North American Indians

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The North American Indians, despite [41] the demoralizing influences of traders, agencies, and fire-water, are noble men as compared with the cannibals just considered. Many of their less amiable traits are doubtless the fruits of white intruders' avarice, which has from the first set aside equity when dealing with the red man. They live having a future state in view in the happy hunting-grounds, which stimulates in them a strict, but not too comprehensive, moral consciousness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Chinese and Japanese, while to many tribes of our North American Indians I have devoted no little attention, the opportunities having been afforded by a life among them extending over a period of more than ten years.
Now as interesting and important as such a study is among our northern tribes of Indians, it can hardly be compared in either of these particulars, with similar investigations undertaken among those races of Indians found south of the 37th parallel, and west of the Rocky Mountains. Here we meet with the Navajos, the Apaches, the Mojaves, as representative field Indians ”

“ From the tables it will be seen that the American Indians in some parts of North America are not decreasing, but either holding their own or even increasing; also that thousands of them are now to all intents and purposes the equals in wealth, thrift, industry and intelligence Population, &c. of the average white man and citizens with him in the same society. In certain regions of the continent small tribes have been annihilated in the course of wars with other Indians or with the whites, and others have been decimated by disease, famine, &c. ”

“ On the whole the policy of the United States toward the Indians has been dictated by justice and humanity, but instances have not been wanting in which arid lands have been foisted upon the Indians, and the pressure of white settlers has frequently forced the Government to dispossess the Red Man of the land that had originally been granted to him. ”

“ On the northwest coast most of the Indians live by hunting and fishing. They use principally the bow and arrow, knife, war club and lance. In the North Pacific Ocean are several islands inhabited only by Indians. In the Queen Charlotte and the Prince of Wales Archipelago is found one of the most remarkable races of aborigines on the American continent. These are the Haida tribes, and consist of strikingly intelligent Indians. They acquire knowledge readily; learn trades and exhibit much ingenuity in following the teachings of missionaries and traders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the last thirty years much has been accomplished in placing the study of the American aborigines on a sounder basis. The older school of ethnologists were for the most part obsessed with the wildest ideas concerning the origin of the Indians, and many of them believed the Red Man to be the degenerate descendant of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel or of early Phoenician adventurers. ”

“ LAW OF BATTLE.
With savages, for instance, the Australians, the women are the constant cause of war both between members of the same tribe and between distinct tribes. So no doubt it was in ancient times; “nam fuit ante Helenam mulier teterrima belli causa.” With some of the North American Indians, the contest is reduced to a system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 several tribes of Indians inhabiting the regions of the Upper Missouri, and of whom I spoke in my last Letter, are undoubtedly the finest looking, best equipped, and most beautifully costumed of any on the Continent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the white man finally arrived in 1492, there were fifteen or twenty million Indians in North and South America. Some still lived by hunting, some by fishing, others by gathering the seeds, roots and other plant products offered by nature. But millions of the Indians were highly developed agricultural people. The Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, the Indians of the New England states whom our first colonists met, the Mayas and Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of South America, and many others had made surprising progress in a comparatively short time. ”

“ The relation of the American people to the Indians, since the first settlement of this country, has been one of conflict, which has been almost incessant in some sections of the land. By the opening of the nineteenth century the red men had been driven back in great measure from the thirteen original states, but the tribes in the west were still frequently hostile, and stood sternly in the way of our progress westward. ”

“ Robbed of their homes and hunting-grounds, and driven by the encroachments of the whites to distant regions, which hardly support existence, the Indians, day by day, gradually decrease before the accumulating evils of body and soul, which their civilized persecutors entail upon them. With every man's hand against them, they drag on to their final destiny; and the day is not far distant when the American Indian will exist only in the traditions of his pale-faced conquerors. ”

“ Generations of American Indians have served and sacrificed to defend our freedom, and no segment of our population has sent a larger percentage of its young men and women to serve in our Armed Forces. But American Indians are not just an important part of our country's past; they are also a vital part of today's America and will play an even more important role in America's future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Indians of America owe very few obligations to the white people that have settled among them. The latter have endeavoured to exterminate the former, and by violence or fraud, to get possession of their territories. They have slaughtered a great part of the American Aborigines in open war, endeavoured to enslave the rest, and multiplied so rapidly, and spread themselves so regularly over the face of the transatlantic world, as to render the Indian mode of procuring subsistence exceedingly precarious. ”

“ In a Report for the protection of the Western Frontier, submitted to Congress by the Secretary of War, we have a very fair exposé of the conduct and intentions of the American Government towards the Indians. Although the Indians continue to style the President of the United States as their Great Father, yet, in this report, the Indian feeling which really exists towards the American people is honestly avowed ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the Indians belong to one great race, and show no connection in language or customs with the outside world. They belong to the American continent, it has been said, as strictly as its opossums and its armadillos, its maize and its golden rod, or any other of its aboriginal animals and plants. ”

“ But after making all due allowances for these conditions, it still remains difficult to understand how so great a number of languages have become established amongst a comparatively small population. At no time, since the discovery of America, have the total numbers of Indians within the regions now forming the United States, exceeded five hundred thousand men, women and children. In 1829, it was estimated that the Indian population slightly exceeded three hundred and thirteen thousand. ”

“ Letter of Washington of March 4, to Governor Clinton, and also from the same to General Gates of March 6, 1779.
Those who have been accustomed to contemplate the whole race of North American aboriginals as essentially alike, viewing them all as the same roving, restless, houseless race of hunters and fishermen, without a local habitation, and with scarce a name, have widely misunderstood the Indian character, and must know but little of its varieties. They have, indeed, many traits and characteristics in common ”

“ We are at full liberty to reject them in these respects, and commence anew; using any facts they may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society. It was a calamity to the entire Red Race that the achievements of the Village Indians of Mexico and Central America, in the development of their institutions, should have suffered a shipwreck so nearly total. The only remedy for the evil done them is to recover, if possible, a knowledge of their institutions, which alone can place them in their proper position in the history of mankind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The other race is that of the Red Indians who inhabit the prairie-states of North Mexico, such as the Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos. They are hunters, as they always were, and they will never preserve their existence by adopting agriculture as their regular means of subsistence, and settling in peace among the white men. ”