Tribal people

“ Each tribe was individualized by a name, by a separate dialect, by a supreme government, and by the possession of a territory which it occupied and defended as its own. The tribes were as numerous as the dialects, for separation did not become complete until dialectical variation had commenced. Indian tribes, therefore, are natural growths through the separation of the same people in the area of their occupation, followed by divergence of speech, segmentation, and independence. ”

“ Some of the “hordes,” or tribes, are purely pastoral in their mode of life, and of mild and hospital dispositions, exceedingly fond of strangers, and kind to such as come among them. Others again are averse to all intercourse with others, than those of their own race and religion, and are shy, if not inhospitable, when visited by strangers. But there is a class of a still less creditable character,—a large number of tribes that are not only inhospitable, and hostile to strangers, but as ferocious and bloodthirsty as any savages in Africa, America, or the South-Sea Islands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If all the tribes will be as one tribe, and join with us, we will drive all the white men from our mountains. If all the tribes will go together, the white men will run from us, and leave their property behind them. The tribes who join in with my people will be the first to secure the property of the gold-diggers. ”

“ Perhaps the Indian trait that soonest strikes, and most indelibly impresses the observer, is his charming altruism in the community of the family or tribal group, his wild misanthropy towards other tribes. His ambition is to live undisturbed with his family in the deep recesses of the forest. He asks only to be let alone. ”

“ Very long ago, before the white man came to conquer the land, a tribe of black people lived in a great forest. Beyond their country was a range of mountains which separated them from another tribe of fierce and warlike blacks, and on one side they were bounded by the sea. They were a prosperous tribe, for not only was there plenty of game in the forest, to give them food and rugs of skins for clothing, but the sea gave them fish: and fish were useful both to eat and for their bones. ”

“ They are not, however, an infallible proof of the tribe of an individual, for sometimes a boy, when taken into slavery, will have the marks of his master’s tribe cut upon his face. Some races do not practise the custom of tribal marks. ”

“ Its population was nomadic, not to say barbaric, consisting of tribes of Indians whose hunting grounds from time immemorial the region was; hunters and trappers, who had turned their backs upon civilization for the free, wild life of nature; men of doubtful or dangerous antecedents, who had found it convenient to leave their country for their country’s good ”

“ 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. ”

“ Individuals belonging to the same tribe are usually on the best of terms, but the different tribes are each other’s mortal enemies. Woe therefore to the stranger who dares trespass on the land of another tribe! He is pursued like a wild beast and slain and eaten. ”

“ As the tribal system breaks down from whatever cause, the tribesmen must do one of three things—either settle on the land on new conditions, or live permanently in the service of employers, or swell the loose population of town and country. ”

“ They still afford a rich field in which much information may be gathered. Our knowledge, which is now general, should be made minute and comparative. The Indian tribes in the Lower and in the Middle Status of barbarism represent two of the great stages of progress from savagery to civilization. Our own remote forefathers passed through the same conditions, one after the other, and possessed, there can scarcely be a doubt, the same, or very similar institutions, with many of the same usages and customs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Measurement of skulls may tell us something concerning the basal characteristics of tribes: it leaves untouched the boundless fund of beliefs, thoughts, aspirations, and customs which mould the lives of nations. The peoples of to-day are what their creeds, customs, and hopes have made them; as regards their political life, they have little more likeness to their tribal forefathers than the average man has to the chimpanzee. ”

“ In the first place, the people were as hospitable as one could wish, and far more so than one could have expected in a heathen land. I am persuaded to believe that the tribes further in the interior are much more docile and far more industrious and a finer class of people than those living on the coast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All these tribes would fight well for us at first if there were to be a rising outside, but after a bit they would join their own kind, as they both feel and say that white and black blood can never mingle because we despise them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have seen tribes rise from a state of barbarism to a condition in which they are as civilized in their institutions, in their religion, and in their social refinement and habits, as citizens of the United States, and all this has been done within half a century. ”

“ Are they Natives?
They are. The Tribes are in constant War with each other, and those of their Prisoners whom they do not devour they make Slaves of. They do not make Slaves of any Men of their own Tribes, only those they take in War? ”

“ Protect the inhabitants of the frontiers, gradually push the Indians south, and at no distant day, the necessary, unavoidable and melancholy consummation must arrive, viz., the expulsion of the last tribe of red men from the soil over which they once roamed the sole lords and possessors. ”

“ This tribe is indigenous, and formerly owned a large part of the territory which is now assigned to others. Their habits and condition have been, however, but little benefited by the use which they have made of their annuities. Great exertions have been made by the local agents to induce them to give up their erratic mode of life, and become agriculturists. ”

“ Half clad in skins, or entirely naked, they roamed from place to place, passing their lives, alternately, in stupid idleness, and the fiercest excitements of war and the chase. Ignorant of the past, and improvident of the future, most of these tribes were sunk in the lowest depths of human degradation. ”

