Indian village

“ Such an incident builds up again the Indian village and its encircling forest, and recalls to life the painted chiefs and warriors, the squaws at their household toil, and the children sporting among the wigwams, while the little wind-rocked pappose swings from the branch of a tree. It can hardly be told whether it is a joy or a pain, after such a momentary vision, to gaze around in the broad daylight of reality and see stone fences, white houses, potato-fields, and men doggedly hoeing in their shirt-sleeves and homespun pantaloons. ”

“ All between was savagery: here and there a squalid Indian village, with its conical wigwams of bark or matted reeds, pitched on the shore of a lake, at the foot of a portage trail, or on the banks of a forest stream. Now and then a French trading party passed along the frozen trails, following the natives on the hunt and poisoning their minds against the newcomers, who were struggling to make their poor old stockade a fairly decent shelter against the winter storms. ”

“ A TOY INDIAN VILLAGE JUST fancy an encampment of real, live Indians in the house in a little Indian village that you made all yourself! It will be the best sort of fun to make the camp, and when it is done it will be a fine, new plaything for all winter long, as the toy Indians have sham fights, and May dances and tell each other stories around their tiny camp fires. ”

“ Instantly the whole village awoke to intense excitement. Women dropped their work by the fireside; old men put away their long-stemmed pipes and leaped like young braves to the doors of the lodges; while in the fields young girls stood straight to listen. Again came the cry, but nearer now and as of many voices. From every lodge by the side of the river and on the hill came pouring the red-skinned villagers, their straight, black hair glistening in the sunlight. From the fields of corn and squashes and out from among the bean-vines came lithe maidens and sturdy Indian women ”

“ The village, the chief centre, lies by the water's edge, facing the islands which enclose the natural harbour. It was and is a fishing village, like many another on the coast. In the midst of it, vast wooden hotels, four times as high as the houses nearest to them, have sprung up to lodge fashion in six-storied discomfort. The effect is astonishing; for the blatant architect, gesticulating in soft wood and ranting in paint,
Old Indian Village. ”

“ AN INDIAN HOME IN THE HOT COUNTRY
Their homes are different from those in the colder lands. The houses of the middle and lower classes are built of bamboo or other light material found in the tropical jungles, and thatched with palm leaves. The upright bamboo poles are often set an inch or more apart thus giving a free circulation of air. An Indian village generally consists of one long, winding, irregular street lined on each side by these picturesque huts, and bearing a strong resemblance to a village in the interior of Africa. ”

“ It is a truthfully written account of native life in one of those 55,000 villages which dot the great district—a tract much larger than the British Isles—the daily existence of whose peaceful, and not altogether unhappy, population it is intended to illustrate; and it can be dipped into, or read through, with equal satisfaction and advantage,—Daily Telegraph (London) .
"Life in an Indian Village" is an amusing and clear portrayal of the manners and customs of the inhabitants of a village in the Madras Presidency. ”

“ Behind the house, and some distance off, is the Indian village, where we see great barn-like buildings; here the Siwash Indians live, and several of their flat-faced, broad-nosed children are tumbling about and playing; as we come up one sturdy youngster raises a heavy stick and flings it with all his force at a wretched little seal tied up by a flapper. ”

“ You never hear but one voice at a time in an Indian village.
The Indians say the Great Spirit made this moun tain first of all. Can you not see how it is ? they say. He first pushed down snow and ice from the skies through a hole which he made in the blue heavens by turning a stone round and round, till he made this great mountain, then he stepped out of the clouds on to the mountain top, and descended and planted the trees all around by putting his finger on the ground. ”

“ I think you will agree with me that there is much that is both picturesque and attractive in this glimpse of social and domestic life in an Indian village. It is a harmless and happy form of human existence. ”

“ Not as it was seventy years ago—a populous Indian village; the dwellings of white settlers are now overshadowing the ancient wigwams. Even its burial-ground—its memelose illihee, or "land of spirits"—is profaned. Alas! nothing of one race is sacred to another; least of all, are the poor Indians' bones sacred to white men. ”

