Part 2 (2/2)
The chief implements and weapons were of stone, wood, bone, horn, and antler. According to Carver, the ”Nadowessie” were skillful bowmen, using also the ”ca.s.se-tete”(31) or warclub, and a flint scalping-knife. Catlin was impressed with the shortness of the bows used by the prairie tribes, though among the southwestern tribes they were longer. Many of the Siouan Indians used the lance, javelin, or spear. The domestic utensils were scant and simple, as became wanderers and fighters, wood being the common material, though crude pottery and basketry were manufactured, together with bags and bottles of skins or animal intestines. Ceremonial objects were common, the most conspicuous being the calumet, carved out of the sacred pipestone or catlinite quarried for many generations in the midst of the Siouan territory. Frequently the pipes were fas.h.i.+oned in the form of tomahawks, when they carried a double symbolic significance, standing alike for peace and war, and thus expressing well the dominant idea of the Siouan mind. Tobacco and kinnikinic (a mixture of tobacco with shredded bark, leaves, etc(32)) were smoked.
Aboriginally the Siouan apparel was scanty, commonly comprising breechclout, moccasins, leggings, and robe, and consisted chiefly of dressed skins, though several of the tribes made simple fabrics of bast, rushes, and other vegetal substances. Fur robes and rush mats commonly served for bedding, some of the tribes using rude bedsteads. The buffalo-hunting prairie tribes depended largely for apparel, bedding, and habitations, as well as for food, on the great beast to whose comings and goings their movements were adjusted. Like other Indians, the Siouan hunters and their consorts quickly availed themselves of the white man's stuffs, as well as his metal implements, and the primitive dress was soon modified.
The woodland habitations were chiefly tent-shape structures of saplings covered with bark, rush mats, skins, or bushes; the prairie habitations were mainly earth lodges for winter and buffalo-skin tipis for summer.
Among many of the tribes these domiciles, simple as they were, were constructed in accordance with an elaborate plan controlled by ritual.
According to Morgan, the framework of the aboriginal Dakota house consisted of 13 poles;(33) and Dorsey describes the systematic grouping of the tipis belonging to different gentes and tribes. Sudatories were characteristic in most of the tribes, menstrual lodges were common, and most of the more sedentary tribes had council houses or other communal structures. The Siouan domiciles were thus adapted with remarkable closeness to the daily habits and environment of the tribesmen, while at the same time they reflected the complex social organization growing out of their prescriptorial status and militant disposition.
Most of the Siouan men, women, and children were fine swimmers, though they did not compare well with neighboring tribes as makers and managers of water craft. The Dakota women made coracles of buffalo hides, in which they transported themselves and their householdry, but the use of these and other craft seems to have been regarded as little better than a feminine weakness. Other tribes were better boatmen; for the Siouan Indian generally preferred land travel to journeying by water, and avoided the burden of vehicles by which his ever-varying movements in pursuit of game or in waylaying and evading enemies would have been limited and handicapped.
There are many indications and some suggestive evidences that the chief arts and certain inst.i.tutions and beliefs, as well as the geographic distribution, of the princ.i.p.al Siouan tribes were determined by a single conspicuous feature in their environment-the buffalo. As Riggs, Hale, and Dorsey have demonstrated, the original home of the Siouan stock lay on the eastern slope of the Appalachian mountains, stretching down over the Piedmont and Coastplain provinces to the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic between the Potomac and the Savannah. As shown by Allen, the buffalo, ”prior to the year 1800,” spread eastward across the Appalachians(34) and into the priscan territory of the Siouan tribes. As suggested by Shaler, the presence of this ponderous and peaceful animal materially affected the vocations of the Indians, tending to discourage agriculture and encourage the chase; and it can hardly be doubted that the bison was the bridge that carried the ancestors of the western tribes from the crest of the Alleghenies to the Coteau des Prairies and enabled them to disperse so widely over the plains beyond. Certainly the toothsome flesh and useful skins must have attracted the valiant huntsmen among the Appalachians; certainly the feral herds must have become constantly larger and more numerous westward, thus tempting the pursuers down the waterways toward the great river; certainly the vast herds beyond the Mississippi gave stronger incentives and richer rewards than the hunters of big game found elsewhere; and certainly when the prairie tribes were discovered, the men and animals lived in constant interaction, and many of the hunters acted and thought only as they were moved by their easy prey. As the Spanish horse spread northward over the Llano Estacado and overflowed across the mountains from the plains of the Cayuse, the Dakota and other tribes found a new means of conquest over the herds, and entered on a career so facile that they increased and multiplied despite strife and imported disease.
