Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

shelter prevailed, a dome-shaped bark or mat-covered lodge for winter and a rectangular bark house for summer, though the Ojibway used the conical type of the northern border group; dug-out and bark canoes and snowshoes were used, occasionally the toboggan and dog traction; weaving was of bark fibre (downward with fingers), and soft bags, pack lines and fish nets were made; clothing was of skins; soft-soled moccasins with drooping flaps, leggings, breech-cloth and sleeved shirts for men, for women a skirt and jacket, though a one-piece dress was known; robes of skin or woven rabbit-skin; no armour or lances; bows of plain wood and clubs; in trade days, the tomahawk; work in wood, stone and bone weakly developed; probably considerable use of copper in prehistoric times; feather-work rare.

In the eastern group agriculture was more intensive (except in the north) and pottery was more highly developed. Woven feather cloaks were common, there was a special development of work in steatite, and more use was made of edible roots.

The Iroquoian tribes were even more intensive agriculturalists and potters. They made some use of the blow-gun, developed cornhusk weaving, carved elaborate masks from wood, lived in rectangular houses of peculiar pattern, built fortifications and were superior in bone work[846].

In physical type the Ojibways[847], who may be taken as typical of the central Algonquians, were 1.73 m. (5 ft. 8 in.) in height, with brachycephalic heads (82 in the east, 80 in the west, but variable), heavy strongly developed cheek-bones and heavy and prominent nose. They were hard fighters and beat back the raids of the Iroquois on the east and of the Foxes on the south, and drove the Sioux before them out upon the Plains. According to Schoolcraft, who was personally acquainted with them and married a woman of the tribe, the warriors equalled in physical appearance the best formed of the North-West Indians, with the possible exception of the Foxes.

They were organised in many exogamous clans; descent was patrilineal although it was matrilineal in most Algonquian tribes. The clan system was totemic. There was a clan chief and generally a tribal chief as well, chosen from one clan in which the office was hereditary. His authority was rather indefinite.

As regards religion W. Jones[848] notes their belief in a cosmic mystery present throughout all Nature, called "Manito." It was natural to identify the Manito with both animate and inanimate objects and the impulse was strong to enter into personal relations with the mystic power. There was one personification of the cosmic mystery; and this was an animate being called the Great Manito. Although they have long been in friendly relations with the whites Christianity has had but little effect on them, largely owing to the conservatism of the native medicine-men. The Medewiwin, or grand medicine society, was a powerful organisation, which controlled all the movements of the tribe[849].

The Iroquois[850] are not much differentiated in general culture from the stocks around them, but in political development they stand unique. The Five Nations, Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Seneca (subsequently joined by the Tuscarora), formed the famous League of the Iroquois about the year 1570. Each tribe remained independent in matters of local concern, but supreme authority was delegated to a council of elected sachems. They were second to no other Indian people north of Mexico in political organisation, statecraft and military prowess, and their astute diplomats were a match for the wily French and English statesmen with whom they treated. So successful was this confederacy that for centuries it enjoyed complete supremacy over its neighbours, until it controlled the country from Hudson Bay to North Carolina. The powerful Ojibway at the end of Lake Superior checked their north-west expansion, and their own kindred the Cherokee stopped their progress southwards.

The social organisation was as a rule much more complex and cohesive than that of any other Indians, and the most notable difference was in regard to the important position accorded to the women. Among the Cherokee, the Iroquois and the Hurons the women performed important and essential functions in their government. Every chief was chosen and retained his position and every important measure was enacted by the consent and cooperation of the child-bearing women, and the candidate for a chieftainship was nominated by the suffrages of the matrons of this group. His selection from among their sons had to be confirmed by the tribal and the federal councils respectively, and finally he was installed into office by federal officers. Lands and the "long houses" of related families belonged solely to the women.

VIII. South-eastern Area. This area is conveniently divided by the Mississippi, the typical culture occurring in the east. The Powhatan group and the Shawnee are intermediate, and the chief tribes are the Muskhogean (Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, etc.) and Iroquoian tribes (Cherokee and Tuscarora) with the Yuchi, Eastern Siouan, Tunican and Quapaw. The main culture traits are: great use of vegetable food and intensive agriculture; maize, cane (a kind of millet), pumpkins, watermelons and tobacco being raised. Large use of wild vegetables, the dog, the only domestic animal, eaten; later chickens, hogs, horses and cattle quickly adopted; large game, deer, bear and bison, in the west; turkeys and small game also hunted; some fishing (with fish poison); of manufactured foods bears' oil, hickory-nut oil, persimmon bread and hominy are noteworthy, together with the famous black drink[851]; houses generally rectangular with curved roofs, covered with thatch or bark, often with plaster walls, reinforced with wicker work; towns were fortified with palisades; dug-out canoes were used for transport. Clothing chiefly of deerskins and bison robes, shirt-like garments for men, skirts and toga-like, upper garments for women, boot-like moccasins in winter; there were woven fabrics of bark fibre, fine netted feather cloaks, and some bison hair weaving in the west (the weaving being downwards with the fingers); baskets of cane and splints, the double or netted basket and the basket meal sieve being special forms; knives of cane, darts of cane and bone; blow-guns in general use; pottery good, coil process, with paddle decorations; a particular method of skin dressing (macerated in mortars), good work in stone, but little in metal[852].

