Sevenfold division of the North Indians. the first authenticated European explorations, occupied the country enclosed by the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi, the great lakes, and the St. American Lawrence, three, the Natchez, the Uchees, and the Catawbas, possessed but a small space of territory. The range of the Cherokees was wider; that of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, wider still. The combination of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks (Muskhogees), in the extreme southern region, was yet more extensive. But the largest domain of all was that of the family to which the French gave the name of Algonquin. In the territory roamed over by the Algonquins was included that which extends along the Atlantic Ocean from Pamlico Sound to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and no other race than this occupied any portion of New England. Twofold division of the New England A difference in dialect is the basis of a division of the New-England Indians into two classes, one consisting of those who inhabited what is now the State of Maine, nearly up to its western border; the other, of the rest of the New-England native population.2 Of the Maine Indians, the Etetchemins dwelt furthest towards the east; the Abenaquis, of which nation the Tarratines were a part,3 hunted on both sides of 1 Mr. Gallatin's map, attached to his Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, &c., (in the second volume of Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society,) exhibits the territories belonging to these tribes respectively. 2 Gallatin (Synopsis, 32); Williamson (History of Maine, I. 460). A comparison of Mr. Gallatin's vocabularies (Synopsis, 307, &c.) appears abundantly to confirm the statement. There are not wanting, however, high authorities on the opposite side. (See Pickering, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XIX. 236-239, and Duponceau, Ibid., Ap. VI., VII.) Gorges (Ibid., XXVI. 59) speaks of an Indian of his from Mar Indians. tha's Vineyard, and another from Maine, "who at first hardly understood one the other's speech, till after a while I perceived the difference was no more than that as ours is between the Northern and Southern people." Gookin says (Ibid., I. 149), “The Indians of the parts of New England, especially upon the sea-coasts, use the same sort of speech and language.” But under the name New England Gookin did not include Maine. In the preceding chapter, entitled "Of the Principal Indians that inhabit New England," he says nothing of those east of the Piscataqua. 3 Hutchinson, I. 404. Williamson the Penobscot, and westward as far as the Saco, if not quite to the Piscataqua. The home of the Penacook, or Pawtucket, Indians was in the southeast corner of New Hampshire and the contiguous region of Massachusetts. Next dwelt the Massachusetts tribe, along the bay of that name. Then were found successively the Pokanokets, or Wampanoags, in the southeastern region of Massachusetts and by Buzzard's and Narragansett Bays; the Narragansetts, with an inferior and probably tributary tribe, called the Nyantics, in what is now the State of Rhode Island; the Pequots, between the Narragansetts and the river formerly called the Pequot River, now the Thames; and the Mohegans, spreading themselves as far as the river Connecticut. From the Mohegan hunting-grounds the country of the Mohawks was understood to begin. That powerful nation never had a permanent residence on NewEngland soil, but they were accustomed annually to send envoys to collect tribute from the nearest Eastern tribes. In the central region of Massachusetts were the Nipmucks, or Nipnets, and along Cape Cod the Nausets, who appear to have owed some fealty to the Pokanokets. Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Northern New Hampshire were almost, if not absolutely, without inhabitants. lation of New England. The estimates which have been made of the native Native popu- population of New England at the time of the first English immigrations are discordant. A probable computation places the number not far from fifty thousand souls.1 Of this aggregate, Connecticut and Rhode Island together may have contained one half, and Maine less than two thirds of the other half. This was no occupation of a country which, not yet completely occupied, contains at this time three millions of men. teristics. These people held a low place on the scale of humanity. Even their physical capacities contradicted Their physithe promise of their external conformation. Sup- cal characple and agile, so that it was said they would run eighty or a hundred miles in a day, and back again in the next two, they sank under continuous labor. The lymphatic temperament indicated the same preponderance in them of "vegetative nature" which marked other animals of the same continent.1 They scarcely wept or smiled. Their slender appetites required small indulgence. They could support life on the scantiest quantity of food, and the innutritious stimulus of tobacco seemed almost enough to supply its place; though at times a gormandizing rage seemed to possess them, and they would be as ravenous in abundance as they were capable of being abstemious under necessity. If they were continent, it can only be to coldness of constitution that this was due; but no instance is recorded of their offering insult