that no slave could be found within the dis
tricts hunted by these red-men, even when negro
slaves were everywhere being bought and sold in
the streets of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.
74 NEW AMERICA.
In time, however, some of the less noble tribes of
Indians Cherokees, Choktaws, and Chickasaws
learned from the white men to buy and to steal
their negro brother, and to hold him in bondage,
like a mule or a dog.
Among many of the Indian tribes, though
less in these savage western provinces than
among the Delawares, Mohicans, and Senecas, the
women have a singular degree of power ; not only
in the wigwam, where they occupy the seats of
honour, but in public places and in public life ;
even the right of holding meetings and discussing
questions of peace and war. Among the higher
class of Indian tribes, the braves take a pride in
paying to their squaws a measure of respect ex
ceeding the mere courtesies of city life ; often
rising into what, for lack of a better name,
might be called chivalry ; a fine feeling of the
strong towards the weak, as such ; a softening of
the hard towards the gentle ; a bending of the
warrior towards the hus-wife. Of course, in a
settled society, where rights are guarded by law,
not left to the caprice of individual will, there
should be little need for this open and avowed
protection, on the part of men towards women.
It is a virtue of the savage and the semi-savage,
THE RED MAN. 75
of the hunter and the herdsman, of the Seneca
Indian and the Anezi Arab ; which has not failed
to touch with moral and poetic beauty the manners
of a people of far nobler grade.
What man can doubt that Indian ideas on
witchcraft, on polygamy, . on plurality of gods,
on the migration of souls, on the presence of
spirits, on future rewards, have entered deeply
into the popular mind, and are now affecting for
good or ill the course of American religious
thought ?
One of the first things to strike an English
eye about these red-skins (after their paint and
feathers, perhaps), is their division into tribes ;
the oldest form in which men were organised
into societies. It is an Oriental system ; found
in Media and India, in Arabia and Scythia, among
all the wandering and pastoral nations. In the
first step from savage towards civil life, all races
are divided into tribes, of either the family or
the clan. In Sparta there were three of these
original tribes, in Athens four, in Palestine twelve,
in Eome three ; in each of which states one
tribe would appear to have had some sort of
regal superiority : the Hyllean at Sparta, the Eu
patrid in Athens, the house of Judah in Pales-
76 NEW AMERICA.
tine, the Ramnes in Rome. Among these mul
titudinous tribes of the red race, no such regal
character appears to obtain ; the Cheyenne admits
no moral superiority in the Sioux, the Mohican
in the Seneca ; each nation is a separate body ;
and the chief policy of the red natives is that
of maintaining their tribal independence. From
them the white settlers have borrowed the senti
ment of State rights.
77
CHAPTEE VII.
INDIAN LIFE.
THE story of Minnehaha, Laughing Water, has
made known the fact that there exists, among
these sons of the lake and prairie, a body of tra
dition available for art. The life of a Eed Indian
as he starts on a trail, as he hunts the bison and
the elk, as he courts his mistress with the scalp of
an enemy slain in battle, or by stealth, as he leaps
in the war-dance, as he buries the hatchet and
lays by the knife, as he harangues his fellows in
council, as he defies the malice of his captors, as
he sits down under his hemlock and smokes the
pipe of peace is nothing less than a romance.
His presence is a picture, his conduct a poem.
The forest in which he dwells, the plain on which
he hunts, the river along which he floats, are full
to him of a myriad spirits. His canoe is an ark,
his wigwam is a tent. On every side he is in
78 NEW AMERICA.
contact with the innermost soul of things, and
nature speaks to his ear out of every leaf and from
every stone. What marvel, then, that his un
written poetry should be of a wild and daring
kind ; new in its character, fresh in its colours,
like and yet unlike to the Homeric, the Ossianic,
and the Gothic primitive romance ?
