Indians of the Americas

“ 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. ”

“ Each time removal was intimated to the Indians they laughed—as children laugh if you tell them you are going to buy them from their parents. Had they not lived here long before a white man had ever set foot on the continent? Were they not born here, raised, married, had their children, died and were buried here for centuries? Had not Spaniards, Mexicans, and even General Kearny assured them they were secure in their possession? ”

“ Of the total of about nine millions of Indians, two or three millions may be wild, Indios bravos, as the South Americans call them, and in little contact with civilized whites or mestizos. To this class belong many of the aborigines in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, as well as most of the far smaller number still left in Argentina. Of the more or less civilized and settled Indians, more than one-half, about three and a half millions, are in Peru and Bolivia ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is expedient with respect to the condition of the North American Indians, to take into consideration some of the circumstances relating to their languages, customs, and superstitions; particularly such of them as may appear to have remote analogies with the observances of other races, or with the more advanced state of civilisation that existed in the fifteenth century, among the tribes who had conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan. ”

“ The wild Indians of North America were profoundly different from the ancient people of Central America and Peru. The Pueblo or Village Indians of New Mexico have scarcely any thing in common with the Apaches, Comanches, and Sioux. Even the uncivilized Indians of South America are different from those in the United States. Our wild Indians have more resemblance to the nomadic Koraks and Chookchees found in Eastern Siberia, throughout the region that extends to Behring’s Strait, than to any people on this continent. ”

“ What a worthy and successful experiment it had proved to be under the wise guidance of Chief Andres Lucero, of the Mahuna Indians of Guana-pia-pa! He was truly a noble character whose labors, love for his people, and self-sacrifice saved the lives of thousands of Indians, and without whose loyalty and kindness to other tribesmen, the American Indian in the Pacific Southwest would be an extinct race of people today, with no one to tell what had actually taken place in the wild mountain regions and the desolate desert, which were neither inhabited nor trespassed upon by the white race. ”

“ The North American Indians, though they achieved no civilisation to be compared with the cultures of Mexico and Peru, yet conserved a very high degree of initiative in other directions. According to competent observers, these people have shown a capacity for wiliness and a power of divination of the obscured workings of nature and of the human mind which have never been surpassed elsewhere. ”

“ In the West Indies the native Caribs were nearly exterminated by the Spaniards early in their occupation of the islands, their places as labourers being supplied by the importation of negro slaves, and at the present time but few, if any, Indians of pure blood are to be found. Throughout Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies amalgamation of the Indian with both Europeans and negroes has taken place, and a mixed race, consisting of a large percentage of the total population, has resulted. ”

“ The Indians—above all, in New Mexico—although called Indios fideles, are always ready on the first opportunity to ally themselves with their desert congeners; and in the incursions of the Apaches and Comanches it is rare for the faithful Indians not to serve them as scouts, guides, and spies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the Indians between the Umqua and Puget's Sound, are at this time any thing else but warlike. The time no doubt has been, when they were; but they have degenerated as fast as they have decreased in numbers, until they have, in every sense of the terms, become inactive and feeble. Perhaps no where on the great American Continent, on either side of the Isthmus of Panama, has their intercourse with the white man been more ruinous to them, than it has here. ”

“ In fact the same causes which affect the appearance of the Indians in North America are present here, but with the difference that there it is the squaw who contracts the stooping and bent figure, through carrying her children and other burdens, and it is the man who maintains the upright figure and dignified manner.
On the plains a few miles to the west of the city, in the direction of the village of Mixco, there is a large and extensive group of ancient Indian mounds of whose construction or purpose nothing is known. ”

“ Taking therefore into consideration the prevalence of trade-winds blowing towards America, and the peculiar conditions of architectural and astronomical intelligence possessed by the Mexican Indians, there are certain inferences which may be accepted. It is not improbable that men belonging to European, Moorish, or Asiatic races arrived in Central America during a period between the sixth and eleventh centuries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is great diversity among the various tribes of North American Indians in respect to manners and customs, dress, and modes of living. The inhabitants of the sultry regions of Florida and Texas, of course pay less attention to the texture of their garments, and the comfort of their dwellings, than those who reside in the more northern regions ”