to a female captive or soliciting her familiarity, and the coyness of their women repelled approach on the part of European visitors. If there was noticed a remarkable exemption from physical deformities, this was probably not the effect of any peculiar congenital force or completeness, but of circumstances which forbade the prolongation of any imperfect life. The deaf, blind, or lame child was too burdensome to be reared, and, according to a savage's estimate of usefulness and enjoyment, its prolonged life would not requite its nurture. A sort of compassion would early 1 Guyot, Earth and Man, pp. 193195. "There is even in the tropical man of the Old World, in Africa at least, a somewhat of native vigor, of vital energy, manifested by his san3 VOL. I. guine temperament, by his gayety, by his lively affections, and by his muscular strength, which places him higher than the Indian of tropical America,” &c. Ibid., p. 206. relieve it from what would seem, under such disabilities, the misery of existence, or it would die prematurely from neglect, or from mere want of that skilful assiduity which parental affection in civilized society studies peculiarly to bestow upon peculiarly helpless offspring. Their demeanor, so grave when exposed to notice, was apt to be taken for an indication of self-respect, but was equally susceptible of being interpreted as betokening a mere stolid vacuity of emotion and thought. Their dress. Supplies for the essential wants of physical life-food, shelter, and clothing -were of the .rudest kind. Undressed skins of deer or of other wild animals furnished the winter's attire ;) in summer, the men wore about the middle only a piece of deer-skin, from which the fur had been removed by friction. Moccasons reaching above the ankle, of thin dressed deer-skin or of the moose's hide according to the season, afforded some protection and support to the foot. Their houses. The wigwam, or Indian house, of a circular or oval shape, was made of bark or mats laid over a framework of branches of trees stuck in the ground in such a manner as to converge at the top, where was a central aperture for the escape of smoke from the fire beneath. The better sort had also a lining of mats. For entrance and egress two low openings were left on opposite sides, one or the other of which was closed with bark or mats, according to the direction of the wind. Their food. For food the natives had fish and game; nuts, roots, and berries, (and, in the last resort, acorns,) which grew wild; and a few cultivated vegetables. In the winter, they shot, or snared, or caught in pitfalls, the moose, the bear, and the deer; in the summer, still less trouble procured for them a variety of birds; in both seasons, at favorable times, the sea and the rivers afforded some supplies. Having no salt, they could not preserve meat except by fumigation, or, for a short time, by bury ing in the snow. They had not the potato, but in th ground-nut, which they dug in the woods, nature had, t a limited extent, furnished a sort of substitute.1 2 4 3 Tobacco they cultivated for luxury, using it only in the way of smoking. For food, they raised maize, Their horor Indian corn, the squash, the pumpkin, the ticulture. bean now called Seiva-bean, and a species of sun-flower, whose esculent tuberous root resembled the artichoke in taste. It has been asserted, but without probability, that they had cucumbers and watermelons. One tool sufficed for their wretched husbandry; a hoe, made of a clamshell, or a moose's shoulder-blade, fastened into a wooden handle. Their manure was fish, covered over in the hill along with the seed. When the corn was sufficiently advanced, earth was heaped about it to the height of some inches, for support as well as to extirpate weeds, while the bean-vines were held up by the corn-stalk around which they twined. Fish were taken with lines or nets, the cordage of which was made of twisted fibres of the dogbane, Their or of sinews of the deer. Hooks were fashioned fishing. of sharpened bones of fishes and birds. 1 What commonly goes by this name at the present time (otherwise called pea-nut) is a kind of bean, not a native of New England. The ground-nut is a tuber, varying in size from that of a musket-ball to that of a hen's egg, and when boiled or roasted is mealy and not unpalatable. 2 Maize is not indigenous in New England, but somehow worked its way thither from its unascertained native country nearer the sun. According to Hutchinson (I. 420), there was a tradition that a bird brought it. Roger Williams (Key into the Language of America, Chap. XV.) reports the Indians as saying that "the crow brought them at first an Indian grain of corn in one ear, and an Indian or French bean in another, from the great god Kautontowit's field in the southwest, from whence they held came all their corn and beans." 3 De Candolle (Géographie Botanique) denies both these vegetables to the New World. But the different testimony of Champlain as to Maine in 1604 (Voyage de la Nouvelle France, &c., pp. 73, 80, 84) appears decisive. 4 Higginson (New England's Plantation, in Mass. Hist. Coll., I. 118) gives them the former; Josselyn, the latter. "The watermelon "The watermelon is proper to the country." (Account of Two Voyages, 74, comp. 130.) L'Escarbot (II. 836) says that in the time of Cartier they were cultivated in Canada, not that they were indigenous. |