Three Conditions of Wilderness Life—Farming in the Driest Country—The Cache—The Clan, the Unit of the Tribe—Hospitality—Totems and Totem Marks—Dress—An Aboriginal Geographer—The Winter Life—The War-path, the Scalp-lock, and the Scalp-dance—Mourning the Lost Braves—Drifting.

The daily life of these natives of the Wilderness was regulated chiefly by the food quest. With reference to this quest they existed in three general states or conditions: hunter, fisher, farmer. Sometimes two, sometimes all, these conditions were combined at one time. But no matter which condition a tribe might be living in, nor what language it might speak, its customs and social organisation were surprisingly similar to those of all the other tribes. So that we have the picture of numerous tribes dwelling in houses of widely varying construction, subsisting on food obtained in radically different ways, and speaking distinctly different languages, with general habits, customs, and ceremonials almost identical, yet with the details of the daily routine regulated largely by the kind of food most easily obtained in their particular locality. Those in the higher mountains and on the plains were mostly hunters. The tribes of the plains subsisted principally on the buffalo, though some few cultivated maize, beans, and squashes along the Arkansas, the Platte, and the Missouri river bottoms. To these people of the prairies the horse was the greatest prize. Those living mainly by fishing were tribes of the Pacific Coast and along the Pacific river-valleys, like the Columbia, where the salmon run. Most of this class had small use for the horse; many had for him no use whatever, doing their entire travelling by canoe, and handling this craft with unsurpassed dexterity.

Those in the farmer condition were the people of the extremely arid south-western quarter where large game was scarce, and where crops of maize and beans, grown with considerable difficulty and labour, were the principle reliance. With maize as a basis of food supply it was possible for a tribe to be far more sedentary than when subsistence was obtained by the chase. Hostile neighbours could be avoided. A whole tribe could occupy fortifications, like the Pueblo villages for example, in the midst of some wide valley, near a river or other water supply, or could retire to some fastness of cliff or mountain, easily defended, where ample crops could be grown on bottom lands, and where recesses in cliffs afforded sites for secure and comfortable homes, as well as great quantities of fallen dÉbris for building purposes. Such were hundreds of villages scattered over the South-west as far north as the southern parts of Utah and Colorado; and even perhaps to Salt Lake. There was no need of sallying forth to the confines of hostile country in search of food; and, before the coming of the whites placed the gun and horse at the service of the more predatory tribes, they would not readily risk an attack on such strongholds.

The cultivation of maize was increasing, except on the immediate Pacific Coast, where it was not cultivated at all. Even the Pai Utes, who lived largely on grass seeds and edible plants and roots, had begun to have small gardens where beans, pumpkins, melons, and maize grew. East of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes enormous quantities of the great staple of the New World were produced before the white people arrived. Tribes to the north in the region of Minnesota were beginning to understand its cultivation, and the importance of having a food supply under control. In the South-west, for an unknown period, it had been the mainstay. There it was cultivated by irrigation whereas in the eastern part of the continent the rainfall was, of course, sufficient. In the South-west the men did the work in the fields, leaving the management of the household to the women; even the building of the houses in fact. But in districts where the products of the soil formed only a minor part of the subsistence, or where it was mainly or entirely wild meat, the men for so large a part of their time were engaged in the pursuit of game that the camp and household duties, as well as what tending of crops might be necessary, fell to the women. Their labours were intermittent, and when the men returned from the chase, sometimes worn out if game were scarce, the women waited upon them just as a white woman waits on her cross husband when he comes home tired from the shop.

Besides the various game animals, and maize, beans, squash, grass seeds, pine nuts, cactus apples, wild potatoes, agave, and numerous palatable roots and berries, the dog was largely eaten. Some kinds of young dogs were said, when well cooked, to be much like pig, but the larger ones were apt to be coarse and rank. In addition to these numerous kinds of food, human flesh was occasionally eaten, but only when in the pangs of starvation: or as a religious ceremony. When no water was to be had, the plains tribes would kill a buffalo and drink the blood. They often also ate the entrails of animals raw, particularly those of the buffalo, which latter delicacy Harmon[25] indulged in and speaks of as "very palatable." All the Amerinds smoked, and with most tribes every consultation or council or friendly visit was opened by the tobacco pipe. Indeed the place of tobacco and the pipe among the natives of the continent was one of the greatest importance. It was not always what we call tobacco that was smoked, but frequently the inner bark of the red willow, the leaves of the manzanita bush, dog-wood bark and sumach leaves, or a plant resembling garden sage, which according to Beckwourth,[26] grew wild in the country of the Snakes, but which was cultivated by the Crows and several other tribes. Most of the Algonquian tribes grew large quantities of maize, and cooked it with beans and other things. From them, and their neighbours, we have derived not only a number of dishes, but their names as well, such as supawn, succotash, pone, mush, etc.

