Part 8 (1/2)

They all come, they tarry at the land of the spruce-pines: Those from the west come with hesitation, Esteeming highly their old home at the Turtle land.

There was no rain, and no corn, so they moved farther seaward.

At the place of caves, in the Buffalo land, they at last had food, on a pleasant plain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Lenape come to the Place of Caves]

{79}

Modern Education and Culture

After the establishment of the United States Government a number of Christian and lay bodies undertook the education and enlightenment of the aborigines. Until 1870 all Government aid for this object pa.s.sed through the hands of missionaries, but in 1775 [Transcriber's note: 1875?] a committee on Indian affairs had been appointed by Congress, which voted funds to support Indian students at Dartmouth and Princeton Colleges. Many day-schools were provided for the Indians, and these aimed at fitting them for citizens.h.i.+p by inculcating in them the social manners and ethical ideas of the whites. The school established by Captain R. H. Pratt at Carlisle, Pa., for the purpose of educating Indian boys and girls has turned out many useful members of society.

About 100 students receive higher instruction in Hampton Inst.i.tute.

There are now 253 Government schools for the education of Indian youth, involving an annual expenditure of five million dollars, and the patient efforts of the United States Government may be said to be crowned with triumph and success when the list of cultured Indian men and women who have attended these seminaries is perused. Many of these have achieved conspicuous success in industrial pursuits and in the higher walks of life.

{80}

CHAPTER II: THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Animism

All mythological systems spring from the same fundamental basis. The G.o.ds are the children of reverence and necessity. But their genealogy stretches still farther back. Savage man, unable to distinguish between the animate and inanimate, imagines every surrounding object to be, like himself, instinct with life. Trees, the winds, the river (which he names ”the Long Person”), all possess life and consciousness in his eyes. The trees moan and rustle, therefore they speak, or are, perchance, the dwelling-place of powerful spirits. The winds are full of words, sighings, warnings, threats, the noises, without doubt, of wandering powers, friendly or unfriendly beings. The water moves, articulates, prophesies, as, for example, did the Peruvian Rimac and Ipurimac--'the Oracles,' 'the Prophesiers.' Even abstract qualities were supposed to possess the attributes of living things. Light and darkness, heat and cold, were regarded as active and alert agencies.

The sky was looked upon as the All-Father from whose co-operation with the Mother Earth all living things had sprung. This condition of belief is known as 'animism.'

Totemism

If inanimate objects and natural phenomena were endowed by savage imagination with the qualities of life and thought, the creatures of the animal world were placed upon a still higher level. The Indian, brought into contact with the denizens of the forest and prairie, conceived a high opinion of their qualities and instinctive abilities.

He observed that they {81} possessed greater cunning in forest-craft than himself, that their hunting instinct was much more sure, that they seldom suffered from lack of provisions, that they were more swift of foot. In short, he considered them to be his superiors in those faculties which he most coveted and admired. Various human attributes and characteristics became personified and even exaggerated in some of his neighbours of wood and plain. The fox was proverbial for craft, the wild cat for stealth, the bear for a wrong-headed stupidity, the owl for a cryptic wisdom, the deer for swiftness. In each of these attributes the several animals to whom they belonged appeared to the savage as more gifted than himself, and so deeply was he influenced by this seeming superiority that if he coveted a certain quality he would place himself under the protection of the animal or bird which symbolized it. Again, if a tribe or clan possessed any special characteristic, such as fierceness or cunning, it was usually called by its neighbours after the bird or beast which symbolized its character.

A tribe would learn its nickname from captives taken in war; or it might even bestow such an appellation upon itself. After the lapse of a few generations the members of a tribe would regard the animal whose qualities they were supposed to possess as their direct ancestor, and would consider that all the members of his species were their blood-relations. This belief is known as totemism, and its adoption was the means of laying the foundation of a widespread system of tribal rule and custom, by which marriage and many of the affairs of life were and are wholly governed. Probably all European and Asiatic peoples have pa.s.sed through this stage, and its remains are to be found deeply embedded in our present social system.

{82}

Totemic Law and Custom

Few generations would elapse before the sense of ancestral devotion to the totem or eponymous forefather of the tribe would become so strong as to be exalted into a fully developed system of wors.h.i.+p of him as a deity. That the totem develops into the G.o.d is proved by the animal likeness and attributes of many deities in lands widely separate. It accounts for the jackal- and ibis-headed G.o.ds of Egypt, the bull-like deities of a.s.syria, the b.e.s.t.i.a.l G.o.ds of Hindustan--possibly even for the owl which accompanied the Grecian Pallas, for does not Homer speak of her as 'owl-eyed'? May not this G.o.ddess have developed from an owl totem, and may not the attendant bird of night which perches on her shoulder have been permitted to remain as a sop to her devotees in her more ancient form, who objected to her portrayal as a human being, and desired that some reminder of her former shape might be preserved?

That our British ancestors possessed a totemic system is undoubted.

Were not the clan Chattan of the Scottish Highlands the ”sons of the cat”? In the _Dean of Lismores Book_ we read of a tribe included under the ”sons to the king of Rualay” one battalion of whom was 'cat-headed,' or wore the totem crest of the cat. The swine-G.o.ds and other animal deities possessed by the British Celts a.s.sist this theory, as do the remains of many folk-customs in England and Scotland. Our crests are but so many family symbols which have come down to us from the distant days when our forefathers painted them upon their s.h.i.+elds or wore them upon their helmets as the badge of their tribe, and thus of its supposed beast-progenitor or protector.

As has been said, a vast and intricate system of tribal {83} law and custom arose from the adoption of totemism. The animal from which the tribe took its name might not be killed or eaten, because of its blood-kins.h.i.+p with the clan. Descent from this ancestor postulated kins.h.i.+p between the various members of the tribe, male and female; therefore the female members were not eligible for marriage with the males, who had perforce to seek for wives elsewhere. This often led to the partial adoption of another tribe or family in the vicinity, and of its totem, in order that a suitable exchange of women might be made as occasion required, and thus to the inclusion of two _gentes_ or divisions within the tribe, each with its different totem-name, yet each regarding itself as a division of the tribal family. Thus a member of the 'Fox' _gens_ might not marry a woman of his own division, but must seek a bride from the 'Bears,' and similarly a 'Bear'

tribesman must find a wife from among the 'Foxes.'