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"Indian Occupancy" - One Man's View in 1880 |
The following excerpt is from History of Rensselaer Co., New York by Nathaniel Bartlett Sylvester, published in 1880.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are not the views of Rootsweb, or of the Rensselaer County, NY GenWeb site, or of its co-ordinators past or present. Both Debby and I personally find much of what is written below offensive. Debby typed the material exactly as Mr. Sylvester wrote it, and we present it here only because it gives a view from the year 1880 of the situation as it appeared to someone not closely involved who was writing at that time. Please note that Mr. Sylvester both influenced and was influenced by the thinking of the day. WE WOULD WELCOME an alternative assessment from a different source of the situation for Native Americans in about 1880 in Rensselaer County, or in the Hudson River Valley generally. We'd like to know which Native Americans lived where, and what their life was like, and the customs they practiced, and how they were treated both by the US Government Bureau of Indian Affairs and by the people who lived around them.
In the passage below, I have added in square brackets [ ] information that I hope will help with the geography and history being described.
THE ORIGINAL HOME OF UNCAS
Rensselaer County was the original home of the famous Mohicans. Uncas,
the last noted chieftain of the tribe, was once the lord of the territory out
of which was carved the Manor of Rensselaerswick, or at least that part of the
manor which lay to the eastward of the Hudson. The Mohicans, or
Ma-hi-cans, as the Dutch called them, occupied the region that now
comprises the southern part of the county, while the northern part of Rensselaer
and the southern part of Washington were originally inhabited by a tribe
called the Ho-ri-cons. It will readily be seen that the novelist
Cooper [James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), who in 1826 published the novel
The Last of the Mohicans] borrowed his appellation for Lake George [in Warren
Co, NY], which he named Lake Horicon, from this Algonquin tribe, although that
beautiful lake never belonged to the Horicons, but was always within
the country of the Mohawks, the fiercest nation of the Iroquois,
their hereditary enemies. This leads us to the consideration of the two great
families into which the Indians of the Atlantic slope were divided.
TWO FAMILIES OF NATIONS
When the Europeans first landed on the continent of America, the Indians who
inhabited the Atlantic slope, and dwelt in the fertile valleys of the Allegheny
range of mountains, in the basin of the great lakes, and the valley of the
St. Lawrence, were divided into two great families of nations. These were soon
known and distinguished by the whites as the Iroquois and the
Algonquin families, so named by the French. They differed radically,
both in language and in lineage, in the manner of building their wigwams,
as well as in many of their manners and customs.
THE IROQUOIS
The Iroquois proper, the best types and leading people of this family,
were the Five Nations of Central New York, called by themselves the
Ho-de-no-sau-nee. To the south of the Five Nations, in the valley of the
Susquehanna [Tioga Co, NY, flowing southward into Pennsylvania], were the
Andastes, and to the westward of them, along the
southern shore of Lake Erie, were the Eries. To the northward of Lake
Erie lay the Neutral Nation, and near them the Tobacco Nation, while the
Hurons, another tribe of the Iroquois, dwelt along the eastern
shore of the lake that still bears their name. There was also a branch of
the Iroquois family in the Carolinas, the Tuscaroras, who came
north and united with the Five Nations in 1715, after which the confederacy
was known as the Six Nations. (See Colden's History of the Five Nations.)
On every side these few kindred bands of Iroquois were surrounded by the
much more numerous tribes of the greater Algonquin family.
Among all the aboriginal inhabitants of the New World there were none so politic
and intelligent, none so fierce and brave, none with so many germs of heroic
virtues mingled with their savage vices, as the true Iroquois, the people
of the Five Nations of Central New York. They were a terror to all the
surrounding tribes, whether their own or of Algonquin speech and lineage.
