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CHAPTER

II.

CHAPTER II.

ASPECT AND ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF NORTH

AMERICA.

WITHIN the first half century after the discovery of

America, the Spaniards had overrun and occupied no inconsiderable portion of the new continent, on both sides of the equator. The original Spanish colonies, planted in the four great islands of the West Indies, in consequence of the extermination of the native inhabitants were now in a declining state; but the conquered empires of Mexico and Peru, of Guatemala, New Granada, and Chili, and the vast treasures of silver derived from the recentlydiscovered mines of Potosi, and others in Mexico, gave America every day a new importance in the eyes of Europe. Nor had Portugal neglected her Brazilian terri1539-tories. A series of colonies had been established along 49. that coast, and the city of Bahia, or San Salvador, had been founded as the capital of the Portuguese settlements.

The fish

These splendid enterprises and lucrative conquests had thrown North America quite into the shade. ery of Newfoundland still continued the only connecting link between that country and Europe. But the growing importance of that fishery was attested by an act of 1543. the English Parliament, of which the object was to protect the fishermen against the exactions of the Admiralty officers. These fishermen, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English, whose principal resorts were the southeastern bays and harbors of that great island to which the name of Newfoundland began now to be confined, built temporary huts on the shore for the convenience

II.

of their business, and stages for drying their fish; but CHAPTER nowhere north of the Gulf of Mexico had any successful attempt been made at permanent occupation.

That distant region presented, on the whole, an aspect little inviting. In more southern latitudes, the coast, for a great extent destitute of harbors, was a dead level, but little elevated above the ocean, and swept, in spring and autumn, by terrible storms. The winters, even in the parallels of Spain and Italy, were exceedingly tedious and severe; the summers, on the other hand, were excessively hot; and the climate was every where remarkable, at all seasons, for frequent changes and extreme vicissitudes unknown in Western Europe. The northern coasts abounded with excellent harbors; the land was higher; even mountains, in some places, might dimly be seen in the distance; but of the interior no explorations had been made. Except the region of Newfoundland, the North American coast was seldom visited. Even the outline of the shores was not yet ascertained. As to the breadth or configuration of the continent, nothing was known. The narrowness of the land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific still kept up the idea that North America might be a long and narrow extent of coasts, perhaps a succession of islands, among which it was still hoped that a short western passage to India might be found. ́

At the period of European discovery, this vast and unknown country, lying as yet in a state of nature, hardly modified at all by the hand of man, was thinly inhabited by a peculiar race known to Europeans under the general name of INDIANS-a name which still commemorates the error of Columbus in mistaking America for a part of India.

Presenting human society under its simplest and most

CHAPTER inartificial forms, these aboriginal inhabitants were divided into a great number of petty tribes, dwelling together in little villages of huts made with the boughs of trees, and covered with mats ingeniously woven. These villages, by way of defense, were sometimes surrounded by a rude palisade of trees or brushwood, or placed on some little islet in the midst of a morass. For conven

ience of fishing, they were often built on inlets of the sea, or near the falls of some river. Each village had chiefs of its own, who were often hereditary. The petty tribes were generally united into confederacies of greater or less extent, with superior chiefs exercising a certain authority over the whole.

Neighboring confederacies sometimes spoke languages radically distinct; yet the dialects of all the tribes north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of Hudson's Bay, from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, are thought by philologists capable, with few exceptions, of being reduced under five general heads.

The most widely-diffused of these five languages, called the Algonquin, after one of the tribes of Canada, from whom the French missionaries first learned it, is exceedingly harsh and guttural, with few vowels, and words often of intolerable length, occasioned by complicated grammatical forms-a whole sentence, by means of suf fixes and affixes, being often expressed in a single word. This character, indeed, is common, in a greater or less. degree, to all the American languages, serving to distinguish them, in a remarkable manner, from the dialects. of the Old World. Tribes of Algonquin speech extended from Hudson's Bay southeast beyond the Chesapeake, and southwest to the Mississippi and Ohio. They inclosed, however, several formidable confederacies, the Hurons, the Iroquois, the Eries, and others settled around

II.

Lakes Erie and Ontario, and occupying all the upper wa- CHAPTER ters of the western tributaries of the Chesapeake, who spoke a different language, less guttural and far more sonorous, called the Wyandot, after a tribe inhabiting the north shore of Lake Erie. The Cherokee is peculiar to a confederacy of that name, occupants for centuries of the southern valleys of the great Allegany chain, from whence they have been but very lately expelled. The common name of Mobilian includes the kindred dialects of the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Creeks or Muscogees, the Appalachees, and Yamassees, ancient inhabitants of the valley of the Lower Mississippi, and thence, by the southern foot of the Alleganies, to the Savannah and beyond it. Compared with the northern languages, the Cherokee and Mobilian are soft and musical, abounding with vowels, thus indicating the long-continued influence of a southern climate. The number of syllables in the Cherokee is very limited-a circumstance of which an uninstructed but ingenious member of that tribe recently availed himself to invent a syllabic alphabet, by means of which the Cherokee is written and read with great facility. Of the ancient state of the wandering tribes of the prairies west of the Mississippi little is known; but the Dacotah or Sioux, still spoken in a great variety of dialects, has been probably for centuries the prevailing language of that region. The Catawbas, who have left their name to a river of Carolina, and who once occupied a wide adjacent territory; the Uchees, on the Savannah, subjects of the Creeks; the Natchez, a small confederacy on the Lower Mississippi, in the midst of the Choctaws, appear to have spoken peculiar languages; and no doubt there were other similar cases. Of the dialects west of the Rocky Mountains hardly any thing is known.

CHAPTER

II.

It is from their languages only that some faint trace may be obtained of the derivation and wanderings of the Indian tribes. Other monuments they had none. Their sole records were a few rude drawings on skins or bark, or, among some tribes, belts of beads made of shells, and used to commemorate their treaties. Of any period beyond the memory of their old men they knew absolutely nothing. They had, indeed, some vague traditions, important if we had them in a pure version, not however for their historical character, but as illustrating the ideas of the Indians and the process by which legends are every where formed. But these traditions, early modified by suggestions borrowed from the white men, come to us so colored by the fancies and preconceived opinions of those who report them, as to lose a great part of the value they might otherwise have had.

The religious and political arrangements and opinions of the Indians also come to us, in the books of historians and tourists, invested with a systematic consistency and coherence strangers to the forests and prairies of the wilderness. Strictly speaking, according to our notions, the Indians could hardly be said to have had either government or laws. The whole tribe came together to deliberate on matters of public interest, such as war, peace, or a change of hunting grounds. The old, as in all rude communities, had great weight, from their experience; but it was the weight only of sage advice, and, if that failed to control the younger and more ardent, the elders had no authority by which to re-enforce it. Those who had superior energy of character, the gift of oratory, or a reputation for wisdom, swayed by their vigor, their eloquence, or their councils the decisions of the tribe. They were chiefs; chiefs, however, rather by nature than by any artificial arrangement or special appoint

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