Littell's Living Age/Volume 139/Issue 1796/The North American Indians

From The London Times.

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

One of the most interesting papers read in the Anthropological Section at the recent meeting of the British Association was by Professor Daniel Wilson, of Toronto, on the Canadian Indians. Professor Wilson showed that the Canadian Indians, instead of "melting away" before the civilized virtues and vices of the white man, have already been to a considerable extent absorbed, and the likelihood is that ultimately this absorption will be complete. At present, Professor Wilson maintains — and he has so mastered the subject that he has a right to speak — the blood of the so-called "red man" flows in the veins of every class of Canadian, from the highest to the lowest; and many of those who are treated by the government as "Indians" are as white as many of their "pale-faced" fellow-countrymen. This subject of the fate of the American Indian has been also engaging the attention of competent men in the United States, and the facts and statistics which have been collected appear to give the death-blow to the commonly accepted "blight" and "withering" theory.

An extremely interesting paper^[1] on the subject, just published, by Lieutenant-Colonel Mallery, enters into the question of the former and present number of the Indians in so thorough a manner as to give confidence in the conclusions come to. Colonel Mallery, from his position on the United States Survey, has had every opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the present condition and number of the Indians, and he has taken great pains to become acquainted with whatever records exist as to their past numbers. Colonel Mallery shows that the estimates of earlier writers are so varied as to be untrustworthy. Early travellers had no opportunity whatever of acquiring a knowledge of the Indian population of the North American continent, but naturally would exaggerate the number of those with whom they came into contact. Naturally, also, the natives from a wide district would crowd to the shores of the sea, river, or lake, which were the first visitors' only highways, and thus the latter would be led to form an exaggerated notion of the extent of the whole population. Colonel Mallery shows that before and long after the advent of the whites, the only regions where the Indians could find support were along the shores of the great rivers and lakes. If the successive waves of continental migration did originate on the Pacific coast, it is scarcely to be supposed that they crossed the arid plains only lately explored, or even the more eastern prairies, where, with all then existing facilities the support of life would have been most difficult. The savages relied at first mainly on fish, secondarily and later on the chase, and only in their last stages of development on agriculture, which, though a greater resource among some tribes than is generally understood, became so after their long-continued occupancy of regions near the Atlantic and great lakes. They could neither, before obtaining the horse, pursue to great advantage the large game of the open prairie necessary for their subsistence while passing it, nor transport stores before collected, and moved probably (as one route, others being also contended for) via the headwaters of the Mississippi and the outlet of Lake Superior, resting on long lines and with little lateral spread, near rivers, lakes, and the ocean. The greater part of the districts east of the Rocky Mountains and some to their west, where the Indians are now, or in recent years have been found, and much of which was until recently charted as the "Great American Desert," was, in fact, a solitude when America was discovered, the population being then confined to the wooded borders of the traversing streams. Colonel Mallery adduces irrefutable evidence to prove that many Indian tribes now classed as prairie Indians were, when first met with and for long after, lake and river Indians. Early voyagers on the Mississippi and Lake Michigan met Indians only after many days', and even weeks', travel. Vermont and western Massachusetts and much of New Hampshire were left unoccupied. On early maps the low country from the Mobile River to Florida was marked vacant, and the oldest reports from Georgia assert with gratulation that there were scarcely any savages within four hundred miles of Savannah. Colonel Mallery adduces many other facts which, when grouped together, show how insignificant was the territory actually occupied by the natives before the European immigrants could possibly have affected their numbers or distribution, and how silly are any estimates obviously influenced by a calculation of the product of their number on some one square mile, multiplied by the figures expressing all the square miles embraced between the Atlantic and Pacific and certain degrees of latitude. The mounds of the Mississippi Valley certainly prove that at some time it held a large population; but the origin and period, connections, and fate of these so-called "mound-builders" are still sub judice. It is, however, conceded that they were agricultural, had several arts unknown to the historic tribes, and had passed away before the latter had come within our knowledge. The ethnologists and philologists, though so widely disagreeing in other respects, both admit that the actual distribution of the natives at the time of, and shortly after, their discovery, was as represented by Colonel Mallery, and the immediate practical inquiry concerns the tribes then and still known to us, rather than ancient inhabitants, whether or not the ancestors of these tribes.