Many tribes laid away stores for winter, but these were the more sedentary, though dried buffalo meat, and pemmican, were accumulated as far as possible by the tribes living upon the plains. But when the diet of a people is confined to meat alone, an enormous supply, per capita, is required for a whole winter, hence some tribes ran out of provisions, especially when the numbers of buffalo began to diminish, and were in hard straits before spring came again. The fisher tribes put away great amounts of dried salmon, but here again was the danger of shortage that always threatened meat-eaters. The same might be true of people living on the products of agriculture if the population pressed on the supply, but with agriculture the returns are so bountiful that the supply was always adequate among those tribes cultivating the ground, except there was a failure of crops, which was rare. The Puebloans provided against this by retaining a considerable extra store from year to year. They used the lower inside rooms of the village which were much like cellars, as the village, resembling a pile of huge packing cases, was built over and around them. Thus they were admirably adapted for storage in that dry climate. The ears of corn were piled up evenly and neatly one beside the other. Watermelons were treated in the same way, and were preserved in perfect condition till the end of February at least. Naturally the tribes which moved about considerably could not well make such ample provision for the future, but they often stored food, and other goods in holes dug in the ground, well concealed. Such storage places were also used by the whites, and the name cache was applied to this method by the early French trappers. Where the cache was in dry ground the contents would remain in good preservation for a long time.

It is plain that the people of the Wilderness possessed everywhere an abundant food supply, whether in the arid Southwest, whereat first glance it would seem no cereal could grow, in the buffalo country, or in the region of the salmon streams. It was the preservation of these supplies, over-abundant at certain times, scarce at others, which was their greatest difficulty.

With us the unit of our social organisation is the family: father, mother, children. With the Amerind the unit was generally the clan (or gens) as we call it, a group of several families related on the mother's side, for descent was usually counted in the female line. The Omahas and some others had changed to descent in the male line. The clan held property in common exactly as one of our families does to-day; that is not all property, but general property and food. There were articles and objects which were exclusively individual property and did not belong to the clan any more than certain articles a daughter or a son may individually possess belong to the parents in one of our families. Hunting, farming, and such affairs were conducted, as a rule, for the clan, hence food was clan property free to all members, or for that matter to almost any one, because in the Amerind village, or camp, every house was open to the hungry guest. The white man was always fed as well as the supplies would permit; special stews of dog, or buffalo, or succotash, were prepared for his special delectation, and he was expected to eat all given him or take it away. To these people, therefore, it was a rather painful surprise when, as they began to unravel the peculiarities of their new acquaintances, they found that the white man was perfectly willing to accept the boundless hospitality of the native, but when the latter visited fort or camp, he was received as a beggar. When the hospitality he expected was not granted, he asked for it; and this, to a white man, was begging. In dealing with Amerinds the white man went on the principle of what is yours is mine and what is mine is my own. Perhaps there were two exceptions to this, the early French, and the great Hudson Bay Company.

Marriage within the clan was forbidden, therefore a man had to seek a wife in another clan or another tribe. A violation of this rule, or of any other moral precept of their code, brought punishment from the clan of the individual or from the officers of the tribe. Sometimes this was nothing more than a flogging; sometimes it was death. A man always retained allegiance to his own clan and the wife to hers, the children belonging to their mother's clan. As a rule there was no limit to the number of wives a man could have, though polygamy was not general. In the Amerind code the bona fide acceptance of a wife was a marriage, and the husband was expected to assume the duties of a husband seriously. The white adventurer did not do it. He was quite apt to abandon his wife as cheerfully as he had taken her.

The clan had the right to adopt into it any outsider it pleased, and this right of adoption was frequently exercised. In this manner white, or other prisoners, or friends, were incorporated into the clan and therefore into the tribe, taking the place perhaps of some deceased son or brother, daughter or sister. The adopted men not infrequently rose to positions of importance, even to that of head chief. These officers were usually chosen because of personal qualifications and achievements, but it was not uncommon for the title of ordinary chief to be bestowed on a visitor as a sort of honorary degree. There were many chiefs of varying power and importance, mostly military; the office of sachem, a purely civil position, was more difficult to attain, as it was generally hereditary within the clan. Because of the law of maternal descent, a man's son in most tribes could not inherit his father's office. He might be adopted, however, by the clan.

