Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3)

J >> James Athearn Jones >> Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3)

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(2) _Manitou of Dreams_.--p. 66.

The life of an Indian is regulated by his dreams. There is not a single
enterprise of any importance undertaken till the Manitou of sleep has
been consulted. When a child is born, the nature of his future
occupation is taught by dreams; when he arrives at manhood, the name by
which he is in future to be known is given in consequence of what is
seen in the dream which follows the feast of initiation into manhood.

There is nothing in which they have shown more superstition and
extravagance, than in what regards their dreams; but they differ much in
the manner of explaining their thoughts on this matter. Sometimes it is
the reasonable soul that wanders out, while the sensitive soul continues
to animate the body; sometimes it is the familiar genius that gives good
advice about future events; sometimes it is a visit they receive from
the soul of the object they dream of. But, in whatsoever way they
conceive of a dream, it is always regarded as a sacred thing, and as the
means which the Gods most usually employ to declare their will to men.

"Prepossessed with this idea," says Charlevoix, (a writer I delight
to quote) "they cannot conceive that we should take no notice of them.
For the most part they look upon them as desires of the soul inspired by
some spirit, or an order from it. And, in consequence of this principle,
they make it a duty of religion to obey these commands. A savage, having
dreamt that his finger was cut off, really had it cut off when he awoke,
after he had prepared himself for this important action by a feast.
Another, dreaming that he was a prisoner in the bands of his enemies,
was greatly embarrassed. He consulted the jugglers, and, by their
advice, got himself tied to a post, and burned in various parts of the
body."--_Charlevoix,_ ii. 18.

Dreams are resorted to for the purpose of procuring a proper Manitou or
guardian spirit for the child. This is the most important affair of
life. They begin by blacking the face of the child; then it must fast
for eight days, without baring the least nourishment; and, during this
time, his future guardian genius must appear to him in his dreams. Every
morning, they take great care to make him relate them. The thing the
child dreams of most frequently is supposed to be his genius; but no
doubt this thing was considered at first only as a symbol or shape under
which the spirit manifests itself.

Nor is this potency of dreams peculiar to one tribe or nation; it
obtains, both as a belief and practice, throughout the entire continent,
over which that perfect anomaly in the human kind, the red men, are
scattered. Equally among the Esquimaux of the regions of eternal ice,
and the Abipones of Paraguay, dreams are reckoned the revelations of the
God of the Universe.

(3) _Wise and good bird.--p._ 68.

It is singular that the owl should be the symbol of Wisdom, Minerva's
bird, alike with the classic Greeks and Romans, and the American
savages. This is one of the many arguments to be drawn from existing
manners and customs, to prove that the peopling of the western continent
by the race who at present occupy it took place at a period, which may
well have permitted their drawing upon classic models for a portion of
their beautiful figures and allegories. Unhappily, our desire to know
them thoroughly and truly has only been awakened since their minds have
been _corrupted_, and the strong traits of their character blunted by a
participation in our enervating and demoralising _comforts_! They can
now be studied only in the reports made of them by early travellers.

THE MOTHER OF THE WORLD.

A TRADITION OF THE DOG-RIBS.

In the frozen regions of the North, beyond the lands which are now the
hunting-grounds of the Snakes and Coppermines, there lived, when no
other being but herself _was_, a woman who became the mother of the
world. She was a little woman, our fathers told us, not taller than the
shoulders of a young maiden of our nation, but she was very beautiful
and very wise. Whether she was good-tempered or cross, I cannot tell,
for she had no husband, and so there was nothing to vex her, or to try
her patience. She had not, as the women of our nation now have, to pound
corn, or to fetch home heavy loads of buffalo flesh, or to make
snow-sledges, or to wade into the icy rivers to spear salmon, or basket
kepling, or to lie concealed among the wet marsh grass and wild rice to
snare pelicans, and cranes, and goosanders, while her lazy,
good-for-nothing husband lay at home, smoaking his pipe, and drinking
the pleasant juice of the Nishcaminnick by the warm fire in his cabin.
She had only to procure her own food, and this was the berries, and
hips, and sorrel, and rock-moss, which, being found plentifully near her
cave, were plucked with little trouble. Of these she gathered, in their
season, when the sun beamed on the earth like a maiden that loves and is
beloved, a great deal to serve her for food when the snows hid the earth
from her sight, and the cold winds from the fields of eternal frost
obliged her to remain in her rude cavern. Though alone, she was happy.
In the summer it was her amusement to watch the juniper and the alders,
as they put forth, first their leaves, and then their buds, and when the
latter became blossoms, promising to supply the fruit she loved, her
observation became more curious and her feelings more interested; then
would her heart beat with the rapture of a young mother, whose gaze is
fixed on her sleeping child, and her eyes glisten with the dew of joy
which wets the cheeks of those who meet long parted friends. Then she
would wander forth to search for the little berry whose flower is
yellow, and which requires keen eyes to find it in its hiding-place in
the grass, and the larger[A] which our white brother eats with his
buffalo-meat; and their progress, from the putting forth of the leaf to
the ripening of the fruit, was watched by her with eager joy. When tired
of gazing upon the pine and stunted poplar, she would lie down in the
shade of the creeping birch and dwarf willow, and sink to rest, and
dream dreams which were not tinged with the darkness of evil. The
sighing of the wind through the branches of the trees, and the murmur of
little streams through the thicket, were her music. Throughout the land
there was nothing to hurt her, or make her afraid, for there was nothing
in it that had life, save herself and the little flower which blooms
among thorns. And these two dwelt together like sisters.