“ In short, they are a peaceable, industrious, intelligent, honest, and virtuous people. They are Indians only in feature, complexion, and a few of their habits; in all other respects superior to all but a few of the civilized Indian tribes of the country, and the equal of the most civilized thereof. This description of the pueblo Indians, I think, will be deemed by all who know them as faithful and true in all respects. Such was their character at the time of the acquisition of New Mexico by the United States ”

“ In the old times that was a frontier region, and the Pueblos seem to represent ancient settlers who went there from the south. There was the border line between the Mexican race and the wild Indians, and the distinction between the Pueblos and the savage tribes is every way so uniform and so great that it is well-nigh impossible to believe they all belong to the same race. In fact, no people really like our wild Indians of North America have ever been found in Mexico, Central America, or South America. ”

“ Another point that strikes the observer is, that not only the descendants of the Spaniards and the Mestizos are sunk far below the level of the old Indians, but that the nearly pure Indians, of whom there are many large communities, have so degenerated that it is hard to believe that they are the very same people that, four hundred years ago, had advanced so far in their peculiar civilisation. They are not so sunk in sloth as the half-breeds. They still till the ground, grow maize, cacao, and many fruits ”

“ In American ethnology, however, the red man is all-important. Primeval men of this race undoubtedly formed the original stock whence during the centuries were derived all the numerous tribes of "Indians" [Pg 73] found in either North or South America. Throughout Asia and Africa there is great diversity in type among the races that are indigenous; but as to America, to quote Humboldt:
The Indians of New Spain [i. e., Mexico] bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil. ”

“ Of course all theorists who have to deal with these supposed early discoveries by Europeans connect, each with his own pet scheme, the prevailing legendary belief among the American Indians that white men at an early period made their appearance on the coasts all the way from Central America to Labrador. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the character of the native Indians there are very many good points, although they have long had a bad name, from their characters and descriptions coming from the Spanish mouths, who are too indolent to investigate it beyond their households, or at the most beyond their city walls ”

“ Taking the country over, the Whites who have married Indians have not been of a high class. But the total number of Indians in the United States is so small that their future is probably that of being absorbed in the White race through miscegenation, unless it be for a few tribes cultivating a racial purity of their own and, with favorable economic conditions, perpetuating themselves for a long time to come. ”

“ Nothing in all the history of the earliest intercourse between the friendly tribes of North American Indians and the Europeans coming among them is more pathetic than the accounts of their simple hospitality, their unstinted invitations, and their guileless expressions of desire for a greater knowledge of the white men’s ways. ”

“ While the aborigines of the New World {249} have been noted above almost every other uncivilized nation in history, for their vindictiveness and cruelty towards their enemies, there are, in these attributes, wide differences apparent among them. The Indians along the Pacific coast, as well as in most of Mexico, were always more mild and peaceable than those of the United States. ”

“ It may be premised further that the Spanish adventurers who thronged to the new world after its discovery found the same race of Red Indians in the West India Islands, in Central and South America, in Florida, and in Mexico. In their mode of life and means of subsistence, in their weapons, arts, usages, and customs, in their institutions, and in their mental and physical characteristics, they were the same people in different stages of advancement. ”

“ It would be difficult to account for the existence of a race of African descent, dwelling near the Western coasts of the Pacific, if we did not possess the statements of the Spanish historians, and their explanation of the circumstances which necessitated the introduction of negroes for the purpose of working in the mines or plantations, and to take the place of the Indians who died in great numbers in consequence of the severity of their treatment by the conquerors. ”

“ Salmon, sea-otter, otter, beaver, marten, bear, and deer (or caribou or moose) were and still are the chief resources of most of the Indians. Once they sold the fish and the peltry to the Huds [258] on Bay Company, and ate what parts or surplus they did not sell. Now they work in the canneries or fish for them in summer, and hunt, trap, or loaf the rest of the time. However, while they still fish and sell furs, and while some are yet as their fathers were, nearly all the coast Indians are semi-civilized. They have at least the white man's clothes and hymns and vices. They have churches ”