A young hunter fell in love with a beautiful
girl whom he sought for his wife, and being the
pride of his tribe, both for swiftness in the race
and for courage in war, his suit was accepted by
her father, and she was given to him in mar
riage. On her wedding-day she died. Tearing a
trench in the soil, the women swathed her limbs
in a cloth, and after wailing over her body, laid
her down in the bunch-grass. But the young
hunter could not leave her. His bow was un
strung in the wigwam, his club lay idle on the
ground, for his heart was buried in that forest
grave, and his ears were no longer awake to the
sounds of war and the chase. One joy was left
to him on earth : to sit by himself, near that
mound under which his love lay at rest, pondering
of his lost bride, and following her in fancy to the
spirit-land. Old men of the tribe had told him,
when a child, that souls go after death to the
INDIAN LIFE. 79
Blessed Isles, lying far off to the south, in a sunny
clime, upon the bosom of a placid lake, under a
sky of unfreckled blue ; and one day, as he sat on
the cold ground, with snow in the trees above
him, the thought came into his mind that he would
go in search of that Island in which the soul of his
mistress dwelt. Turning his face to the south, he
began his journey, which, for a long while, lay
through a country of lakes, hills, valleys, much like
his own ; but in time there appeared to be less
snow in the trees, less frost on the streams, more
brightness in the air, more verdure on the earth ;
then he came upon buds and blossoms, he saw
flowers in the field, and heard warblings in the
bush. Seeing a path into a thick grove, he fol
lowed it through the trees until it led him to
a high ridge, on the top of which stood an
Indian lodge. At the door of this lodge, an old
man, with white hair, a pale face, and fiery eyes,
covered with skins of wild beasts, and leaning on
a staff, received him with a sad smile. The hunter
was beginning to tell his story : " Hush !" said
the old man ; "I expected you, and have risen to
give you welcome. She whom you seek has been
here ; she rested for awhile, and then went on.
Come into my lodge." When the hunter was re-
80 NEW AMERICA.
freshed with food and sleep, the old man led him
forth of the lodge and said : " See you that gulf
and the plain beyond? It is the land of souls.
You stand upon its confines, and my lodge is the
gate of entry. But only souls can pass beyond this
gate. Lay down your bundle and your quiver;
leave behind your body and your dog ; now, pass
into the land of spirits." The hunter bounded from
the earth, like a bird on its wings. Forest, lake,
mountain, were the same, but he saw them with
new eyes, and felt them with a strange touch.
Nature seemed to have become luminous and vocal.
The air was softer, the sky was brighter, the sward
was greener, than they seem to our mortal senses.
Birds sang to him out of trees, and animals came
frisking past him. No creature was afraid of him,
for blood is never shed in the spirit-land. He
went forward without effort, gliding, rather than
walking, along the ground ; passing through trees
and rocks as a man in the flesh might walk
through a wreath of spray and a cloud of smoke.
At length he came to a wide and shining lake,
from the midst of which sprang a lovely isle. A
canoe of white stone lay close in shore, with
paddles laid ready to his hand. Stepping intc
this boat, and pushing from the bank, he became
INDIAN LIFE. 81
conscious, as in a dream, that another white canoe
was at his side, in which, pale and beautiful as
he had last seen her, sat his bride. As he put
forth from the bank, she put off also ; answering
ito the motion of his oars like the chords in music.
A tranquil joy was in the hunter s heart as they
pushed their way towards the Blessed Isle. On
looking forward towards the land, he was seized
,with fear for his beloved; a great white line of
surf broke angrily in their front, and in the clear
deep waters he could see the bodies of drowning
men and the bones of thousands who had perished
in that surf. His thews being strong and his
courage calm, he had no fears for himself; but
:he yearned for her, exposed to the surf in that
iglittering shell; but when they pushed boldly
into the breakers, they found their canoes go
(through them as through air. Around them were
many boats, each freighted with a soul. Some
Iwere in sore distress, some wrecked and lost.
:The boats which bore young children glided
home like birds. Those containing youths and
maidens met with gusts and rollers. Older men
were beaten by storms and tempests, each accord
ing to his deeds ; for the calm and storm were
.not in the spirit-lake, but in the men who sailed
VOL. i. G
82 KEW AMERICA.
upon it. Softly running to the shore, the hunter
and his bride leaped lightly from their canoes
upon the Golden Isle. What a change from
the dull, cold earth on which the hunter lived!
They saw no graves. They never heard of war. No
gales ever vexed the air, no fogs ever hid the sun.
Ice was unknown to that Blessed Isle. No blood
was ever shed ; no hunger and thirst were felt ;
for the very air which they breathed was food
and drink. Their feet were never tired and their
temples never ached. No sorrowing was endured
for the dead. Gladly would the hunter have
remained for ever with his bride in this spirit-
land ; but a great presence, called the Master of
Life, came near to him, and speaking in a voice
like a soft breeze, said to the young man : " Go
back to the land from which you came ; your day
is not yet. Eeturn to your tribe, and to the duty
of a good man. When that is done, you will
rejoin the spirit which you love. She is ac
cepted ; she will be here for ever ; as young, as
happy as when I called her from the land of
snow." When the voice ceased from its speak
ing, the hunter started in his sleep to find the
little mound at his feet, snow in the trees over
head, and a numb sorrow in his heart.
