Chapter V (3)

We must class with these records of the Jesuits, though not equalling them in value, the volumes of Champlain, Sagard, Creuxius, Boucher,[1365] and the later Lafitau and Charlevoix. Parkman[1366] tells us that no other of these early books is so satisfactory as Lafitau’s _Mœurs des Sauvages_ (1724); and Charlevoix gave similar testimony regarding his predecessor.[1367] For original material on the French side we have nothing to surpass in interest the _Mémoires et documents_, published by Pierre Margry, of which an account has been given elsewhere,[1368] as well as of the efforts of Parkman and others in advancing their publication.[1369] There is but little matter in these volumes relating to the military operations which make the subject of this chapter, though jealousy and rivalry of the schemes of the English, and the necessity of efforts to thwart them in their attempts to gain influence and to open trade with the Indians, are constantly recognized. In the diplomatic and military movements which opened on this continent the Seven Years’ War, the English, who had substantially secured the alliance of the Iroquois, or the Six Nations, insisted that they had obtained by treaties with them the territory between the Alleghanies and the Ohio, which the Six Nations on their part claimed to have gained by conquest and cession of the tribes that had previously occupied it. But when the English vindicated their entrance on the territory on the basis of these treaties with the Six Nations, the Shawanees and the Delawares, having recuperated their courage and vigor, denied this right by conquest. The French could not claim a right either by conquest or by cession. Their assumed occupancy and tenure through mission stations and strongholds were maintained simply and wholly on grounds of discovery and exploration. Margry’s volumes furnish the abundant and all-sufficient evidence of the priority of the French in this enterprise. The official documents interchanged with the authorities at home are all engaged with advice and promptings and measures for making good the claim to dominion founded on discovery. These volumes also are of the highest value as presenting to us from the first explorers, every way intelligent and competent as observers and reporters, the scenes and tenants of the interior of the continent. Here we have the wilderness, its primeval forests, its sea-like lakes, its threading rivers, shrunken or swollen, its cataracts and its confluent streams, its marshy expanses, bluffs, and plains, and its resources, abundant or scant, for sustaining life of beasts or men, all touched in feature or full portrayal by the charming skill of those to whom the sight was novel and bewildering.[1370] These French explorers will henceforth serve for all time as primary authorities on the features and resources of the interior of this continent just before it became the prize in contest between rival European nationalities. That contest undoubtedly had more to do in deciding the fate of the savage tribes from that time to our own. There are many reasons for believing that if the French had been able to hold alone an undisputed dominion in the interior of the continent, their relations with the Indian tribes, if not wholly pacific, would have been far more amicable than those which followed upon the hot rivalry with the English for the possession of their territories. The French were the wiser, the more tolerant and friendly of the two, in their intercourse with and treatment of the savages, with whom they found it so easy to affiliate. Under other circumstances the Indians might have come to hold the relation of _wards_ to the French in a sense far more applicable than that in which the term has been used by the government of the United States.

Of the early English material there is no dearth, but it hardly has the same stamp of authority. The story of the Moravian and other missions on the Protestant and English side has less of such invariable devotedness and success than is recorded in the general summaries of the Jesuit and Recollet missions, like Shea’s _History of the Catholic Missions_, 1529-1854 (N. Y., 1855).[1371] The _Indian Nations_ of Heckewelder,[1372] the service of the United Brethren, and the labors instituted by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,[1373] are records not without significance; but they yield to the superior efficacy of the French.[1374] Among the English administrative officers, the lead must doubtless be given to Sir William Johnson, for his personal influence over the Indian mind, winning their full confidence by fair and generous treatment of them, by a free hospitality, by assimilating with their habits even in his array, and by mastering their language. His deputy, Col. George Croghan, as interpreter and messenger, was kept busily employed in constant tramps through the woods, and in fearless errands to parties of vacillating or hostile tribes, to hold or win them to the English interest. The principal and the deputy, in this hazardous diplomacy, were specially qualified for their office by having mastered the gift and qualities of Indian oratory, by a familiarity with Indian character in its strength and weakness, and by endeavoring to keep faith with them, and to imitate the adroit methods of the French rather than the contemptuous hauteur of most of the English in intercourse with them.[1375]

The reader will naturally go to the biographies of Johnson, Washington, and the other military leaders of their time, to those of a few civilians, like Franklin, and to the general histories of the French and Indian wars and of their separate campaigns, for much light upon the Indian in war; and these materials have been sufficiently explored in another volume of the present History.[1376] These more general accounts are easily supplemented in the narratives of adventures and sufferings by a large class of persons who fell captive to the Indians, and lived to tell their tales.[1377]

The earlier travellers, like P. E. Radisson,[1378] Richard Falconer,[1379] Le Beau,[1380] and Jonathan Carver,[1381] not to name others; the later ones, like Prinz Maximilian;[1382] the experiences of various army officers on the frontiers, like Randolph B. Marcy[1383] and J. B. Fry,[1384]—all such books fill in the picture in some of its details.