The horse was acquired by the prairie tribes toward the end of the last century. Carver (1766-1768) describes the methods of hunting among the ”Naudowessie” without referring to the horse,(35) though he gives their name for the animal in his vocabulary,(36) and describes their mode of warfare with ”Indians that inhabit still farther to the westward a country which extends to the South Sea,” having ”great plenty of horses.”(37) Lewis and Clark (1804-1806) mention that the ”Sioux of the Teton tribe ...
frequently make excursions to steal horses” from the Mandan,(38) and make other references indicating that the horse was in fairly common use among some of the Siouan tribes, though the animal was ”confined princ.i.p.ally to the nations inhabiting the great plains of the Columbia,”(39) and dogs were still used for burden and draft.(40) Grinnell learned from an aged Indian that horses came into the hands of the neighboring Piegan (Algonquian) about 1804-1806.(41) Long's naturalists found the horse, a.s.s, and mule in use among the Kansa and other tribes,(42) and described the mode of capture of wild horses by the Osage;(43) yet when, two-thirds of a century after Carver, Catlin (1832-1839) and Prince Maximilian (1833-34) visited the Siouan territory, they found the horse established and in common use in the chase and in war.(44) It is significant that the Dakota word for horse (suk-ta?'-ka or su?-ka'-wa-ka?) is composed of the word for dog (su?'-ka), with an affix indicating greatness, sacredness, or mystery, so that the horse is literally ”great mysterious dog,” or ”ancient sacred dog,” and that several terms for harness and other appurtenances correspond with those used for the gear of the dog when used as a draft animal.(45) This terminology corroborates the direct evidence that the dog was domesticated by the Siouan aborigines long before the advent of the horse.
Among the Siouan tribes, as among other Indians, amus.e.m.e.nts absorbed a considerable part of the time and energy of the old and young of both s.e.xes. Among the young, the gambols, races, and other sports were chiefly or wholly diversional, and commonly mimicked the avocations of the adults.
The girls played at the building and care of houses and were absorbed in dolls, while the boys played at archery, foot racing, and mimic hunting, which soon grew into the actual chase of small birds and animals. Some of the sports of the elders were unorganized diversions, leaping, racing, wrestling, and other spontaneous expressions of exuberance. Certain diversions were controlled by more persistent motive, as when the idle warrior occupied his leisure in meaningless ornamentation of his garment or tipi, or spent hours of leisure in esthetic modification of his weapon or ceremonial badge, and to this purposeless activity, which engendered design with its own progress, the incipient graphic art of the tribes was largely due. The more important and characteristic sports were organized and interwoven with social organization and belief so as commonly to take the form of elaborate ceremonial, in which dancing, feasting, fasting, symbolic painting, song, and sacrifice played important parts, and these organized sports were largely fiducial. To many of the early observers the observances were nothing more than meaningless mummeries; to some they were sacrilegious, to others sortilegious; to the more careful students, like Carver, whose notes are of especial value by reason of the author's clear insight into the Indian character, they were invocations, expiations, propitiations, expressing profound and overpowering devotion.
Carver says of the ”Naudowessie,” ”They usually dance either before or after every meal; and by this cheerfulness, probably, render the Great Spirit, to whom they consider themselves as indebted for every good, a more acceptable sacrifice than a formal and unanimated thanksgiving;”(46) and he proceeds to describe the informal dances as well as the more formal ceremonials preparatory to joining in the chase or setting out on the warpath. The ceremonial observances of the Siouan tribes were not different in kind from those of neighboring contemporaries, yet some of them were developed in remarkable degree-for example, the b.l.o.o.d.y rites by which youths were raised to the rank of warriors in some of the prairie tribes were without parallel in severity among the aborigines of America, or even among the known primitive peoples of the world. So the sports of the Siouan Indians were both diversional and divinatory, and the latter were highly organized in a manner reflecting the environment of the tribes, their culture-status, their belief, and especially their disposition toward bloodshed; for their most characteristic ceremonials were connected, genetically if not immediately, with warfare and the chase.