In the spring of 1628, they made war upon the Mohicans, who dwelt on
territory now comprising the county of Rensselaer, and drove them beyond the
Connecticut River; in 1650 they overran the country of the Hurons;
in 1651 they destroyed the Neutral Nation; in 1652 they exterminated the
Eries; in 1663 they ravaged the country of the Pa-comp-tucks
and Squak-heags in the valley of the Connecticut; in 1672 they
conquered the Andastes, and reduced them to the most abject
submission, calling them, in derision, the women of their tribe.
They followed the warpath, and their war cry was heard westward to the
Mississippi, southward to the great Gulf, and eastward to the Massachusetts Bay.
The New England nations mostly, as well as the river tribes along the Hudson,
whose warriors trembled at the name of Mohawk, all paid them tribute. The
Montagnais, of the far-off Saguenay, whom the French called th
paupers of the wilderness, would start from their midnight sleep and run
terror-stricken from their wigwams into the forest when but dreaming of
the dreadful Iroquois. The [the Iroquois] were truly in their day
the conquerors of the New World, and were justly styled "the Romans of the West".
"My pen", wrote the Jesuit father Rageneneau in the year 1650 in his
"Revelations des Hurons," has no ink black enough to paint the fury of
the Iroquois.
The Iroquois dwelt in palisaded villages upon the fertile banks of the
lakes and streams which watered their country. The houses of all the
Iroquois families were built long and narrow. They were not more than
twelve or fifteen feet in width, but often extended one hundred and fifty feet
in length. Within, they built their fires at intervals along the centre of
the earth floor, the smoke passing out through openings in the top,
which likewise served to let in the light. In every house were many fires
and many families, every family having its own fire within its allotted space.
From this custom of having many fires and many families strung through a long and
narrow house comes the signification of the Indian name the league of the
Five Nations called themselves by. This Indian name was Ho-de-no-sau-nee,
"the people of the long house". They likened their confederacy of five
nations or tribes stretched along a narrow valley for more than two hundred miles
through Central New York to one of their long wigwams containing many families.
The Mohawks guarded the eastern door of this typical long house, while
the Senecas kept watch at the western door. Between these doors of their
country dwelt the Oneidas, the Onondagas, and the Cayugas,
each nation around its own family fire, while the great central council fire
was always kept brightly burning in the land of the Onondagas.
The nation of the Iroquois to whom the Indians of the Connecticut Valley
paid unwilling tribute were the Mohawk. In the Algonquin speech
of the Connecticut River Indians, the Mohawks were called
Mau-qua-wogs or Maquas, that is to say, "Man-eaters."
(See brief history by Increase Mather.)
The Mohawk country proper, called by themselves Gu-ne-a-ga-o-no-ga, all lay
on and beyond the westerly bank of the Hudson, but by right of conquest they
claimed all the territory lying between the Hudson and the sources of the
easterly branches of the Connecticut. By virtue of this claim all the Indians
in the valley of the Connecticut paid annual tribute to the Mohawks.
Every year two old Mohawk chiefs would leave their castles on the
Mohawk River, in their elm-bark canoes, and, crossing the Hudson, would ascend
the Has-sicke (Hoosac) to its head, and carrying them [their canoes] over
the mountain range, re-embark in the head-waters of the Ag-a-wam
(Westfield River) and the Deerfield River, come down to the villages of the
Wo-ro-noaks, the Squak-heags, in the valley, and to the
Nip-mucks at the head of the Chicopee, and father the wampum in
which tribute was paid. As will be seen further on in these pages, when all
these river tribes joined King Philip in his attempt to exterminate the whites
in New England [King Philip's War, 1676-1676], the Mohawks sided with
the English and did material service against Philip. (See Conn. His. Col. Rec.,
vol. ii, p. 461, etc.)
THE ALGONQUIN FAMILY
Surrounding the few tribes of the Iroquois on every hand dwelt the much
more numerous tribes of the Algonquin family, to which belonged all
the New England tribes, as well as the Mohicans, Horicans, and other
New York Indians who dwelt east of the Hudson, and were known as "river Indians".
