XV. Mounds And Their Builders.

There are three ways in which we can learn about these so-called “mound-builders.” We may learn something from the mounds themselves, from the relics found in the mounds, and from the bones of persons who were buried in them.

Studying the mounds themselves, we find that they differ in different areas. We will look at three areas:

(1) In Ohio there are thousands of mounds and earthworks. Near every important modern town there are groups of them. Cincinnati, Chillicothe, Dayton, Xenia, are all near important mounds.

The regular enclosures are numerous in this area: these are great embankments of earth inclosing a regular space. Some are in the form of circles; others are four-sided; in a few cases they are eight-sided. Sometimes a square and a circle are united. There is one such combination at Hopeton; one of the embankments is a nearly true circle containing twenty acres; joined to it is a square of almost the same area.

At Newark there was a wonderful group of enclosures. The group covered about two miles square and consisted of three divisions, which were connected with one another by long parallel embankment walls. One circle in this group contained more than thirty acres: the walls were twelve feet high and fifty feet wide; a ditch seven feet deep and thirty-five feet wide bordered it on the inner side; a gap of eighty feet in the circle served as an entrance. In the center of the area enclosed by this great circle was a curious earth heap somewhat like a bird in form. Northwest from this great circle, nearly a mile distant, were two connected enclosures, one octagonal, the other circular: the former contained more than fifty acres, the latter twenty. East from these and northeast from the great circle was a fine twenty-acre enclosure, nearly a square in form. Besides these great walls, there were long parallel lines of connecting embankment walls, small circular enclosures, and little mounds in considerable variety. This great mass of works represented an enormous amount of time and labor.

What was the purpose of these regular enclosures? Some writers claim that they were forts for protection; others consider them protections for the corn-fields; others think they were places for games or religious ceremonials; one eminent man insists that they were foundations upon which were built long and narrow houses.

The purpose of the effigy mounds is somewhat uncertain. Some authors think they represent the totem animals after which the families of their builders were named, and that they served as objects of worship or as guardians over the villages.

In the same district are found many dirt rings called “house-circles.” These occur in groups and appear to mark the sites of ancient villages, each being the ruin of a house. These rings are nearly circular and from ten to fifty feet across, and from a few inches to two or three feet high. Excavation within them shows old floors made of hard clay, with the fireplace or hearth. The stone-grave people lived in these houses. They often buried little children who died, under the floor. Their stone coffins measured only from one to four feet long. They contain the little skeletons and all the childish treasures—pretty cups and bowls of pottery, shell beads, pearls, and even the leg bones of birds, on which the babies used to cut their teeth as our babies do on rubber rings.

They would show that the builders of the mounds, while they made many beautiful things of stone, shell, bone, beaten metals, could not smelt ores. They were Stone Age men, not civilized men. The objects from different areas differ so much in kind, pattern, and material as to suggest that their makers were not one people. Study of skulls from mounds in one district—as Ohio or Iowa—show that different types of men built the mounds even of one area.

XVI. The Algonkins.

Algonkin tribes occupied the Atlantic seacoast from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick south to Virginia, and stretched west as far, at places, as the Rocky Mountains. They also occupied a large area in the interior of British America north of the Great Lakes. Brinton names more than thirty tribes of this great group. Among the best known of these were the Lenape (Delawares), Blackfeet, Ojibwas, and Crees.

It was chiefly Algonkin tribes with whom the first white settlers met. The Indians who supplied the Pilgrims with corn in that first dreadful winter were Algonkins; so were Powhatan and Pocahontas, King Philip and Massasoit. Of course whites came into contact with the Iroquois in New York, and with the Cherokees, the Creeks, and their kin in the south, but much the larger part of their early Indian acquaintance was Algonkin.

We shall speak of two Algonkin tribes. One—the Lenape—is eastern; the other—the Blackfeet—is western. The former are woodland, the latter Plains Indians. The Lenape lived in settled villages, and had a good deal of agriculture; they were also hunters, fishermen, and warriors. Their houses were like those of their Iroquois neighbors, but each family had its own. They were huts of poles and interwoven branches with a thatching of corn leaves, the stalk of sweet-flag, or the bark of trees. Sometimes at the center of the village, surrounded by the houses, was a sort of hillock or mound from which the country around might be overlooked. The women made good garments of deerskin with skillful beadwork. In cooking they used soapstone vessels. For pounding corn they had mortars of wood, dug out of a section of a tree trunk, and long stone pestles.

In districts where the wild rice or zizania grew abundantly great quantities of it were gathered. The women in canoes paddled out among the plants, bent the heads over the edge of the canoe and beat out the grain. This was a food supply of no importance to the Lenape, but the Ojibwas and their neighbors used much of it.

