French Pathfinders in North America Part 1

French Pathfinders in North America.

by William Henry Johnson.

FOREWORD

The compiler of the following sketches does not make any claim to originality. He has dealt with material that has been used often and again. Still there has seemed to him to be a place for a book which should outline the story of the great French explorers in such simple, direct fas.h.i.+on as might attract young readers. Trying to meet this need, he has sought to add to the usefulness of the volume by introductory chapters, simple in language, but drawn from the best authorities and carefully considered, giving a view of Indian society; also, by inserting numerous notes on Indian tribal connections, customs, and the like subjects.

By selecting a portion of Radisson's journal for publication he does not by any means range himself on the side of the scholarly and gifted writer who has come forward as the champion of that picturesque scoundrel, and seriously proposes {vi} him as the real hero of the Northwest, to whom, we are told, is due the honor which we have mistakenly lavished on such commonplace persons as Champlain, Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle.

While the present writer is not qualified to express a critical opinion as to the merits of the controversy about Radisson, a careful reading of his journal has given him an impression that the greatest part is so vague, so wanting in verifiable details, as to be worthless for historical purposes. One portion, however, seems unquestionably valuable, besides being exceedingly interesting. It is that which recounts his experiences on Lake Superior. It bears the plainest marks of truth and authenticity, and it is accepted as historical by the eminent critic, Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites. Therefore it is reproduced here, in abridged form; and on the strength of it Radisson is a.s.signed a place among the Pathfinders.

French Pathfinders in North America

Chapter I

THE ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE INDIAN RACE

America probably peopled from Asia.--Unity of the American Race.--The Eskimo, possibly, an Exception.--Range of the Several Groups.

In an earlier volume, "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," the probable origin of the native races of America has been discussed. Let us restate briefly the general conclusions there set forth.

It is the universal opinion of scientific men that the people whom we call Indians did not originate in the Western World, but, in the far distant past, came upon this continent from another--from Europe, some say; from Asia, say others. In support of the latter opinion it is pointed out that Asia and America once were connected by a broad belt of land, now sunk {4} beneath the shallow Bering Sea. It is easy, then, to picture successive hordes of dusky wanderers pouring over from the old, old East upon the virgin soil of what was then emphatically a new world, since no human beings roamed its vast plains or traversed its stately forests.

Human wave followed upon wave, the new comers pus.h.i.+ng the older ones on.

Some wandered eastward and spread themselves in the region surrounding Hudson Bay. Others took a southeast course and were the ancestors of the Algonquins, Iroquois, and other families inhabiting the eastern territory of the United States. Still others pushed their way down the Pacific coast and peopled Mexico and Central America, while yet others, driven no doubt by the crowding of great numbers into the most desirable regions of the isthmus, pa.s.sed on into South America and gradually overspread it.

Most likely these hordes of Asiatic savages wandered into America during hundreds of years and no doubt there was great diversity among them, some being far more advanced in the arts of life than others. But the essential thing to notice is that they were _all of one blood_. Thus their descendants, however different they may {5} have become in language and customs, const.i.tute one stock, which we call the _American Race_.

The peoples who reared the great earth-mounds of the Middle West, those who carved the curious sculptures of Central America, those who built the cave-dwellings of Arizona, those who piled stone upon stone in the quaint pueblos of New Mexico, those who drove Ponce de Leon away from the sh.o.r.es of Florida, and those who greeted the Pilgrims with, "Welcome, Englishmen!"--all these, beyond a doubt, were of one widely varying race.

To this oneness of all native Americans there is, perhaps, a single exception. Some writers look upon the Eskimo as a remnant of an ancient European race, known as the "Cave-men" because their remains are found in caves in Western Europe, always a.s.sociated with the bones of arctic animals, such as the reindeer, the arctic fox, and the musk-sheep. From this fact it seems that these primitive men found their only congenial habitation amid ice and snow. Now, the Eskimo are distinctly an arctic race, and in other particulars they are amazingly like these men of the caves who dwelt in Western Europe when it had a climate like that of Greenland. The lamented {6} Dr. John Fiske puts the case thus strongly: "The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from antler, used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the Cave-men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the Pleistocene caves of France and England, they would be indistinguishable in appearance from the remains of the Cave-men which are now found there."

Further, these ancient men had an astonis.h.i.+ng talent for delineating animals and hunting scenes. In the caves of France have been found carvings on bone and ivory, probably many tens of thousands of years old, which represent in the most life-like manner mammoths, cave-bears, and other animals now extinct. Strangely enough, of all existing savage peoples the Eskimo alone possess the same faculty. These circ.u.mstances make it probable that they are a remnant of the otherwise extinct Cave-men. If this is so, their ancestors probably pa.s.sed over to this continent by a land-connection then existing between Northern Europe and Northern America, of which Greenland is a survival.

From the Eskimo southward to Cape Horn {7} we find various branches of the one American race. First comes the _Athapascan_ stock, whose range extends from Hudson Bay westward through British America to the Rocky Mountains. One branch of this family left the dreary regions of almost perpetual ice and snow, wandered far down toward the south, and became known as the roaming and fierce Apaches, Navajos, and Lipans of the burning southwestern plains.

