands once lying east of the Mississippi. ”

“ The humbler East Indians, if asked their race, reply that they are Wallandez or Oollanday, which is a modification of Hollandais, the name having been brought down through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the Dutch. East Indians have, in India, all the rights and privileges of Europeans. Races with a mixture of European with Asiatic blood possess a proud and susceptible tone of mind. ”

“ As they suppose their ancestors to come originally from the east those who happen to be born in the eastern part of their territory are considered to be of the purest race. I have been informed that all the Indians who trade at the different posts in the north-west parts of America imagine that their forefathers came from the east, except the Dog-Ribs who reside between the Copper Indian Islands and the Mackenzie’s River and who deduce their origin from the west, which is the more remarkable as they speak a dialect of the Chipewyan language. ”

“ The prospects of living on amicable terms with the numerous and formidable tribes of Indians infesting our frontier borders, in fact, occupying the whole extent of country from the British possessions in the north to Mexico in the south, and from beyond the Rocky mountains on the east to the Pacific ocean on the west, is certainly anything but flattering. ”

“ Whatever types of Indians with Mongolian characteristics were found settled in South America were to be found to the west of the Andes and not to the east. This does not of course mean that in recent years, when roads and railways and steamships have been established, and communication made comparatively easy, individuals or families may not have been conveyed from one coast to the other of the South American continent. But I wish my reader to keep in mind for a moment a clear distinction between the Indians of the western coast and the Indians of the interior. ”

“ Among the coast tribes, however, there are great differences, those to the north being far superior to those in the south. Those who know the Indians well declare that it would be impossible to find anywhere finer looking men than the Hydahs, Tsimsheans, and some of the Alaskan tribes. "They are," writes one, "a manly, tall, handsome people, and comparatively fair in their complexion."
The Indians on the sea-board of the mainland, and those on the east coast of Vancouver's Island who have affinity with one another, have been grouped into three principal families or nations. ”

“ The climate of the Indian Territory is congenial to them, while it has proved unwholesome to the northern Indians who were located there. The northwestern tribes will, in the course of time, have to be concentrated in similar manner on a few reservations east of the Rocky Mountains and on the Pacific slope. ”

“ They belong, as all the American “Indians” do, to one great human stock that spread out east and west along the northern lands of Asia and Europe, where their closest kin to-day are found among the tribes of North Siberia and the Lapps of Russia and Norway. ”

“ While they were making these discoveries, some Indians came to Cibola from a village which was 70 leagues east of this province, called Cicuye. Among them was a captain who was called Bigotes (Whiskers) by our men, because he wore a long mustache. He was a tall, well-built young fellow, with a line figure. He told the general that they had come in response to the notice which had been given, to offer themselves as friends, and that if we wanted to go through their country they would consider us as their friends. ”

“ There is every prospect of these north-western tribes remaining in their present primitive state, indeed of their gradual improvement, for nothing can induce them to touch spirits. They know that the eastern Indians have been debased and conquered by the use of them, and consider an offer of a dram from an American trader as an indirect attempt upon their life and honour. ”

“ The Indians of Central America, bear as little resemblance to those of our country generally, as the Spaniards among whom they dwell do, to us. They do not, in any place, live by themselves, as independent tribes. They have no peculiar habits of life, or of warfare—no hunting—no sports peculiar to themselves—and none of the customs of their ancestors preserved, to distinguish them from the mass of people about them. It is only their complexion, their poverty, and generally degraded condition, that marks the difference between them and their neighbors. ”

“ The silly attempts that have been made to establish an oriental origin for the North American Indians, have never produced any other conviction in an unbiased mind, than that the facts brought forward to support that theory existed only in the imaginations of those who advanced them. The colour, the form, the manners, habits, and propensities of the Indians, all combine to establish that they are a distinct race of human beings, and could never have emanated from any people of European, Asiatic, or African origin. ”

“ Shortly afterwards he went to some of the inhabitants, and said to them. When white man’s child die—Indian man be sorry—he help bury him—when my child die—no one speak to me—I make his grave alone—I can’t no live here.—He gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child and carried it with him two hundred miles through the forest, to join the Canada Indians. ”

“ There seems always to have been, as there is now, far more in common as regards all the resources and habits of life among American Indians, certainly in the northern parts of the continent, than there were of local and circumstantial diversities. We can indeed discern among various tribes, when compared with each other, the effects upon them of greater ease or difficulty in obtaining sustenance, of more or less of providence in storing up food, of degrees of ferocity in warfare, and evidences of skill, industry, and art spent upon their weapons and utensils. ”

“ A few of these tribes live a retired existence in the forests, but most of them mingle with the white people, and are employed by them in gathering rubber or other products of the forests. The skin of the Indians is a coppery-brown colour. They are of a medium height, but have not the high cheek bones of the North American Indian. ”

“ It has not hitherto been explained how it happened that this tribe who, as far as is known, have always lived in this region, placed in the centre of the continent, should possess a language which is absolutely different from that of any other race of North American Indians, and that they should have been, for a long period of time, surrounded by powerful tribes with whom they could never have held any spoken communications. ”

“ The Indians will learn their ways, will live as they do, will become as they are. There will be no more great war dances, no more fights with other powerful tribes; it will be as if the Indians had lost all bravery, all courage, all confidence.' He hated the voices, he hated the dream; but all his power, all his big medicine, could not drive them away. He was the strongest man on all the North Pacific Coast. ”