“ Horticulture and other domestic arts spread from the Village Indians to the tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism, and thus advanced them materially in their onward progress toward the higher condition of the Village Indians. Numerous tribes were thus raised out of savagery into barbarism by appropriating the arts of life of tribes above them. This process has been a constant phenomenon in the history of the human race. ”

“ When the tribes are not made identical with the names of birds and snakes, quite another interpretation has to be given. In the history of the conquest of the rude aboriginal tribes, we get one and the same mythical account all over the world: the rude tribes in their mountain fastnesses and forest tracts are represented as giants or dwarfs with mysterious powers, or they are imagined to possess power of transforming themselves into beasts or birds. ”

“ But we must remember that all the tribes of the forest are naturally the most vicious and degraded of the human race on the face of the earth, though in my opinion they are quite as capable of improvement as the wild Caledonian, and susceptible of{89} transformation into orderly and law-abiding peoples. ”

“ They have been absorbed by, and eventually into, one of these magnificent tribes. They have disappeared, or if they have found their way back to civilization, having proved failures in their new environment, they are tongue-tied, evasive, ashamed. ”

“ In the electric moonlight the blue mountains, more mysterious than ever, stand out in bold relief. What restless tribes of savages are wandering now through the trackless forests, sleeping in lofty trees, or in some scanty shelter amid the tangled underbrush! The light that flickers in the distant gorge, perchance illumines some religious orgy—some impassioned dance of primitive and pagan men. ”

“ Tribes with dark skins you may find, tribes with hair more or less wavy, or frizzly, [III-41] tribes with features heavy, massive, and coarse—but the true and typical negro, with his short woolly hair, and his thick projecting lips you will not find. Wherever he is the occupant, the soil is alluvial, and the heat of the atmosphere is combined with moisture. Wherever the land gets high and dry, the inhabitant is brown rather than black, and long-haired rather than frizzly headed. ”

“ The different tribes at first, however, lived together amicably enough, in a primitive state; and increased and multiplied, leading happy lives under their bright and morning star, precursor of the yet unseen sun. They had as yet no worship save the breathing of the instinct of their soul, as yet no altars to the gods ”

“ When they make a present, it is with a view of getting more than its equivalent in return. I have never yet been able to discover that the Western wild tribes possessed any of those attributes which among civilized nations are regarded as virtues adorning the human character. ”

“ But despairing of success in war against these intruders on the graves of their 120 fathers, all those tribes, which have been more or less encircled and hemmed in by the white settlements, have not only lost their original wildness, and intrepidity of character, but such, as have not become debased by intemperance, have been greatly softened;—and not a few of them exhibit the most exemplary specimens of civilized manners—and some are even highly cultivated and refined. ”

“ There can be no doubt that this desperate forecasting of the destiny of our aboriginal tribes has, latently or in avowal, swayed the minds of a vast number in each generation here, and has by no means been confined to those violent, merciless fighters and desperadoes who have done their utmost to carry out the presumed decree of fate. ”

“ On the buffalo-hunting inland plains I have seen aggregations of tribes driven out from their old camping-ground, in some instances a thousand miles away, and their places occupied by others; in the narrower limits of the north-western mountains I have seen numerous tribes extirpated by their neighbors, a remnant only being kept as slaves. ”

“ In numerous reservations throughout the country you will find the remnants of the moribund Indian tribes; and finally on every hand you will encounter a vast, vigorous, and increasing negro population, all nominally in possession of the franchise. ”

“ At present it is quite impossible to calculate closely the wild Indians of miserable, debased tribes found in the mountains, whose numbers are variously stated by travellers and writers at 100,000, and 300,000. ”

“ The hunter finds a bride among the native women; and when at length the wild tribe recedes before the growing clearing and the diminished supplies of game, it not only leaves behind a half-breed population as the nucleus of the civilised community, but it also carries away with it a like element, increasingly affecting the ethnical character of the whole tribe. ”

“ The whole tribe hunted and harvested in common, and when they were satisfied they gave themselves up with passion to their dramatic dances. Nowadays we still find tribes very near to this primitive phase, driven back to the outskirts of the large continents, or in Alpine regions, the least accessible of our globe. ”

“ These reside in the interior of the country, some of the tribes even construct their rude dwellings in the trees, and wherever land culture is by them adopted it is of the most rude and primitive description. As a rule, their life is nomadic. ”

“ It is among these tribes, inhabiting a wild and forbidding country, undisturbed by the march of progress and civilization, that one may find the indigenous races living under the same conditions and maintaining the traditions and customs that prevailed before the coming of the white man to the western world. ”

“ Not only has it been studied less diligently, but the geographical character of the interior, the facilities with which tribes move along its extensive water-ways, and the less stable temperament of the white population have combined to obscure the relationship of the native tribes and to limit our knowledge about them. ”