Fayette County, Ohio - The Miamis the Miami, Piankeshaw, and Wea Bands, 1881 (part 1 of 2)

The Miamis the Miami, Piankeshaw, and Wea Bands

The people known to us as the Miamis formerlj^ dwelt beyond the Mississippi, and, according to their own traditions, came originally from tlie Pacific. " If what I have heard asserted in several places be true, tlie Illinois and Miamis- came from the banks of a very distant sea to the westward. It would seem that their first stand, after they made their first descent into this country, was at Moingona. At least it is certain that one of their tribes bears that name. The rest are knowm under the name of Peorias, Tamaroas, Caoquias and Kaskaskias."

The migration of the Miamis from the west of the Mississippi, eastward through Wisconsin and northern Illinois, aroi;nd the southern end of Lake Michigan to Detroit, and thence up the Maumee and down the Wabash, and eastward through Indiana into Ohio as far as the Great Miami, can be followed through the mass of records handed down to us from the missionaries, travelers and officers connected with the French. Speaking of the mixed village of Maskoutens, situated on Fox Piver, Wisconsin, at the time of his visit there in 1670, Father Claude Dablon says the village of the Fire-nation " is joined in the circle of the same barriers to another people, named Oumiami, w^hich is one of the Illinois nations, which is, as it were, dismembered from the others, in order to dwell in these quarters. It is beyond this great river that are placed the Illinois of whom we speak, and from whom are detached those who dwell here with the Fire-nation to form here a transplanted colony." -

From the quotations made there remains little doubt that the Miamis were originally a branch of the great Illinois nation. This theory is confirmed by writers of our own time, among whom we may mention General William H. Harrison, whose long acquaintance and official connection with the several bands of the Miamis and Illinois gave him the opportunities, of which he availed himself, to acquire an intimate knowledge concerning them. "Although the language, manners and customs of the Kaskaskias make it sufficiently certain that they derived tlieir origin from the same source with the Miamis, the connection had been dissolved before the French had penetrated from Canada to the Mississippi." The assertion of General Harrison that the tribal relation between the Illinois and Miamis had been broken at the time of the discovery of the Upper Mississippi valley by the French is sustained with great unanimity by all other authorities. In the long and disastrous wars waged upon the Illinois by the Iroquois, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and other enemies, we have no instance given where the Miamis ever offered assistance to their ancient kinsmen. After the separation, on the contrary, they often lifted the bloody hatchet against them.

Father Dablon, in the narrative from which we have quoted, gives a detailed account of the civility of the Miamis at Mascouten, and the formality and court routine with which their great chief was surrounded. " The chief of the Miamis, whose name was Tetinchoua, was surrounded by the most notable people of the village, who, assuming the role of courtiers, with civil posture full of deference, and keeping always a respectful silence, magnified the greatness of their king. The chief and his routine gave Father Dablon every mark of their most distinguished esteem. The physiognomy of the chief was as mild and as attractive as any one could wish to see ; and while his reputation as a warrior was great, his features bore a softness which charmed all those who beheld him."

^Nicholas Perrot, with Sieur de St. Lussin, dispatched by Talon, the intendant, to visit the westward nations, with whom the French had intercourse, and invite them to a council to be held the following spring at the Sault Ste. Marie, was at this Miami village shortly after the visit of Dablon. Perrot was treated with great consideration by the Miamis. Tetinchoua " sent out a detachment to meet the French agent and receive him in military style. The detachment advanced in battle array, all the braves adorned with feathers, armed at all points, were uttering war cries from time to time. The Pottawatomies who escorted Perrot, seeing them come in this guise, perpared to receive them in the same manner, and Perrot put himself at their head. When the two troops were in face of each other, they stopped as if to take breath, then all at once Perrot took the right, the Miamis the left, all running in Indian file, as though they wished to gain an advantage to charge.

" But the Miamis wheeling in the form of an arc, the Pottawatomies were invested on all sides. Then both uttered loud yells, which were the signals for a kind of combat. The Miamis fired a volley from their guns, wliicli were only loaded with powder, and the Pottawatoinies returned it in the same way ; after this they closed, tomahawk in hand, all the blows being received on the tomahawks. Peace was then made ; the Miamis jDresented the calumet to Perrot, and led him with all his chief escort into the town, where the great chief assigned him a guard of fifty men, regaled him magnificently after the custom of the country, and gave him the diversion of a game of ball. The Miami chief never spoke to his subjects, but imparted his orders through some of his officers. On account of his advanced age he was dissuaded from attending the council to be held at Ste. Marie, between the French and the Indians; however, he deputized the Pottawatomies to act in his name.

This confederacy called themselves " Miamis ," and by this name were known to the surrounding tribes. The name was not bestowed upon them by the French, as some have assumed from its resemblance to 3fon-ami, because they were the friends of the latter. When Hennepin was captured on the Mississippi by a war party of the Sioux, these savages with their painted faces rendered more hideous by the devilish contortions of their features, cried out in angry voices, " '-Mia-Jiama ! Mia-hama P and we made signs with our oars upon the sand, that the Miamis, their enemies, of whom they were in search, had passed the river upon their flight to join the Illinois."

" The confederacy which obtained the general appellation of Miamis, from the superior numbers of the individual tribe to whom that name more properly belonged," were subdivided into thi-ee principal tribes or bands, namely, the Miamis proper, Weas and Piankeshaws. French writers have given names to two or three other subdivisions or families of the three principal bands, whose identity has never been clearly traced, and who figure so little in the accounts which we have of the Miamis, that it is not necessary here to specify their obslete names. The different ways of wi-iting Miamis are : Oumiamwek, Oumamis, Maumees, Au-Miami (contracted to Au-Mi and Omee) and Mine-ami.