Immediately south of the Athapascans was the most extensive of all the families, the _Algonquin_. Their territory stretched without interruption westward from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to the Rocky Mountains, on both banks of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. It extended southward along the Atlantic seaboard as far, perhaps, as the Savannah River. This family embraced some of the most famous tribes, such as the Abnakis, Micmacs, Pa.s.samaquoddies, Pequots, Narragansetts, and others in New England; the Mohegans, on the Hudson; the Lenape, on the Delaware; the Nantic.o.kes, in Maryland; the Powhatans, in Virginia; the Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and Chippeways, in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys; and the Shawnees, on the Tennessee.

{8} This great family is the one that came most in contact and conflict with our forefathers. The Indians who figure most frequently on the b.l.o.o.d.y pages of our early story were Algonquins. This tribe has produced intrepid warriors and sagacious leaders.

Its various branches represent a very wide range of culture. Captain John Smith and Champlain, coasting the sh.o.r.es of New England, found them closely settled by native tribes living in fixed habitations and cultivating regular crops of corn, beans, and pumpkins. On the other hand, the Algonquins along the St. Lawrence, as well as some of the western tribes, were s.h.i.+ftless and roving, growing no crops and having no settled abodes, but depending on fish, game, and berries for subsistence, famished at one time, at another gorged. Probably the highest representatives of this extensive family were the Shawnees, at its southernmost limit.

Like an island in the midst of the vast Algonquin territory was the region occupied by the _Huron-Iroquois_ family. In thrift, intelligence, skill in fortification, and daring in war, this stock stands preeminent among all native Americans. It included the Eries and Hurons, in Canada; {9} the Susquehannocks, on the Susquehanna; and the Conestogas, also in Pennsylvania. But by far the most important branch was the renowned confederacy called the Five Nations. This included the Senecas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Mohawks. These five tribes occupied territory in a strip extending through the lake region of New York. At a later date a kindred people, the Tuscaroras, who had drifted down into Carolina, returned northward and rejoined the league, which thereafter was known as the Six Nations. This confederacy was by far the most formidable aggregation of Indians within the territory of the present United States. It waged merciless war upon other native peoples and had become so dreaded, says Dr. Fiske, that at the cry "A Mohawk!" the Indians of New England fled like sheep. It was especially hostile to some alien branches of its own kindred, the Hurons and Eries in particular.

South of the Algonquins was the _Maskoki_ group of Indians, of a decidedly high cla.s.s, comprising the Creeks, or Muskhogees, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, and, later, the Seminoles. They occupied the area of the Gulf States, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. The {10} building of the Ohio earthworks is by many students attributed to the ancestors of these southern tribes, and it was they who heroically fought the Spanish invaders.

The powerful _Dakota_ family, also called Sioux, ranged over territory extending from Lake Michigan to the Rocky Mountains and covering the most of the valley of the Missouri.

The _p.a.w.nee_ group occupied the Platte valley, in Nebraska, and the territory extending thence southward; and the _Shoshonee_ group had for its best representatives the renowned Comanches, the matchless hors.e.m.e.n of the plains.

On the Pacific coast were several tribes, but none of any special importance. In the Columbia and Sacramento valleys were the lowest specimens of the Indian race, the only ones who may be legitimately cla.s.sed as savages. All the others are more properly known as barbarians.

In New Mexico and Arizona is a group of remarkable interest, the _Pueblo Indians_, who inhabit large buildings (pueblos) of stone or sun-dried brick. In this particular they stand in a cla.s.s distinct from all other native tribes in the United States. They comprise the Zunis, Moquis, Acomans, and others, having different languages, {11} but standing on the same plane of culture. In many respects they have advanced far beyond any other stock. They have specially cultivated the arts of peace.

Their great stone or adobe dwellings, in which hundreds of persons live, reared with almost incredible toil on the top of nearly inaccessible rocks or on the ledges of deep gorges, were constructed to serve at the same time as dwelling-places and as strongholds against the attacks of the roaming and murdering Apaches. These people till the thirsty soil of their arid region by irrigation with water conducted for miles. They have developed many industries to a remarkable degree, and their pottery shows both skill and taste.

These high-cla.s.s barbarians are especially interesting because they have undergone little change since the Spaniards, under Coronado, first became acquainted with them, 364 years ago. They still live in the same way and observe the same strange ceremonies, of which the famous "Snake-dance" is the best known. They are, also, on a level of culture not much below that of the ancient Mexicans; so that from the study of them we may get a very good idea of the people whom Cortes found and conquered.

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Chapter II

SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE

Mistakes of the Earliest European Visitors as to Indian Society and Government.--How Indian Social Life originated.--The Family Tie the Central Principle.--Gradual Development of a Family into a Tribe.--The Totem.

