his enemy. The history of civilized nations can furnish no example of greater self-reliance than was exhibited in such enterprises as these.

Among the moral characteristics of the Indian, it only remains to notice his comparative indifference to sensual pleasures. In this one respect he presented a striking contrast to nearly every other savage, removed as far as he was from all the restraints of civilized and Christian life. Food of the most simple character was all that his appetite demanded; his thirst was always slaked and satisfied with a little water from the spring. If, as was sometimes the case, he was obliged to fast two or three days in succession, he submitted in patience to the necessity, never seeming to regard it as a hardship worthy of complaint. But it may be said that the Indian was indifferent to the pleasures of the palate, only be cause he was ignorant of the sources of gratification. He knew no food more inviting than his half-cooked fish and flesh; no drink more pleasant to the taste than water; and not being conscious of deficiency, he therefore sought for nothing better than that which he already possessed. It may be so. Let us, however, venture to extend the inquiry to another appetite, which, next to hunger and thirst, is the most imperious of all in its demands; to that upon which the continued existence of the race depends. Passing upon this ground, we find the same characteristic of comparative indifference; the Indian is still "the stoic of the woods." To him the female of his race was not, as in civilized society, a companion and friend; nor yet, as elsewhere, the mere object of voluptuous desire; but he seemed to look upon her as little other than a slave and beast of burden. His conduct exhibited none of those tender sentiments which, grounded on the dif

ference of the sexes, soften and harmonize their intercourse, but he stood aloof in his cold superiority, waited on with trembling by his female drudges.

During the wars which he so frequently and fiercely waged against the whites, many of their wives and daughters were taken captive and carried into his own country. Although these prisoners were entirely at his disposal; although they were subject to insult and injury of every other kind; there is yet no instance recorded of the perpetration of that violence which female virtue reckons worse than death. How shall we account for this remarkable temperance? How can it be accounted for, except upon the ground that the Indian master, whether from natural temperament or manner of life,* or indeed from the joint influence of both these causes, was in a great measure insensible to the ordinary power of female beauty? No other explanation is free from insuperable difficulties. The lust of the savage is his law. ever desire urges and opportunity presents to his hand, he does; restrained even by the slightest barriers of external prohibition, and hearing the faintest whisper from the voice within. If then, at any time, he seems to respect the claims of virtue, his continence must be attributed, not so much to a kindred virtue in himself, as to the absence of every impulse toward its violation.

What

of his own acceptance, but marriage did not immediately follow. The young couple lived together for a time on trial. At the end of the probationary period, if they were pleased with each other, they were united in wedlock; if not, they sep. arated, each to make another experiment in a different quarter. After marriage, the first object of the young husband was to provide a dwelling for his wife and himself. This was accomplished in the following manner. Having chosen a spot for his house, with especial reference to the convenient neighborhood of wood and water, he proceeded to form its roof and walls by bending down toward a common center, the tops of a circle of stout saplings, and closely interlacing their trunks with strips of bark. This done, it only remained to cut a hole in the top of the hut for the passage of the smoke; to make an opening on the side for the ingress and egress of its inhabitants; to cov er the structure, within and without, with mats to keep it warm, and then the simple dwelling of the Indian was completed.

In the division of family duties, the whole drudgery of life was imposed upon the female. While the husband was engaged in hunting or fishing, the wife was compelled to cultivate the field; to supply the wigwam with food and water; to carry home the game which her husband had taken-in short, whenever toilsome and inglorious work of any kind was to be done, she was the only laborer. There was but a single exception to this domestic law. The Indian could condescend to labor in the field for one purpose. His darling plant, tobacco, was thought worthy to receive his personal care. The manner of life to which the Indian female, even from a child, was bred, although in itself most ungenerous and oppres sive, was attended with at least one salutary effect. It gave her

a strength of bodily constitution scarcely inferior to that of her master. Her powers of endurance were astonishing. The curse of her sex was nearly lost upon her. "I have often known," says Williams, "in a quarter of an hour, a woman merry in the house, and delivered and merry again; and within two days abroad, and after four or five days at work." The number of wives was unlimited, yet polygamy, though not rare, was by no means universal among them. Divorces frequently took place, for little beside the inclination of the parties kept them together. Adultery was considered a hainous crime, although the sexual intercourse of the unmarried was under no restraint, either of law or public opinion. The children of the Indians were treated by their parents with great affec tion and indulgence, but parental kindness was seldom repaid or even remembered. The aged and helpless were frequently left to perish in neglect, without the slightest token of love or offer of aid from those to whom they had given birth. In the heart of the Indian, the current of affection, forsaking the parents, ran always forward toward the children; and this truth continuing from one generation to another, it came to pass that filial ingratitude was ever justly punished in the very manner of its own sin. The child who had neglected his parent, becoming a parent himself, was in turn neglected by the children whom he had begotten.