The French called the Weas Ouiatenons, Syatanons, Ouyatanons and Ouias ; the English and Colonial traders spelled the word, Ouicatanon, Way-ough-ta-nies, Wawiachtens, and Wehahs.

British, as well as by the American colonists. Of this name there are various corruptions in pronounciation and spelling, examples oi which we have in " Twich-twichs," " Twick-twicks," " Twis-twicks," " Twigh-twees," and " Twick-tovies." The insertion of these many names, applied to one people, would seem a tedious superfluity, were it otherwise possible to retain the identity of the tribes to which these different appellations have been given by the French, British and American officers, traders and writers. It will save the reader much perplexity in perusing a history of the Miamis if it is borne in mind that all these several names refer to the Miami nation or to one or the other of its respective bands.

Besides the colony mentioned by Dablon and Charlevoix, on the Fox River of Wisconsin, Hennepin informs us of a village of Miamis soutli ^nd west of Peoria Lake at the time he was at the latter place in 1679, and it was probably this village whose inhabitants the Sioux were seeking. St. Cosme, in 1699, mentions the '- village of the ' Peanzichias-Miamis, who formerly dwelt on the of the Mississippi, and who had come some years previous and settled ' on the Illinois Piver, a few miles below the confluence of the Des Plaines."

The Miamis were within the territory of La Salle's colony, of which Starved Pock was the center, and counted thirteen hundred warriors. The Weas and Piankeshaws were also there, the former having five hundred warriors and the Piankeshaw band one hundred and fifty. This was prior to 1687. At a later day the Weas " were at Chicago, but being afraid of the canoe people, left it." Sieur de Courtmanche, sent westward in 1701 to negotiate with the tribes in that part of Kew France, was at " Chicago, where he found some Weas (Ouiatanons), a Miami tribe, who had sung the war-song against the Sioux and the Iroquois. He obliged them to lay down their arms and extorted from them a promise to send deputies to Montreal."

In a letter dated in 1Y21, published in his " Narrative Journal," Father Charlevoix, speaking of the Miamis about the head of Lake Michigan, says : " Fifty years ago the Miamis were settled on the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, in a place called Chicagou, from the name of a small river which runs into the lake, the source of which is not far distant from that of the river of the Illinois; they are at present divided into three villages, one of which stands on the river St. Joseph, the second on another river which bears their name and runs into Lake Erie, and the third upon the river

A.Wae Witu The Sioux

In 1694, Count Frontenac, in a conference with the Western Indians, requested the Miamis of the Pepikokia band who resided on the Maramek, to remove and join the tribe which was located on the Saint Joseph, of Lake Michigan. The reason for this request, as stated by Frontenac himself, was, that he wished the different bands of the Miami confederacy to unite, " so as to be able to execute with greater facility the commands which he might issue." At that time the Iroquois were at war with Canada, and the French were endeavoring to persuade the western tribes to take up the tomahawk in their behalf. 'The Miamis promised to observe the Governor's wishes and began to make preparations for the removal.

"Late in August, 1696, they started to join their brethren settled on the St. Joseph. On their way they were attacked by the Sioux, who killed several. The Miamis of the St. Joseph, learning this hostility, resolved to avenge their slaughter. They pursued the Sioux to their own country, and found them entrenched in their fort with some Frenchmen of the class known as coureurs des bois (bushlopers). They nevertheless attacked them repeatedly with great resolution, but were repulsed, and at last compelled to retire, after losing several of their braves. On their way home, meeting other Frenchmen carrying arms and ammunition to the Sioux, they seized all they had, but did them no harm."

The Miamis were very nmch enraged at the French for supplying their enemies, the Sioux, with guns and ammunition. It took all the address of Count Frontenac to prevent them from joining the Iroquois; indeed, they seized upon the French agent and trader, Nicholas Perrot, who had been commissioned to lead the Maramek band to the St. Josephs, and would have burnt him alive had it not been for the Foxes, who interposed in his behalf. This was the connnencement of the bitter feeling of hostility with which, from that time, a part of the Miamis always regarded the French. From this period the movements of the tribe were observed by the French with jealous suspicion.

We have already shown that in 1699 the Miamis were at Fort Wayne, engaged in transferring across their portage emigrants from Canada to Louisiana, and that, within a few years after, the Weas are described as having their fort and several miles of cultivated fields on the Wea plains below La Fayette. From the extent and character of these improvements, it may be safely assumed that the

When the French first discovered the Wabash, the Piankeshaws were found in possession of the land on either side of that stream, from its mouth to the Yennilion River, and no claim had ever been made to it by any other tribe until 1804, the period of a cession of a part of it to the United States by the Delawares, who had obtained their title from the Piankeshaws themselves.

We have already seen that at. the time of the first account we have relating to the Maumee and the Wabash, the Miamis had villages and extensive improvements near Fort Wayne, on the Wea prairie below La Fayette, on the Vei'milion of the Wabash, and at Yincennes. At a later day they established villages at other places, viz., near the forks of the Wabash at Huntington, on the Mississinewa, on Eel River near Logunsport, while near the source of this river, and westward of Fort Wayne, was the village of the " Little Turtle." Near the mouth of the Tippecanoe was a sixth village. Passing below the Yermilion, the Miamis had other villages, one on Sugar Creek and another near Terre Haute.

The country of the Miamis extended west to the watershed between the Illinois and Wabash rivers, which separated their possessions from those of their brethren, the Illinois. On the north were the Pottawatomies, who were slowly but steadily pushing their lines southward into the territory of the Miamis. The superior numbers of the Miamis and their great valor enabled them to extend the limit of their hunting grounds eastward into Ohio, and far within the territory claimed by the Iroquois. " They were the undoubted proprietors of all that beautiful country watered by the Wabash and its tributaries, and there remains as little doubt that their claim extended as far east as the Scioto."

