Native people

“ As the first people to call our country home, American Indians and Alaska Natives have a noble history in this land and have long shaped our Nation. During National American Indian Heritage Month, we celebrate our commitment to respect and preserve the rich Native American traditions and cultures. ”

“ All this is encouraging, and leads us to hope that this people may escape the general destruction which, in North America especially, has fallen upon the aboriginal tribes with the advance of the Anglo-Saxon race. ”

“ Long before this country was settled by immigrants from around the world, it was the home of generations of Native Americans. Each of the many different tribes that inhabited this vast country had a unique and vibrant culture, as well as its own system of social order. The first European settlers in the New World benefitted greatly from what they learned from this country's original inhabitants, who gave them a wealth of knowledge and skills in such areas as hunting, farming, and crafting tools. Today all Americans can continue to learn from the rich heritage of this country's native peoples. ”

“ Throughout our history, American Indian and Alaska Native peoples have been an integral part of the American character. Against the odds, America's first peoples have endured, and they remain a vital cultural, political, social, and moral presence. ”

“ He has come, if he does not lie, from a far country, a land very beautiful to the eye, a land of many villages and much people, but who are not so wise and warlike as we are. He has left his father and mother, and wife and children, and the bones and burial-place of his ancestors, to listen to the wisdom of the Indians, and to be instructed by them in the history of their tribes. ”

“ I need not inform you that the aborigines, who inhabit the valley of the Amazon, are all of the so-called Indian race—though there are so many distinct tribes of them that almost every river of any considerable magnitude has a tribe of its own. ”

“ The aboriginal American, as we know him with his language and legends, his physical and mental peculiarities, his social observance and customs, is most emphatically a native and not an imported article. ”

“ American Indian and Alaska Native cultures have made remarkable contributions to our national identity. Their unique spiritual, artistic, and literary contributions, together with their vibrant customs and celebrations, enliven and enrich our land. ”

“ They think to drive the Indians from the land their fathers left them. I have heard of great tribes in the east, by the big water, who have been driven out and have perished one by one, until they have no longer a name or a place among the people. ”

“ Surveying now the vast series of so-called native, or indigenous, tribes of North and South America, we may admit that the fundamental notion on which American anthropology has to be treated is its relation to Asiatic. ”

“ To be sure, some of the wealthy, who in early childhood were sent to England to be educated there, and who spent there perhaps the greater part of their lives, may have preserved the native vigor of their race; but I refer to the multitude born on West Indian soil, and their children who had continually inhabited it. Have they not become a race, if possible, as miserable as that mixed element which is acknowledged as the indigenous one of the American tropics? You will find that fact confirmed by every intelligent traveller. ”

“ The natives were certainly the most singular-looking beings we had ever beheld. They are about medium size, copper-colored, and wear no clothing except a small piece of tappa—a native cloth pounded out from bark—around their loins. ”

“ American Indians and Alaska Natives have made invaluable contributions to our common heritage; in every field of human endeavor, from the arts, sciences, and humanities to politics, religion, and public service, they have added immeasurably to the strength of our civilization. ”

“ In other words, an effort has been made to place the reader in the position and environment of the native inhabitants in order that he may witness the coming of the whites through the eyes and minds of the Indians instead of viewing from the outside the exploration, by men of his own kind, of an unknown land peopled by a strange and vaguely understood race. ”

“ The description which I have given of the political institutions that took place among those rude tribes in America, concerning which we have received most complete information, will apply, with little variation, to every people, both in its Northern and Southern division, who have advanced no farther in civilization than to add some slender degree of agriculture to fishing and hunting. ”

“ Before our adventurous writers use in connection with our native tribes and their works such terms as "civilization, great cities, palaces, and temples," and apply such imposing titles as "king, prince, and lord" to Indian chiefs, they should be prepared to show that some at least of their tribes had learned the use of wells and how to dig them, and how to quarry stone, to prepare a mortar of lime and sand; to form a right angle and a level face upon a stone, and lay up vertical walls. These necessary acquisitions precede the first beginnings of civilization. ”

“ The faculty of colonization seems to be indigenous to the native character; once let an Englishman plant his national standard on the surface of the moon, and it would not be long before a colony would be established around it. ”

“ The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular hours, and church, and school, and Sunday-school, and work, and the other misplaced persecutions of civilization, and they pined for their lost home and their wild free life. ”

“ From all this it can be seen that the ethnologist has added much to our story. Since the Pueblo Indians of today are the descendants of the Pueblo Indians of a few centuries ago, a thorough knowledge of them is the soundest approach to an understanding of the ancient people. ”

“ The natives, whom we met here, were fine-looking men, enjoying contentment and happiness, within the precincts of their native woods.” They were very civil, and presented a burning stick to the strangers, at the moment when they saw that they wanted fire, in a manner expressive of welcome and of a wish to assist them. ”

“ Among no people do we find more striking confirmations of the truth of the above doctrine than among the Aborigines of the North American Continent. In the character of that unhappy, but noble, race of men, we find many striking peculiarities which can be ascribed only to the influence of those circumstances in which the Indian tribes are placed, and which mark them out as objects of peculiar interest to the philosophic historian. ”

“ The country was all backwoods, and the Post miles and miles from even the semblance of civilization, and the lonely young Englishman's heart had gone out to the girl who, apart from speaking a very few words of English, was utterly uncivilized and uncultured, but had withal that marvellously innate refinement so universally possessed by the higher tribes of North American Indians. ”