In war, the men used the bow and arrows, spear and tomahawk. They protected themselves with round shields. They speared fish in the streams and lakes or caught them in brush nets or with hooks of bone or bird-claws.

There were three totems of the Lenape. Every man was either a wolf, turkey, or turtle. He had one of these three animals for his emblem, and was as fond of drawing or carving it as a boy among us is of writing his name. This emblem was signed to treaties, it was painted on the houses, it was carved on stones. But only those who were turtles drew their totem entire; usually the wolf or the turkey were represented only by one foot. Between a person and his totem there was a curious friendship, and it was believed that the animal was a sort of protector and friend of those who bore his name. All who had the same totem were blood-relations.

At first everything was good. Animals and men lived in peace. Then a wicked serpent tried to drown the world. Only a few persons escaped to the back of a great turtle. Their great hero Nanabush helped them. The waters subsided. As the land where they now found themselves was cold, the people determined to move southward. The story of their quarrels and divisions on the journey is told, and also the way in which they seized their new home, destroying or driving out the original owners.

The song in which this story is told is long and full of old words difficult to understand. The Indians themselves must have had difficulty in remembering it. It was a great help to have these little sticks with the red pictures to remind them of its different parts.

While the guests were feasting, the man of the house prepared a pipe and tobacco. After the eating was over, the pipe was lighted and passed from hand to hand, each person giving it to the one on his left. Meantime stories of hunting and war were narrated and jokes cracked. Only one man spoke at one time, the rest listening until he was through. Thus they whiled away the time until the last pipe was smoked out, when the host, knocking the ashes from the pipe, told them they might go.

At night about their camp-fires the Blackfeet delighted to tell their sacred stories, which they did not dare repeat in daylight. In telling a story of personal adventure, Indians, like white people, were often tempted to make it larger than it really was.

The Blackfeet and some other Indians had the following mode of getting at the truth. When a man told an improbable story some one handed a pipe to the medicine man, who painted the stem red and prayed over it, asking that the man's life might be long if his story were true, but cut short if the story were false. The pipe was then filled and lighted and given to the man. The medicine man said, as he handed it to him: “Accept this pipe, but remember that if you smoke, your story must be as sure as that there is a hole through this pipe and as straight as the hole through this stem. So your life shall be long and you shall survive; but if you have spoken falsely, your days are counted.” If he refused to smoke, as he surely would if he had not spoken true things, every one knew that he was a braggart and a liar.

Most Indian tribes consisted of a few great groups of persons, the members of which were related to each other and lived together. Such groups of related persons are called gentes; the singular of the word is gens. There were three gentes among the Mohawks, three among the Oneidas, and eight in each of the other three tribes. These gentes usually bore the name of some animal; thus the Oneida gentes were the wolf, bear, and turtle. The people belonging to a gens were called by the gens name. Thus an Oneida was either a wolf, bear, or turtle. Every wolf was related to every other wolf in his tribe; every turtle to every other turtle; every bear to every other bear.

Each tribe was ruled by a council which contained members elected from each gens. Each gens had one or more councillors, according to its size and importance. Each member of the council watched with care to see that his gens got all its rights and was not imposed upon by others. Every tribe was independent of every other tribe.

When he found he could not move his own people, Hayenwatha went to the Mohawks, where he found help; they agreed that such a union was needed. Next the Oneidas were interested. Two great chiefs, one Mohawk and one Oneida, then went to the Onondagas to urge these to join with them; again the plan failed because Atotarho opposed it. The two chiefs went further westward and had a council with the Cayugas, who were pleased with their plan. With a Cayuga chief to help them, they returned to the Onondagas. Another council was held, and finally the Onondagas were gained over by promising the chieftaincy of the confederacy to Atotarho. There was then no trouble in getting the consent of the Senecas. Two chiefs were appointed by them to talk over the plan with the others. Hayenwatha met the six chiefs at Onondaga Lake, where the whole plan was discussed and the new union was made.