Children were seldom whipped, yet they were carefully trained and were obedient and respectful. Their parents loved them just as white parents love their offspring and in later days when the Indian Bureau compelled the children to attend the agency schools, there was many a heart pang and copious tears all round at the parting. But the usual theory was that these people had no human sensibility.

Several families of a clan often occupied a single structure. Each clan had a sign, a sort of coat of arms, called a totem, to represent it, and this was often used as a signature. Combined with other pictures it indicated the occurrence of certain events. It was generally an animal from which in far past times the clan was supposed to be descended; but there were also personal totems. The clan took its name from its totem, Bear, Hawk, etc., and its members frequently held names which indicated their clan title. The clan controlled its members, settled disputes, and if one were murdered or committed murder, the clan prescribed or accepted punishment or settlement as the case might be. It also argued its case when necessary by means of representatives before the council of the tribe. To know a tribe well it was important to know the workings of the clan system, yet this has generally been overlooked by all but the ethnologists. A tribe was usually spoken of by its members as "the men" or "the people," and these terms were often understood by white men to be the names of the tribes, and accordingly were so used.

When at peace these people were kind. The Rev. Samuel Parker who was on the plains at a very early time, referring to some who accompanied him declares: "They are very kind and manifest their kindness by anticipating all, and more than all my wants." Harmon, who for nineteen years was a leading member of the North-west Company, speaking of one village where he passed several days, is sure he was treated "with more real politeness than is commonly shown to strangers in the civilised part of the world."

The general dress of the men was leggins of buckskin resembling the legs of a pair of white man's trousers, attached to a belt, with frequently a shirt of the same material, though a great deal of the time there was no covering for the upper part of the body except a robe or blanket thrown loosely around the shoulders. The remainder of the costume was a breech cloth and moccasins of buckskin, the latter with or without hard soles according to the tribe. In the South-west, particularly after the Spaniards came, the costume was different. There leggins came only to the knee, and were made to button, or were attached by a woven garter twisted around just under the knee. Above there were short trousers, or rather breeches of cotton. A cotton shirt with a blanket over it in cool weather, and a cloth À la turban around the head completed the dress. No matter if an Amerind wears trousers as he often did and does, he rarely dispenses with the breech cloth. In battle the warrior stripped completely, though in past times some tribes wore armour of slats, rods, or tough buffalo hide.

The woman's dress was a loose gown or tunic of buckskin, of woollen or of cotton fabric, bound at the waist by a girdle, and, when travelling or in ceremonials, moccasins with leggins attached, the latter buckskin strips winding round and round the leg. In the house or about the village or camp the women generally went without any covering on the feet. The women of some tribes wore only a sort of kilt of bark strips. The younger children in summer wore no clothing; and in some tribes, particularly those of the mild South-west, neither men, women, nor children troubled themselves about covering. The manner of wearing the hair was always significant; caps and head-dresses were also worn.

In moving camp the plains tribes usually took their whole tent with them, the poles, before they had the horse, being tied on each side of their dogs by means of a sort of saddle made for the purpose. Moving was far easier after the horse arrived, for not only could he pull the poles of the tent tied to his back, but also upon them he could drag the children, the tent cover, and the general household goods; furthermore, the mother could ride on the horse. The travois was, therefore, a different affair with the horse to drag it than it was with the dog; but they did not abandon utilising the dogs and they were often harnessed to light loads on the poles. The horse, then, was not only an essential in war and the chase, but also in the journeys from one locality to another.

They knew well their own land and its limits. We sometimes forget this. Francis La Flesche, an educated Dakota, writes with reference to their knowledge:

Tabbaquena, a head chief of the Comanches whom Gregg interviewed, drew for him a map, with paper and pencil, and "although the draft was somewhat rough it bore much to our astonishment, quite a map-like appearance, with a far more accurate delineation of all the principal rivers of the plains, the road from Missouri to Santa FÉ and the different Mexican settlements than is to be found in many of the engraved maps of those regions." Pike and other early explorers might have saved themselves vast trouble had they employed such a man to accompany them. This was not always easy, however, for sometimes when the native was perfectly willing to draw a map, or otherwise describe a route, nothing could induce him to leave his people, and even if he did go, he would frequently tire of his job and slip away.