[Footnote A: The cranberry.]

One day, when the mother of the world was out gathering berries, and
watching the growth of a young pine, which had sprung up near her friend
the flower, and threatened, as the flower said, "to take away the beams
of the sun from it," she was scared by the sight of a strange creature,
which ran upon four legs, and to all her questions answered nothing but
"Bow, wow, wow." To every question our mother asked, the creature made
the same answer, "bow, wow, wow." So she left off asking him questions,
for they were sure to be replied to in three words of a language she
could not understand. Did he ask for berries? no, for she offered him a
handful of the largest and juiciest which grew in the valley, and he
neither took them nor thanked her, unless "bow" meant "thank you." Was
he admiring the tall young pines, or the beautiful blossoms of the
cranberry, or the graceful bend of the willow, and asking her to join
him in his admiration? She knew not, and leaving him to his thoughts,
and to utter his strange words with none to reply, she returned to her
cave.

Scarcely was she seated on her bed of dried leaves when he came in, and,
wagging his tail, and muttering as before, lay down at her feet.
Occasionally he would look up into her face very kindly, and then drop
his head upon his paws. By and by he was fast asleep, and our mother,
who had done no evil action, the remembrance of which should keep her
awake, who never stole a beaver-trap(l), or told a lie, or laughed at a
priest, was very soon in the same condition. Then the Manitou of Dreams
came to her, and she saw strange things in her sleep. She dreamed that
it wan night, and the sun had sunk behind the high and broken hills
which lay beyond the valley of her dwelling, that the dwarf willow bowed
its graceful head still lower with the weight of its tears, which are
the evening dew, and the dandelion again imprisoned its leaves within
its veil of brown. So far her dreams so closely resembled the reality,
that for a time she thought she was awake, and that it was her own
world--her cave, her berries, and her flowers, which were before her
vision. But an object speedily came to inform her that she dwelt in the
paradise of dreams--in the land of departed ideas. At the foot of her
couch of leaves, in the place of the dog which she had left there when
she slept, stood a being somewhat resembling that she had beheld in the
warm season, when bending over the river to lave her bosom with the
cooling fluid. It was taller than herself, and there was something on
its brow which proclaimed it to be fiercer and bolder, formed to wrestle
with rough winds, and to laugh at the coming tempests. For the first
time since she was, she turned away to tremble, her soul filled with a
new and undefinable feeling, for which she could not account. After
shading her eyes a moment from the vision, she looked again, and though
her trembling increased, and her brain became giddy, she did not wish
the being away, nor did she motion it to go. Why should she? There was a
smile upon its lip and brow, and a softness diffused over every feature,
which gradually restored her confidence, and gave her the assurance that
it would not harm her. She dreamed that the creature came to her arms,
and she thought that it passed the season of darkness with its cheek
laid on her bosom. To her imagination, the breath which it breathed on
her lips was balmy as the juice of the Sweet Gum Tree, or the dew from
her little neighbour, the flower. When it spoke, though she could not
understand its language, her heart heaved more tumultuously, she knew
not why, and when it ceased speaking, her sighs came thick till it spoke
again. When she awoke it was gone, the beams of the star of day shone
through the fissures of her cavern, and, in the place of the beautiful
and loved being lay the strange creature, with the four legs and the old
"bow, wow, wow."