The early life in the Ohio Valley was particularly conducive to such auxiliary helps in this study, and we owe more of this kind of illustration to Joseph Doddridge[1385] than to any other. He was a physician and a missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in both his professions a man highly esteemed. He was born in Maryland in 1769, and in his fourth year removed with his family to the western border of the line between Pennsylvania and Virginia. With abundant opportunities in his youth of familiarity with the rudest experiences of frontier life near hostile Indians, he was a keen observer, a skilful narrator, and a diligent gatherer-up of historical and traditional lore from the hardy and well-scarred pioneers. He had received a good academic and medical education, and was a keen student of nature as well as of humanity. His pages give us most vivid pictures of life under the stern and perilous conditions; not, however, without their fascinations, of forest haunts, of rude and scattered cabins, of domestic and social relations, of the resources of the heroic whites, and of the qualities of Indian warfare in the desperate struggle with the invaders.[1386]

Another early writer in this field was Dr. S. P. Hildreth of Ohio, who published his _Pioneer History_ (Cincinnati, 1848) while some of the pioneers of the Northwest were still living, and the papers of some of them, like Col. George Morgan, could be put to service.[1387] Dr. Hildreth, in his _Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio_ (Cincinnati, 1852), included a Memoir of Isaac Williams, who at the age of eighteen began a course of service and adventure in the Indian country, which was continued till its close at the age of eighty-four. When eighteen years of age he was employed by the government of Pennsylvania, being already a trained hunter, as a spy and ranger among the Indians. He served in this capacity in Braddock’s campaign, and was a guard for the first convoy of provisions, on pack-horses, to Fort Duquesne, after its surrender to General Forbes in 1758. He was one of the first settlers on the Muskingum, after the peace made there with the Indians, in 1765, by Bouquet. His subsequent life was one of daring and heroic adventure on the frontiers.[1388]

* * * * *

Passing to the more general works, the earliest treatment of the North American Indians, of more than local scope, was the work of James Adair, first published in 1775, a section of whose map, showing the position of the Indian tribes within the present United States at that time, is given elsewhere.[1389] This _History of the American Indians_ was later included by Kingsborough in _Antiquities of Mexico_ (vol. viii. London, 1848).[1390] At just about the same time (1777), Dr. Robertson, in his _America_ (book iv.), gave a general survey, which probably represents the level of the best European knowledge at that time.

It was not till well into the present century that much effort was made to summarize the scattered knowledge of explorers like Lewis and Clarke and of venturesome travellers. In 1819, we find where we might not expect it about as good an attempt to make a survey of the subject as was then attainable, in Ezekiel Sanford’s _History of the United States before the Revolution_,—a book, however, which was pretty roundly condemned for its general inaccuracy by Nathan Hale in the _North American Review_. The next year the Rev. Jedediah Morse made _A report to the secretary of war, on Indian affairs, comprising a narrative of a tour in 1820, for ascertaining the actual state of the Indian tribes in our country_ (New Haven, 1822), which is about the beginning of systematized knowledge, though the subject in its scientific aspects was too new for well-studied proportions. The _Report_, however, attracted attention and instigated other students. De Tocqueville, in 1835, took the Indian problem within his range.[1391] Albert Gallatin printed, the next year, in the second volume of the _Archæologia Americana_ (Cambridge, 1836), his _Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States east of the Rocky Mountains_; and though his main purpose was to explain the linguistic differences, his introduction is still a valuable summary of the knowledge then existing.

