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CHAPTER VI.

INDIAN CHARACTER.

INDIAN CHARACTER-INDIAN STUDIES OF GEORGE CATLIN, PARKMAN, SCHOOLCRAFT AND OTHERS -THE ORIGINAL NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN, GENTLE, HOSPITABLE AND KINDLY DISPOSED TOWARD THE NEWCOMERS CAUSES OF THE CHANGE IN INDIAN CHAR

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ACTER ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN AND SPANISH COLONIZATION
SCHEMES INDIAN WARS BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

ON THE

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HE official reports and literature regarding the aborigines of this country during the past four hundred years have been so voluminous that the future historian will have ample material for portraying the character of that race as civilization has known it during the period. But their true history cannot be written until the prejudices engendered by hundreds of years of race war have, to a great extent, been obliterated. It is not my purpose to write a history of that race, but only to contribute a chapter, in part my own observations of the Indians, and in part to give the testimony of others concerning them.

Among the authorities, the writings and illustrations of George Catlin are entitled to a high rank in point of accuracy and attention to detail. Catlin was ambitious to be the historian of a departed race. The inspiration came to him on seeing a delegation of stalwart Indians on their visit to the national capital. They made a marked and lasting impression upon his artistic eye, and in 1832 he went west, ascending the Missouri River to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and took up his abode among the Indians of that region. During the succeeding eight years he visited nearly half a hundred different tribes, and collected much information concerning their habits and character. In the early forties he returned to civilization and gave to the world a very excellent account of the tribes with which he had come in contact. I may also instance Washington Irving's work, "The Rocky Mountains, or Adventures in the Far West," as presenting trustworthy information; also Schoolcraft, and numerous other works treating of Indian history and character in earlier times.

Parkman, who has made the subject a life work, has given us many volumes of interesting and valuable information concerning the original inhabitants and the early occupation of the country by the Europeans. McKinney's and Hall's works are valuable and interesting.

To the civilized man of to-day the idea of human torture is abhorrent, whether prompted by bigotry, race hatred, or superstition, and the extreme cruelty sometimes shown by the Indian has been dwelt upon as a peculiarly inherent trait of his nature; and he has been condemned as a malignant fiend, incapable of the better impulses of humanity and unworthy of admission to the brotherhood of man. I have no sympathy with this view, which has been crystalized into the brutal epigram, falsely attributed to General Sherman, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." I hope before I am through with this work, I shall be able to show that much that is good may be said of the Indian. I shall speak of him as a diplomatist, a statesman and a warrior. I shall, to some extent, describe his industries, his games, his music and his art, for there is much of art in the Indian's decorations, his blending of colors, his pottery, his feather work, and his bead, basket and blanket work. It is a singular thing, but long since noted as a fact, that the more cultivated a people, the more intricate is their music and the more simple their colors, especially in dress; or, conversely, the more primitive and unenlightened they are, the simpler is their music, and the more complicated or extravagant their coloring.

It will not be without interest to note somewhat briefly the condition of the races found here by Columbus and the early explorers.

The first and, in view of the savage character now generally attributed to him, most striking fact to be noted of the American Indian before he degenerated through contact with the white man, and anterior to the race war that was waged for centuries before his final overthrow, was the dignity, hospitality and gentleness of his demeanor toward strangers and toward his fellow savages; his cordial welcome of the newcomers to his shores and home.

What was it that changed all this and caused that race war, so relentlessly prosecuted and so heroically contested to the bitter end? Not entirely treachery on the part of the Indian, but also the inexorable needs of a higher civilization, too often in haughty contempt pushing its conquests and gratifying its desires regardless of justice, plighted faith, and the finer and purer instincts and emotions that actuate and move the best elements of our nature. All accounts agree that the first voyagers and explorers found the natives "simple," "hospitable,”

and "friendly." Soon, however, they learned to fear and distrust the strangers, who took every advantage of their ignorance and kindness. Enticed on board their vessels they were seized and carried away from their native lands to be put on exhibition or sold into perpetual slavery beyond the seas. Columbus himself initiated this wrong. Sebastian Cabot carried his quota to England, and Captain Aubert his to France. It may be not uninteresting to cite a few instances from the records, both early and recent, to illustrate more fully this too generally unrecognized fact.

Upon his first arrival Columbus wrote of the natives: "We found them timid, and full of fear, very simple and honest, and exceedingly liberal, none of them refusing anything he may possess when asked for it." Yet he took some of them by force and carried them to Spain. These, however, were not Indians as we use the term, but Caribs, the milder race found on the West Indian Islands.

Gaspar Cortereal, a mariner in the service of the king of Portugal, ranged the coast in 1501 as far as the fifteenth parallel, admiring the brilliant verdure and dense forests wherever he landed. He repaid the hospitality with which he was everywhere received by the natives by taking with him on his return fifty-seven of them, whom he had treacherously enticed on board his ship, and selling them into slavery.