INDIAN LIFE. 83
Ah me, it was all a dream !
The red man believes in a god, or rather, he
believes in many gods ; also in a life after death,
to be shared by his horse, his hawk, and his
dog. He thinks there is a good spirit and a
bad spirit, equal in dignity and strength to each
other ; that, under them, live a multitude of
gods ; spirits of the rock, the tree, the cloud, the
river, and the frost ; spirits of the wind, of the
sun, and of the stars. No Greek shepherd ever
peopled Hymettus and Arcadia, Orion and the
Bear, with such swarming multitudes of shapes
and radiances as the Cheyenne, the Pawnee, and
the Snake, believe to inhabit their plains and
mountains, their creeks and woods, their lakes and
skies. But the Indian has never yet learned to
erect temples to his deities ; being content to
find them in tree and flower, in sunshine and in
storm, in the hawk, the beaver, and the trout.
His only religion is that of nature, his only wor
ship a kind of magic. He believes in witches
and in sorcerers ; in their power to degrade men
into beasts, to elevate beasts into men. Sleep
is to him but another side of his life, and dreams
are as real as his waking deeds. In his fancy
all space is teeming with gods and spirits, which
G2
84 NEW AMERICA.
are close to him as he hunts and fights, capable
of hearing his call to them, of making known
to him their presence and their wishes by signs
and sounds. He is the original source of all
our spirit-rapping, all our table-turning ; and in
the act of invoking demons to his aid, he is still
beyond the reach of such puny rivals as the
Davenports and Homes.
His religious rites are few and cabalistic ; thus,
he will sing for the sick, and offer meat to the
dead ; he will put a charm in his ear, in his nose,
and around his wrist commonly a shell from the
great sea as a defence against evil spirits. He
has no priest, as we understand the word, but he
submits himself abjectly to his prophet (jossakeed)
and seer ; and he does so, not only as regards his
soul, but his body. In fact, his prophet is his
doctor also ; disease being in his opinion a spiritual
as well as physical defect, only to be conquered by
one who has power upon sin and death. Brig-
ham Young has very much the same function
to perform at one end of Salt Lake that a
Shoshonee seer may have to discharge at the
other.
The red men have no settled laws. Their
government is patriarchal, the chief power being
"
INDIAN LIFE. 85
exercised, as in every savage horde, by the old
men of the tribe, except in war time, when the
bravest and most cunning take the lead. They
know nothing about votes, either free or open,
but in electing leaders they declare their pre
ference with a shout. They have no conception
of the use and power of work, and it is only with
a slow and sullen heart that even the best among
them will consent to practise a trade. They
have about them a sense of having always been
a wild tribe ; a race of hunters and warriors, lords
of the arrow and the club ; and they are too
proud to moil and toil, to do the offices of
squaws and cowards. If they were not driven
by hunger to the chase, they would do nothing
at all, except drink and fight. In these things
the Creeks and the Dakotas excel the most accom
plished rowdies of Denver, Leavenworth, and New
York.
I cannot say that their domestic life is either
noble or lovely. A prairie brave, mounted on a
strong pony, with a rifle on his saddle, a blanket
strapped behind him, dressed in a handsome skin
jacket, adorned with beads and tags, with his
]
squaw trudging heavily by his side on foot, carry
ing her papoose on her back, and a parcel of pro-
86 NEW AMEKICA.
visions in her hands, was one of my earliest illus
trations of the chivalries of Indian life. A mob of
Ute warriors, tearing through the streets of Den
ver, rushing into shops and painting their faces,
while the squaws and papooses tumbled after
them in the mire, laden with cabbages, buffalo-
skins, and miscellaneous domestic fry, was another.
A listless, insolent crowd of Pawnees, smoking and
drinking on the Pacific road, while their squaws
were labouring on the railway line as navvies,
hired out by the braves at fifty cents, a-day, and
a ration of corn and meat uncooked, was a third.