There were at this time two well-directed efforts in progress to catch the features and life of the Indians as preserving their aboriginal traits. Between 1838 and 1844 Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall published at Philadelphia, in three volumes folio, their _History of the Indian tribes of North America, with biographical sketches of the principal chiefs. With 120 portrs. from the Indian gallery of the Department of war, at Washington_;[1392] and in 1841 the public first got the fruits of George Catlin’s wanderings among the Indians of the Northwest, in his _Letters and notes on the manners, customs and condition of the North American Indians, written during eight years’ travel among the wildest tribes of Indians in North America, in 1832-39_ (N. Y., 1841), in two volumes. The book went through various editions in this country and in London.[1393] It was but the forerunner of various other books illustrative of his experience among the tribes; but it remains the most important.[1394] The sufficient summary of all that Catlin did to elucidate the Indian character and life will be found in Thomas Donaldson’s _George Catlin’s Indian Gallery in the U. S. Nat. Museum, with memoirs and statistics_, being part v. of the _Smithsonian Report_ for 1885.[1395]

The great work of Schoolcraft has been elsewhere described in the present volume.[1396]

The agencies for acquiring and disseminating knowledge respecting the condition, past and present, of the red race have been and are much the same as those which improve the study of the archæological aspects of their history: such publications as the _Transactions of the American Ethnological Society_ (1845-1848); the _Reports_ of the governmental geological surveys, and those upon trans-continental railway routes; those upon national boundaries; those of the Smithsonian Institution, with its larger _Contribution_s, and of late years the _Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_; the reports of such institutions as the Peabody Museum of Archæology; and those of the Indian agents of the Federal government, of chief importance among which is Miss Alice C. Fletcher’s _Indian Education and Civilization_, published by the Bureau of Education (Washington, 1888). To these must be added the great mass of current periodical literature reached through _Poole’s Index_, and the action and papers of the government, not always easily discoverable, through Poore’s _Descriptive Catalogue_.

The maps of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are, in addition to the reports of traders, missionaries, and adventurers, the means which we have of placing the territories of the many Indian tribes which, since the contact of Europeans, have been found in North America; but the abiding-places of the tribes have been far from permanent. Many of these early maps are given in other volumes of the present History.[1397] Geographers like Hutchins and military men like Bouquet found it incumbent on them to study this question.[1398] Benjamin Smith Barton surveyed the field in 1797; but the earliest of special map seems to have been that compiled by Albert Gallatin, who endeavored to place the tribes of the Atlantic slope as they were in 1600, and those beyond the Alleghanies as they were in 1800. The map in the _American Gazetteer_ (London, 1762) gives some information,[1399] and that of Adair in 1775 is reproduced elsewhere.[1400] In 1833, Catlin endeavored to give a geographical position to all the tribes in the United States on a map, given in his great work and reproduced in the _Smithsonian Report_, part v. (1885). In 1840 compiled maps were given on a small scale in George Bancroft’s third volume of his _United States_, and another in Marryat’s _Travels_, vol. ii. The government has from time to time published maps showing the Indian occupation of territory, and the present reservations are shown on maps in Donaldson’s _Public Domain_ and in the _Smithsonian Report_, part v. (1885).[1401]

The migrations and characteristics of the Eskimos have already been discussed,[1402] and the journals of the Arctic explorers will yield light upon their later conditions. We find those of the Hudson Bay region depicted in all the books relating to the life of the Company’s factors.[1403] The Beothuks of Newfoundland, which are thought to have become extinct in 1828,[1404] are described in Hatton and Harvey’s _Newfoundland_; by T. G. B. Lloyd in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_ (London), 1874, p. 21; 1875, p. 222; by A. S. Gatschet in the _American Philosophical Society’s Transactions_ (Philad., 1885-86, vols. xxii. xxiii.); and in the _Nineteenth Century_, Dec., 1888. Leclercq in his _Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie_ (Paris, 1691) gives us an account of the natives on the western side of the gulf.[1405]

The Micmacs of Nova Scotia are considered in Lescarbot and the later histories and in the documentary collections of that colony; and as they played a part in the French wars, the range of that military history covers some material concerning them.[1406]

For the aborigines of Canada, we easily revert to the older writers, like Champlain, Sagard, Creuxius, Boucher, Leclercq, Lafitau; the _Voyage curieux et nouveau parmi les sauvages_ of Le Beau (Amsterdam, 1738); the _Nouvelle France_ of Charlevoix; the _Histoire de l’Amérique Septentrionale_ (Paris, 1753) of Bacqueville de la Potherie;[1407] and to the later historians, like Fernald (ch. 7, 8), Garneau (2d book), and Warburton’s _Conquest of Canada_ (ch. 6, 7, 8). The Abenaki, which lay between the northeastern settlements of the English and the French, are specially treated by Bacqueville (vol. iv.), in the _Maine Hist. Soc. Collection_s, vol. vi., and in Maurault’s _Histoire des Abenakis_ (1866).[1408]