Northward of the Iroquois were the Nipissings, La Petite Nation
[the Small Nation], and La Nation de l'Isle [the Island Nation], and other
tribes in the valley of the Ottawa River. Along the valley of the St. Lawrence dwelt
the Algonquins proper, the Abenaquis, the Montagnais, and
other roving bands below the mouth of the Saguenay.
The Algonquins and Montagnais and the other wild rovers of the
country of the Saguenay, who subsisted mostly by the chase, were often, during
the long Canadian winters, when game grew scarce, driven by hunger to subsist
for many weeks together upon the buds and bark, and sometimes upon the young
wood, or forest trees. Hence their hereditary enemies, the more favored
Mohawks, called them, in mockery of their condition, Ad-i-ron-daks, -
that is to say, tree eaters. This name, thus borne in derision, was given by
Prof. Emmonds to the principal mountain chain of Northern New York, and has
since been applied to its whole region, now so famous as a summer resort.
(See "Historical Sketches of Northern New York", by N. B. Sylvester, pp. 39 and 40).
The New England tribes of the Algonquin family dwelt mostly along the sea coast
and on the banks of larger streams. In Maine the Et-it-che-mias dwelt
farthest east, at the mouth of the St. Croix River. The Albenaquis,
with their kindred tribe the Toratines, had their hunting grounds in
the valley of the Penobscot [in central Maine] and as far west as the river
Saco [southwestern Maine] and the Piscataqua [between Maine and New Hampshire].
In the southeast corner of New Hampshire and over the Massachusetts border
dwelt the Penobscot or Pawtucket tribe. The Massachusetts
nation had their home along the bay of that name and the contiguous islands.
It was a tradition of this tribe that they formerly dwelt farther to the
southwest, near the Blue Mountains, and hence their name Mass-ad-chu-sit,
"near the great mountains."
The Wampanoags or Pokanokets dwelt along the easterly shore
of Narragansett Bay, in Southeastern Rhode Island, and in the contiguous
part of Massachusetts adjoining these, being near neighbors of the
Plymouth Pilgrims. The Nansets along Cape Cod were a family of
the Wampanoags, and paid them tribute. Next in line were the
Narragansetts and their sister tribe, the Nyantics,
along the westerly shore of Narragansett Bay, in Western Rhode Island.
Between the Narragansetts and the river Thames, in Southeastern Connecticut,
then called the Pequot River, dwelt the Pequot nation; and between
the Pequots and the east bank of the Connecticut River was the
adopted home of Uncas and his Mohicans, whose ancestral home was
in the valley of the Hudson, in Rensselaer County.
On the west side of the Connecticut, the territory of the Mohawks was
supposed to begin; and in Western Massachusetts, and in what is now the
State of Vermont, no Indians tribes had permanent homes. This large territory
was a beaver-hunting country of the Iriquois.
THE RIVER INDIANS
Upon the arrival of the Europeans in the valley of the Hudson [early 17th century],
or Shat-e-muc,
two races of Algonquin lineage dwelt on its banks. On the east side were
the Mohicans, and on the west side the Min-cees. These races
were hereditary enemies of each other, and united only in their hatred
of the Iroquois, to the westward of them.
Long Island, or Sewan-hacky, was occupied by the various clans of the
Met-o-wacks. Staten Island, or Mo-nack-nonq, was held by
the Mon-a-tons. Inland to the west [New Jersey] lived the
Rar-i-tans and the Hack-in-sacks. In the region of the
Highlands were the Nav-i-sinks. To the south and west, covering the
centre of New Jersey, were the A-qua-ma-chukes and the
Stan-ke-kans, and in the valley of the Delaware River were
the Lenni-Lenape, known to the Dutch as the Min-quas.
The island of the Man-hat-tans was so called from its Indian owners.
Above the Nav-i-sinks, on the west side of the [Hudson] river, were
the San-hi-cans, and in the region of Rockland and Orange Counties
[New York state] were the Tap-pans.