There were a number of the Iroquois orators whose names are remembered, but none is more famous than Red Jacket. We will give a passage from one of his speeches as an example of Indian oratory. The speech was made in 1805, at a council held at Buffalo. A missionary, named Cram, had come to preach to them, and invited a number of chiefs and important men to attend, that he might explain his business to them. After he had spoken, the old Seneca orator rose, and in his speech said the following words:

The party which had seized them was composed of six Shawnee Indians and four Frenchmen. The first day was terrible. They were kept rapidly marching until night; they had no food or water during the whole day. One Indian went behind the party with a whip, with which he lashed the little ones to make them keep up with the party. At night there was no fire and they had no covering. They were afoot again before daylight, but as the sun rose, stopped and ate breakfast. The second night they camped near a dark and dreary swamp, and here they were given supper, but were too tired and sad to care much for food. After supper, an Indian stripped off Mary's shoes and stockings and began putting moccasins upon her. The same thing was done to the woman's little boy. Noticing this, Mary's mother believed the Indians intended to spare the two children. She said to the girl:

Just then an Indian took Mary and the little boy by the hand and led them away. As they parted, the mother called out to the child, who was crying bitterly, “Don't cry, Mary! Don't cry, my child! God will bless you! Farewell, farewell!”

The Indian took the children into the woods, where they lay down to sleep. The little boy begged Mary to try to escape, but she remembered her mother's warning. The next morning the other Indians and the Frenchmen rejoined them, but their white captives were not with them. During the night, in that dark and dismal swamp, Mary's father and mother, Robert, Matthew, and Betsey, the woman, and two of her children had been killed, scalped, and fearfully mangled. When they camped again, Mary saw with horror the Indians at work upon the scalps of her parents.

A fourth and fifth day the party journeyed on, and then, driven by bad weather, camped for three nights in one place. Finally the party came near Fort Du Quesne, where Pittsburg now stands. They had been joined by other Indians who had a young white man prisoner. When they reached this place, the Indians carefully combed the hair of the three prisoners, and painted their faces and hair with red as Indians do.

The next morning after they reached the fort, the little boy and young man were given to the French. Mary was given to two young Seneca women. By them she was taken to their town some distance down the Ohio River. Here they washed her and dressed her nicely in Indian clothing. They publicly adopted her in place of a brother who had just been killed. These women and their brothers were kind to Mary, treating her as their real sister, and she came to love them dearly. She was with them for three winters and two summers on the Ohio River, when, at their wish, she married a Delaware Indian named Shenanjie. He was a good husband, but died when they had been married but two or three years.

XIX. The Creeks.

The Creeks and their kindred tribes present a number of points of rather peculiar interest. In the olden time there were two kinds of Creek towns—white towns and red towns. The red towns were war towns, governed by warriors. The white or peace towns were governed by civil chiefs. It is said by some of the early writers that the white towns were “cities of refuge” to which those who were being pursued for some crime or unfortunate accident could flee. The red towns could be known as such as soon as a stranger entered the public square, as the posts of the “great house” were painted red.

Men who wished to become great warriors selected some old conjurer to give them instruction. Four months were spent with him alone. The person desiring to learn fasted, ate bitter herbs, and suffered many hardships. After he had learned all the old conjurer could teach him, it was believed that he could disarm the enemy even at a distance, and if they were far away, could bring them near, so that he might capture them.

The council house was used as a gathering or meeting place, much as the great house, but it was chiefly for bad weather, especially for winter. Here, too, private meetings of importance were held at all times. Here young men prepared for war-parties, spending four days in drinking war-drink, and counseling with the conjurers. This council house was also the place for sweat baths. Stones were heated very hot; water was thrown upon them to give steam. Those desiring the bath danced around this fire and then plunged into cold water.

The playground was in the northwest corner of the public square; it was marked off by low embankments. In the center, on a low, circular mound, stood a four-sided pole, sometimes as much as forty feet high. A mark at the top served as a target for practice with the bow and arrow. The floor of this yard was beaten hard and level. The chief game played here was called Chunkey. It was played with neatly polished stone disks. These were set rolling along on the ground, and the players hurled darts or shafts at them to make the disk fall. (Compare with the wheel game of the Blackfeet.) Ball games and sometimes dances were also held upon this playground.

At noon of the second day, the men took ashes from the new fire and rubbed them over their chin, neck, and body; they then ran and plunged themselves into cold water. On their return, they took the new corn of the year and rubbed it between their hands and over their bodies. They then feasted upon the new corn. On the last, eighth day, of the busk, a medicinal liquid was made from fourteen (or fifteen) different plants, each of which had medicinal power; they were steeped in water in two pots and were vigorously stirred and beaten. The conjurers blew into the liquid through a reed. The men all drank some of this liquid and rubbed it over their joints.

They did other curious things during this day. When night came, all went to the river. “Old man's tobacco” was thrown into the stream by each person, and then all the men plunged into the river and picked up four stones from the bottom. With these they crossed themselves over the breast four times, each time throwing back one stone into the river.

Mr. Gatschet thinks that much good resulted from the busk. After it all quarrels were forgotten; crimes, except murder, were forgiven; old utensils were broken and new ones procured. Every one seemed to leave the past behind and begin anew.