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[ Present State of the Savages of North America ] [ The United States Today ]Present State of the Savages of North America
If I presented the reader this tableau of savage America as the faithful picture of what exists today, I would be deceiving him. I have painted what was much more than what is. There are no doubt still to be found several of these character traits in the Indians of the wandering tribes of the New World; but the manners in general, the originality of the customs, the primitive form of the governments, in short the American genius, all this has disappeared. After having told of the past, I have yet to complete my work by sketching the present.
When one has evaluated the tales of the first navigators and colonists who reconnoitered and cleared Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, the two Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and all that which is called New England, Acadia, and Canada, one can scarcely estimate the savage population contained between the Mississippi and the Saint Lawrence at the time of the discovery of those countries at less than three million men.
Today the Indian population of all North America, including neither the Mexicans nor the Eskimo, scarcely reaches 400,000. The roll of the indigenous peoples of that part of the New World has not been called: I shall do it. Many men, many tribes will fail to answer: a last historian of those peoples, I shall open their death register.
In 1534, upon the arrival of Jacques Cartier in Canada, and at the time of the founding of Quebec by Champlain in 1608, the Algonquians, the Iroquois, the Hurons, with their allies or subjects, namely, the Etchimins, the Souriquois, the Bersiamites, the Papinachois, the Montagais, the Attikamègues, the Nipissings, the Temiscamings, the Amikouès, the Cristinaux [Crees], the Assiniboins, the Potawatomis, the Nokais, the Otchagras, and the Miamis, armed about 50,000 warriors; that supposes among the savages a population of about 250,000. According to Lahontan, each of the five great Iroquois villages contained 14,000 inhabitants. Today one can find in Lower Canada only six hamlets of savages who have become Christians: the Hurons of Corette, the Abnakis of Saint Franpis, the Algonquians, the Nipissings, the Iroquois of the Lake of the Two Mountains, and the Osouekatchiesfeeble remnants of several races that are no more, and which, gathered together by religion, offer the double proof of its power to preserve, and man's power to destroy.
The remains of the five Iroquois nations is enclaved in the English and American possessions, and the number of all the Savages that I have just named is at most 2,500 to 3,000.
The Abnakis, who is 1587 occupied Acadia (today New Brunswick and Nova Scotia); the savages of Maine, who destroyed all the whites' settlements in 1675, and who continued their ravages until 1748; the same hordes who subjected New Hampshire to the same fate; the Wampanoags, the Nipmucks, who carried on pitched battles with the English, besieged Hadley and assaulted Brookfield in Massachusetts; the Indians who in the same years 1673 and 1675 fought the Europeans; the Pequots of Connecticut; the Indians who negotiated the cession of part of their territories to the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware; the Piscataways of Maryland; the tribes who obeyed Powhatan in Virginia; the Paroustis in the Carolinas-all these peoples have disappeared.
Of the numerous nations that Hernando de Soto found in the Floridas (and we must include in this name all that which forms today the states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee), there remain only the Creeks, the Cherokees, and the Chickasaws.
The Creeks, whose former manners I have painted, could not now raise more than 2,000 warriors. Of the vast countries that belonged to them they no longer possess any more than about eight square miles in the state of Georgia and a territory of about the same size in Alabama. The Cherokees and the Chickasaws, reduced to a handful of men, live in a corner of the states of Georgia and Tennessee; the latter, on the two banks of the Hiwassee.
As weak as they are, the Creeks fought the Americans valiantly in the years 1813 and 1814. Generals Jackson, White, Clayborne, and Floyd caused them to suffer great losses at Talladeza, Hillabes, Autossees, Becanachaca, and especially at Entonopeka. These savages had made notable progress in civilization, and especially in the art of war, using and directing artillery very well. A few years ago they judged and put to death one of their Micos, or kings, for having sold lands to the whites without the participation of the national council.