Farther north on the west side of the river, in the counties of Ulster and Greene,
were the Minqua clans of the Min-ni-sinks, Nan-ti-cokes,
Min-cees, and Delawares. These clans had migrated from the
upper valley of the Delaware River.
On the eastern bank of the river, north of the Man-hat-toes, were the tribe
of Week-quaes-geeks. Above them, as far as Croton, dwelt the
Sint-Sings, whose chief village was called Osin-Sing,
or "the place of stones".
The highlands above were occupied by the Waor-an-acks, and north of
these, in Dutchess County, lived the tribe of Wap-pin-gers.
Above the Wap-pin-gers, and occupying the whole of the counties of
Columbia and Rensselaer, were the Mo-hi-cans [sic - above he
says that the Mohicans occupied only the southern part of Rensselaer County].
Such was the condition of things when Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson in the
autumn of 1609, as described in the following chapter.
THE MOHICANS
Rensselaer County was the hereditary ancestral home of the Mohicans up
to the year 1628.
The Mohicans planted their corn on the fertile meadows which stretched
along the Hudson, where the city of Troy now stands. Indeed, the Indian name
for Troy, Pa-an-pa-ack, means "the field of standing corn".
(See Brodhead's "History of New York, vol. I, page 534.) Their principal
village was in the town of Schodack, in the southwestern corner of the county.
But little is known of them in the valley of the Hudson, for as early as the year
1628, two years before the founding of the Manor of Rensselaerswick, and only
five years after the building of Fort Orange at what is now Albany, when driven
from their ancestral home in the valley of the Hudson, the Mohicans, with
Uncas at their head, fled into the valley of the Connecticut, and
planted themselves on the eastern bank of that river, near its mouth, on
Long Island Sound, and between that river and their friends, the Pequods.
In the year 1637, the Pequot nation was exterminated by the whites,
and the Mohicans were left to be the new neighbors of the powerful
Narragansetts, who dwelt to the east of the Pequot country,
on the borders of Rhode Island.
Uncas and Mi-an-to-no-mo
Some account of what happened to Uncas and his Mohicans, after fleeing
from their ancient home in Rensselaer County to the valley of the Connecticut,
will doubtless interest the reader.
Although the destruction of the Pequots relieved the whites of New England
from further Indian ravages for a period of forty years, and until another
generation of men came of the stage of active life, yet it tended to intensify
the hatred which had long existed between the neighboring tribes of
Mohicans and Narragansetts.
The Pequots, the reader will remember, dwelt on the eastern border
of Connecticut, between the Rhode Island line and the river Thames, then
called the Pequot River. To the east of the Pequots were the
Narragansetts, and to the west of them, between the Thames and the
Connecticut, dwelt the Mohicans.
At the close of the Pequot War [1637], the captives were divided by the whites
between Un-cas of the Mohicans and Mi-an-to-no-mo of
the Narragansetts.
These two tribes were hereditary enemies, although both were the allies of
the English, and both aided the whites in the war against the Pequots.
The deserted hunting grounds of the Pequots soon became a bone of contention
between the rival tribes, and in the year 1643, war broke out between them.
Previous to the commencement of hostilities, the emissaries of Miantonomo
had made several attempts upon the life of Uncas, and Uncas had made complaints
to the whites of such treatment.
Miantonomo had also made an ineffectual attempt, about the year 1642, to unite
the New England tribes in a war of extermination against the whites.
Failing in this scheme, and incensed at Uncas for not joining him in it,
he determined to make war upon the Mohicans.
In the month of July, in the year 1643, Miantonomo, without giving Uncas
any previous notice of his intentions or making any formal declaration of war,
set out at the head of some seven hundred warriors to invade the Mohican
country. Uncas, learning of his approach, hastily fathered an equal number,
and marched out to bar his progress.
The two hostile bands met upon the old Pequot hunting ground, and halting
in sight of each other, with a level plain between them, the two rival
chieftains advanced to the front and held a parley.