Among many of the Siouan tribes, games of chance were played habitually and with great avidity, both men and women becoming so absorbed as to forget avocations and food, mothers even neglecting their children; for, as among other primitive peoples, the charm of hazard was greater than among the enlightened. The games were not specially distinctive, and were less widely differentiated than in certain other Indian stocks. The sport or game of chungke stood high in favor among the young men in many of the tribes, and was played as a game partly of chance, partly of skill; but dice games (played with plum stones among the southwestern prairie tribes) were generally preferred, especially by the women, children, and older men. The games were partly, sometimes wholly, diversional, but generally they were in large part divinatory, and thus reflected the hazardous occupations and low culture-status of the people. One of the evils resulting from the advent of the whites was the introduction of new games of chance which tended further to pervert the simple Siouan mind; but in time the evil brought its own remedy, for a.s.sociation with white gamblers taught the ingenuous sortilegers that there is nothing divine or sacred about the gaming table or the conduct of its votaries.
The primitive Siouan music was limited to the chant and rather simple vocal melody, accompanied by rattle, drum, and flute, the drum among the northwestern tribes being a skin bottle or bag of water. The music of the Omaha and some other tribes has been most appreciatively studied by Miss Fletcher, and her memoir ranks among the Indian cla.s.sics.(47) In general the Siouan music was typical for the aboriginal stocks of the northern interior. Its dominant feature was rhythm, by which the dance was controlled, though melody was inchoate, while harmony was not yet developed.
The germ of painting was revealed in the calendars and the seed of sculpture in the carvings of the Sionan Indians. The pictographic paintings comprised not only recognizable but even vigorous representations of men and animals, depicted in form and color though without perspective, while the calumet of catlinite was sometimes chiseled into striking verisimilitude of human and animal forms in miniature. To the collector these representations suggest fairly developed art, though to the Indian they were mainly, if not wholly, symbolic; for everything indicates that the primitive artisan had not yet broken the shackles of fetichistic symbolism, and had little conception of artistic portrayal for its own sake.
INSt.i.tUTIONS
Among civilized peoples, inst.i.tutions are crystallized in statutes about nuclei of common law or custom; among peoples in the prescriptorial culture-stage statutes are unborn, and various mnemonic devices are employed for fixing and perpetuating inst.i.tutions; and, as is usual in this stage, the devices involve a.s.sociations which appear to be essentially arbitrary at the outset, though they tend to become natural through the survival of the fittest. A favorite device for perpetuating inst.i.tutions among the primitive peoples of many districts on different continents is the taboo, or prohibition, which is commonly fiducial but is often of general application. This device finds its best development in the earlier stages in the development of belief, and is normally connected with totemism. Another device, which is remarkably widespread, as shown by Morgan, is kins.h.i.+p nomenclature. This device rests on a natural and easily ascertained basis, though its applications are arbitrary and vary widely from tribe to tribe and from culture-status to culture-status. A third device, which found much favor among the American aborigines and among some other primitive peoples, may be called _ordination_, or the arrangement of individuals and groups cla.s.sified from the prescriptorial point of view of Self, Here, and Now, with respect to each other or to some dominant personage or group. This device seems to have grown out of the kin-name system, in which the Ego is the basis from which relation is reckoned. It tends to develop into federate organization on the one hand or into caste on the other hand, according to the attendant conditions.(48) There are various other devices for fixing and perpetuating inst.i.tutions or for expressing the laws embodied therein.
Some of these are connected with thaumaturgy and shamanism, some are connected with the powers of nature, and the several devices overlap and interlace in puzzling fas.h.i.+on.