Of iron and steel the Indian had no knowledge. All the tools which he used were made of wood, shells, and stone. The hoe with which the Indian women cultivated the fields, was a clam-shell. Their axe was of stone, having a withe fastened round the neck of it for a handle. Their mortars, pestles, and chisels, were also of stone; and they had moreover stone knives, sharpened to so keen an edge that they could

easily cut their hair with them. Two methods of hunting were in use among the natives. Sometimes they followed their game in companies of two or three hundred men, scouring the forests, and destroying multitudes of the sylvan inhabitants, with the same weapons which they used in war. Sometimes they filled the woods with traps of various fashions, and spent their time in passing from one trap to another, to secure whatever had been taken in them. In fishing, they employed nets made of hemp; lines terminating in a hook of bone; and in shallow water, arrows or sharpened sticks, in the use of which they were very skill ful.

Their weapons of war were the bow and arrow, the spear, and the tomahawk. The string of the bow was made either of hemp or of the sinew of some wild animal. The arrow was commonly headed with a sharp stone, but sometimes with the horn of the deer, and the claw of the eagle. The spear was nothing more than a long pole, sharpened at the end, and hardened in the fire. The tomahawk, by no means the deadly weapon which the Indian has used since iron was given him, was merely a stick of two or three feet in length, headed with a knob or a

stone.

Such were the simple arms of the aborigines, and although with these they were able to carry on the warfare of ambushment and surprisal, which they loved so well, yet we can not wonder that a few shots of European musketry so often drove hundreds of them from the open field.

The Indian was not without a circulating medium, to represent the value of the little property which he possessed. His coin was called wampumpeag, or more briefly, wampum, and was of two kinds, the white and the black. The black was just double in value to the white. It was wrought from shells into the form of beads, to be strung as beads Vol. I.

41

are, and reckoned by the fathom. A fathom of wampum was worth not far from five English shillings. This Indian money served a double purpose, being used for ornament as well as trade. Chains and bracelets were made of it, and worn upon the neck and wrists, while belts curiously wrought, encircled the body. Indeed nearly the whole. dress of the more wealthy was covered by it, for the ostentation of riches is confined to no state of society, and to no period of the world. There was not any restriction upon the manufacture of this money, but whoever chose to make it, was at liberty to do so.

In what is called driving a bargain, the Connecticut Indian was scarcely inferior to the Connecticut white. An old historian says, "they will be at all markets, and try all places, and run twenty, thirty, yea, forty miles and more, and lodge in the woods, to save six pence." Their trade was principally in furs; but sometimes in corn, venison, and fish. It was never safe to allow them credit, for whoever did so, most commonly lost both his debt and his customer.

The political institutions of the Indians were of the very simplest character. A hereditary sachemdom was the only authority recognized among the tribes. In theory, the power of the sachem was absolute; but whenever a question of more than usual interest or difficul ty arose, he always sought the advice, and was guided by the wisdom of his counselors. His actual influence with his subjects depended far more upon personal character, than upon birth or station. The sachem who was not the leader of his tribe, in fact as well as name, could not long command their respect or obedience. Females were not excluded from the regular line of succession, although the early history of New England presents but few examples of such government.

The dignity of the crown was sustained by the liberal contributions of the people. Offerings of corn and other productions of the soil were annually made to the sachem, who received also one fourth of all venison taken in the chase. If his dominions included any portion of sea-coast, whatsoever was cast upon the shore, were it ship or whale, belonged to him.

The administration of justice was among the duties of the sachem, who united in his single person, the legislative, judicial, and executive functions. The Indian who had transgressed the laws of his tribe, not only received his sentence from the lips of his chief, but ordinarily, the punishment decreed, was inflicted by the hand of the judge himself. In every such instance, the criminal submitted in silence to the discipline of his master.

The sachem was assisted in council by a certain order of men called the Paniese. He availed himself of their wisdom in time of quiet, and in war they formed his body-guard. Selected as the Paniese were, from the most promising of the young men, trained to dare every danger, and endure all hardships, they constituted not only the defense of the sovereign, but in a great measure, the strength of the whole tribe. They founded their claim to the respect of the people, not more upon their personal merits, than upon their pretended intercourse with the invisible world. They were wise enough to know that the great weakness of the savage is his superstition, and taking advantage of this weakness, they established their power in this world on a firmer basis, by deriving their authority from the powers of the world to come.