Unlike the Illinois, the Miamis held their own until they were placed upon an equal footing with the tribes eastward by obtaining possession of fire-arms. With these implements of civilized warfare they were able to maintain their tribal integrity and the independence they cherished. They were not to be controlled by the French, nor did they sufEer enemies from any quarter to impose upon them without prompt retaliation. They traded and fought with the Frencli, English and Americans as their interests or passions inclined. They made peace or declared war against other nations of their own race as policy or caprice dictated. More than once they compelled even the arrogant Iroquois to beg from the governors of the American colonies that protection which they themselves had failed to seciire by their own prowess. Bold, independent and flushed with success, the Miimis afforded a poor field for missionary work, and the Jesuit relations and pastoral letters of the French priesthood have less to say of the Miamis confederacy than any of the other western tribes, the Kickapoos alone excepted.

The country of the Miamis was accessible, by way of the lakes, to the fur trader of Canada, and from the eastward, to the adventurers engaged in the Indian trade from Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia, either by way of the Ohio River or a connnerce carried on overland by means of pack-horses. The English and the French alike coveted their peltries and sought their powerful alliance; therefore the Miamis were harrassed with the jealousies and diplomacy of both, and if they or a part of their several tribes became inveigled into an alliance with the one, it involved the hostility of the other. The French government sought to use them to check the westward advance of the British colonial influenae, while tlie latter desired their assistance to curb the French, whose ambitions schemes involved nothing less than the exclusive subjugation of the entire countries westward of the Alleghanies.- Jn these wars between the French and the English the Miamis were constantly reduced in numbers, and whatever might have been the result to either of the former, it only ended in disaster to themselves. Sometimes they divided , again they were entirely devoted to the interest of the English and Iroquois. Then they joined the French against the British and Iroquois, and when the British ultimately obtained the mastery and secured the valley of the Mississippi - the long sought for prize - the Miamis entered the <3onfederacy of Pontiac to drive them out of the country. They fought with the British - except the Piaukeshaw band - against the colonies during the revolutionary war. After its close their young men were largely occupied in the predatory warfare waged by the several Maumee and Wabasli tribes upon the frontier settlements of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. They likewise entered the confederacy of Tecumseh, and, either openly or in secret sympathy, they were the allies of the British in the war of 1812. Their history occupies a conspicuous place in the military annals of the west, extending over a period of a century, during which time they maintained a manly struggle to retain possession of their homes in the valleys of the Wabash and Maumee.

bj the exercise of tlieir cunning and bravery. " In the year 1680 the Miamis and Illinois were hunting on the St. Joseph River. A party of four hundred Iroquois surprised them and killed thirty or forty of their hunters and captured three hundred of their women and children. After the victors had rested awhile they prepared to return to their homes by easy journeys, as they had reason to believe that they could reach their own villages before the defeated enemy would have time to rally and give notice of their disaster to those of their nation who were hunting in remoter places. But they were deceived; for the Illinois and Miamis rallied to the nmnber of two hundred, and resolved to die fighting rather than suffer their women and cliildren to be cariied away. In the meantime, because they were not equal to their enemies in equipment of arms or numbers, they contrived a notable stratagem.

After the Miamis had duly considered in what way they would attack the Iroquois, they decided to follow them, keeping a small distance in the rear, until it should rain. The heavens seemed to favor their plan, for, after awhile it began to rain, and rained continually the whole day from morning until night. When the rain began to fall the Miamis quickened their march and passed by the Iroquois, and took a position two leagues in advance, where they lay in an ambuscade, hidden by the tall grass, in the middle of a prairie, which the Iroquois had to cross in order to reach the woods beyond, where they designed to kindle fires and encamp for the night. The Illinois and Miamis, lying at full length in the grass on either side of the trail, waitiid until the Iroquois were in their midst, when they shot off their arrows, and then attacked vigorously with their clubs. The Iroquois endeavored to use their fire-arms, but finding them of no service because the rain had dampened and spoiled the priming, threw them upon the ground and undertook to defend themselves with their clubs. In the use of the latter weapon the Iroquois were no match for their more dexterous and nimble enemies. They were forced to 'yield the contest, and retreated, fighting until night came on. They lost one hundred and eighty of their warriors.

The fight lasted about an hour, and would have continued through the night, were it not that the Miamis and Illinois feared that their women and children (left in the rear and bound) would be exposed to some surprise in the dark. The victors rejoined their women and children, and possessed tliemselves of the fire-arms of their enemies. The Miamis and Illinois then returned to their own country, wHhout taking one Iroquois for fear of weakening themselves.

Defeat Of The Iroquois

Failing in their first efforts to withdraw the Miamis from the French, and secure their fur trade to the merchants at Albany and New York, the English sent their allies, the Iroquois, against them. A series of encounters between the two tribes was the result, in which the blood of both was profusely shed, to further the purposes of a purely commercial transaction.

In these engagements the Senecas - a tribe of the Iroquois, or Five N"ations, residing to the west of the other tribes of the confederacy, and, in consequence, being nearest to the Miamis, and more directly exposed to their fury - were nearly destroyed at the outset. The Miamis followed up their success and drove the Senecas behind the palisades that inclosed their villages. For three years the war was carried on with a bitterness only known to exasperated savages.

When at last, the Iroquois saw that they could no longer defend themselves against the Miamis, they appeared in council before the Governor of New York, and, pityingly, claimed protection from him, who, to say the least, had remained silent and permitted his own people to precipitate this calamity upon them.

" You say you will support us against all your kings and our enemies ; we will then forbear keeping any more correspondence with the French of Canada if the great King of England will defend our people from the TwichUoichs and other nations over whom the French have an influence and have encouraged to destroy an abundance of our people, even since the peace hetween the two crowns" etc.

