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CHAPTER

II.

Next to war, it was thought most honorable to excel in hunting and fishing. These pursuits, chief resources for food and clothing, were followed, each in its season, with patience, assiduity, and no little skill. The Indians applied all their sagacity to the knowledge of wood-craft, which they carried to a high degree of perfection. They could trace their game or their enemy by the slightest indication-grass bent, leaves trampled, or twigs broken. Inferior to Europeans in strength and in capacity to perform regular labor to which they were unaccustomed, their activity, powers of endurance, and acuteness of sight and hearing were extraordinary. Guided by the stars and sun, and supported by a little parched corn pounded and moistened with water, they performed, with unerring sagacity, immense journeys through the woody or grassy wilderness. The habits of almost all the tribes were more or less migratory. They knew little or nothing of the comforts of a settled habitation. They seemed always uneasy, always on the point of going somewhere else. Their frequent journeys had traced, in many places, trails or foot-paths through the woods or across the prairies. It was their custom to kindle annual fires, by which the grass and underwood were consumed. Except among the swamps and rocky hills, the forests thus acquired an open and park-like appearance.

Trees, remarkable for height and beauty of foliage, and varying in species with every variety of soil and climate, overspread, in vast forests, all the eastern portion of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay. Beyond the mountains, in the neighborhood of the Mississippi, the open prairies commenced, and, on the western side of that river, gradually usurped almost the whole country. Besides oaks, and pines, and other well-known genera of Europe, the American forests con-

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tained many trees, and a great variety of shrubs and CHAPTER plants, entirely new. Even such as seemed most familiar to visitors from Europe were specifically different from those of the Old World. The same was true of birds, fish, and forest animals. The animated nature of North America was peculiar to itself. Beasts of prey,

the wolf, and several varieties of the cat tribe, were few in number and comparatively diminutive in size and strength. The black bear, a favorite article of food with the Indians, could hardly be reckoned of that class. It was, however, upon several varieties of the deer that the tribes of the forest region chiefly depended for meat. The more northern forests seem to have furnished the best hunting grounds; it was there only that the moose and the elk were found. These northern regions abounded also with beaver and other valuable fur-bearing animals; but, till a regular trade and intercourse were opened with Europeans, these animals remained comparatively undisturbed. The northern rivers those, at least, of the Atlantic slope-annually swarmed, at certain seasons, with salmon, bass, shad, herring, sturgeon. The northern lakes were also full of fish. The shell-fish of the sea-coast furnished an important resource to some tribes. Water-fowl were abundant; the wild turkey traversed all the American forests.

The vast grassy plains of central North America, with their immense herds of bison, or buffalo, might seem to invite to pastoral life; but nothing of that sort was known. Till the southwestern tribes obtained horses from the Spaniards, the Indians had no domestic animals except a few small dogs. Besides hunting and fishing, they supported themselves in part, especially the more southern confederacies, among whom game was comparatively scarce, by cultivating patches of maize or Indian corn,

II.

CHAPTER that remarkable grain so widely diffused, in many varieties, over the whole of America, though nowhere found in a wild state. They cultivated, also, several sorts of beans and pease, besides squashes, pumpkins, water-melons, and a number of edible roots, of which, among the Southern tribes, the sweet potato seems to have been one. They had orchards of native plums; and wild berries, gathered and dried, constituted a part of their winter store. Among the Southern tribes the peach was early introduced, and the apple among the Northern. Their agricultural instruments were of the rudest sort, large shells, flat stones, or stakes sharpened by fire. They could only fell trees by burning round them.

The labor of planting, tending, and gathering the crops; preparing skins for clothing, which they did with much nicety; making mats and baskets, their chief household furniture; carrying burdens during their journeys; in fact, all the drudgery, fell upon the women. Marriage was a sort of purchase the father receiving presents from the husband in exchange for his daughter, who, after a few months of fondling and favor, sunk to the condition of a domestic servant. Polygamy was not common except among the chiefs; but there were no objections to it. Every Indian had as many wives as he could pay for and support. It was, indeed, the labor of their wives that enabled the chiefs to maintain the hos

pitality proper to their station. The Indian husband divorced his wife at pleasure; in case she proved unfaithful, he might put her to death. Unmarried women. might follow, with little reserve, the bent of their inclination; but the Indians of both sexes, as a general rule, were remarkable for continence. The affection of the women for their children was unbounded; the fathers, also, were very indulgent.

II.

In their own wigwams the natives of America were CHAPTER often gay and jolly, exhibiting a quick sense of the ludicrous; but, on all public occasions, and in presence of strangers, they put on a grave and reserved appearance, which, indeed, their solitary habits made in a measure habitual. Pride forbade the public exhibition of curiosity or emotion. Though, like all rude men, subject to violent gusts of passion, and very plain of speech, they exercised on public occasions a strict command over their feelings, and often practiced in their social intercourse, especially with strangers, a forbearance and politeness such as might shame more civilized communities. Toward strangers their hospitality was unbounded; and, as among the ancient Greeks, the relation of host and guest possessed, to a certain extent, a sacred character. If they never forgave an injury, so they seldom forgot a benefit.

It was not alone in active employments that the men found occupation. Each warrior and hunter manufac tured for himself his weapons and his implements: his war clubs of hard and heavy wood, wrought and ornamented with great ingenuity; his bows shaped and polished; his arrows pointed with flints, shells, or sharp bones, which served also as cutting instruments. A rude clay pottery, able to stand the fire, and employed to boil their food, was also molded by the men.

The canoes of the northern tribes, made of the bark of the white birch, neatly sewed together, and strengthened by an interior frame-work, were very light, and easily transported over the numerous portages where navigation was interrupted by rapids, or one water course separated from another by an interval of land. The canoes of the more southern tribes were made of the trunks of trees shaped and hollowed by fire.

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Till they obtained blankets and cloth of European traders, the clothing of the Indians was very scantylittle more than a skin tied about the loins. They made great use of oil, which they extracted from a variety of nuts, applying it, like so many other nations, as an unguent, and a sort of substitute for clothing. For personal decoration, or for staining their skins and baskets, they employed bright pigments, the juice of berries, or colored earths. They were very fond of dress and ornaments, the earliest and rudest development of the sentiment of the beautiful, and gave much time and labor to the business of decoration, a luxury reserved chiefly for the men, some of whom were great fops. Yet, even in this personal decoration, a higher sentiment developed itself. Several ornaments most esteemed, the feathers of the eagle, the claws of the bear, the skins of the more savage animals, the hair and scalps of enemies slain in battle, could only be obtained by efforts of skill or courage, of which they served, indeed, as badges. Personal neatness, and the idea of cleanliness and order in their dwellings, were points of a more advanced civilization to which the Indians had not attained.

Though active, patient, and persevering in the accomplishment of particular objects, the general foresight of the Indians was limited. They took little thought or care for the morrow, and often suffered excessively for want of food. They were fond of gluttonous feasts, in which they often heedlessly devoured their whole winter's store. Unlike their neighbors of Mexico and the West Indies, the northern tribes had no knowledge, in their primitive state, of any intoxicating drink. They found a partial substitute, however, in tobacco, which they cultivated with care, and the smoking of which entered into all their festivals and solemnities.

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