As such examples grew in strength upon me, I
began to think the noble Indian was not so much
of a gentleman as a believing reader of the "Last
of the Mohicans " might suppose. " Why don t these
fellows work for themselves, instead of lounging
in groceries and grog-shops, while their wives are
digging earth and carrying wood ? " An Omaha
friend who stood near me smiled : " Don t you
see, they are warriors and gentlemen ; they can
not degrade themselves by work."
The Sioux, the Pawnee, the Cheyenne squaw,
though she may have a certain power in the wig
wam, and an uncertain liberty of speech in the
council, when her character as a woman happens
INDIAN LIFE. 87
to be great, is, in many respects, and as a general
rule, no better than a slave ; such rights as she
may exercise belonging to her rather as a member
of the tribe than as a mother and a wife. Her
husband has probably bought her for a blanket,
for an old carbine, for a keg of whisky ; and it
depends wholly on the man s humour, on his fond
ness, whether he shall treat her as a lady or as a
dog. He can sell her, he can give her away.
The squaw s inferiority to the hunter is like that
of the horse to his master. She is one of the man s
chattels; one of many like herself; for the Indian
is a polygamist, and keeps a harem in the prairie.
She has to perform all in-door, all out-door labour ;
to fix the wigwam in the ground, to fetch water
from the stream, to gather billets from the bush,
to dig roots and pick up acorns, to dress and cook
the food, to make the clothes, to dry the scalps,
to mend the wigwam, to carry her children on the
march. And while she has a thousand toils to
endure, she has scarcely any rights as either a
woman or a wife. The man may put her away
for the most trifling fault. Her infant may be
taken from her lap. Her modesty is not always
spared. While the sins into which her own fancies
may have led her are visited with revolting pun-
88 NEW AMERICA.
ishment, she may be forced by her husband into
acts of immorality which degrade her as a woman,
not only in her own eyes, but in those of the
companions of her shame. If she commits adultery
without her husband s leave, his custom allows him
to slit her nose ; yet when the whimsy takes him,
he may sell her charms to a passing guest. In
the freedom of his forest life, it is common for the
Shoshonee and the Comanche to offer his squaw
to any stranger visiting in his lodge. The theory
of the wigwam is, that the female member of it is
a chattel, and that her beauty, her modesty, her
service, belong to her lord only, and may be given
as he lists. For her there is nothing save to hear
and to obey.
And the Indian squaw is what such rules of
life must make her. If her mate is cruel in dis
position, she is savage ; if he is dirty in person,
she is filthy ; if he is lax in conduct, she is shame
less. When anything base and monstrous has to
be done, it is left to the squaws. If an enemy
is to be tortured, the women are set upon him.
A brave might club his prisoner to death by a
blow, but the sharper and slower agonies caused
by peeling off his skin, by tearing out his nails,
by breaking his finger-joints, by putting fire
INDIAN LIFE. 89
under his feet, by gouging out his eyes, are only
to be inflicted by the demons who have taken up
their dwelling in female forms.
All the men who fought against the Indians
at Sand Creek, to whom I have spoken, describe
the squaws as fighting more furiously than the
braves ; and ah 1 the white women (as I hear) who
have had the double misfortune of falling into
Indian hands, and surviving to tell the tale of
their dishonour, exclaim against the squaws as
deeper in cruelty and iniquity than their lords.
The story of a white woman s captivity among the
Sioux and Arappahoes is one that ought never to
be told. In Colorado there are fifty, perhaps a
hundred, females who have undergone the shame
of such a passage in their lives; and it is fearful
to see the flashing eyes, to hear the emphatic
oaths, of either father, lover, or son to one of
these wretched creatures, when a Cheyenne is
spoken of otherwise than as a dog, whom it is
the duty of every honest man to shoot.
It would be a dangerous trial for a Yengee
to say one word in favour of the Indians either
in the streets of Denver and Central City, or
along the route through the Eocky Mountains
travelled by the waggon trains and the mail.
90 NEW AMERICA.
Yet with all their faults, the Indians have
some virtues and many capacities. They are
brave. As a rule they are chaste. In patience
they have few equals ; in endurance they have
none. They are affectionate towards their child
ren; moderately faithful to their squaws. Their
reverence for age, for wisdom, and for valour, is
akin to religious feeling, and is only a little lower
in degree than that which they pay to their Great
Spirit. In war time, and against an enemy, they
consider everything fair ; but the first and worst
of all vices in the savage, the habit of lying, is
comparatively rare in these red men.