The wildest romance of the old wilderness warfare presents no more striking
scene than this meeting of Uncas and Miantonomo. Uncas proposed that they, the
two chieftains, should there and then decide the contest by single combat,
and that the people of the one vanquished should become the subjects of
the victorious sachem. To this proposal of Uncas, Miantonomo made haughty
answer: "My warriors have come to fight, and they shall fight."
Upon receiving this defiant answer, Uncas fell prostrate upon the ground.
It was the signal for his men to rush over his body upon the Narragansetts.
The Mohicans were victorious. Miantonomo was overtaken in the flight, and
made a prisoner by Uncas. Haughty and defiant still, he would ask no quarter;
but Uncas for the time being saved his life, and delivered him to the English,
at Hartford, for safe-keeping.
The case of Miantonomo was brought by Uncas before the commissioners of
the United Colonies, and they ordered that he should suffer death, and that
Uncas should be his executioner. He was taken to the field of the fight, and,
in the presence of two Englishmen, a warrior of Uncas sank a hatchet into his brain.
The spot where he is said to have fallen, in the town of Norwich, Conn., is marked
by a block of granite, simply inscribed with his name, MIANTONOMO. Thus died the
second most prominent Indian conspirator against the whites - the prototype,
after Sas-sa-cus the Pequot, of Philip, of Pontiac, of Tecumseh, of Black Hawk,
and of Osceola.
The part which the English took in this quarrel between Uncas and Miantonomo,
still rankling in the minds of the Narragansetts, doubtless led to their
union with the Pokanokets, nearly thirty years later, in Philip's War.
The killing of the Narragansett sachem in cold blood, while a
prisoner-of-war, was without doubt justifiable in the minds of the New England
fathers as a means of self-defense, for had his life been spared the dreadful
scenes of Philip's War would, it is probable, have been enacted long before
they were, while the colonists were too feeble to withstand the savages; yet it
must be confessed that the side of the Indian has never been written. (See
"History of Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts," by N. B. Sylvester,
vol. I, p. 53).
SCHAGHTICOKE INDIANS
The Schaghticoke Indians were fugitives from New England, who fled from the
avenging whites at the close of King Philip's War, in the year 1676.
Mas-sa-soit and His Two Sons, Wam-sut-ta and Met-a-co-met
The powerful tribe of the Wampanoags, or Po-ka-no-kets, dwelt at the
head of Narragansett Bay and along its eastern shore, and consequently were
the near neighbors of the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth. Mas-sa-soit, the chief
sachem of the Pokanokets, was always the warm friend and steadfast
ally of the English. Massasoit had two sons, who were the hereditary heirs
of his sachemship, named Wam-sut-ta and Meto-a-co-met. Early in the summer of
1660, Massasoit died at an advanced age and was succeeded by his eldest son,
Wamsutta. In the month of June 1660, Wamsutta visited the General Court at
Plymouth and among other requests was desirous of an English name. It was
easy for the court to grant this request, and so they "ordered that for
the future he should be called by the name of Alexander Pokanoket".
Desiring the same in behalf of his brother, the court at that time ordered
that Metacomet should from henceforth be called Philip.
But the reign of Alexander over the Pokanokets was short. It was reported
at Plymouth in the summer of 1662 that he was plotting with the
Narragansetts, and a message was sent to him to come to town and
explain his conduct. Failing to come, an armed party was sent for him. He
made satisfactory explanations and set out on his return. At the end of two
or three days he changed his mind and turned back towards Boston. He reached
Major Winslow's house at Marshfield, and there was taken sick of a fever. He
was carefully taken home by water, soon died there, and his brother Philip
became chief sachem of the Pokanokets.