The Americans, who covet the rich territory where the Muskogees and the Seminoles still live, have wanted to force them to cede it to them for a sum of money, proposing that they be transported then to the west of the Missouri. The state of Georgia has maintained that it bought that territory; the American Congress has placed an obstacle before this claim; but sooner or later the Creeks, the Cherokees, and the Chickasaws, pressed in the midst of the white populations of Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, will be obliged to undergo exile or extermination.
Upstream along the Mississippi, from its mouth to the confluence of the Ohio, all the savages who inhabited these two banks-the Biloxis, the Torimas, the Kappas, the Sotouis, the Bayogoulas, the Kalapaoian, the Tansas, the Natchez, and the Yazoos-are no more.
In the valley of the Ohio, the nations that wandered along that river and its tributaries rose up in 1810 against the Americans. They put at their head a medicine man or prophet who predicted victory, while his brother, the famous Tecumseh,"' fought. Three thousand savages united to recover their independence. The American general Harrison... marched against them with a body of troops; he met them on November 6, 1811, at the confluence of the Tippecanoe and the Wabash. The Indians showed the greatest courage, and their chief Tecumseh displayed an extraordinary skill; he was, however, overcome.
The War of 1812 between the Americans and the English renewed the hostilities on the frontiers of the wilderness; the savages almost all rallied to the English; Tecumseh had passed into their service: Colonel Proctor, an Englishman, directed the operations. Barbarous scenes took place at Chicago and forts Meigs and Milden. The heart of Captain Wells was devoured in a feast of human flesh. General Harrison rushed in again and overcame the savages at the Thames affair. Tecumseh was killed there; Colonel Proctor owed his safety to the speed of his horse.
Peace being concluded between the United States and England in 1814, the limits of the two empires were definitively drawn. By a chain of military posts the Americans assured their domination over the savages.
From the mouth of the Ohio to the falls of Saint Anthony on the Mississippi there are to be found on the western bank of the river the Saukes, whose population attains the figure of 4,800; the Foxes, 1,600; the Winnebagos, 1,600 and the Menominees, 1,200. The Illinois are of the stock of these tribes.
Then come the Sioux, of Mexican stock divided into six nations; the first inhabits in part the upper Mississippi; the second, third, fourth, and fifth hold the banks of the St. Peter's River,"' the sixth extends toward the Missouri. These six Sioux nations are estimated at about 45,000.
Behind the Sioux, approaching New Mexico, are some remains of the Osages, the Kansas, the Octotatas, the Nakotas, the Ajoues, and the Pawnees.
The Assiniboins wander under different names from the northern sources of the Missouri to the great Red River, which flows into Hudson Bay;` their population is 25,000.
The Chippewas of Algonquian race and enemies of the Sioux, hunt, 3,000 or 4,000 warriors strong in the wilderness that separates the great lakes of Canada from Lake Winnipeg.
That is all which is known positively of the population of the savages of North America. Even if we add to these known tribes the less familiar tribes that live beyond the Rocky Mountains, we shall have difficulty indeed finding the 400,000 individuals mentioned at the beginning of this census. There are travelers who do not number at more than 100,000 the Indian population on this side of the Rocky Mountains nor at more than 50,000 beyond the mountains, including the savages of California.
Pushed by the European population toward the Northwest of North America, the savage population comes by a singular destiny to expire on the very shore on which they landed in unknown centuries to take possession of America. In the Iroquois language, the Indians give themselves the name "men of forever" - Ongoue-onoue. These "men of forever" have gone, and the foreigner will soon leave to these legitimate heirs to a whole world, only the earth of their tombs.
The reasons for this depopulation are known: the use of strong liquors, vices, illnesses, and wars, which we have multiplied among the Indians, have precipitated the destruction of these peoples; but it is not entirely true that the social state, coming to be established in the forests, has been a sufficient cause of this destruction.
The Indian was not savage; the European civilization did not act on the pure state of nature; it acted on the rising American civilization; if it had found nothing, it would have created something; but it found manners and destroyed them because it was stronger and did not consider it should mix with those manners.