This distribution rendered misconception of their numbers by the early whites almost unavoidable. The latter, using the natural and only readily available highways of ocean and river, met the Indians precisely where they were most numerous and stationary, and could not thoroughly explore the endless tracts where they only occasionally roamed, or which they entirely avoided; while the enormous distances of separation prevented any one traveller from actually seeing, and thereby distinguishing between, but a limited number of tribes. Even if an expedition through the wilderness were risked, the very presence of the explorers from obvious motives of curiosity, barter, or defence, would, as we have said, attract all the bands over many miles. Cunning and vanity, moreover, would induce every tribe to exaggerate its own importance, which there was at first no evidence to contradict. So late as 1829 Naw-Kaw, a Winnebago chief, attending a balloon ascent in the Battery in New York, where there was an immense crowd, and being asked if he had ever seen so many people together, replied haughtily, "We have more in our smallest villages." Considering that his whole tribe only mustered then about three thousand souls, this may pass as a creditable specimen of aboriginal brag, which, if government officials had not already become familiar through systematic fraud with the actual count of the Winnebagoes, would doubtless have been adopted as a faithful comparison to influence statistics, as has actually occurred with other chiefs, who, likening their few score warriors to "the leaves of the forest," have been seriously quoted. The early travellers received such tales with alacrity to enhance their own adventures, repeating them with the fabled reproductiveness of the three black crows, even when they did not imitate Falstaff in the multiplication of his men in buckram. Another potent cause of error in the enumeration of the Indians, extending even to modern times, and from which we are scarcely yet free, necessarily arose from the utterly confused synonyms. Not only had each of the tribes a variety of names among themselves, but the various English, French, and Dutch immigrants added to these names of their own coining so that one tribe might have a dozen different names, and each name has often been mistakenly held to apply to a different tribe.

The main explanations of the lately unquestioned law dooming all the American Indians to speedy death have been in their constant wars and the strange diseases introduced. As regards the latter small-pox has been the most fatal; but Colonel Mallery shows that its ravages have been no greater among the Indians than among other races and other lands which recovered from it. Moreover, these ravages have been greatly exaggerated often, as may be seen from the report of the Canadian minister of the interior for 1876. In 1868 it was stated the Indians of Vancouver's Island had been nearly exterminated from small-pox, and that "hundreds of bodies lay unburied." After a full inquiry it was found that only eighty-eight Indians had died from the disease in the whole district throughout the entire year. The fact is that many Indians have died of smallpox, as did many Europeans before the days of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Jenner, and also that those who could ran away from the danger, as more enlightened people do now, with the difference that the latter are brought back by the ties of real and personal property, which, not troubling the former, they ever after avoided a locality that in their theory of disease was the scene of demoniac wrath. It may be noted that this particular disease has ceased to be a scourge to the tribes, the reports of fifty-six agents in recent years not including any fatal case.

As to the destructive element of war, that was the normal condition of the Indians before the advent of the whites, who only added to the number of the combatants. The whites did not introduce extermination and dispossession, which were systematically carried out before they came by one or two of the most powerful tribes. The whites were never more systematic or successful in subjugation by force of arms than were several of the Indian leagues, and all we know of the prevailing customs of the continent tells us that war was with its natives a necessity for the assertion of manhood, if not a religious duty. Perhaps since the power of the white race has been established with restraining effect, there have been fewer and less bloody wars than were frequent for centuries before, and certainly for years past no whole tribe, and but a minority of individuals among very few of the tribes, have been on the war path against any other in the United States. No such conversion, then, from less to greater combativeness is apparent as would account for any important change in the Indian population. If warfare has been a chief cause of their decrease, they were on the wane long prior to their discovery. Of this, however, there is no evidence. Taking the Iroquois as a representative body of Indians, Colonel Mallery shows that they now number 13,668 souls, as against 11,650, thirteen years beforethe Declaration of Independence, being an increase of two thousand. This is not a solitary instance; and especially among the hybrids of Canada, New York, the Indian Territory, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin, has there been a steady increase during the past thirty or forty years. Figures are given to show that the Sioux Confederacy have quadrupled in one hundred and forty years, and doubled, at least, in twenty-nine years. Remarkable increase is shown in other tribes, notwithstanding war, disease, and whisky. It is at the same time admitted that in some of the western regions, especially California, the unusual barbarity of the brutal white has told seriously on the Indian population there, though not to nearly so great an extent as vague estimates would make out.