The governor declined sending troops to protect the Iroquois against their enemies, but informed them: "You must be serisible that the Dowaganhaes, Twichtwicks, etc., and other remote Indians, are vastly more numerous than you Five Nations, and that, by their continued warring upon you, they will, in a few years, totally destroy you. I should, therefore, think it pruderice and good policy in you to try all possible means to fix a. trade and correspondence with all those nations, by which means you would reconcile them to yourselves, and with my assistance, I am in hopes that, in a short time, they might be united with us in the covenant chain, and then you might at all times, without hazard, go hunting into their country, which, I understand, is much the best for beaver. I wish you would try to bring some of them to speak to me, and perhajjs I might prevail upon them to come and live amongst you. I should think myself obliged to reward you for such a piece of service as I tender your good advantage, and will always use my best endeavor to preserve you from all your enemies.

The conference continued several days, during which the Iroquois stated their grievances in numerous speeches, to which the governor graciously replied, using vague terms and making no promises, after the manner of the extract from his speech above quoted, but placed great stress on the value of the fur trade to the English, and enjoining his brothers, the Iroquois, to bring all their peltries to Albany ; to maintain their old alliance with the English, offensive and defensive, and have no intercourse whatever, of a friendly nature, with the rascally French of Canada.

The Iroquois declined to follow the advice of the governor, deeming it of little credit to their courage to sue for peace. In the meantime the governor sent emissaries out among the Miamis, with an invitation to open a trade with the English. The messengers were captured by the commandant at Detroit, and sent, as prisonei;s, to Canada. However, the Miamis, in July, 1702, sent, through the sachems of the Five Nations, a message to the governor at Albany, advising him that many of the Miamis, with another nation, had removed to, and were then living at, Tjughsaghrondie, near by the fort which the French had built the previous summer ; that they had been informed that one of their chiefs, who had visited Albany two years before, had been kindly treated, and that they had now come forward to inquire into the trade of Albany, and see if goods could not be purchased there cheaper than elsewhere, and that they had intended to go to Canada with their beaver and peltries, but that they ventured to Albany to inquire if goods could not be secured on better terms. The governor replied that he was extremely pleased to speak with the Miamis about the establishment of a lasting friendship and trade, and in token of his sincere intentions presented his guests with guns, powder, hats, strouds, tobacco and pipes, and sent to their brethren at Detroit, waumpum, pipes, shells, nose and ear jewels, looking-glasses, fans, children's toys, and such other light articles as his guests could conveniently carry ; and, finally, assured them that the Miamis might come freely to Albany, where they would be treated kindly, and receive, in exchange for their peltries, everything as cheap as any other Indians in covenant of friendship with the English.

Ueged To Unite At One Place

suade tlie Miamis from trading witli the English ; failing in this, forcible means were resorted to. CajDtain Antoine De La Mothe Cadillac marched against the Miamis and rednced them to terms.

The Miamis were not unanimous in the choice of their friends. Some adhered to the French, while others were strongly inclined to trade with the English, of whom they could obtain abetter quality of goods at cheaper rates, while at the same time they were allowed a greater price for their furs. Cadillac had hardly effected a coercive peace with the Miamis before the latter were again at Albany. " I have," writes Lord Cournbury to the Board of Trade, in a letter dated August 20, 1708, " been there five years endeavoring to get the^e nations (referring to the Miamis and another nation) to trade with our people, but the French have always dissuaded them from coming until this year, when, goods being very scarce, they came to Albany, where our people have supplied them with goods nmch cheaper than ever the French did, and they promise to return in the spring with a much greater number of their nations, which would be a very great advantage to this province. I did, in a letter of the 25th day of June last, inform your Lordships that three French soldiers, having deserted from the French at a place they call Le Destroit, came to Albany. Another deserter came from the same place, whom I examined myself, and I inclose a copy of his examination, by which your Lordships will perceive how easily the French may he heaten out of Canada. The better I am acquainted with this conntry, and the more I inquire into matters, so much the more I am confirmed in my opinion of the facility of effecting that conquest, and by the method I then proposed."

Turning to French documents, we find that Sieur de Callier desired the Miamis to withdraw from their several widely separated villages and settle in a body upon the St. Joseph. At a great council of the westward tribes, held in Montreal in 1694, the French Intendant, in a speech to the Miamis, declares that " he will not believe that the Miamis wish to obey him until they make altogether one and the same fire, either at the Eiver St. Joseph or at some other place adjoining it. He tells them that he has got near the Iroquois, and has soldiers at Katarakoui, in the fort that had been abandoned ; that the Miamis must get near the enemy, in order to imitate him (the Intendant), and be able to strike the Iroquois the more readily. My children," continued the Intendant, "tell me that the Miamis are numerous, and able of themselves to destroy the Iroquois. Like them, all are afraid. What ! do you wish to abandon your country to your enemy ? . . Have you forgotten that I waged war against him principally on your account, alone ? Your dead are no longer visible in his country; their bodies are covered by those of the French wlio have perished to avenge them. I furnished you the means to avenge them likewise. It depends only on me to receive the Iroquois as a friend, which I will not do on account of you, who would be destroyed were I to make peace without including you in its terms."

" I have heard," writes Governor Yaudreuil, in a letter dated the 28th of October, 1719, to the Council of Marine at Paris, " that the Miamis had resolved to remain where they were, and not go to the St. Joseph River, and that this resolution of theirs was dangerous, on» account of the facility they would have of communicating with the English, who were incessantly distributing belts secretly among the nations, to attract them to themselves, and that Sieur Dubinson had been designed to command the post of Ouaytanons, where he should use his influence among the Miamis to induce them to go to the Eiver St. Joseph, and in case they were not willing, that he should remain with them, to counteract the eifect of those belts, which had already caused eight or ten Miami canoes to go that year to trade at Albany, and which might finally induce all of the Miami nation to follow the example." Finally, some twenty-five years later, as we learn from the letter of M. de Beauharnois, that this French oflicer, having learned that the English had established trading magazines on the Ohio, issued his orders to the commandants among the Weas and Miamis, to drive the British off by force of arms and plunder their stores.