Among the Siouan Indians the devices of taboo, kin-names, and ordination are found in such relation as to throw some light on the growth of primitive inst.i.tutions. While they blend and are measurably involved with thaumaturgic devices, there are indications that in a general way the three devices stand for stages in the development of law. Among the best-known tribes the taboo pertained to the clan, and was used (in a much more limited way than among some other peoples) to commemorate and perpetuate the clan organization; kin-names, which were partly natural and thus normal to the clan organization, and at the same time partly artificial and thus characteristic of gentile organization, served to commemorate and perpetuate not only the family relations but the relations of the const.i.tuent elements of the tribe; while the ordination, expressed in the camping circle, in the phratries, in the ceremonials, and in many other ways, served to commemorate intertribal as well as intergentile relations, and thus to promote peace and harmonious action. It is significant that the taboo was less potent among the Siouan Indians than among some other stocks, and that among some tribes it has not been found; and it is especially significant that in some instances the taboo was apparently inversely related to kin-naming and ordination, as among the Biloxi, where the taboo is exceptionally weak and kin-naming exceptionally strong, and among the Dakota, where the system of ordination attained perhaps its highest American development in domiciliary arrangement, while the taboo was limited in function; for the relations indicate that the taboo was archaic or even vestigial. It is noteworthy also that among most of the Siouan tribes the kin-name system was less elaborate than in many other stocks, while the system of ordination is so elaborate as to const.i.tute one of the leading characteristics of the stock.
At the time of the discovery, most of the Siouan tribes had apparently pa.s.sed into gentile organization, though vestiges of clan organization were found-e.g., among the best-known tribes the man was the head of the family, though the tipi usually belonged to the woman. Thus, as defined by inst.i.tutions, the stock was just above savagery and just within the lower stages of barbarism. Accordingly the governmental functions were hereditary in the male line, yet the law of heredity was subject to modification or suspension at the will of the group, commonly at the instance of rebels or usurpers of marked prowess or shrewdness. The property regulations were definite and strictly observed; as among other barbarous peoples, the land was common to the tribe or other group occupying it, yet was defended against alien invasion; the owners.h.i.+p of movable property was a combination of communalism and individualism delicately adjusted to the needs and habits of the several tribes- in general, evanescent property, such as food and fuel, was shared in common (subject to carefully regulated individual claims), while permanent property, such as tipis, dogs, apparel, weapons, etc, was held by individuals. As among other tribes, the more strictly personal property was usually destroyed on the death of the owner, though the real reason for the custom-the prevention of dispute-was shrouded in a mantle of mysticism.
Although of primary importance in shaping the career of the Siouan tribes, the marital inst.i.tutions of the stock were not specially distinctive.
Marriage was usually effected by negotiation through parents or elders; among some of the tribes the bride was purchased, while among others there was an interchange of presents. Polygyny was common; in several of the tribes the bride's sisters became subordinate wives of the husband. The regulations concerning divorce and the punishment of infidelity were somewhat variable among the different tribes, some of whom furnished temporary wives to distinguished visitors. Generally there were sanctions for marriage by elopement or individual choice. In every tribe, so far as known, gentile exogamy prevailed-i.e., marriage in the gens was forbidden, under pain of ostracism or still heavier penalty, while the gentes intermarried among one another; in some cases intermarriage between certain tribes was regarded with special favor. There seems to have been no system of marriage by capture, though captive women were usually espoused by the successful tribesmen, and girls were sometimes abducted.
In general it would appear that intergentile and intertribal marriage was practiced and sanctioned by the sages, and that it tended toward harmony and federation, and thus contributed much toward the increase and diffusion of the great Siouan stock.
As set forth in some detail by Dorsey, the ordination of the Siouan tribes extended beyond the hierarchic organization into families, subgentes, gentes, tribes, and confederacies; there were also phratries, sometimes (perhaps typically) arranged in pairs; there were societies or a.s.sociations established on social or fiducial bases; there was a general arrangement or cla.s.sification of each group on a military basis, as into soldiers and two or more cla.s.ses of noncombatants, etc. Among the Siouan peoples, too, the individual brotherhood of the David-Jonathan or Damon-Pythias type was characteristically developed. Thus the corporate inst.i.tutions were interwoven and superimposed in a manner nearly as complex as that found in the national, state, munic.i.p.al, and minor inst.i.tutions of civilization; yet the ordination preserved by means of the camping circle, the kins.h.i.+p system, the simple series of taboos, and the elaborate symbolism was apparently so complete as to meet every social and governmental demand.
BELIEFS
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