Asking what would have happened to the inhabitants of America, if America had escaped the sails of navigators, would no doubt be a vain question but still curious to examine. Would they have perished in silence as did those nations more advanced in the arts, which in all probability formerly flourished in the country watered by the Ohio, the Muskingum, the Tennessee, the lower Mississippi, and the Tombigbee?
Putting aside for a moment the great principles of Christianity, as well as the interests of Europe, a philosophical spirit could wish that the people of the New World had had the time to develop outside the circle of our institutions.
We are everywhere reduced to the worn forms of an old civilization (I do not speak of the populations of Asia, fixed for 4,000 years in a despotism which is infantile). There have been found among the savages of Canada, New England, and the Floridas, beginnings of all the customs and all the laws of the Greeks, the Romans and the Hebrews. A civilization of a nature different from ours could have reproduced the men of antiquity or have spread new enlightenment from a still unknown source. Who knows whether we would not have seen one day land on our shores some American Columbus coming to discover the Old World?
The degradation of the Indians' manners marched in step with the depopulation of the tribes. The religious traditions have become much more confused; education, first spread by the missionaries of Canada, has mixed foreign ideas with the native ideas of the inhabitants. One can see today through crude fables the Christian beliefs disfigured. Most of the savages wear crosses as ornaments, and the Protestant traders sell them what the Catholic missionaries gave them. Let us say, to the honor of our country and the glory of our religion, that the Indians became very attached to the French, that they never stopped missing them, and that a black robe (a missionary) is still venerated in the American forests. If the English in their wars with the United States saw almost all the savages enrolled under the British banner, it is because the English of Quebec still have among them descendants of the French, and they occupy the land which Ononthiol governed. The savage continues to love us in the land on which we trod, where we were his first guests, and where we left tombs: serving the new possessors of Canada, he remains faithful to France with the enemies of France.
Here is what can be read in a recent book of Travels to the sources of the Mississippi. The significance of this passage is all the greater in that the author in another part of his Travels, pauses to argue against the Jesuits of our days:
In all justice, the French missionaries in general distinguished themselves everywhere by an exemplary life in conformity with their state. Their good religious faith, their apostolic charity, their insinuating gentleness, their heroic patience, and their shunning of fanaticism and rigorism mark in these countries edifying periods in the glory of Christianity; and while the memory of the del Vildes, the Vodillas, etc., will always be held in execration in all truly Christian hearts, that of the Daniels, the Bréboeufs, etc., will never lose the veneration which the history of the discoveries and the missions justly confers upon them. That is the source of the preference which the savages show for the French, a preference they naturally find in the depths of their souls, nourished by the traditions which their fathers left in favor of the first apostles of Canada, then New France.
That confirms what I have already written on the missions of Canada. The brilliant character of French valor, our disinterestedness, our gaiety, our adventuresome spirit were in sympathy with the genius of the Indians; but it must also be realized that the Catholic religion is more appropriate to the education of the savage than the Protestant sect.
When Christianity began in the midst of a civilized world and the spectacle of paganism, it was simple in its outward appearance, severe in its morality, and metaphysical in its arguments, because it was a question of tearing away from their error people overcome by the senses or misled by philosophical systems. When Christianity passed from the delights of Rome and the schools of Athens to the forests of Germania, it surrounded itself with pomp and images in order to enchant the simplicity of the barbarian. The Protestant governments of America occupied themselves little with the civilization of the savages: they thought only of trading with them. Now commerce, which increases civilization among peoples already civilized and among whom intelligence has prevailed over manners, produces only corruption among peoples whose manners are superior to their intelligence. Religion is obviously the primitive law: Fathers Jogues, Lallemant, and Brébeuf were legislators of a quite different kind from the English and the American traders.
Just as the religious notions of the savages became confused, the political institutions of these peoples have been altered by the influx of the Europeans. The mainsprings of the Indian government were subtle and delicate; time had not consolidated them; foreign politics, touching them, easily broke them. Those various councils balancing their respective authority, those counterweights formed by the members (the Sachems, the matrons, the young warriors) -all that machine was put in disarray: our presents, our vices, and our arms bought, corrupted, or killed the individuals who made up these several powers.