Other extracts might be drawn from the voluminous reports of the military and civil ofiicers of the French and British colonial governments respectively, to the same purport as those already quoted ; but enough has been given to illustrate the unfortunate position of the Miamis. For a period of half a century they were placed between the cutting edges of English and French purposes, during which there was no time when they were not threatened with danger of, or engaged in, actual war either with the French or the English, or with some of their several Indian allies. By this continual abrasion, the peace and happiness which should have been theirs was wholly lost, and their numbers constactly reduced. They had no relief from the strife, in which only injury could result to themselves, let the issue have been what it might between the English and the French, until the power of the latter was finally destroyed in 1763 ; and even then, after the French had given up the country, the Miamis were compelled to de- fend their own title to it against the arrogant claims of the English. In the effort of the combined westward tribes to wrest their country from the English, subsequent to the close of the colonial war, the Miamis took a conspicuous part. This will be noticed in a subsequent chapter. After the conclusion of the revolutionary war, the several Miami villages from the Yermilion River to Fort Wayne suffered severely from the attacks of the federal government under General Harmer, and the military expeditions recruited in Kentucky, and commanded by Colonels Scott and Wilkinson. Besides these disasters, whole villages were nearly depopulated by the ravages of small-pox. The uncontrollable thirst for whisky, acquired through a long course of years, by contact with unscrupulous traders, reduced their numbers still more, while it degraded them to the" last degree. This was their condition in 1814:, when General Harrison said of them : " The Miamis will not be in our way. They are a poor, miserable, drunken set, diminishing every year. Becoming too lazy to hunt, they feel the advantage of their annuities. The fear of the other Indians has alone prevented them from selling their whole claim to the United States ; and as soon as there is peace, or when the British can no longer intrigue, they will sell." The same authority, in his historical address at Cincinnati in 1838, on the aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio, says : "At any time before the treaty of Greenville in 1795 the Miamis alone could have furnished more than three thousand warriors. Constant war with our frontier had deprived them of many of their braves, but the ravages of small-pox was the principal cause of the great decrease in their numbers. They composed, however, a body of the finest light troops in the world. And had they been under an efficient system of discipline, or possessed enterprise equal to their valor, the settlement of the country would have been attended with much greater difficulty than was encountered in accomplishing it, and their final subjugation would have been delayed for some years."

Yet their decline, from causes assigned, was so rapid, that when the Baptist missionary, Isaac McCoy, was among them from 1817 until 1822, and drawing conclusions from jDersonal contact, declared that the Miamis were not a warlike people. There is, perhaps, in the history of the North American Indians, no instance parallel to the utter demoralization of the Miamis, nor an example of a tribe which stood so high and had fallen so low through the practice of all the vices which degrade human beings. Mr. McCoy, within the period named, traveled up and down the Wabash, from Terre Haute to Fort Wayne ; and at the villages near Montezuma, on Eel River, at the Missis- sinewa and Fort Wayne, there M'ere continnons rounds of drunken debaucliery whenever wliiskj could be obtained, of wliich men, women and children all partook, and life was often sacriliced in personal broils or by exposure of the debauchees to the inclemency of the weather.

By treaties, entered into at various times, from 1795 to 1845, inclusive, the Miamis ceded their lands in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and removed west of the Mississippi, going in villages or by detachments, from time to time. At a single cession in 1838 they sold the government 177,000 acres of land in Indiana, which was only a fragment of their former possessions, still retaining a large tract. Thus they alienated their heritage, and gradually disajDpeared from the valleys of the Maumee and Wabash. A few remained on their reservations and adapted themselves to the ways of the white people, and their descendants may be occasionally met with about Peru, Wabash and Fort Wayne. The money received from sales of their lands proved to them a calamity, rather than a blessing, as it introduced the most demoralizing habits. It is estimated that within a period of eighteen years subsequent to the close of the war of 1812 more than five hundred of them perished in drunken broils and fights.

The last of the Miamis to go westward were the Mississinewa band. This remnant comprising in all three hundred and fifty persons, under charge of Christmas Dagney, left their old home in the fall of 1846, and reached Cincinnati on canal boats in October of that year. Here they were placed upon a steamboat and taken down the Ohio, up the Mississippi and Missouri, and landed late in the season at Westport, near Kansas City. Ragged men and nearly naked women and children, forming a motley groujD, were huddled upon the shore, alone, with no friends to relieve their wants, and exposed to the bitter December winds that blew from the chilly plains of Kansas. In 1670 the Jesuit Father Dablon introduces the Miamis to our notice at the village of Maskoutench, where we see the chief surrounded by his officers of state in all the routine of barbaric display, and the natives of 'other tribes paying his subjects the greatest deference. The Miamis, advancing eastward, in the rear of the line of their valorous warriors, pushed their villages into Michigan, Indiana, and as far as the river still bearing their name in Ohio. Coming in collision with the French, English and Americans, reduced by constant wars, and decimated, more than all, with vices contracted by intercourse with the whites, whose virtues they failed to emulate, they make a M^estward turn, and having, in the progress of time, described the round of a most singular journey, we at last behold the miserable and friendless remnant on the same side of the Mississippi from whence their warlike progenitors had come nearly two centuries before.