The rich descriptive literature of the early days of New England gives us much help in understanding the aboriginal life. We begin with John Smith, and come down through a long series of writers like Governor Bradford and Edward Winslow for Plymouth; Gorges, Morton, Winthrop, Higginson, Dudley, Johnson, Wood, Lechford, and Roger Williams for other parts. These are all characterized in another place.[1409] The authorities on the early wars with the Pequots and with Philip, the accounts of Daniel Gookin, who knew them so well,[1410] and chance visits like those of Rawson and Danforth,[1411] furnish the concomitants needful to the recital. The story of the labors of Eliot, Mayhew, and others in urging the conversion of the natives is based upon another large range of material, in which much that is merely exhortative does not wholly conceal the material for the historian.[1412] Here too the chief actors in this work help us in their records. We have letters of Eliot, and we have the tracts which he was instrumental in publishing.[1413] There is also a letter of Increase Mather to Leusden on the Indian missions (1688).[1414] Gookin tells us of the sufferings of the Christian Indians during the war of 1675,[1415] and he gives also reports of the speeches of the Indian converts.[1416] The Mayhews of Martha’s Vineyard, Thomas, Matthew, and Experience, have left us records equally useful.[1417]

The principal student of the literature, mainly religious, produced in the tongue of the natives, has been Dr. James Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, and he has given us the leading accounts of its creation and influence.[1418] It was this propagandist movement that led Eleazer Wheelock into establishing (1754) an Indian Charity School at Lebanon, Connecticut, which finally removed to Hanover, in New Hampshire, and became (1769) Dartmouth College.[1419]

The New England tribes have produced a considerable local illustrative literature. The Kennebecs and Penobscots in Maine are noticed in the histories of that State, and in many of the local monographs.[1420] For New Hampshire, beside the state histories,[1421] the Pemigewassets are described in Wm. Little’s _Warren_ (Concord, 1854), and the Pemicooks in the _N. H. Hist. Collections_, i.; Bouton’s _Concord_, Moore’s _Concord_, and Potter’s _Manchester_.

The Archives of Massachusetts yield a large amount of material respecting the relations of the tribes to the government, particularly at the eastward, while Maine was a part of the colony;[1422] and the large mass of its local histories, as well as those of the State,[1423] supply even better than the other New England States material for the historian.[1424]

The Indians of Rhode Island are noted by Arnold in his _Rhode Island_ (ch. 3), and some special treatment is given to the Narragansetts and the Nyantics.[1425] Those of Connecticut have a monographic record in De Forest’s _Indians of Connecticut_, as well as treatment otherwise.[1426]

Palfrey (_Hist. New England_, i. ch. 1, 2), in his general survey of the Indians of New England, delineates their character with much plainness and discrimination, and it is perhaps as true a piece of characterization as any we have.[1427]

The Iroquois of New York have probably been the subject of a more sustained historical treatment than any other tribes. We have the advantage, in studying them, of the observations of the Dutch,[1428] as well as of the French and English. The French priests give us the earliest accounts, particularly the relations of Jogues and Milet.[1429]

The story of the French missions in New York is told elsewhere;[1430] those of the Protestant English yield us less.[1431]

We have another source in the local histories of New York.[1432] The earliest of the general histories of the Iroquois is that of Cadwallader Colden, and the best edition is _The history of the five Indian nations depending on the province of New-York. Reprinted exactly from Bradford’s New York edition, 1727; with an introduction and notes by J. G. Shea_ (New York, 1866).[1433] The London reprints of 1747, and later, unfortunately added to the title _Five Indian Nations_ [_of Canada_] the words in brackets. This was the very point denied by the English, who claimed that the French had no territorial rights south of the lakes. Otherwise his title conveys two significant facts: first, that the English had come to regard the Five Nations as their “dependants”; and second, that these Indians actually were a barrier between them and the French. There was something farcical in the formula used by Sir Wm. Johnson in a letter to the ministry: “The combined tribes have taken arms against his Britannic Majesty.” The Mohawks had been induced to ask that the Duke of York’s arms should be attached to their castles. This had been assented to, and allowed as a security against the inroads of the French—a sort of talismanic charm which might be respected by European usage. But those ducal bearings did not have their full meaning to the Iroquois as binding their own allegiance, nor were the Six Nations ever the gainers by being thus constructively protected.