The first white visitors to America found men exercising some kind of authority, and they called them kings, after the fas.h.i.+on of European government. The Spaniards even called the head-chief of the Mexicans the "Emperor Montezuma." There was not a king, still less an emperor, in the whole of North America. Had these first Europeans understood that they were face to face with men of the Stone Age, that is, with men who had not progressed further than our own forefathers had advanced thousands of years ago, in that dim past when they used weapons and implements of stone, and when they had not as yet anything like written language, they would have been saved many blunders. They would not have called native chiefs by such high-sounding t.i.tles as "King {16} Powhatan" and "King Philip." They would not have styled the simple Indian girl, Pocahontas, a princess; and King James, of England, would not have made the ludicrous mistake of being angry with Rolfe for marrying her, because he feared that when her father died, she would be ent.i.tled to "the throne," and Rolfe would claim to be King of Virginia!

The study of Indian life has this peculiar interest, that it gives us an insight into the thinking and acting of our own forefathers long before the dawn of history, when they wors.h.i.+ped G.o.ds very much like those of the Indians.

All the world over, the most widely separated peoples in similar stages of development exhibit remarkably similar ideas and customs, as if one had borrowed from the other. There is often a curious resemblance between the myths of some race in Central Africa and those of some heathen tribe in Northern Europe. The human mind, under like conditions, works in the same way and produces like results. Thus, in studying pictures of Indian life as it existed at the Discovery, we have before us a sort of object-lesson in the condition of our own remote ancestors.

Now, the first European visitors made serious {17} errors in describing Indian life. They applied European standards of judgment to things Indian. A tadpole does not look in the least like a frog. An uninformed person who should find one in a pool, and, a few weeks later, should find a frog there, would never imagine that the tadpole had changed into the frog. Now, Indian society was in what we may call the tadpole stage. It was quite unlike European society, and yet it contained exactly the same elements as those out of which European society gradually unfolded itself long ago.

Indian society grew up in the most natural way out of the crude beginnings of all society. Let us consider this point for a moment.

Suppose human beings of the lowest grade to be living together in a herd, only a little better than beasts, what influence would first begin to elevate them? Undoubtedly, parental affection. Indeed, mother-love is the foundation-stone of all our civilization. On that steadfast rock the rude beginnings of all social life are built. Young animals attain their growth and the ability to provide for themselves very early. The parents' watchful care does not need to be long exercised. The offspring, so soon as it is weaned, is quickly {18} forgotten. Not so the young human being. Its brain requires a long time for its slow maturing. Thus, for years, without its parents' care it would perish. The mother's love is strengthened by the constant attention which she must so long give to her child, and this is shared, in a degree, by the father. At the same time, their common interest in the same object draws them closer together. Before the first-born is able to find its own food and shelter other children come, and so the process is continually extended. Thus arises the _family_, the corner-stone of all life that is above that of brutes.

But the little household, living in a cave and fighting hand to hand with wild beasts and equally wild men, has a hard struggle to maintain itself. In time, however, through the marriage of the daughters--for in savage life the young men usually roam off and take wives elsewhere, while the young women stay at home--instead of the original single family, we have the grown daughters, with their husbands, living still with their parents and rearing children, thus forming a group of families, closely united by kins.h.i.+p. In the next generation, by the same process continued, we have a dozen, perhaps twenty, families, {19} all closely related, and living, it may be, under one shelter, the men hunting and providing food for the whole group, and the women working together and preparing the food in common.

Moreover, they all trace their relations.h.i.+p through their mothers, because the women are the home-staying element. In our group of families, for instance, all the women are descendants of the original single woman with whom we began; but the husbands have come from elsewhere. This is no doubt the reason why among savages it seems the universal practice to trace kins.h.i.+p through the mother. Again, in such a little community as we have supposed, the women, being all united by close ties of blood, are the ruling element. The men may beat their wives, but, after all, the women, if they join together against any one man, can put him out and remain in possession.

These points it is important to bear in mind, because they explain what would otherwise appear very singular features of Indian life. For instance, we understand now why a son does not inherit anything, not so much as a tobacco-pipe, at his father's death. He is counted as the mother's child. For the same reason, if the {20} mother has had more than one husband, and children by each marriage, these are all counted as full brothers and sisters, because they have the same mother.

Such a group of families as has been supposed is called a _clan_, or in Roman history a _gens_. It may be small, or it may be very numerous.

The essential feature is that it is a body of people united by the tie of common blood. It may have existed for hundreds of years and have grown to thousands of persons. Some of the clans of the Scotch Highlands were quite large, and it would often have been a hopeless puzzle to trace a relations.h.i.+p running back through many generations.

Still, every Cameron knew that he was related to all the other Camerons, every Campbell to all the other Campbells, and he recognized a clear duty of standing by every clansman as a brother in peace and in war. We see thus that the clan organization grows naturally out of the drawing together of men to strengthen themselves in the fierce struggle of savage life. The clan is simply an extension of the family. The family idea still runs through it, and kins.h.i.+p is the bond that holds together all the members.

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Now, this was just the stage of social progress that the Indians had reached at the Discovery. Their society was organized on the basis of the clan, and it bore all the marks of its origin.