From Westport the Mississinewas were conducted to a place near the present village of Lowisburg, Kansas, in the county named (Miami) after the tribe. Here they suffered greatly. Nearly one third of their number died the first year. They were homesick and disconsolate to the last degree. " Strong men would actually weep, as their thoughts recurred to their dear old homes in Indiana, whither many of them would make journeys, barefooted, begging their way, and submitting to the imprecations hurled from the door of the white man upon them as they asked for a crust of bread. They wanted to die to forget their miseries." " I have seen," says Mrs. Mary Baptiste to the autlior, " mothers and fathers give their little children away to others of the tribe for adoption, and after singing their funeral songs, and joining in the solemn dance of death, go calmly away from the assemblage, to be seen no more alive. The Miamis could not be reconciled to the prairie winds of Kansas ; they longed for the woods and groves that gave a partial shade to the flashing waters of the Wa^esha.

The Wea and Piankeshaw bands preceded the Mississinewas to the westward. They had become reduced to a wretched community of about two hundred and fifty souls, and they suffered severely during the civil war, in Kansas. The Miamis, Weas, Piankeshaws, and the remaining fragments of the Kaskaskias, containing under that name what yet remained of the several subdivisions o± the old Illini confederacy were gathered together by iJaptiste Peoria, and consolidated under the title of The Confederated Tribes. This little confederation disposed of their reservation in Miami county, Kansas, and adjacent vicinity, and retired to a tract of reduced dimensions within the Indian Territory. Since their last change of location in 1867 they have made but little progress in their efforts toward a higher civilization. The numbers of what remains of the once numerous Illinois and Miami confederacies are reduced to less than two hundred persons. The Miamis, like the unfortunate man who has carried his dissipations beyond the limit from which there can be no healtliy reaction, seem not to have recovered from the vices contracted before leaving the states, and with some notable exceptions, they are a listless, idle people, little worthy of the spirit that inspired the breasts of their ancestors.

Chaptee Yii The Shawnees And Dela Wares

The Shawnees were a branch of tlie Algonquin family, and in manners and customs bore a strong resemblance to the Delawares. They were the Bedouins of the wilderness, and their wanderings form a notable instance in the history of the nomadic races of N^orth America. - Before the arriyal of the Europeans the Shawnees lived on the shores of tiie great lakes eastward of Cleveland. At that time the principal Iroquois villages were on the northern side of the lakes, above Montreal, and this tribe was under a species of subjection to the Adirondacks, the jriginal iribe from whence the several Algonquin tribes are alleged to have sprung, and made " the planting of corn their business."

" The Adirondacks, however , value' i themselves as delighting in a more manly employment, and despised the Iroquois in following a business which they thought onlv fit for women. But it once happened that game failed tlie Adirondacks, which made them desire some of the young men of the Iroquois to assist them in hunting. These young men soon became much more expert in hunting, and-able to endure fatigues, than the Adirondacks expected or desired ; in short, they became jealous of them, and one night murdered all the young men chey had with them." The chiefs of the Iroquois complained, but the Adirondacks treated their remonstrances with contempt, without being apprehensive of the resentment of the Iroquois, " for they looked upon them as women."

The Iroquois determined on revenge, and the Adirondacks, hearing of it, declared war. The Iroquois made but feeble resistance, and were forced to leave their country and fly to the south shores of the lakes, where they ever afterward lived. " Their chiefs, in order to raise their people's spirits, turned them against the Satanas, a less warlike nation, who then lived on the shores of the lakes." The Iroquois soon subdued the Satanas, and drove them from their country.

Their Removal Erom Florida

From this time the Iroquois pursued them, each year driving them farther southward. Forty years Liter they were on the Tennessee, and Father Marquette, in speaking of them, calls them Chaouanons, which was the Illinois word for southerners, or people from the south, so termed because they lived to the south of the Illinois cantons. The Iroquois still waged war upon the Shawness, driving them to the extremities mentioned in the extracts quoted from Father Marquette's journal. To escape further molestation from the Iroquois, the Shawnees continued a more southern course, and some of their bands penetrated the extreme southern states. The Suwanee River, in Florida, derived its name from the fact that the Shawnees once lived upon its banks. Black Hoof, tlie renowned chief of this tribe, was born in Florida, and informed Gen. Harrison, with whom for many years he was upon terms of intimacy, that he had often bathed in the sea.

" It is well known that they were at a place which still bears their name on the Ohio, a few miles below the mouth of the Wabash, some time before the- commencement of the revolutionary war, where they remained before their removal to the Scioto, where they were found in the year 1774 by Gov. Dunmore. Their removal from Florida was a necessity, and their progress from thence a flight rather than a deliberate march. This is evident from their appearance when they presented themselves upon the Ohio and claimed protection of the Miamis. They are represented by the chiefs of the Miamis and Delawares as supplicants for protection, not against the Iroquois, but against the Creeks and Seminoles, or some other southern tribe, who had driven them from Florida, and they are said to have been literally sans provant etsans culottes [hungry and naked].

After their dispersion by the Iroquois, remnants of the tribe were foimd in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but after the return of the main body from the south, the}^ became once more united, the Pennsylvania band leaving that colony about the same time that the Delawares did. During the forty years following that period, the whole tribe was in a state of perpetual war with America, either as British colonies or as independent states. By the treaty of Greenville, they lost nearly all the territory they had been permitted to occupy north of the, Ohio.

In 1819 they were divided into four tribes - the Pequa, the Mequachake,the Chillicothe, and the Kiskapocoke. The latter tribe was the one to which Tecumseh belonged. They were always hostile to the United States, and joined every coalition against the government. In 1806 they separated from the rest of the tribe, and took up their

At the close of Gen. Wayne's campaign, a large body of the Shawnees settlecl near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, upon a tract of land granted to them and the Delawares in 1793, by Baron de Carondelet, governor of the Spanish provinces west of the Mississippi.