Colden was born in Scotland in 1688, and died on Long Island in 1776. He was a physician, botanist, scholar, and literary man, able and well qualified in each pursuit. The greater part of his long life was spent in this country. As councillor, lieutenant-governor, and acting governor, he was in the administration of New York from 1720 till near his death. He was a most inquisitive and intelligent investigator and observer of Indian history and character. In dedicating his work to General Oglethorpe, he claims to have been prompted to it by his interest in the welfare of the Five Nations. He is frank and positive in expressing his judgment that they had been degraded and demoralized by their intercourse with the whites. He says that he wrote the former part of his history in New York, in 1727, to thwart the manœuvres of the French in their efforts to monopolize the western fur trade. They had been allowed to import woollen goods for the Indian traffic through New York. Governor Burnet advised that a stop be put to this abuse. The New York legislature furthered his advice, and built a fort at Oswego for three hundred traders. When the Duke of York was represented here by Governor Dongan, and “Popish interests” were allowed sway,—there being at the time a mean pretence of amity between England and France,—the interests of the former were sacrificed to those of the latter. This, of course, had a bad influence on the Five Nations, as leading them to regard the French as masters. The whole of the first part of Colden’s History deals with the Iroquois as merely the centre of the rivalry between the French and the English with their respective savage allies. The English had the advantage at the start, because from the earliest period when Champlain made a hostile incursion into the country of the Iroquois, attended by their Huron enemies, the relations of enmity were decided upon, and afterwards were constantly imbittered by a series of invasions. The French sought to undo their own influence of this sort when it became necessary for them to try to win over the Iroquois to their own interest in the fur traffic. The Confederacy which existed among the Five, and afterwards the Six, Nations was roughly tried when there was so sharp a bidding for alliances between one or another of the tribes by their European tempters. An incidental and very embarrassing element came in to complicate the relations of the parties, English, French, and Indians, on the grounds of the claim advanced by the English to hold the region beyond the Alleghanies by cession from the Iroquois in a council in 1726. The question was whether the Iroquois had previous to that time obtained tenable possession of the Ohio region, by conquest of the former occupants. It would appear that after that conquest that region was for a time well-nigh deserted. When it was to some extent reoccupied, the subsequent hunters and tenants of it denied the sovereignty of the Iroquois and the rights of the English intruders who relied upon the old treaty of cession.

The rival French history while Colden was in vogue was the third volume of Bacqueville de la Potherie’s _Hist. de l’Amérique Septentrionale_ (Paris, 1753); and another contemporary English view appeared in Wm. Smith’s _Hist. of the Province of New York_ (1757).[1434] Nothing appeared after this of much moment as a general account of the Six Nations till Henry R. Schoolcraft made his _Report_ to the New York authorities in 1845, which was published in a more popular form in his _Notes on the Iroquois, or Contributions to American history, antiquities, and general ethnology_ (Albany, 1847), a book not valued overmuch.[1435]

Better work was done by J. V. H. Clark in what is in effect a good history of the Confederacy, in his _Onondaga_ (Syracuse, 1849). The series of biographies by W. L. Stone, of Sir William Johnson, Brant, and Red Jacket, form a continuous history for a century (1735-1838).[1436] The most carefully studied work of all has been that of Lewis H. Morgan in his _League of the Iroquois_ (1851), a book of which Parkman says (_Jesuits_, p. liv) that it commands a place far in advance of all others, and he adds, “Though often differing widely from Mr. Morgan’s conclusions, I cannot bear too emphatic testimony to the value of his researches.”[1437] The latest scholarly treatment of the Iroquois history is by Horatio Hale in the introduction to _The Iroquois Book of Rites_ (Philad., 1883), which gives the forms of commemoration on the death of a chief and upon the choice of a successor.[1438]

Moving south, the material grows somewhat scant. There is little distinctive about the New Jersey tribes.[1439] For the Delawares and the Lenni Lenape, the main source is the native bark record, which as Walam-Olum was given by Squier in his _Historical and Mythological Traditions of the Algonquins_,[1440] as translated by Rafinesque,[1441] while a new translation is given in D. G. Brinton’s _Lenâpé and their legends; with the complete text and symbols of the Walam Olum, a new translation, and an inquiry into its authenticity_ (Philadelphia, 1885), making a volume of his _Library of aboriginal American literature_; and the book is in effect a series of ethnological studies on the Indians of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland.[1442]