In the spring of 1675, King Philip's war broke out, and for two summers
devastated New England. It was a war of extermination between the white
and red races, and for a time the issues seemed doubtful. In the winter of
1675-76, King Philip, with some of his followers, as has been stated in a
preceding chapter, came over to the valley of the Hudson, and dwelt for
some months at or near the mouth of the Hoosac [Hoosick River]. In February
he returned to the valley of the Connecticut, or rather was driven there
by the Mohawks, and mustered his clans in "Squak-heag," now Northfield,
for the final struggle.
As is well known, the Indians, at the close of Philip's War, in 1676, were mostly
driven from New England. In the autumn of 1676 some of the scattered tribes
united in an emigration to the valley of the Hudson, and settled, with the consent
of the Mohawks, at the mouth of the Hoosac, in Rensselaer County, and
became known to the English as the Schagh-ti-coke Indians. These Indians
dwelt peaceably in the fertile valley of the Hoosac until about the year 1754.
They were fugitives from the Narragansetts, Wampanoags, Pacomptucks, Nonotucks,
and other Eastern tribes.
About the year 1754 the Schaghticokes left their adopted home on the
Hudson, at the mouth of the Hoosac, and joined a band of their old
neighbors of the Connecticut Valley, the Wo-ro-noaks, who had settled,
at the end of Philip's War, at Missisquoi Bay, at the lower [northern] end of Lake
Champlain, near the Vermont and Canada line, under the leadership of the
famous chief Gray Lock.
An account of the departure of the Schaghticokes from the Hoosac Valley
is given by John Fitch, as follows:
"About the year 1753-54, and about the time of the commencement of active
hostilities in the French and Indian war, the Schaghticokes had a
pow-wow so protracted and singular as to attract the notice and excite
the wonder of their white neighbors. During four consecutive days they engaged
in songs, dances, shouts, and other ceremonies; and on the morning of the
fifth day most of their huts were found tenantless. A man residing on the
outskirts of the settlement had heard the footsteps of one Indian after
another as they were running past his cabin, singly and at the top of their
speed, the whole night through. Thus the entire tribe, which was now quite
formidable and of much influence, without the knowledge of the whites,
left their homes." (See the Historical Magazine, June, 1870, p. 388,
article by John Fitch.)
SOCIAL LIFE
Forts
The Indians of the valley of the Hudson built their forts on high bluffs,
near springs of water, and usually on or not far from the bank of some river.
The forts were circular in form, enclosing about one acre of ground, and
constructed of palisades set close together in the ground, and some
twelve or fifteen feet in height. Within they built rows of wigwams
along both sides of well-defined streets.
Wigwams
The Indians of the Algonquin family of nations built their wigwams
small and circular, and for one or two families only, unlike the
Iroquois nations, who built theirs long and narrow, each for the
use of many families. The Algonquin-shaped wigwam of the valley
tribes was made of poles set up around a circle, from ten to twelve feet across.
The poles met together at the top, thus forming a conical framework,
which was covered with bark mats or skins; in the centre was their
fireplace, the smoke escaping through a hole in the top. In these
wigwams men, women, children, and dogs crowded promiscuously together
in distressing violation of all our rules of modern housekeeping.
Corn-Planting Fields
The low meadows of the streams in and around Rensselaer County were
famous in Indian annals for their corn fields. Every autumn, after the
fall of the leaf, came the Indian summer, in which they set fire to the
woods and fields, and thus burned over the whole country, both upland
and meadow, once a year. This burning destroyed all the underbrush and
mostly all the timber on the uplands, save that growing in swales
and on wet lands. Their cornfields on the meadows usually contained
from fifteen to twenty acres of ground. One tool for planting was all
they had. This was a hoe, made of the shoulder blade of a deer or moose,
or a clam shell fastened onto a wooden handle. For manure they covered
over a fish in each hill of corn at planting time. Their planting time
was about the 10th of May, or as soon as the butternut leaves were as
large as squirrels' ears. Some idea may be formed of the large extent
of their planting fields when it is stated that the Pa-comp-tucks
alone planted, in the valley of the Deerfield River, in the spring of 1676,
the second year of Philip's War, about three hundred acres.
