The How and Why Library/Geography/Section I

by Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

^{1902 by E. Irving Couse, A. N. A.}

The Historian

The Indian Artist is painting in sign language, on buckskin, the story of a battle with American Soldiers. When exhibited at the National Academy this picture was considered one of the most important paintings of the year. See if you can find the sign of the Indians, the United States Calvalry and the officer in command. The dots he is making are "bullets." See the arrows.

CHILDREN OF OUR OWN AND OTHER LANDS

 

I. THE RED CHILD OF THE FOREST

You are proud of being an American boy, aren't you? Perhaps you will be surprised to learn that there is another boy who has a better right to the name than you have. He was here four hundred years ago, when Columbus sailed over the wide ocean and found our country.

This American boy was tall and straight and slender. His eyes were as black as ink, his hair as black as a crow's wing. He could run like a deer, swim like a fish and climb like a squirrel. He was as solemn as a little owl. When he grew to a man he wore a headdress of eagle feathers. His skin was not white like yours. It was nearly the color of an English penny or an American one cent piece. Now you know what he was. He was an American Indian. There are still a good many Indians in our country. They live in houses, on big farms. They dress like white boys, speak English and go to school. But their faces are the same as those Columbus saw.

It was a hard, wild life the Indian boy lived. Still, he had a good deal of fun. It was like camping out all the time. There were four or five million Indians here, but the country was so big that there was room for everybody to move about a good deal. There were no cities or farms; no railway trains or wagons. The Indians had to travel on foot. They followed narrow paths, or trails, through the forests and over the plains. On the rivers and lakes they made long journeys, in boats so light that they could carry them on their shoulders from one stream to another. These boats they called canoes. They were made of birch bark stretched over frames of wood. A great many Indians traveled together, for company and for safety. Each band was called a tribe and each had a chief. When a tribe found a good place to camp, some poles were stuck in the ground in a circle. The top ends of these poles were tied together. Then the skins of wild animals, or mats woven of rushes were fastened over the poles. They called this tent a wigwam. Some Indians built dome-shaped wigwams, like circus tents. Others built long houses of bark, big enough to shelter the tribe.

Our little Indian boy was born in a circus tent wigwam, in a village of other wigwams, in the forest. His mother put a long shirt of soft yellow deer skin on him and taught him his first lesson before he was a day old. She taught him that he must not cry. When he cried she put her hand over his mouth. She did this because cruel enemies and wild animals might hear him. When he grew up he could bear any pain without complaining.

The Indian baby could not even kick. His mother bound him to a flat piece of birch bark, to make his back and legs straight. She hung "the baby cradle and all" from her shoulders. She wrapped a big skin around herself and the baby, if it was cold weather, leaving his face uncovered so he could see. Then they went "by-by." Any baby would like that. When the tribe stopped to rest, the baby and his cradle were hung from the limb of a tree, and the wind rocked him to sleep.

Someone was always saying "don't" to the Indian boy and girl. "Don't make a noise when you walk. You must not even rustle a leaf, or snap a twig." That might scare away the deer father was trying to kill, and then the family must go hungry. Sometimes, when out hunting, a boy had to lie for an hour, as quiet as a pussy at a mouse hole. The Indian boy had to learn to strike fire from two pieces of flint; to make a bow and a stone arrow head; to make a canoe and snow shoes. He shot arrows at a mark every day; he speared fish, and threw stone hatchets. These hatchets were called tomahawks. He must learn the ways and places and calls of animals and birds, and be able to follow the tracks of men and wild beasts. He had to learn how to fight, too, or he and his family would be killed. The Indian boy was grown to a man before he had learned all his lessons.

One sign that he had grown up was that he was given a name. It was really a nickname, given for something he had done. This name he had to bear all his life, so he was very careful not to do anything foolish or cowardly. If he did something brave, and got such a name as Eagle Heart, he was so proud he couldn't sleep the first night. The Indian man was proud and brave and cunning. Sometimes he was cruel. No man could use him for a slave.

THE RED CHILD OF THE FOREST

PAST AND PRESENT

THE Indian medicine man thought he could cure disease by frightening away the evil spirits supposed to cause it, so he wore horns and other things to make him look savage. What is this medicine man wearing that used to belong to Brother Bear? Indians, when they live in wigwams, believe in medicine men, as Eagle Heart did, but most Indian children now go to school and know better. The two

From the Statue by Dallin. THE MEDICINE MAN

center pictures show the boys and girls studying art and manual training at the Indian school at Carlisle, Pa. In the summer the boys and girls at Carlisle are allowed to work on neighboring farms where they can earn a little money and learn how farming is carried on. Our government has established a number of Indian schools and keeps them up at a cost of several million dollars a year.

 

"She hung the baby and cradle and all from her shoulders."		Some tribes wrap up their babies in buckskin bags.
These are wigwams like that in which Eagle Heart was born. They are made of the skins of wild animals.

If Eagle Heart's sister was a merry little maid she might be called Laughing Water. Isn't that a pretty name? Laughing Water had lessons to learn too. She had to help mother take the skins from the wild animals the hunters had brought home, and cut up and cook the meat. She had to help scrape the hair from deer skins with sharp clam shells, and rub and pull the skin until it was as soft as a kid glove. A needle she made of a fish bone; the thread of the leg tendons of the deer. Her thread was like our violin strings. It was very strong. Then she sewed the skins into shirts and leggings and moccasins and robes. She embroidered moccasins and belts with little shells, after boring holes through them; and she colored porcupine quills and pushed them in patterns through the soft yellow skin. She colored long eagle feathers and made a warrior head-dress for her father. She made herself necklaces of shells.

In the summer, the Indian women and girls dug holes in the fields, with pointed sticks or clam shells, and planted corn and beans, pumpkins and tobacco. Laughing Water had to gather the ripe corn, shell it, boil the grains in clay pots, dry them and pound them to meal in wooden bowls. She shifted the meal through a sieve she made of fine, tough grass. She wove baskets of reeds and grasses. If she had time she wove colored figures and lines in her pretty baskets. She made clay cooking pots and water jars, and she painted figures on them. One of the nicest things she did was to make candy. She made it by boiling the sweet sap of the maple tree. For her father, Laughing Water dried the broad tobacco leaves. He put these in a pipe with a stone bowl and a hollow reed stem, and smoked them.

In the evening the whole tribe sat around a big fire under the maple trees. The tired hunters smoked and talked of the hunt, or of battles. Old men and women told stories of long ago. The Indians had no books, but their old stories were not lost. Grandfathers and grandmothers told these hero tales to the children, and the children remembered the stories and told them to their grandchildren. Some day you must read "Hiawatha" and learn more about how the first American boy lived.

Eagle Heart and Laughing Water thought their home would always be as it was then. They did not know that little children with pale faces were coming to live among them.

See Plate "Natives of North America," Vol. I, page 60. Also see Indians, page 921; Aztec, page 150; Pueblos, page 1559. Also in Index under Indian see numerous references.