In addition to some of the early tracts[1443] on Maryland[1444] and Virginia and the general histories, like those of Beverly, and Stith for Virginia, and particularly Bozman for Maryland, with Henning’s _Statutes_, and some of the local histories,[1445] we have little for these central coast regions.[1446] In Carolina we must revert to such early books as Lawson and Brickell; to Carroll’s _Hist. Collections of South Carolina_, and to occasional periodic papers.[1447]

Farther south, we get help from the early Spanish and French,—Herrera, Barcia, the chroniclers of Florida, Davilla Padilla, Laudonnière, the memorials of De Soto’s march, the documents in the collections of Ternaux, Buckingham Smith, and B. F. French, all of which have been characterized elsewhere.[1448]

The later French documents in Margry and the works of Dumont and Du Pratz give us additional help.[1449] On the English side we find something in Coxe’s _Carolana_, in Timberlake, in Lawson,[1450] in the Wormsloe quartos on Georgia and South Carolina,[1451] and in later books like Filson’s _Kentucke_, John Haywood’s _Nat. and Aborig. Hist. Tennessee_ (down to 1768), Benjamin Hawkins’s _Sketch of the Creek Country_ (1799), and Jeffreys’ _French Dominion in America_. Brinton, in _The National Legend of the Chata-Mus-ko-kee tribes_ (in the _Hist. Mag._, Feb., 1870), printed a translation of “What Chekilli the head chief of the upper and lower Creeks said in a talk held at Savannah in 1735,” which he derived from a German version preserved in _Herrn Philipp Georg Friederichs von Reck Diarium von seiner Reise nach Georgien im Jahr 1735_ (Halle, 1741).[1452] This legend is taken by Albert S. Gatschet, in his _Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, with a linguistic, historic, and ethnographic introduction_ (Philad., 1884), as a centre round which to group the ethnography of the whole gulf water-shed of the Southern States, wherein he has carefully analyzed the legend and its language, and in this way there is formed what is perhaps the best survey we have of the southern Indians.

This we may supplement by Pickett’s _Alabama_. Col. C. C. Jones, Jr., has given us a sketch (1868) of Tomo-chi-chi, the chief who welcomed Oglethorpe.[1453]

C. C. Royce has given us glimpses of the relations of the Cherokees and the whites in the _Fifth Report, Bureau of Ethnology_. A recent book is G. E. Foster’s _Se-Quo-Yah, the American Cadmus and modern Moses. A biography of the greatest of redmen, around whose life has been woven the manners, customs and beliefs of the early Cherokees, with a recital of their wrongs and progress toward civilization_ (Philadelphia, etc., 1885.)[1454] Gatschet cites the _Mémoire_ of Milfort, a war chief of the Creeks.[1455] The Chippewas are commemorated in a paper in Beach’s _Indian Miscellany_.[1456] The Seminole war produced a literature[1457] bearing on the Florida tribes. Bernard Romans’ _Florida_ (1775) gave the comments of an early English observer of the natives of the southeastern parts of the United States. Dr. Brinton’s _Floridian Peninsula_ and the paper of Clay Maccauley on the Seminoles in the _Fifth Rept. Bureau of Ethnology_ help out the study. The Natchez have been considered as allied with the races of middle America,[1458] and we may go back to Garcilasso de la Vega and the later Du Pratz for some of the speculations about them, to be aided by the accounts we get from the French concerning their campaigns against them.[1459]