Four moons passed, and brought no change of scene to the mother of the
world. By night, her dreams were ever the same: there was always the
same dear and beloved being, each day dearer and more beloved, coming
with the shades, and departing with the sun, folding her in its arms,
breathing balm on her lips, and pressing her bosom with its downy cheek.
By day, the dog was always at her side, whether she went to gather
berries or cresses, or to lave her limbs in the stream. Whenever the dog
was there, the more beloved being was not; when night came, the dog as
surely disappeared, and the other, seen in dreams, supplied his place.
But she herself became changed. She took no more joy in the scenes which
once pleased her. The pines she had planted throve unnoticed; the
creeping birch stifled the willow and the juniper, and she heeded it
not; the sweetest berries grew tasteless--she even forgot to visit her
pretty sister, the rose. Yet she knew not the cause of her sudden
change, nor of the anxiety and apprehension which filled her mind. Why
tears bedewed her cheeks till her eyes became blind, why she trembled at
times, and grew sick, and feinted, and fell to the earth, she knew not.
Her feelings told her of a change, but the relation of its cause, the
naming to her startled ear of the mystery of "the dog by day, and the
man by night," was reserved for a being, who was to prepare the world
for the reception of the mighty numbers which were to be the progeny of
its mother.

She had wandered forth to a lonely valley--lonely where all was
lonely--to weep and sigh over her lost peace, and to think of the dear
being with which that loss seemed to her to be in some way connected,
when suddenly the sky became darkened, and she saw the form of a being
shaped like that which visited her in her sleep, but of immense
proportions, coming towards her from the east. The clouds wreathed
themselves around his head, his hair swept the mists from the
mountain-tops, his eyes were larger than the rising sun when he wears
the red flush of anger in the Frog-Moon, and his voice, when he gave it
full tone, was louder than the thunder of the Spirit's Bay of Lake
Huron. But to the woman he spoke in soft whispers; his terrific accents
were reserved for the dog, who quailed beneath them in evident terror,
not daring even to utter his only words, "bow, wow." The mother of the
world related to him her dreams, and asked him why, since she had had
them, she was so changed--why she now found no joy in the scenes which
once pleased her, but rather wished that she no longer was, her dreams
being now all that she loved. The mighty being told her that they were
not dreams, but a reality; that the dog which now stood by her side was
invested by the Master of Life with power to quit, at the coming in of
the shades, the shape of a dog, and to take that of MAN, a being who was
the counterpart of herself, but formed with strength and resolution, to
counteract, by wisdom and sagacity, and to overcome, by strength and
valour, the rough difficulties and embarrassments which were to spring
up in the path of human life; that he was to be fierce and bold, and she
gentle and afraid. He told her that the change she complained of, and
which had given her so much grief, wetted her cheek with tears, and
filled her bosom with sighs, was the natural result of the intimate
connection of two such beings, and was the mode of perpetuating the
human race, which had been decreed by the Master of Life; that before
the buds now forming should be matured to fruit, she would give birth to
two helpless little beings, whom she must feed with her milk, and rear
with tender care, for from them would the world be peopled. He had been
sent, he said, by the Good Spirit to level and prepare the earth for the
reception of the race who were to inhabit it.

Hitherto the world had lain a rude and shapeless mass--the great, man
now reduced it to order. He threw the rough and stony crags into the
deep valleys--he moved the frozen mountain to fill up the boiling chasm.
When he had levelled the earth, which before was a thing without form,
he marked out with his great walking-staff the lakes, ponds, and rivers,
and caused them to be filled with water from the interior of the earth,
bidding them to be replenished from the rains and melted snows which
should fall from the skies, till they should be no more.

When he had prepared the earth for the residence of the beings who were
to people it, he caught the dog, and, notwithstanding the cries of the
mother of the world, and her entreaties to him to spare its life, he
tore it in pieces, and distributed it over the earth, and the water, and
into air. The entrails he threw into the lakes, ponds, and rivers,
commanding them to become fish, and they became fish. These waters, in
which no living creature before moved, were now filled with salmon,
trout, pike, tittymeg, methy, barble, turbot, and tench, while along the
curling waves of the Great Lake the mighty black and white whale, the
more sluggish porpoise, and many other finny creatures, sported their
gambols. The flesh he dispersed over the land, commanding it to become
different kinds of beasts and land-animals, and it obeyed his commands.
The heavy moose, and the stupid we-was-kish, came to drink in the
Coppermine with the musk-ox, and the deer, and the buffalo. The
quiquehatch, and his younger brother, the black bear, and the wolf, that
cooks his meat without fire,[A] and the cunning fox, and the wild cat,
and the wolverine, were all from the flesh of the dog. The otter was the
tail of the dog, the wejack was one of his fore-paws, and the horned
horse, and the walrus, were his nose.