Today the Indian tribes are simply led by a chief. Those which have confederated gather sometimes in general diets; but since no law regulates these assemblies, they almost always disperse without having decreed anything. They realize their nothingness and the discouragement that accompanies weakness.
Another cause has contributed to the degradation of the savages' government: the establishment of American and English military posts in the midst of the forests. There a commander sets himself up as the protector of the Indians in the wilderness; by means of a few presents he causes the tribes to appear before him; he declares himself their father and the envoy of the three white worlds: the savages designate thus the Spaniards, the French, and the English. The commander informs his "red children" that he is going to fix certain limits, clear certain lands, etc. The savage ends up believing he is not the real possessor of the land disposed of without his being consulted; he becomes accustomed to look upon himself as a species inferior to the white; he consents to receive orders, to hunt, to fight for masters. What need to govern oneself when one has only to obey?
It is natural that the manners and customs deteriorated with religion and politics, that everything was swept away at once. When the Europeans penetrated America, the savages lived and dressed by means of the product of their hunt and carried on no commerce among themselves. Soon the foreigners taught them to barter for arms, strong liquors, different household utensils, coarse cloth, and beads. Some Frenchmen, called coureurs de bois,"' at first accompanied the Indians in their excursions. Little by little there were formed commercial companies which thrust out advance posts and placed shops in the midst of the wilderness. Pursued by the European avidity and by the corruption of civilized people even in the depths of their forests, the Indians exchange at these trading posts rich furs for objects of little value but which have become for them objects of prime necessity. Not only do they deal in the hunts already accomplished, but they make disposition of the future hunts, as one sells a harvest still standing in the field.
These advances accorded by the traders plunge the Indians into an abyss of debt. Then they have all the calamities of the common man of our cities and all the distress of the savage. Their hunts, whose results they seek to increase to an exaggerated degree, are transformed into a frightful exhaustion. They take along their wives; these unfortunates, used for all the camp services, draw the sledges, go to retrieve the slain animals, tan the skins, dry the meat. They can be seen loaded with the heaviest burdens, still carrying their little children at the breast or on their shoulders. Should they be pregnant and ready to give birth, to hasten their delivery and return more quickly to the work they press their stomach against a wooden bar raised several feet off the ground; letting their head and arms hang down they give birth to a miserable creature, in all the rigor of the curse: In dolore paries filios!
Thus civilization, entering through commerce among the American tribes, instead of developing their intelligence, stupefied them. The Indian has become perfidious, selfish, lying, and dissolute; his cabin is a receptacle for filth and dirt. When he was nude or covered with animal skins, there was something proud and great about him; today European rags, without covering his nudity, merely attest to his misery: he is a beggar at the door of a trading post; he no longer is a savage in his forests.
Finally there has been formed a kind of half-breed people, born from the commerce of European adventurers and savage women. These men, who are called bois-brfil6s," because of the color of their skin, are the businessmen and the brokers between the tribes from whom they draw their origin: speaking at the same time the languages of their fathers and their mothers, interpreters for the traders with the Indians and for the Indians with the traders, they have the vices of the two races. These bastards of civilized nature and savage nature sell themselves now to the Americans, now to the English, to deliver to them the monopoly of the pelts; they feed the rivalries of the English companies- Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company-and the American companies - Columbia American Fur Company, Missouri's Fur Company," and others. They conduct hunts themselves for the account of the traders and with hunters paid by the companies.
The spectacle is then quite different from the Indian hunts: the men are on horseback; there are wagons that transport the dried meat and the furs; the women and children are carried on little carts by dogs. These dogs, so useful in the northern countries, are another burden for their masters, for since they cannot feed them during the summer, they board them on credit with keepers and thus contract new debts. The famished dogs sometimes leave their kennel and go fishing: they can be seen diving into the rivers and seizing the fish at the bottom of the water.