“ Here Nature, too, predominates, not merely because the splendour of Indian scenery is passively reflected in the Indian hymns, epics, dramas, but because human life in India has been such as to make the social predominate over the individual factors, the Indian village community having always been the most stable institution of Indian life. ”

“ The traveller who has spent a winter in touring India, but has only visited the large towns and show places, and has never lived in an Indian village, remains altogether a stranger to the deep inner life of the Indian. The real India is not seen in the Westernized bazaars of the large cities, but in the myriads of villages, wherein more than 80 per cent. of the population of India dwell. ”

“ The object is not to import a foreign exotic, but to revive and strengthen a plant of home growth, stunted by ill usage and weakened, but firmly rooted in ancient custom and in the habits of the people. Philosophers and historians have always dwelt lovingly on the Indian village community as the natural political unit, and as the best type of rural life ”

“ They came to the site where the Indian village had formerly stood in its picturesque beauty, with six or eight thousand inhabitants swarming around, in the various costumes, and engaged in the diversified employments of savage life. ”

“ This pretty Indian village is hardly recognized as a village at once, for it consists of a number of sitios 258scattered through the forest; and though the inhabitants look on each other as friends and neighbors, yet from our landing-place only one sitio is to be seen,—that at which we are staying. It stands on a hill sloping gently up from the lake-shore, and consists of a mud-house containing two rooms, besides several large, open palm-thatched rooms outside. ”

“ Every Indian had his share in the preparations for the great event.
"On the morning of the tenth sleep, before even the birds had begun their morning chants, thirty braves in their gala dress, stole silently forth from their lodges and assembled in the open space before the village. When the first faint blush of dawn appeared in the east, a blast from thirty cedar horns broke the stillness of the beautiful mountain village. As the last [Pg 66] notes died away two processions from opposite ends of the village started toward the bridal lodge. ”

“ The conditions of village tenure vary largely all over India, but apparently in every part there may be traced more or less distinctly the custom of holding lands in common, as in the primitive village life of Germany and England. In most Indian villages there are still extensive outlying lands which are looked upon as the property of the community ”

“ Their houses, or wigwams, as they called them, were made of bark, or skins, or matting, stretched on poles driven in the ground, and an Indian village was simply a great many tents in one spot, in the largest of which the chief always lived. These little villages were nothing like those which you would see now, scattered up and down the Atlantic coast, where all kinds of people live together ”

“ On their way they passed an Indian village, which they captured without resistance from the natives, who fled in dismay from the sight and sound of the guns; here they found a great many large emeralds, as well as much gold and silver, and a good store of corn and other food, and after plundering the village they went on with light hearts, cheered with the prospect of still greater wealth and good fortune in the near future. ”

“ In a newly-formed village, settled by Indians just emerging from the superstitions and long-rooted habits of their forefathers, persons accustomed from infancy to all the refinements of Christian and civilized life can hardly imagine how great the influence, and how valuable the example, of such a family. ”

“ The party consisted of my companion and myself, three negroes, and two half-bred Indians, who carried between them fresh supplies and provisions for the camp. The first part of the way lay through an old track, and offered no difficulty. After traversing a distance of about a mile we came to a muddy river, on the banks of which stood a small Indian village, composed of rude huts and shacks. The human beings who inhabited these patched-up, nondescript dwellings were about as mixed in breed as their houses in construction, and as indolent and dirty as their domiciles were foul and evil-smelling. ”

“ The next morning he had disappeared, and no one knew where he had gone, nor for months did the settlers hear tidings of him or of Grace or of Tom Walden.
[Pg 25]
In one of the wildest parts of the Northwest woods an Indian village had been built.
There were no white settlers within many miles, and the tribe was said to be a peaceful one, never going on the warpath, and always treating with kindness the few straggling whites who made their way into this wilderness. ”