[Footnote A: It is a prevalent opinion with the savages, that the wolf
cooks his meat before he eats it.]

Nor did the great man omit to make the skin furnish its proportion of
the tribes of living beings. He tore it into many small pieces, and
threw it into the air, commanding it to become the different tribes of
fowls and birds, and it became the different tribes of fowls and birds.
Then first was seen the mighty bird which builds its nest on trees which
none can climb, and in the crevices of inaccessible rocks--the eagle,
which furnishes the Indians with feathers to their arrows, and steals
away the musk-rat and the young beaver as his recompense. Then was the
sacred falcon first seen winging his way to the land of long winters;
and the bird of alarm, the cunning old owl, and his sister's little son,
the cob-a-de-cooch, and the ho-ho. All the birds which skim through the
air, or plunge into the water, were formed from the skin of the dog.

When the great man had thus filled the earth with living creatures, he
called the mother of the world to him, and gave to her and her offspring
the things which he had created, with full power to kill, eat, and never
to spare, telling her that he had commanded them to multiply for her use
in abundance. When he had finished speaking, he returned to the place
whence he came, and has never been heard of since. In due time, the
mother of the world was delivered of two children, a son and a daughter,
both having the dark visage of the Indian race, and from them proceeded
the Dog-ribs, and all the other nations of the earth. The white men
were from the same source, but the father of them, having once upon a
time been caught stealing a beaver-trap, he become so terrified that he
lost his original colour and never regained it, and his children remain
with the same pale cheeks to this day.

Brothers, I have told you no lie.

NOTE.

* * * * *

(1) _Never stole a beaver-trap._--p. 76.

Thieving is considered disreputable among the Indians; that is, it is
highly criminal and infamous to steal from each other. Thieves are
compelled to restore what they have stolen, or to make satisfactory
amends to the injured party; in their default, their nearest relations
are obliged to make up the loss. If the thief, after sufficient warning,
continues his bad practices, he is disowned by his nation, and any one
may put him to death the next time he is caught in the act of stealing,
or that a theft can be clearly proved to have been committed by him. "I
once," says Heckewelder, "knew an Indian chief who had a son of a
vicious disposition, addicted to stealing, and would take no advice. His
father, tired and unable to satisfy all the demands which were made upon
him for the restitution of articles stolen by his son, at last issued
his orders for shooting him, the next time be should be guilty of a
similar act"--_Heckew_., 328.

Theft is always looked upon as a blot which dishonours a family, and
every one has a right to wash away the stain with the blood of the
delinquent. "Father Breboeuf," says Charlevoix, (vol. ii. p. 28) "one
day saw a young Huron who was killing a woman with a club; he ran to
him to prevent him, and asked him why he committed such violence. 'She
is my sister,' replied the savage; 'she is guilty of theft, and I will
expiate by her death the disgrace she has brought upon me and all my
family.'"

THE FALL OF THE LENAPE

The Delawares are the grandfather of nations, the parent stock from
which have proceeded the many tribes who roam over the woods of this
vast island. From them are descended the red men of the east and the
west, of the shores of the Great Sea and of the northern lakes. Among
these the Mengwe was a favoured grandchild. In the days that are gone,
the Delawares fought his battles, his war was theirs; and the hostile
shout that woke in his woods was answered by the defiance of the sons of
the Leni Lenape.

But the Mengwe was ungrateful, and forgot these benefits; he was
treacherous, and raised his hand against his benefactors and former
friends. His hostile bands invaded the lands of his grandfather, but
they were defeated, and fled howling to their wilderness. The Mengwe, by
their cunning and duplicity, had brought all the tribes of the land upon
the Lenape, whose sons nevertheless continued in possession of their
hunting-grounds, for they were very brave. Still their enemy continued
his arts. He first sought to raise quarrels and disturbances, which in
the end might lead to wars between the Lenape and the distant tribes
who were friendly to them, for which purpose they privately murdered
people on one or the other side, seeking to make the injured party
believe that some particular nation or individual had been the
aggressor. They left a war-club painted as the Lenape paints his[A] in
the country of the Cherokees, where they purposely committed a murder,
and that people, deceived by appearances, fell suddenly on the Lenape,
and a bloody and devastating war ensued between the two nations. They
frequently stole into the country of the Lenape and their associates,
committing murders and making off with plunder. Their treachery having
at length been discovered, the Lenape marched with a powerful force into
their country to destroy them. Finding that they were no match for the
brave Delawares, Thannawage, an aged and wise Mohawk, called the
different tribes of the Mengwe to the great council-fire. "You see,"
said he, "how easily the sons of our grandfather overcome us in battle.
Their pole is strung full of the scalps of our nation, while ours has
but here one and there one. This must not be; the last man of the Mengwe
is not yet prepared to die. We must become united, the Mohawks, the
Oneidas, the Onondagos, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, must become one
people; they must move together in the conflict, they must smoke in one
pipe, and eat their meat in one lodge." The people listened to the words
of Thannawage, and the five nations became one people.