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An Italian mariner in the service of the king of France in 1524 sailed along the coast from about the latitude of Washington to that of Newport, and his narrative furnishes the earliest description of that portion of the Atlantic Coast. He describes the natives as very "courteous" and gentle," but as mild and feeble, though " possessing prompt wit, with delicate limbs and handsome visages." Seeing many fires ashore, and the natives friendly, he sent his boat to them, but the surf was too violent to permit of landing. One of the sailors offered to swim ashore with some presents; but when he came near his fears prevailed, and, throwing out his presents, he attempted to return to the ship, but the waves cast him on the sand, half dead and quite senseless. The Indians immediately ran to his assistance, carried him ashore, dried his clothes before a fire, and did everything to restore him. His alarm, however, was excessive. When they pulled off his clothes to dry them, he thought they meant to sacrifice him to the sun, which then shone brightly in the heavens. He trembled with fear. As soon as he was restored they gently led him to the shore, and then retired to a distance until the ship's boat had been sent for him, and they saw him safely on board. In requital of this kindness, the visitors robbed a mother of her child, and

attempted to kidnap a young woman "of tall stature and very beautiful." Her outcries and vigorous resistance saved her.

In the year 1534, Jacques Cartier sailed from France to the region of the St. Lawrence, and took possession of the country in the name of the French king. The natives were very friendly and took great pains to show it "by rubbing their hands upon the arms of the European visitors, and lifting them up toward the heavens," and in other ways. Cartier carried off some of the natives, but as he was to return the next year he treated them well and trained them to act as interpreters.

In a second voyage, made the following year, ascending the St. Lawrence, he visited the native villages of Stadacona, now Quebec, and Hochelaga, the modern Montreal. Viewing the white men as heavenly visitors, the Indians crowded around them to touch them, paying them every mark of reverence and respect. They brought to Cartier their lame, blind, diseased and impotent to be healed; and he gratified their desires, "praying to God to open the hearts of these poor people that they might be converted." The interview closed with his giving them knives, beads and toys. When he was about to sail, he enticed the chief, Donnaconna, with nine others on board his ship, seized and confined them, and, regardless of the cries and entreaties of their people carried them to France. Four years later all these, excepting one little girl, were dead.

A typical case is related by Captain John Smith, the hero of colonial Virginia.

"One Thomas Hunt, the master of this ship, when I was gone betrayed four and twenty of these poor savages aboard his ship, and most dishonestly and inhumanly, for their kind usage of me and all our men, carried them with him to Malaga and there for a little private gain sold these silly savages. But this vile act kept him ever after from any more employment in these parts."

But what is to be expected of the average adventurer when the highest sentiment of the time in regard to the Indian as expressed by that eminent divine, Rev. Cotton Mather, is found to have been this: "We may guess that probably the devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, in hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them."

The first attempt to found an English colony in New England was made by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602. He landed first on Cape Cod, and then sailed into Buzzard's Bay and began a settlement on the island now known as Cuttyhunk. The Indians, who were frequent visitors,

he described as "exceedingly courteous. gentle of disposition, and well-conditioned, exceeding all others in shape and looks. They are of stature much higher than we, of complexion much like a dark olive; their eyebrows and hair black, which they wear long tied up in knots, wherein they prick feathers of fowls in fashion of a coronet," etc. Another account, speaking of the Abenaki and Micmac tribes farther north on the coast of Maine, says, "they had permanent villages enclosed by palisades. They were agriculturists, amiable and social, brave, faithful to engagements and especially strong in their family attachments." In May, 1605, Captain George Weymouth landed on their coast, seized some of the natives and carried them to England. There was great difficulty in getting the Indians into their boat. The statement is that they were strong and naked so that "their best hold was by their long hair," and it was as much as five could do to take one of them. In England they were objects of great wonder, and crowds of people followed them in the streets as they had done a century before, when those brought over by Cabot were exhibited.

When in 1609 Henry Hudson sailed in the "Half Moon" up the noble river which now bears his name, he found the natives a "very loving people." They invited him to visit them on shore, where they made him welcome and a chief "made an oration and showed him all the country round about." A few years later the Dutch laid the foundation of Manhattan, now the great city of New York, the traders here as elsewhere constantly defrauding the Indians. At length the Dutch governor, Kieft, attempted to exact tribute from them and followed this up by an attack on the Raritans for an alleged theft at Staten Island, which brought on a desolating warfare that lasted two years.

This war was succeeded by a period of comparative peace and amity between the whites and neighboring Algonquin tribes. The latter became involved in a war with the Mohawks, who came down upon and drove them in great numbers into Manhattan and other Dutch settlements near it. As they were then at peace with the whites, policy and humanity alike suggested that they should be well treated. Instead of this, their defenseless condition only suggested to Kieft the policy of exterminating them. Across the river, at Pavonia, a large number of them had collected, and here at midnight the Dutch soldiers, joined by some privateersmen, fell upon them while asleep in their tents and butchered nearly one hundred of them, including women and children. As might have been expected this cruel act was terribly avenged. The Indians everywhere rose

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