In all the history of the Wilderness only one explorer has travelled where the modern Amerind did not go and that one was Major Powell when he descended the Colorado. The natives of his time entered the various canyons here and there, but they never remained in them or navigated their waters. Long years ago clans lived within their fastnesses and knew them well, but before the eventful journey of Powell[28] they had vanished. As winter approached those tribes that had been roving during the mild season selected for the winter comfortable village sites near wood and water and prepared for a long stay. Other tribes whose general village life was more stationary arranged their food supply and provided for stormy weather. If the shadow of famine did not fall on the camp time passed pleasantly, the long evenings being devoted to visiting from tipi (tepee) to tipi, or from house to house, and the crisp air resounded with merry laughter, shouts, and singing. Games of different kinds were played, and certain gifted story tellers kept their audiences nightly in a roar with vivid tales—some true, some made for the occasion out of whole cloth. The Pueblos practised their ceremonial songs, and at times the boom of the great drum quivered constantly on the evening air, when perhaps no other sound was audible. The Pueblo adobe and stone walls being thick all ordinary sounds were prevented from passing out, hence, as a rule, evening closed in silently, particularly in winter when doors were shut against the cold. This was more the case after the whites came, for before that event there were no doors, the openings being filled by blankets or skins. The doorways then were much smaller, to exclude cold air, storm, animals, enemies, and this gave rise to stories of dwarfs, that have from time to time appeared.

In the villages where the walls were no more than the thickness of the buffalo-hide covering the tipi poles, the hilarity rang out and made the locality extremely gay. The popular notion that these people were gloomy and fierce in daily life is a delusion. They were as happy and full of larks as children, and probably no people ever more appreciated a joke. A little thing would sometimes cause great merriment. I remember on one occasion, a good many years ago, when encamped near Fort Defiance, I was standing one evening in front of my tent when an old Navajo was seen approaching who was particularly afraid of a camera. I had in my hand a small hand camera, and as a joke I ran toward him pointing it as if to photograph him, although the light had nearly vanished and a negative could not have been made except by very long exposure. The Navajo did not know this and much to the amusement of his compatriots who were standing around to the number of perhaps a score, he began to dodge about in the wildest fashion, trying to avoid my advance. For some moments I kept up the play, because they were all having such a jolly time except the victim; and he did not seem seriously to mind the chase. Apropos of this subject, Fowler,[29] when crossing the plains met with an incident, also illustrative of their appreciation of fun. He wore spectacles and had broken one of the glasses. One day while at a native settlement, he felt some one steal the spectacles from his eyes and run away with them. He thought they were lost for good, but presently he heard a great uproar of shouts and laughter, and then saw the man who had taken them advancing and leading another with the "specs" on his face. On closer approach Fowler saw that the led person was blind in the eye corresponding to the broken glass; and the joker signified that the "specs" suited his friend much better than they did Fowler. Then amidst great good humour they were returned to him.

In some portions of the South-west, cotton was cultivated and woven into blankets and garments long before the white man came. The Pueblo men did the weaving in that division; among some tribes the women did it. The loom was a simple affair, made of a couple of slender logs, or thick boughs, and several sticks with an arrangement of cords. It is still in use by the Navajo and the Moki people. Among the Moki the men set up the loom in the kiva, a sort of club room entirely devoted to the men, whereas among the Navajo, women usually weave under a flimsy shelter of boughs. The Navajo builds no substantial house, because he will never live in a structure in which any one has died. Probably some such idea retarded many tribes from building more permanently.

It was a sorry day when the trader brought them alcohol. By its use tribes were degraded, swindled, beggared. Occasionally some energetic chief would raise an objection, even to the point of a fight with his people, but it was like a man raising his hand to halt the north wind. The whites wanted the goods the native had, and they wanted them for nothing. Alcohol and water were next to nothing. Porcupine Bear, a Cheyenne, once protested so vigorously that he and a brother chief came near to mortal combat. He was overruled, and like Rip Van Winkle, they all agreed not to count that time. Very soon every one was full of whiskey, not excepting the noble Porcupine Bear himself. The traders poured tallow into the bottom of the measuring cup so that it should hold less than the stipulated amount, also putting thumbs and fingers in to cunningly accomplish the same cheat.

As to population, it is difficult to form an exact estimate. Undoubtedly in early times the number of natives in the region forming the United States was exaggerated; the tendency now appears rather to go to the other extreme. The dwellings having been mostly of perishable materials there is little to indicate former population outside of the mounds of the Mississippi valley, and the house ruins of the South-west. The latter are so numerous as to testify either to residence for an immense period or to a population of considerable size. It was probably both. While these village sites were often only repetitions by the same people at different times, yet there are so many of them that there must also have been a goodly number of clans and tribes. Whole areas, like the region lying immediately north of the Colorado River, exhibit multitudinous remains, but, when white men first went there, only a few scattered bands of Pai Utes were found, who built nothing but brush wickiups.