“ There is a question which has been raised by almost every traveller in America, and that is—from whom are the American Indians descended? and I think, from the many works I have consulted, that the general opinion is, that they are descended from the lost tribes of Israel. We have never discovered any other nation of savages, if we may apply such a term to the American Indians, who have not been idolators; the American Indian is the only one who worships the one living God. ”

“ But wherever they went their trail was marked by blood and pillage, and the story of their ruthless deeds stirred up the Indians in advance to bitter hostility.
Fear alone made any of the natives meet them with a show of peace, and this they repaid by brutal deeds. One of their visitors was an Indian queen—as they called her—the woman chief of a tribe of the South. When the Spaniards came near her domain she hastened to welcome them, hoping by this means to make friends of her dreaded visitors. ”

“ To assume that a population came over and passed down to Mexico, Yucatan and even to South America, carrying with them their arts, but not exercising them on this interminable journey, is ridiculous. No pottery has yet been found between the Yukon and the Humbolt, or even further south.
It was also assumed that either the ten tribes, or a Jewish colony, were the ancestors of the American Indians. ”

“ These Indians, who were masters of this region, originally came, as I have before said, from the other side of the great river of Darien. The lords or caciques are obeyed and feared by the Indians, and their women are the prettiest and most loveable of any that I have seen in the Indies. They are clean in their eating, and have none of the dirty habits of other nations. These Indians have small villages, and their houses are like long sheds. They sleep in hammocks and use no other sort of bed. Their land is fertile and abundantly supplied with provisions, such as well tasted roots. ”

“ In the Northern continent there are two principal facts which attract the attention of those who are thrown into contact with the Iroquois, Chippewas and Dakotas. The first of these which comes under notice is the extraordinary number and diversity of their languages, and afterwards, upon a more extended acquaintance with the customs of these Indians, the strange and most grave nature of the higher character of their ancient religion. ”

“ In 1607 15 Fray Gregorio Garcia published a book, The Origin of the Indians of the New World, in which appeared these words:
The Indians proceed neither from one nation or people, nor have they come from one part alone of the Old World, or by the same road, or at the same time, in the same way, or for the same reasons; some have probably descended from the Carthaginians, others from the Ten Lost Tribes and other Israelites, others from the lost Atlantis, from the Greeks, and Phoenicians, and still others from the Chinese, Tartars, and other groups. ”

“ Of course there were some places where the Indians could not cultivate the land. We were four hundred miles north of the fertile prairies of the great western part of the Dominion of Canada, where perhaps a hundred millions of people will yet find happy times. From these wondrously fertile regions my Nelson River Indians were at least six hundred miles north. As hunters and fishermen these men, and those at Oxford Mission, and indeed nearly all in those high latitudes, must live. But where there was land to cultivate the Indians had their gardens and little fields. ”

“ Of course, we know hardly anything of these Indians during the first two centuries of European settlement in America. Not until the eighteenth century, when Russian traders began to frequent the Pacific coast and the Spanish and English pushed their voyages into the North Pacific,--the Tlingit of the far north, the Salish, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl-Nootka and Kutenai. It is thought, however, that nearly all the Pacific Indians belong to one kindred stock. ”

“ Yet, strange to say, those obstinate and ungrateful savages all persist in declaring that, when their ancestors arrived in this country, they came by way of the northwest.
It is one of the prominent errors of most of the writers on this subject, that, with the exception of the Esquimaux, they aim to find a common origin for all the American tribes. True, there is a common type to all the North American Indians, and there is good reason to suppose that they sprung from a common stock. ”

“ To anyone who threads the vast silent forests of the interior, or journeys upon the trafficless waterways, or, gun in hand, explores the mountains for game, the infrequency with which Indians are met becomes impressive. The province seems almost unpeopled. The reason is that the majority of the Indians were ever on the coast, where the water yielded food at all times and in plenty. The natives of the interior were not well fed or prosperous when the first white men found them, and since then small-pox, measles, vice, and starvation have thinned them terribly. ”

“ THE riparian chiefs, and those inhabiting the vicinity of the Paraguai, near the town of the Ascension, vassals of His Majesty, came and presented themselves before the governor, and complained of a tribe of Indians that dwelt near their borders. These Indians are great warriors, and valiant men, who live on venison, butter, honey, fish, and wild boar, eating nothing besides, neither they nor their wives and children. They go daily to the chase for it is their only occupation. ”

“ Their war-path has reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean on the west, Hudson's Bay on the north, and into the very heart of Mexico on the south. They are not clannish in their dispositions like most other Indians, nor by their habits confined to any given locality, but are found as traders, trappers, or hunters among most of the Indian tribes inhabiting our continent. I even saw them living with the Mormons in Utah. They are among the Indians as the Jews among the whites, essentially wanderers. ”

“ The first two classes of tribes always held the preponderating power, at least in North America, and furnished the migrating bands which replenished the ranks of the Village Indians, as well as the continent, with inhabitants. It remained for the Village Indians to invent the process of smelting iron ore to attain to the Upper Status of barbarism, and, beyond that, to invent a phonetic alphabet to reach the first stage of civilization. One entire ethnical period intervened between the highest class of Indians and the beginning of civilization. ”

“ In considering the characteristics and capacity of the Indians in Central America, it can never be forgotten that, during a period of great257 revolutionary agitation, two unknown Indians should, in a most extraordinary manner, have risen to the surface, and controlled the destinies of the new Republics. ”