In Europe we only know that great war in America which gave to the world a free people. We are unaware that blood flowed for the miserable interests of a few fur merchants. The Hudson's Bay Company sold, in 1811, to Lord Selkirk a vast territory on the edge of the Red River; the establishment was made in 1812. The Northwest Company, or Canada Company, took offense. The two companies, allied with different Indian tribes and encouraged by the bois-brûlés, fell to blows. This little domestic war, which was horrible, took place in the icy wastes of Hudson Bay. The colony of Lord Selkirk was destroyed in June 1815, precisely at the moment at which the battle of Waterloo was taking place. In these two theaters, so different by their brilliance and obscurity, the misfortunes of the human race were the same. The two companies, exhausted, felt that it was better to unite than to rend one another. Today they push together their operations to the west as far as the Columbia, to the north as far as the rivers that flow into the Polar Sea.
In short, the proudest nations of North America have kept only the language and the dress of their race; even this is altered; they have learned a bit how to cultivate the earth and raise flocks. Instead of the famous warrior that he was, the savage of Canada has become an obscure shepherd, a kind of extraordinary herdsman driving his mares with a tomahawk and his sheep with arrows. Philip, successor of Alexander, died a petty official in Rome; an Iroquois sings and dances for a few coins in Paris: one should not look on the aftermath of glory.
In tracing this tableau of a savage world, speaking endlessly of Canada and Louisiana, seeing on the old maps the extent of the former French colonies in America, I was pursued by a painful idea: I wondered how the government of my country had allowed these colonies to perish, colonies that would be for us today an endless source of prosperity.
From Acadia and Canada to Louisiana, from the mouth of the Saint Lawrence to that of the Mississippi, the territory of New France surrounded what initially formed the confederation of the 13 original United States. The other 11 states, the District of Columbia, the Territories of Michigan, the Northwest, Missouri, Oregon, and Arkansas belonged to us or would belong to us as they belong today to the United States by cession from the English and the Spanish, our first heirs in Canada and Louisiana.
Take your starting point between the 43rd and 44th degree of north latitude on the Atlantic at Cape Sable of Nova Scotia, formerly Acadia; from this point draw a line that will pass behind the first United States, Maine, Vernon, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia; let this line pass by the Tennessee to join the Mississippi and New Orleans, let it go then as far as the 29th degree (latitude of the mouths of the Mississippi), and go back up through the territory of Arkansas to the Oregon Territory; let it cross the Rocky Mountains and end at Point Saint George on the Pacific coast around the 42nd degree of north latitude: the immense territory contained inside this line, the Atlantic on the northeast, the Polar Sea on the north, the Pacific Ocean and the Russian possessions on the northwest, the Mexican Gulf on the south-that is, more than two thirds of North America-all that would recognize the laws of France.
What would have happened if such colonies had still been in our bands at the time of the emancipation of the United States? Would this emancipation have taken place? Would our presence on the American soil have hastened it or retarded it? Would New France itself have become free? Why not? What misfortune would there be for the mother country in seeing flourish an immense empire that had sprung from her breast, an empire that would spread the glory of our name and our language in another hemisphere?
We possessed beyond the seas vast countries that could offer asylum to the excess of our population, a considerable market for our commerce, supplies for our navy; today we find ourselves forced to shut up in our prisons the guilty condemned by the court, for lack of a corner of land on which to deposit these unfortunates. We are excluded from the new universe where mankind begins anew. The English and Spanish languages serve in Africa, in Asia, in the islands of the South Seas, and on the continent of the two Americas to interpret the thoughts of several million men; and we, disinherited of the conquests of our courage and our genius, scarcely do we hear spoken, except in a few villages of Louisiana and Canada under foreign domination, the language of Racine, of Colbert, and of Louis XIV; it remains there only as a witness to the reversals of our fortune and the mistakes of our politics.
Thus France has disappeared from North America like those Indian tribes with which she sympathized and of which I glimpsed a few remains. What has happened in that North America since the time when I traveled there? That is what must now be said. To console the readers, I shall in the conclusion of this work fix their view on a miraculous picture: they will learn what liberty is capable of for the happiness and dignity of man when it iseparated from religious ideas and when it is both intelligent and holy.