CHAP. cover her, for I shall take it with me," alluding to XXII. the day when she, too, with her carrying-belt and paddle, and the little relic of her child, should pass through the grave to the dwelling-place of her ancestors. It was believed, even, that living men had visited the remote region where the shadows have their home; Brebeuf. and that once, like Orpheus of old, a brother, wander Tanner, 322. R. Williams, 21. Portuguese C. XXX. Tales of the North 282. In ing in search of a cherished sister, but for untimely cu- This form of faith in immortality had also its crimes. It is related that the chief within whose Relation territory De Soto died, selected two young and wellproportioned Indians to be put to death, saying the usage of the country was, when any lord died, to kill Indians to wait on him and serve him by the way. Traces of an analogous superstition may be found among Algonquin tribes, and among the Sioux; the Winnebagoes are said to have observed the usage Lett. within the memory of persons now living; it is affirmed, also, of the Natchez, and doubtless with truth, though the details of the sacrifice are described with wild exaggeration. Even now, the Dahcotas will slay horses on the grave of a warrior: news has come from the Great Spirit, that the departed chief is still borne by them in the land of shades; and the spirits of the mighty dead have sometimes been seen, as they ride, in the night-time, through the sky. Ed. iv. Du Pratz. XXII. School craft, 1825, p. 432. The savage believed that to every man there is an CHAP. appointed time to die; to anticipate that period by suicide, was detested as the meanest cowardice. For the dead he abounds in his lamentations, mingling them with words of comfort to the living: to him death is the king of terrors. He never names the name of the departed; to do so is an offence justifying revenge. To speak generally of brothers to one who has lost her own, would be an injury, for it would make her weep because her brothers are no more; and the missionary could not speak of the Father of man to orphans, without kindling indignation. And yet they summon energy to speak of their own approaching death with tranquillity. "Full happy am I," sings the warrior, "full happy am I to be slain within the limits of the land of the enemy!" While yet alive, the dying chief sometimes arrayed himself in the garments in which he was to be buried, and, giving a farewell festival, calmly chanted his last song, or made a last harangue, glorying in the remembrance of his deeds, and commending to us, 91, his friends the care of those whom he loved; and when he had given up the ghost, he was placed by his wigwam in a sitting posture, as if to show that, though life was spent, the principle of being was not gone; and in that posture he was buried. Every where in America this posture was adopted at burials. From Canada to Patagonia, it was the usage of every nation—an evidence that some common sympathy pervaded the continent, and struck a chord which vibrated through the heart of a race. The narrow house, within which the warrior sat, was often hedged round with a light palisade; and, for six months, the women would repair to it thrice a day to weep. He that should despoil the dead was accursed. Creux 92. CHAP. XXII. The faith, as well as the sympathies, of the savage descended also to inferior beings. Of each kind of animal they say there exists one, the source and origin of all, of a vast size, the type and original of the whole class. From the immense invisible beaver come all the beavers, by whatever run of water they are found; the same is true of the elk and buffalo, of the eagle and the robin, of the meanest quadruped of the forest, of the smallest insect that buzzes in the air. There lives for each class of animals this invisible, vast type, or elder brother. Thus the savage established his right to be classed by philosophers in the rank of realists; and his chief effort at generalization was a reverent exercise of the religious sentiment. Where these elder brothers dwell they do not exactly know; yet it may be that the giant manitous, which are brothers to beasts, are hid beneath the waters, and that those of the birds make their homes in the blue sky. But the Indian believes also, of each individual animal, that it possesses the mysterious, the indestructible principle of life: there is not a breathing thing but has its shade, which never can perish. Regarding himself, in comparison with other animals, but as the first among coördinate existences, he respects the brute creation, and assigns to it, as to himself, a perpetuity of being. "The ancients of Jos. Le these lands" believed that the warrior, when released Compare Caron, in Le i. 273. Clercq, from life, renews the passions and activity of this world; is seated once more among his friends; shares again the joyous feast; walks through shadowy forests, that are alive with the spirits of birds; and there, in his paradise, Philip neau. "By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, In vestments for the chase arrayed, The hunter still the deer pursues— The hunter and the deer a shade." XXII. Relation 1655, 1656, To the Indian the prospect of his own paradise was CHAP. dear. "We raise not our thoughts," they would say to the missionaries, "to your heaven; we desire only the paradise of our ancestors." To the doctrine of a future life they listened readily. The idea of retribu- p. 95. tion, as far as it has found its way among them, was derived from Europeans. The future life was to the Indian, like the present, a free gift; some, it was indeed believed, from feebleness or age, did not reach the paradise of shades; but no red man was so proud as to believe that its portals were opened to him by his own good deeds. Their notion of immortality was, as we have seen, a faith in the continuance of life; they did not expect a general resurrection; nor could they be induced, in any way, to believe that the body will be raised up. Yet no nations paid greater regard to the remains of their ancestors. Every where among the Choctas and the Wyandots, Cherokees and Algonquins, they were carefully wrapped in choicest furs, and preserved with affectionate veneration. Once every few years, the Hurons collected from their scattered cemeteries the bones of their dead, and, in the midst of great solemnities, cleansed them from every remainder of flesh, and deposited them in one common grave: these are their holy relics. Other nations possess, in letters and the arts, enduring monuments of their ancestors; the savage red men, who can point to no obelisk or column, whose rude implements of agriculture could not even raise a furrow on the surface of the earth, excel all races in veneration for the dead. The grave is their only monument,-the bones of their fathers the only pledges of their history. A deeper interest belongs to the question of the XXII. CHAP. natural relation of the aborigines of America to those before whom they have fled. "We are men," said the Illinois to Marquette. After illustrating the weaknesses of the Wyandots, Brebeuf adds, "They are men." The natives of America were men and women of like endowments with their more cultivated conquerors; they have the same affections, and the same powers; are chilled with an ague, and burn with a fever. We may call them savage, just as we call fruits wild; natural right governs them. They revere unseen powers; they respect the nuptial ties; they are careful of their dead: their religion, their marriages, and their burials, show them possessed of the habits of humanity, and bound by a federative compact to the race. They had the moral faculty which can recognize the distinction between right and wrong; nor did their judgments of relations bend to their habits and passions more decidedly than those of the nations whose laws justified, whose statesmen applauded, whose sovereigns personally shared, the invasion of a continent to steal its sons. If they readily yielded to the impetuosity of selfishness, they never made their own personality the centre of the universe. They were faithless treaty-breakers; but, at least, they did not exalt falsehood into the dignity of a political science, or scoff at the supremacy of justice as the delusive hope of fools; and, if they made every thing yield to self-preservation, they never avowed their interest to be the first law of international policy. They had never risen to the conceptions of a spiritual religion; but as between the French and the natives, the latter -such is the assertion of St. Mary of the Incarnation— had even a greater tendency to devotion. Under the instructions of the Jesuits, they learned to swing cen 1 |