Perhaps this was an exaggerated story, and that one hundred acres would
have been nearer the truth. But Philip was killed in the summer following,
and the Pa-comp-tucks abandoned their unharvested corn fields
for the new home on the east bank of the Hudson, at the mouth of the Hoosac,
as above related. They took what is now the "Tunnel Route" for the West. The
women did all the corn planting and raising, but the men alone planted and
took care of the tobacco. It was too sacred a plant for women to handle or
smoke, and no young brave was allowed to use it until he had made himself
a name in the chase or on the warpath.
Food
The Indians had fish and game, nuts, roots, berries, acorns, corn, squashes,
a kind of bean now called seiva-bean, and a species of sunflower
(whose tuberous root was like the artichoke). Fish were taken with lines
or nets made of the sinews of the deer or of the fibres of the dogbane. Their
fish hooks were made of the bones of fishes and birds.
They caught the moose, the deer, and the bear in the winter season by shooting
with bows and arrows, by snaring, or in pitfalls. In the summer they took
a variety of birds.
They cooked their fish by roasting before the fire on the point of a long stick,
or by boiling in stone or wooden vessels. They made water boil, not by
hanging over the fire, but by the immersion in it of heated stones. Their
corn boiled alone they called hominy; when mixed with beans, it was
succotash. They made a cake of meal, pounded fine by a stone
pestle in a wooden mortar, which they called rookhik,
corrupted by the English into "no cake."
Social Condition
Their government was entirely patriarchal. Each Indian was in his solitary cabin the
head of his family. His wife was treated as a slave, and did all the drudgery. The
only law that bound the Indian was the custom of his tribe. Subject to that only,
he was as free as the air he breathed, following the bent of his own wild will.
Over tribes were principal chiefs called sachems, and inferior ones
called sagamores. The succession was always in the female line. Their
war chiefs were not necessarily sachems in time of peace. They won their
distinction only by prowess on the warpath.
The language of the Indian, in the terms of modern comparative philology, was
neither monosyllabic like the Chinese, nor inflecting like that of
the civilized Caucasian stock, but was agglutinating like that of the
northwestern Asiatic tribes, and those of southeastern Europe. They express
ideas by stringing words together in one compound vocable. The Algonquin
languages were not euphonious like the Iroqouis dialects, but were
harsh and full of consonants. Contrast the Iroquois names,
Ta-wa-sen-ta, Hi-a-wot-ha, or O-no-a-la-go-na, with the
Algonquin names Squak-heag, Qua-Boag, or Wam-pan-oag.
Religion
The Indian had but the crudest possible ideas, if any at all, of abstract religion.
He had no priests, no altars, no sacrifice. His medicine men were mere conjurers,
yet he was superstitious to the last degree, and spiritualized everything in nature.
In a word, he heard "aery tongues on sands and shores and desert wilderness", he saw
"calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire" on every hand. The mysterious realm
about him hw did not attempt to unravel, but bowed submissively before it
with what crude ideas he had of religion and worship. The flight or cry of a
bird, the humming of a bee, the crawling of an insect, the turning of a leaf,
the whisper of a breeze, were to him mystic signals of good or evil import,
by which he was guided in the most important relations in life.
In dreams the Indian placed the most implicit confidence. They seemed to him
to be revelations from the spirit world, guiding him to the places where his
game lurked and to the haunts of his enemies. He invoked their aid on all
occasions. They taught him how to cure the sick, and revealed to him his
guardian spirit, as well as all the secrets of his good or evil destiny.
Although the Indian has been for three centuries in more or less contact
with the civilized life of the white man, he is still the untamed child
of nature. "He will not," says Parkman, "learn the arts of civilization, and
he and his forest must perish altogether. The stern, unchanging features
of his mind excite our admiration from their immutability; and we look with
deep interest on the fate of this irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the
child who will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged mother."
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Lin Van Buren
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