“ We have learned that the remnant of an aboriginal people, now living in the inhabited pueblos of the West, present us, in their primitive usage, with the fading outlines of a culture once widespread in the section of country we have examined. Many of the early sedentary tribes have vanished completely. Traditions state that other tribes have moved southward into regions unknown. ”

“ It follows that the history and experience of the American Indian tribes represent, more or less nearly, the history and experience of our own remote ancestors when in corresponding conditions. Forming a part of the human record, their institutions, arts, inventions and practical experience possess a high and special value reaching far beyond the Indian race itself. ”

“ THE LAW OF HOSPITALITY AND ITS GENERAL PRACTICE.
When America was discovered in its several parts the Indian tribes were found in dissimilar conditions. The least advanced tribes were without the art of pottery, and without horticulture, and were, therefore, in savagery. But in the arts of life they were advanced as far as is implied by its Upper Status, which found them in possession of the bow and arrow. Such were the tribes in the Valley of the Columbia, in the Hudson Bay Territory, in parts of Canada, California, and Mexico, and some of the coast tribes of South America. ”

“ There is a very striking agreement, in the condition, relative duties and obligations, of the Indian family, among all the tribes of whom I have any personal knowledge, in North America. Climate and position, the abundance or want of the means of subsistence and other accidental causes, have created gradations of condition in the various tribes, some of whom excel others in expertness, in hunting and war, and other arts, but these circumstances have done little to alter the general characteristics, or to abridge or enlarge the original rights and claims of each inmate of the lodge. ”

“ Mingling with the natives, they stir anew the progress paralyzed by civil wars, infuse fresh spirit into tottering institutions, and, combining with the aboriginal culture, develop the new era apparent in the art relics of this western plateau. ”

“ These immigrants, the ancestors of all the tribes of Indians, spread from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Over most of the territory in both Americas they remained at the hunting stage of savage life, although they generally supplemented their hunting by a certain amount of cultivation of the soil, and although in places they developed into advanced and very peculiar culture communities. ”

“ It would afford us pleasure to devote some separate considerations to each of the remaining nineteen tribes and half tribes, or remnants and pioneers of tribes, who make up this imposing and interesting colony, where, for the first time since the settlement of the Continent, the Indian race is presented in an independent, compact, and prosperous condition. ”

“ Such are the six principal tribes who form the nucleus, or, to use a military phrase, the right wing of the expatriated aboriginal population, as the bands are arranged in their order from south to north, in the trans-Ozark or Indian territory. ”

“ Third, although representing a small population, the numerous tribes had overspread North America and had possessed themselves of all the territory, which, in the case of a great majority of tribes, was owned in common by the tribe. ”

“ BY the cautious archæologist all evidences of ancient man in Eastern North America—exclusive of true palæolithic implements—are wisely referred to those Indian tribes that, to within a comparatively recent period, were the sole occupants of the territory named. ”

“ There are particular tribes of Natives, who have been miners from generation to generation, and who lead a roving life, migrating, with their wives and children, from one district to another, as they are attracted by the fame of superior riches. ”

“ Our relations with the numerous tribes of aboriginal natives of this country, scattered over its extensive surface and so dependent even for their existence upon our power, have been during the present year highly interesting. ”

“ It is surprising how few details connected with the races that inhabited the older settlements of our country are reached even by the researches of Historical Societies. The materials for the future poets and historians of America are in this department singularly meagre, though it might almost be supposed that the very tracks of the retreating tribes might at this early day be still visible on the soil. Wherever any particulars of the intercourse between the first settlers and the Indians are preserved, they are highly curious, and often very diverting. ”

“ With tribes originally belonging to one nation, these would rapidly become formed into dialects according to the manner in which the 153 tribes moved into other hunting grounds, and became settled into distinct tribal groups. ”

“ These characteristics the Indians have possessed only in a limited degree, and when used in connection with the Indians, especially in their original state, we must apply to the word 'nation' a definition which indicates little more than a large tribe or a group of affiliated tribes possessing a common government, language, or racial origin, and acting, for the time being, in concert. ”

“ The country was peopled with these sedentary and home-loving Indians. They had come largely from the south, had settled down, had built their humble villages, tilled their fields and cultivated their crops. ”

“ We have noticed a similar feeling with respect to existing tribes and chiefs, in the western world, where the inhabitants never fail to be imbued with those peculiar notions and traditions of the particular tribe about them, which represent the latter as the principal nation, and invest them with tribal traits of superiority. ”

“ But the history and traditions of most of the tribes with which we are acquainted, and especially of those inhabiting the American continent, show that at some remote period they must have possessed more knowledge than they exhibited at our first acquaintance with them. ”

“ We had reason to believe, that the natives associate in tribes of many families together, and it appeared now that they have one fixed residence, and the tribe takes its name from the place of their general residence: you may often visit the place where the tribe resides, without finding the whole society there; their time is so much occupied in search of food, that the different families take different routs; but, in case of any dispute with a neighbouring tribe, they can soon be assembled. ”

“ It is time for us now to turn to the aboriginal tribes, to inquire what had been and were their territorial rights before and while they were being ground in the mill by rival European nationalities, all intruders. ”

“ What we have just seen to be the most fundamental social tendencies of the New World, will prepare us for a very formidable list of tribes. It is estimated that for North America alone, our literature contains more than two thousand tribal designations. ”

“ Thus were our languages confounded among the tribes of America, and our tribes became numerous, being scattered over the land of the midnight sun of perpetual ice and snow, over the continent of North America to the equator and regions of perpetual sunshine; and beyond the equator over the continent of South America to its farthermost southern borders, where we merge into the regions of ice and snow again, our tribes have been scattered. ”