“ INDIAN VILLAGES.These Indian villages are very picturesque from afar when dimly seen dotting the verdure of the valleys, and when their tall white cones, half hidden by willow clumps, lie against a blue background. The river side is the savages’ favorite site; next to it the hill foot, where little groups of three or four tents are often seen from the road, clustering mysteriously near a spring. Almost every prairie-band has its own way of constructing lodges, encamping and building fires, and the experienced mountaineer easily distinguishes them. ”

“ This village is situated on some steep precipices, inaccessible on account of their rough rocks. The Indians live in their sótanos (cellars or caves) ; they go up and come down by means of a weak stick, held up by one of themselves while the one who descends slips down. ”

“ The facility with which their dwellings are constructed, and the difficulty in getting more than one or two crops in succession from each plantation, with their primitive agricultural methods, probably account for the frequent changes in site which one notices in Indian villages. As the lands in one neighborhood become impoverished, the population has a tendency gradually to desert the old village, and start a new one in a more favorable locality. ”

“ As the Indians do not provide for travelers, we took our hotel with us—tents, beds, and food—and camped just outside their village. The village looks like a huge beehive made of clay and stuck fast to the top of a sandy knoll. The hive is filled with a mass of cells—three hundred single rooms, placed side by side and piled in rows one on top of another. In each of these rooms lives a Zuñi family. There are no inside stairways leading from story to story, but if the boys and girls living in one row wish to pay a visit to a house above them, they must go outdoors and climb a ladder. ”

“ A street of hogans in each of which lived a whole family of Indians, a few goats and sheep, a stray dog or two, an Indian woman sitting outside her hogan weaving a blanket, perhaps a child running with a dog—this, then, was a Navajo village.
[Pg 11]
THE LITTLE INDIAN WEAVER
How different from your villages with their smooth stone buildings, their stores and gasoline stations, and pretty shrub-covered bungalows!
Most Indian women have many babies, and the whole family lives [Pg 12] together in one room which is the living room, bedroom, kitchen and dining room all rolled into one. ”

“ The higher culture of the Village Indians, such as it was, did not enable them to advance, either in their weapons or in the art of war, beyond the more barbarous tribes, except as a superior house architecture tended to render their villages and their habitations impregnable to Indian assault. Moreover, in the art of government they had not been able to rise above gentile institutions and establish political society. ”

“ In peace, and in his own village, the Indian is a different being. He lounges about listlessly; he will sit for hours watching the children at their games; or will stop at the different lodges to hear the floating rumours of the town. Sometimes a knot of five or six will gather together, for the sake of talking over their own domestic grievances, and abusing their wives behind their backs. Others will assemble in the prairie, and relate to the young men their exploits in battle; their success in hunting; the deeds of the different noted men of the village ”

“ Each village has its lex non scripta, and is a law unto itself everywhere within the confines of the Alexander archipelago; or, in different words, it conducts its affairs wholly without reference to any other village or savages—it is the largest unit in the Indian system of government. Living as they do in these settlements, where they know each other just as well and as familiarly as we know the individual members of our own private home circles, no matter whether the village contain a thousand souls or but half a dozen—there are no strangers in it. ”

“ Many followed in his footsteps, and there now exists a whole village of Christian Indians in the settlement who have put away and for ever their medicine men and their charms, and their false Manitou, and their cruelties and bloodthirstiness, and are worshippers of the true God in sincerity and simplicity of faith. ”

“ Swithun's "New Home in the Village."
[17]
CHAPTER III THE INDIAN VIEW OF NATURE AND ARCHITECTURE
Indians oblivious to scenery. The beauties of Nature. Results of learning drawing. Hindus' offerings of flowers; their garlands. Pictures of flowers. The new village church attracts; impressed by its interior; schoolboys visit it. Visitors from the Hindu college. A party from the Widows' Home. Brahmin ladies admire the embroidery. The "religious bath."
Almost all Indians are apparently oblivious to beautiful scenery. You rarely see them looking at a gorgeous sunset, or hear them speak about it. ”