Only within the past four years has there been any official report of the births and deaths among several tribes sufficiently general to be of value. These official returns relate to over one hundred thousand Indians, belonging to nearly one hundred tribes, and the excess of births over deaths was found to vary from six-tenths to 2ˑ32 per cent. Again, in former times only the strongest survived, weak children not being allowed to live, and old and diseased persons being often put out of the way. Only one of twins was allowed to survive, and generally the battle of life was only to the strong. Now, since the United States government protect and subsidize the Indians the latter are acute enough to see that it is to their interest to have as many mouths to feed and bodies to clothe as possible, and act accordingly.

Colonel Mallery then, from the data which he has collected, comes to the conclusion that when Columbus discovered America there were not more than five hundred thousand Indians to the north of Mexico, and that now, in the United States and Alaska alone, excluding Canada, there are something like three hundred thousand. If the Canadian Indians and hybrids were added to this it would probably turn out that the native population had not at least decreased. At all events it seems to us that Colonel Mallery has adduced strong reasons for hesitating to accept the "blight" and "withering" theory for the American Indians at least. That it does apply to other races with which the Anglo-Saxon at least has come into contact, there is only too good reason to believe. The last of the Tasmanians has gone, the years of the Sandwich Islanders are numbered, many other Pacific islands have been almost depopulated. As to Australia, we wish some one would do for it what Colonel Mallery has done for North America. We believe the results for South America, if the native population question were carefully examined, would show that there also the decrease has been greatly exaggerated. To make a sweeping generalization as to the inevitable disappearance of white before black is absurd; what would be the use of Africa to the world if this were so? As to the future of the American Indian, both Colonel Mallery and Professor Wilson speak hopefully. The process of breaking in the savage to civilized ways of life must be slow. It cannot be done per saltum. How long did it take the European conglomeration of tribes to settle down and reach their present stage of culture? In Canada many so-called Indians are really as settled and civilized as the English peasant, perhaps, on the whole, more so; and if the Indians in the States had as fair play as their Canadian brethren, the process would be much more rapid than it is. At all events, the theory of disappearance by extinction seems now a most improbable one, and that by absorption is proved to be actually occurring! Indeed, the old, old drama which has been acted in Europe from the time of the cavemen until even now is being continued on the other side of the Atlantic; and the result a century or two hence may be a race more mixed, perhaps, than any in the old world, but with the English type of character dominant, and by its very mixture better able to cope with the conditions which prevail on a continent so different in many respects from Eurasia. Professor Huxley has shown how absurd it is to talk of purity of race; there is no such thing probably anywhere in the world, least of all in Europe, in whose population there are lower strains than even that of the North American Indian. We may state that some of the most eminent scientific inquirers in the United States share Colonel Mallery's opinions as to the increase of the Indians.

Colonel Mallery disperses a few other delusions with regard to the North American Indian, most people's idea of whom is derived from Cooper's fictions. He shows how they got their name of "red men" — from the fact that they were in the constant habit of coloring their faces with the ochre found in the soil. Their real color is brown, with many shades. No more common notion exists with regard to the Indians than their belief in one "Great Spirit," under names like Manitou, Taku Wakau, etc. A better acquaintance with Indian traditions, and particularly with the etymology of its languages, shows that this also is a great delusion. The more learned missionaries are now not only agreed that a general creator or upholder never existed in aboriginal cosmogony, but that the much simpler belief in a superhuman Great Chief or ruler is a modern graft. However unpleasant, from a sentimental point of view, Colonel Mallery has done good service by his researches in abolishing beliefs which are so unfounded, and some of which are apt to be mischievous in their consequences.

1. Two papers are in fact quoted from in this editorial, the titles of which are: "The Former and Present Number of our Indians," published in the "Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science," Nashville Meeting, and "Some Common Errors Respecting the North American Indians," in the Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington, both by Brevet Lieut.-Col. Garrick Mallery, Captain 1st Infantry, U. S. Army, detailed with the U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region in charge of Maj. J. W. Powell.