From their towns in eastern Ohio, the Shawnees spread north and westward to the headquarters of the Big and Little Miamis, the St. Mary's, and the Au Glaize, and for quite a distance down the Maumee. They had extensively cultivated fields upon these streams, which, with their villages, were destroyed by Gen. Wayne on his return from the victorious engagement with the confederated tribes on the field of " fallen timbers." Gen. Harmer, in his letter to the Secretary of War, communicating the details of his campaign on the Maumee, in October, 1790, gives a fine description of the country, and the location of the Shawnee, Delaware and Miami villages, in the neighborhood of Fort Wayne, as they appeared at that early day. We quote : " The savages and traders (who were, perhaps, the worst savages of the two) had evacuated their towns,and burnt the principal village called the Omee, together with all the traders' houses. This village lay on a pleasant point, formed by the junction of the rivers Omee and St. Joseph. It was situate on the east bank of the latter, opposite the mouth of St. Mary, and had for a long time past been the rendezvous of a set of Indian desperadoes, who infested the settlements, and stained the Ohio and parts adjacent with the blood of defenceless inhabitants. This day we advanced nearly the same distance, and kept nearly the same course as yesterday ; we encamped within six miles of the object, and on Sunday, the 17th, entered the ruins of the Omee town, or French village, as part of it is called. Appearances confirmed accounts I had received of the consternation into which the savages and their trading allies had been thrown by the approach of the army. Many valuables of the traders were destroyed in the confusion, and vast quantities of corn and other grain and vegetables were secreted in holes dug in the earth, and other hiding places. Colonel Hardin rejoined the army."

: " Besides the town of Omee, there were several other villages situ, ated upon the banks of three rivers. One of them, belonging to the jOmee Indians, called Kegaiogue, was standing and contained thirty (houses on the bank opposite the principal village. Two others, conjsisting together of about forty-five houses, lay a few miles up the St. Mary's, and were inhabited by Delawares. Thirty-six houses occu- pied b}' other savages of this tribe formed another but scattered town, on the east bank of the St. Josepli, two or three miles north from the Frencli viHage. About tlie same distance down the Omee River lay the Shawnee town of Chillicothe, consisting of fifty-eight houses, opposite which, on the other bank of the river, were sixteen more habitations belonging to savages of the same nation. All these I ordered to be burnt during my stay there, together with great quantities of corn and vegetables hidden as at the principal village, in the earth and other places by the savages, who had abandoned them. It is computed that there were no less than twenty thousand bushels of corn, in the ear, which the army either consumed or destroyed."

The Shawnees also had a populous village within the present limits of Fountain county, Indiana, a few miles east of Attica. They gave their name to Shawnee Prairie and to a stream that discharges into the Wabash from the east, a short distance below Williamsport.

In 1854 the Shawnees in Kansas numbered nine hundred persons, occupying a reservation of one million six hundred thousand acres. Their lands were divided into severalty. They have banished whisky, and many of them have fine farms under cultivation. Being on the border of Missouri, they suffered from the rebel raids, and particularly that of Gen. Price in 1864. In 1865 they numbered eight hundred and fortj'-five persons. They furnished for the Union army one hundred and twenty-five men. The Shawnees have illustrated by their own conduct the capability of an Indian tribe to become civilized. , '

The Delawares called themselves Lenno Lenape, which signifies " original " or " unmixed " men. They were divided into three clans : The Turtle, the Wolf and the Turkey. When first met with by the Europeans, they occupied a district of country bounded eastwardly by the Hudson River and the Atlantic ; on the west their territories extended to the ridge separating the flow of the Delaware from the other streams emptying into the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay.

They, according to their own traditions, " many hundred years ago resided in the western part of the continent ; thence by slow emigration, they at length reached the Alleghany River, so called from a nation of giants, the Allegewi, against whom the Delawares and Iroquois (the latter also emigrants from the west) carried on successful war ; and still proceeding eastward, settled on the Delaware, Hudson, Susquehanna and Potomac rivers, making the Delaware the center of their possessions.

" "When William Penn landed in Pennsylvania, the Delawares had been subjugated and made women by the Iroquois." They were prohibited from making war, placed under the sovereignty of the Iroquois, and even lost the right of dominion to the lands which they had occupied for so many generations. Gov. Penn, in his treaty with the Delawares, purchased from them the right of possession merely, and afterward obtained the relinquishment of the sovereignty from the Iroquois. The Delawares accounted for their humiliating relation to the Iroquois by claiming that their assumption of the role of women, or mediators, was entirely voluntary on their part. They said they became " peacemakers," not through compulsion, but in compliance with the intercession of different belligerent tribes, and that this position enabled their tribe to command the respect of all the Indians east of the Mississippi. While it is true that the Delawares were very generally recognized as mediators, they never in any war or treaty exerted an influence through the possession of this title. It was an empty honor, and no additional power or benefit ever accrued from it. That the degrading position of the Delawares was not voluntary is proven in a variety of ways. " We possess none of the details of the war waged against the Lenapes, but we know that it resulted in the en^;ire submission of the latter, and that the Iroquois, to j)revent any further interruption from the Delawares, adopted a plan to humble and degrade them, as novel as it wag effectual. Singular as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the Lenapes, upon the dictation of the Iroquois, agreed to lay aside the character of warriors and assume that of women." The Iroquois, while they were not present at the treaty of Greenville, took care to inform Gen. Wayne that the Delawares were their subjects - " that they had conquered them and put petticoats upon them." At a' council held July 12, 1742, at the house of the lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, where the subject of previous grants of land was under discussion, an Iroquois orator turned to the Delawares who were present at the council, and holding a belt of waumpum, addressed them thus : " Cousins, let this belt of waumpum serve to chastise you. You ought to be taken by the hair of your head and shaken severely, till you recover your senses and become sober. . . But how came you to take upon yourself to sell land at all ? " referring to lands on the Delaware River, which the Delawares had sold some fifty years before. " We conquered you ; we made women of you. You know you are women, and can no more sell land than women ; nor is it fit you should have the power of selling lands, since you would abuse it." The Iroquois warrior continues his chastisement of the Delawares, indulging in the most opprobrious language, and closed his speech by telling the Delawares to remove immediately. " We don't give you the liberty to think about it. You may return to the other side of the Delaware, where you came from ; but we don't know, considering how you had demeaned, yourselves, whether you will be permitted to live there."