The time when the others expired has never been even approximately established. It may have been one, two, three, any number of centuries before our occupation. In that climate a house ruin might endure ages with hardly a noticeable change. But there are certain points leading to the belief that some of the depopulating was of sudden occurrence, and as diseases brought by the Europeans early spread from Mexico, and as sedentary people closely grouped would suffer even more than tribes living in open camps, it appears reasonable to assume that smallpox and kindred diseases ravaged the whole Wilderness soon after the landing of Cortez, and were particularly disastrous in the South-west. Nothing in the shape of skeletons would remain to tell the tales of destruction, because wolves and dogs would devour the bodies and scatter the bones. As they will dig a body out of a grave and strew the bones far and wide, dragging one from a house would be simple. When the smallpox finally swept through the plains tribes, in historical time, they were wofully reduced in numbers. Many killed themselves to avoid the lingering horrors. Whole tribes were exterminated, and the wolves and dogs consumed the putrid carcasses.[30]

Probably there was never a dense population, yet there might have been, say, three or four hundred thousand all told, in the Wilderness. This, with perhaps, six or seven hundred thousand east of the Mississippi, would give a total aboriginal population for the area of the United States of about a million.[31] The estimate of Major Powell was under three-quarters of a million. A quarter of a million are left, and they are not decreasing, for though they are very poor as a rule, owing to the destruction of their game and other food supplies and to their having no means of earning money, yet contagion no longer destroys them as of old, and wars are a thing of the past. They are now, however, a different people from those occupying the country at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

To their enemies they were often horribly cruel, to those of their own hue as well as those who were white. And they learned speedily that the white man was much the same as themselves in this regard. They no longer burn victims at the stake, but the white man who, in the earliest time gave them fearful lessons in this art, still continues it; even within sight of our temples of justice. Their wars were multiplied by the compression of their free territory, which was the result of the white man's arrival, and by the impositions of the newcomers. There was one locality, a strip lying along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, which appears to have been a sort of No Man's Land, and this was called the "Hostile Ground," and the "War Road." Any one wandering in this tract was always in danger of attack from many directions.

If a war party met with failure it would try to recover its prestige by attacking whatever came in its way, but if it were successful, all but the enemy it had originally proceeded against were comparatively safe.

A successful band reaching the borders of its home camp would send a runner in with the announcement, when the people would turn out to form a triumphal procession, and the braves decked themselves out in war-bonnets, war-shirts, etc., kept for such parades. One with his face blackened carried a long pole from which the bloody scalp-trophies dangled, and these were saluted with shouts of joy. At the same time they were reviled as enemies. This pole was planted in front of the lodge of the head chief, where later the scalp-dance and other ceremonies were performed. Many tribes removed all their hair but a solitary lock, called the scalp-lock in consequence, left for the benefit of the enemy. The number of scalps a warrior could boast was the gauge of his military importance in the tribe. But when the war party returned in defeat, the camp became a pandemonium of wailing, and moaning, and gnashing of teeth. Women chopped off fingers by way of mourning; tore their flesh; and braves also shockingly mutilated themselves. Then nothing short of a success in war could wash out the disgrace.

One hardly can believe that a large number of these people once had their villages and their farms east of the Mississippi, where the factory and the mowing-machine now hold sway, but in the South-west wherever we tread we discover some indication of the old population: a trail, an irrigating ditch, a tree for a ladder, house walls, rock pictures, etc., and often, far from the tumult of the modern world, we seem almost to catch the sigh of a voice, or the rustle of a blanket, in the breeze that whispers through the old piÑon tree. On the East Mesa of the Mokis we appear to command a clear perspective, for the modern world is not evident. I always seemed there to be far out of it. Through their windows we can well see into the past and reconstruct the wilderness. Sitting on the housetop at the day's end, the surf of our restless civilisation beating against the far horizon, the vanished sun burnishing with a wondrous spread of gold the whole high vault of the Arizona sky, we drowsily follow the fading light as it dissolves in a sea-like mist the plains so far below, till they no longer have being but float from its firm moorings, the great headland—villages, rocks, and all—drifting it backward through phantasmal centuries. And out of the strange houses around us, where the mothers sing their lullabies, arise the forgotten hosts of other days, with the cry of the chase and the clash of battle, as if like Don Roderick we had unlocked the fateful gates of the Forbidden Tower and were about to be overwhelmed. Suddenly, amidst the turmoil of that ancient throng we discover a greater commotion. It is the European with his hand of iron, shooting as he marches, while through the smoke of his gun rises, like the Spectre of the Brocken, a hideous companion he does not see. It is the dismal Shadow of Death, smiting right and left; and they walk on together, ever over corpses.