The mind of the Indian, degraded and dark as it might be, was nevertheless not without a few faint glimpses from the eternal world. Although among the lowest of mankind, he was still a man, and there

fore not utterly destitute of those religious ideas which, by nature, belong to every human soul. He believed in a Supreme Being, and in a future state; he recognized a ruling Providence in the affairs of this world, and a retribution hereafter. These great principles of natural religion were as really, if not so beautifully developed in the wilds of North America, as they ever had been in the porch and the academy of ancient Greece; for wherever the Almighty enkindles the immortal fire of a human soul, he never leaves it without implanting in its nature a witness of himself.

The religion of the Indian was polytheistic in the very highest degree; but like every other polytheist, he had his greater and his lesser deities. Kiehtan was his name for the good God, the creator of the world, and the bountiful bestower of every blessing. His home was in the southwestern heavens, and to his presence went the souls of the good, when death called them to leave the earth. He named his devil, Hobbamock. This bad spirit was the fountain of all evil; and fear, which among savages is always stronger than love, led the Indian to court his favor with prayers and offerings, and nearly every form of deprecatory worship. Beside' these two principal deities, there was a multitude of local gods, who were known by the general name of Manitou. With these subordinate spirits the whole world of the Indian was overflowing. The clas sical student is familiar with the beautiful superstition of that land where every wood had its dryad; every fountain its naiad-where the rainbow was the garment of one god, and the sun the golden chariot of another-where the Lares and Penates watched over the household hearth-where Jupiter thundered in the heavens, and Neptune rose from the sea. But the fancy of the Indian was even more prodigal of its

treasures than the poetry of bril liant Greece. He filled and crowded every object in nature with spir itual existence. The great points of the compass, east, west, north, south, had each its peculiar god. The sun, the moon, the sea, and the fire, were all the abodes of supernatural beings. Even the involuntary motions of the body were attributed to the power of resident spirits. It was a god who made the heart to beat; yet another god who filled the lungs with vital air. It was a god (Somnus by a different name,) who sat upon the eye-lids and pressed them down in slumber; still another god who lifted those lids, and let in the light of the morn ing. So also whenever any thing took place, the cause or manner of which they did not at once perceive, they were always accustomed to say, Manitou, it is a god. "At the apprehension of any excellency in man, woman, birds, beasts, fish, &c." they still cried out, with a kind of reverential admiration, it is a god. When the English first came among them, and they beheld the ships which brought them over; the buildings which they erected; their manner of cultivating the fields; their arms and clothing; and above all, their books and let ters, they exclaimed one to another, Manitouwock, they are gods. In all this we discover, carried out to its full extent, the universal tendency of the untaught mind to refer all appearances, unusual or difficult of explanation, to the immediate agency of supernatural beings. The grand idea of something above and beyond nature, pervades the whole region of humanity, whether develop. ed in the pantheism of the philosopher, the polytheism of the savage, or the heaven-inspired faith of the Christian.

With a belief so constantly active in the existence and power of spiritual beings, the Indians were ever seeking to propitiate their fa

vor, by prayers and sacrifices and solemn feasts; the customary methods to which nature seems to direct the unenlightened soul. Kichtan, the good god, they approached chiefly with thanksgiving, for benefits received.

When victory crown

ed their warfare, or plenty smiled upon their fields, or success attended their efforts in any direction, it was piously attributed to the friendly aid of this benevolent spirit, and they expressed their thanks to him in song and dance, and every utterance of grateful joy.

But their principal worship was paid to Hobbamock, whose disposition to do them injury they strove by every means to change. They were accustomed to ascribe all their sufferings to the mischievous agency of this spirit of evil. Disease, death, defeat in battle, famine, and pestilence; these and other calamities proceeded forth from him, and fear of his power compelled them to supplicate his mercy with all the earnestness of prayer. The Indian who had lost a child, called up his family at break of day, to join him in his lamentation, and with abundance of tears, exclaimed, "Oh! God! thou hast taken away my child! thou art angry with me. Oh! turn thine anger away from me, spare the rest of my children."* A fearful dream they conceived to be a threatening of evil from Hobbamock, and whenever their rest was so disturbed, they would rise at all times of the night and fall at once to supplication.

and

But not with prayers alone did the Indian seek the favor, and deprecate the wrath of his gods. Sacrifices were also common among them, and it has even been asserted that human life was occasionally taken for this purpose. The truth of this statement, however, is doubtful, and so long as entire certainty is wanting, we should hesitate to ad

*Key, chap. xxi.