The placing of the tribes in the Ohio Valley is embarrassed by their periodic migrations.[1460] Brinton follows the migrations of the Shawanees,[1461] and C. C. Royce seeks to identify them in their wanderings.[1462] O. H. Marshall tracks other tribes along the Great Lakes.[1463] Hiram W. Beckwith places those in Illinois and Indiana.[1464] The Wyandots[1465] have been treated, as affording a type for a short study of tribal society, by Major Powell in the _Bureau of Ethnology, First Report_.[1466] G. Gale’s _Upper Mississippi_ (Chicago, 1867) gives us a condensed summary of the tribes of that region, and Miss Fletcher’s _Report_ will help us for all this territory. Use can be also made of Caleb Atwater’s _Indians of the Northwest, or a Tour to Prairie du Chien_ (Columbus, 1850). Dr. John G. Shea and others have used the _Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society_ to make known their studies of the tribes of that State.[1467] One of the most readable studies of the Indians in the neighborhood of Lake Superior is John G. Kohl’s _Kitchi-Gami_ (1860). The authorities on the Black Hawk war throw light on the Sac and Fox tribes.[1468] Pilling’s _Bibliography of the Siouan Languages_ (1887) affords the readiest key to the mass of books about the Sioux or Dacotah stocks from the time of Hennepin and the early adventurers in the Missouri Valley. The travellers Carver and Catlin are of importance here. Mrs. Eastman’s _Dacotah, or life and legends of the Sioux_ (1849) is an excellent book that has not yet lost its value; and the same can be said of Francis Parkman’s _California and the Oregon Trail_ (N. Y., 1849), which shows that historian’s earliest experience of the wild camp life. Miss Alice C. Fletcher is the latest investigator of their present life.[1469] Of the Crows we have some occasional accounts like Mrs. Margaret J. Carrington’s _Absaraka_.[1470] On the Modocs we have J. Miller’s _Life among the Modocs_ (London, 1873). J. O. Dorsey has given us a paper on the Omaha sociology in the _Third Rept. Bureau of Ethnology_ (p. 205); and we may add to this some account in the _Transactions_ (vol. i.) of the Nebraska State Hist. Society, and a tract by Miss Fletcher on the _Omaha tribe of Indians in Nebraska_ (Washington, 1885). The Pawnees have been described by J. B. Dunbar in the _Mag. Amer. Hist._ (vols. iv., v., viii., ix.) The Ojibways have had two native historians,—Geo. Copway’s _Traditional Hist. of the Ojibway Nation_ (London, 1850), and Peter Jones’ _Hist. of the Ojibway Indians, with special reference to their conversion to Christianity_ (London, 1861). The _Minnesota Hist. Soc. Collections_ (vol. v.) contain other historical accounts by Wm. W. Warren and by Edw. D. Neill,—the latter touching their connection with the fur-traders. Miss Fletcher’s _Report_ (1888) will supplement all these accounts of the aborigines of this region.

Our best knowledge of the southwestern Indians, the Apaches, Navajos, Utes, Comanches, and the rest, comes from such government observers as Emory in his _Military Reconnaissance_; Marcy’s _Exploration of the Red River in 1852_; J. H. Simpson in his _Expedition into the Navajo Country_ (1856); and E. H. Ruffner’s _Reconnoissance in the Ute Country_ (1874). The fullest references are given in Bancroft’s _Native Races_,[1471] with a map.

We may still find in Bancroft’s _Native Races_ (i. ch. 2, 3) the best summarized statement with references on the tribes of the upper Pacific coast, and follow the development of our knowledge in the narratives of the early explorers of that coast by water, in the account of Lewis and Clark and other overland travels, and in such tales of adventures as the _Journal kept at Nootka Sound by John R. Jewitt_, which has had various forms.[1472]

The earliest of the better studied accounts of these northwestern tribes was that of Horatio Hale in the volume (vi.) on ethnography, of the Wilkes’ _United States Exploring Expedition_ (Philad., 1846), and the same philologist’s paper in the _Amer. Ethnological Society’s Transactions_ (vol. ii.). Recent scientific results are found in _The North-West Coast of America, being Results of Recent Ethnological Researches, from the Collections of the Royal Museums at Berlin, published by the Directors of the Ethnological Department, by Herr E. Krause, and partly by Dr. Grunwedel, translated from the German, the Historical and Descriptive Text by Dr. Reiss_ (New York, 1886), and in the first volume of the _Contributions to North Amer. Ethnology_ (Powell’s Survey), in papers by George Gibbs on the tribes of Washington and Oregon, and by W. H. Dall on those of Alaska.[1473]

For the tribes of California, Bancroft’s first volume is still the useful general account; but the Federal government have published several contributions of scientific importance: that of Stephen Powers in the _Contributions to No. Amer. Ethnology_ (vol. iii., 1877);[1474] the ethnological volume (vii.) of _Wheeler’s Survey_, edited by Putnam; and papers in the _Smithsonian Reports_, 1863-64, and in Miss Fletcher’s _Report_, 1888.[1475]

This survey would not be complete without some indication of the topical variety in the consideration of the native peoples, but we have space only to mention the kinds of special treatment, shown in accounts of their government and society, their intellectual character, and of some of their customs and amusements.[1476] Their industries, their linguistics, and their myths have been considered with wider relations in the appendixes of the present volume.