[Footnote A: The different tribes are known by their manner of painting
their war-clubs.]

Still, though united they did not prevail over the Lenape and their
connexions; the latter were most usually victorious. While these wars
were at their greatest height, and when neither could decidedly
pronounce themselves conquerors, the Big-knives arrived in Canada, and a
war commenced between them and the confederated Iroquois. Thus placed
between two fires, and in danger of being exterminated, they resorted to
their old cunning and knavery. They sent a deputation of their principal
warriors, with the sacred calumet (1) and the belt of peace, to the sons
of their grandfather. But they appeared not to wish for peace, but to be
guided by wisdom and compassion alone, and to be fearful only of being
considered as cowards. "A warrior," said they, "with the bloody weapon
in his hand should never intimate, a desire for peace, or hold pacific
language to his enemies. He should shew throughout a determined courage,
and appear as ready and willing to fight as at the beginning of the
contest. Will a man who would not be thought a liar threaten and sue in
the same breath; will he hold the peace-belt in one hand, and smoke the
unpainted calumet, while his other hand grasps a tomahawk? Will he
strike his breast, and say 'I am brave and fearless,' yet shew that he
is a mocking-bird? No, men's actions should be of a piece with their
words, whether good or bad; good cannot come out of evil, neither can
the brave man feel faint-hearted, or the fawn become a tiger. The Mengwe
were brave: they would not abase themselves in the eyes of the Lenape by
admitting that they were vanquished, or proposing peace. They made use
of their women to soften the hearts of our nation. They said to their
wives and the wives of the Lenape, Are you tired of the fathers of your
children?--to the mothers, Does the Lenape hate her sons?--to our young
women, Do the eyes of the maidens turn with aversion from the youths of
your nation? if the wife is tired of her husband, if the mother hate her
sons, if the dark-eyed maiden feels no grief when the Lenape youth goes
forth to battle and certain death, nor sheds a tear when he paints his
face, and dresses his hair, and fills his quiver with arrows, then let
them remain silent, and the messengers of the Mengwe will return to
their nation."

The women to whom they spoke were moved by the eloquence of the
treacherous Iroquois, and they persuaded the enraged combatants to bury
their hatchets, and make the tree of peace grow tall and firm-rooted.
They lamented, with great feeling and many tears, the loss which their
country had sustained in these wars: there was not a woman among them
who had not lost a son, or a brother, or a father, or a husband. They
described the sorrows of bereaved mothers and widowed wives; the pains
mothers endured ere they were permitted to behold their offspring; the
anxieties attending the progress of their sons from infancy to manhood,
from the cradle to the hour when they chewed the bitter root, and put on
new mocassins; these unavoidable evils they had borne: but, after all
these trials, how cruel it was, they said, to see those promising youths
reared with so much care, and so tenderly beloved, fall victims to the
insatiable rage of war, and a prey to the relentless cruelty of their
enemies. "See them slaughtered," cried they, with tears and groans, "on
the field of battle. See them put to death as prisoners by a protracted
torture, and in the midst of lingering torments. Hark, the death-cries!
'Tis the Iroquois, 'tis the Delawares, 'tis the Delawares returning from
battle! I see the beautiful young warriors among them, crowned with
flowers, their faces painted black, and their arms tied with cords.
Hark! they are singing their death-song. 'I am brave and intrepid, I do
not fear death, I care not for tortures. Those who fear them are less
than women. I was bred a warrior; my father never knew fear, and I am
his son.' Then we behold them surrounded with flames, their flesh torn
from their bones, the skin of their head peeled off, coals heaped
thereon, and sharp thorns driven into their flesh. The thought of such
scenes makes us curse our own existence, and shudder at the thought of
bringing children into the world."

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