The Creek women were short though well formed, while the warrior according to Pickett[853] was "larger than the ordinary race of Europeans, often above 6 ft. in height, but was invariably well formed, erect in his carriage, and graceful in every movement. They were proud, haughty and arrogant, brave and valiant in war." As a people they were more than usually devoted to decoration and ornament; they were fond of music and ball play was their most important game. Each Creek town had its independent government, under an elected chief who was advised by the council of the town in all important matters. Certain towns were consecrated to peace ceremonies and were known as "white towns," while others, set apart for war ceremonials, were known as "red towns." The solemn annual festival of the Creeks was the "busk" or puskita, a rejoicing over the first-fruits of the year. Each town celebrated its busk whenever the crops had come to maturity. All the worn-out clothes, household furniture, pots and pans and refuse, grain and other provisions were gathered together into a heap and consumed. After a fast, all the fires in the town were extinguished and a priest kindled a new fire from which were made all the fires in the town. A general amnesty was proclaimed, all malefactors might return to their towns and their offences were forgiven. Indeed the new fire meant the new life, physical and moral, which had to begin with the new year[854].

The Yuchi houses are grouped round a square plot of ground which is held as sacred, and here the religious ceremonies and social gatherings take place. On the edges stand four ceremonial lodges, in conformity with the four cardinal points, in which the different clan groups have assigned places. The square ground symbolises the rainbow, where in the sky-world, Sun, the mythical culture-hero, underwent the ceremonial ordeals which he handed down to the first Yuchi. The Sun, as chief of the sky-world, author of the life, the ceremonies and the culture of the people, is by far the most important figure in their religious life. Various animals in the sky-world and vegetation spirits are recognised, besides the totemic ancestral spirits, who play an important part.

According to Speck[855] "the members of each clan believe that they are relatives and, in some vague way, the descendants of certain pre-existing animals whose names and identity they now bear. The animal ancestors are accordingly totemic. In regard to the living animals, they, too, are the earthly types and descendants of the pre-existing ones, hence, since they trace their descent from the same sources as the human clans, the two are consanguinely related." Thus the members of a clan feel obliged not to do violence to the wild animals having the form or name of their tutelaries, though the flesh and fur may be obtained from the members of other clans who are under no such obligations. The different individuals of the clan inherit the protection of the clan totems at the initiatory rites, and thenceforth retain them as their protectors through life.

Public religious worship centres in the complex annual ceremony connected with the corn harvest and includes the making of new fire, clan dances impersonating totemic ancestors, dances to propitiate maleficent spirits and acknowledge the assistance of beneficent ones in the hope of a continuance of their benefits, scarification of the males for sacrifice and purification, taking an emetic as a purifier, the partaking of the first green corn of the season, and the performance of a characteristic ball game with two sticks.

The middle and lower portions of the Mississippi valley with out-lying territories exhibit archaeological evidence of a remarkable culture, higher than that of any other area north of Mexico. This culture was characterised by "well established sedentary life, extensive practice of agricultural pursuits, and construction of permanent works--domiciliary, religious, civic, defensive and mortuary, of great magnitude and much diversity of form." The people, some, if not all of whom were mound-builders, were of numerous linguistic stocks, Siouan, Algonquian, Iroquoian, Muskhogean, Tunican, Chitimachan, Caddoan and others, and "these historic peoples, remnants of which are still found within the area, were doubtless preceded by other groups not of a distinct race but probably of the same or related linguistic families. This view, in recent years, has gradually taken the place of the early assumption that the mound culture belonged to a people of high cultural attainments who had been succeeded by Indian tribes. That mound building continued down to the period of European occupancy is a well established fact, and many of the burial mounds contain as original inclusions articles of European make[856]."

These general conclusions are in no way opposed to De Nadaillac's suggestion that the mounds were certainly the work of Indians, but of more civilised tribes than the present Algonquians, by whom they were driven south to Florida, and there found with their towns, council-houses, and other structures by the first white settlers[857]. It would appear, however, from F. H. Cushing's investigations, that these tribal council-houses of the Seminole Indians were a local development, growing up on the spot under conditions quite different from those prevailing in the north. Many of the vast shell-mounds, especially between Tampa and Cape Sable, are clearly of artificial structure, that is, made with definite purpose, and carried up symmetrically into large mounds comparable in dimensions with the Indian mounds of the interior. They originated with pile dwellings in shallow water, where the kitchen refuse, chiefly shells, accumulates and rises above the surface, when the building appears to stand on posts in a low mound. Then this type of structure comes to be regarded as the normal for house-building everywhere. "Through this natural series of changes in type there is a tendency to the development of mounds as sites for habitations and for the council-house of the