91
CHAPTEE VIII.
CARRYING THE MAIL.
IN bands from fifteen to forty, well armed and
well mounted, the Cheyennes and their allies are
moving along our line, plundering the stations,
threatening the teamsters and drivers with fire
and lead. A red-skin war is never sudden in its
coming ; for, as many tribes and nations must be
drawn into it, there is much running to and fro,
much smoking of tobacco, and a vast amount of
palaver. When a man desires to have war, he
must first persuade his chief and his tribe to dare
it ; next he must ride round the country into
other tribes, whispering, haranguing, rousing, till
the blood of many of the younger braves boils
up. Meetings must be held, counsels compared,
and a decision taken by the allies. If the pala
vering, in which the aged and timid warriors have
a principal share is going on slowly, some of
92 NEW AMERICA.
the younger braves steal off into the enemy s
land, where they provoke bad blood by plundering
a ranch, driving away mules, if possible carrying
off women. They know that the white men will
turn out and fight, that two or three braves may
happen to get killed, and they are pretty sure
that the nations which have suffered in the fray
will then cry loudly for revenge.
As a rule, the white men, being few in number,
unsupported by their government, never resist
these Indian attacks, unless life is taken or women
are captured ; short of these crimes being com
mitted, the pale-face says, it is cheaper to feed
the red men than to fight them, since he must
always meet them with a halter round his neck.
A white man dare not fire on a band of Coman-
ches, though he may be perfectly sure that they
are enemies, bent on taking his life. If he killed
an Indian, he would be tried for murder. The red
man, therefore, has his choice of when and where
he will attack ; and the grand advantage of being
able to deliver his volley when he pleases. It is
only after some one has been killed, that the white
man feels himself safe in returning shot for shot.
So, when parties of Indians come upon lonely
ranches and stations on the Plains, the white men
CARRYING THE MAIL. 93
have to kill, as it were, the fatted calf, that is to
say, they have to bring forth their stores of bacon,
dried buffalo tongue, beans, and potted fruit, set
the kettle boiling, the pan frying, and feed the
rascals who are going to murder them, down to
the very last pound of flesh, the very last, crust
of bread ; only too happy if they will then go
away into their wilds without taking away wo
men and scalps. Of course, few women are to be
found in these perilous plains ; not a dozen be
tween Warn ego and Denver, I should say.
Now these small bands of Cheyennes and
Arappahoes in our front have come from the great
camp of the Six Nations, lying near Fort Ells
worth, under the command of Eonian Nose. They
are going forward as a party of feelers and pro-
vokers, a little way in advance of us, insulting
the whites, and eating up the road. At every
station, after passing Fort Eiley, we hear of
their presence and of their depredations.
Eed skins, however, will not permit themselves
to be seen, unless they are friendly and mean to
beg. In going over one of the long, low ridges of
Smoky Hill, we observe a small party of Chey
ennes moving along the opposite ridge ; they are
mounted, and leading spare horses ; and as we catch
94 NEW AMERICA.
the gleam of their rifles, we know they are well
armed. Unlike the Bedouin, every red-skin has
a revolver of his own ; some of them have two or
three revolvers in their belts ; almost every one
slings a rifle across his horse. They seem to be
crossing our path. "Who are these Indians?" I
ask the driver, by whose side I am sitting on the
box. " Well," says he, in the deliberate Western
fashion, " guess they are some cuss." They seem to
have halted ; for the moment, as I think, they are
trying to prevent our seeing a white horse, which
one of them is leading. " Guess I can t make
them out," adds the driver, after taking time to
consider his want of opinion ; "if they were
friendly, they would come to us and beg ; if they
were thieves, they would hide in the creek, so as
not to be seen ; guess they are out on the war
path." When they draw up, we can count them ;
they are only five men in number, with four led
horses in addition to their own. Five men would
not dream of attacking the mail, in which there
might be a dozen men and guns ; especially not
when the blinds are down, and they cannot from
their coign of vantage see into the coach, and
count the number of their foes. A sure know
ledge of the enemies to be met in fight is a car-
CARRYING THE MAIL. 95
dinal point in the system of an Indian warrior,
who prides himself more on his success than even
on his valour. Eich in stratagem, he is always
afraid of ambuscade ; and he rarely ventures to
attack an enemy, when, from either want of light