The Quakers who settled Pennsylvania treated the Delawares in accordance with the rules of justice and equity. The result was that during a period of sixty years, peace and the utmost harmony prevailed. This is the only instance in the settling of America by the English where uninterrupted friendship and good will existed between the colonists and and the aboriginal inhabitants. Gradually and by peaceable means the Quakers obtained possession of the greater portion of their territory, and the Delawares were in the same situation as other tribes - without lands, without means of subsistence. They were threatened with starvation. Induced by these motives, some of them, between the years 1T40 and 1750, obtained from their uncles, the Wyandots, and with the assent of the Iroquois, a grant of land on the Muskingum, in Ohio. The greater part of the tribe remained in Pennsylvania, and becoming more and more dissatisfied with their lot, shook ofi the yoke of the Iroquois, joined the French and ravaged the frontiers of Pennsylvania. Peace was concluded at Easton in 1758, and ten years after the last remaining bands of the Delawares crossed the Alleghanies. Here, being removed from the influence of their dreaded masters, the Iroquois, the Delawares soon assumed their ancient independence. During the next four or five decades they were the most formidable of the western tribes. While the revolutionary war was in progress, as allies of the British, after its close, at the head of the northwestern confederacy of Indians, they fully regained their lost reputation. By their geographical j30sition placed in the front of battle, they were, during those two wars, the most active and dangerous enemies of America.

The territory claimed by the Delawares subsequent to their being driven westward from their former possessions, is established in a paper addressed to Congress May 10, 1779, from delegates assembled at Princeton, New Jersey. The boundaries of their country, as declared in the address, is as follows : " From the mouth of the Alleghany Kiver, at Fort Pitt, to the Yenango, and from thence up French

Creek, and by Le Boeiif, along the old road to Presque Isle, on the east. The Oliio River, including all the islands in it, from Fort Pitt to the Ouabache, on the south ; thence up the River Ouabache to that branch, Ojye-co-mee-cah, and up the same to the head thereof; from thence to the headwaters and springs of the Great Miami, or Rocky River; thence across to the headwaters and springs of the most northwestern branches of the Scioto River; thence to the westernmost springs of Sandusky River ; thence down said river, including the islands in it and in the little lake, to Lake Erie, on the west and northwest^ and Lake Erie on the north. These boundaries contain the cessions of lands made to the Delaware nation by the Wyandots and other nations, and the country we have seated our grandchildren, the Shawn ees, upon, in our laps ; and we promise to give to the United States of America such a part of the above described country as would be convenient to them and us, that they may have room for their children's children to set down upon."

After Wayne's victory the Delawares saw that further contests with the American colonies would be worse than useless. They submitted to the inevitable, acknowledged the supremacy of the Caucasian race, and desired to make peace with the victors. At the treaty of Greenville, in 1795-, there were present three himdred and eighty-one Delawares - a larger representation than that of any other Indian tribe. By this treaty they ceded to the United States the greater part of the lands allotted to them by the Wyandots and Iroquois. For this cession they received an annuity of $1,000.

" Father : Your children all well understand the sense of the treaty which is now concluded. We experience daily proofs of your in. creasing kindness. I hope we may all have sense enough to enjoy our dawning happiness. Many of your people are yet among us. I trust they will be immediately restored. Last winter our king came forward to you with two ; and when he returned with your speech to us, we immediately prepared to come forward with the remainder, which we delivered at Fort Defiance. All who know me know me to be a man and a warrior, and I now declare that I will for the future be as steady and true a friend to the United States as I have heretofore been an active enemy."

Become Citizens

The Delawares remained faithful to the United States during the war of 1812, and, with the Shawnees, furnished some very able warriors and scouts, who rendered valuable service to the United States during this war.

After the treaty of Greenville, the great body of Delawares removed to their lands on White River, Indiana, whither some of their people had already preceded them.

Their manner of obtaining possession of their lands on "White River is thus related in Dawson's Life of Harrison : " The land in question had been granted to the Delawares about the year 1770, by the Piankeshaws, on condition of their settling upon it and assisting them in a war with the Kickapoos." These terms were complied with, and the Delawares remained in possession of the land.

The title to the tract of land lying between the Ohio and White Rivers soon became a subject of dispute between the Piankeshaws and Delawares. A chief of the latter tribe, in 1803, at Yincennes, stated to Gen. Harrison that the land belonged to his tribe, " and that he had with him a chief who had been present at the transfer made by the Piankeshaws to the Delawares, of all the country between the Ohio and White Rivers more than thirty years previous," This claim was disputed by the Piankeshaws. They admitted that while they had granted the Delawares the right of occupancy, yet they had never conveyed the right of sovereignty to the tract in question.

Gov. Harrison, on the 19th and 27th of August, 1804, concluded treaties with the Delawares and Piankeshaws by which the United States acquired all that fine country between the Ohio and Wabash Rivers. Both of " these tribes laying claim to the land, it became necessary that both should be satisfied, in order to prevent disputes in the future. In this, however, the governor succeeded, on terms, j)erhaps, more favorable than if the title had been vested in only one of these tribes; for, as both claimed the land, the value of each claim was considerably lowered in the estimation of both ; and, therefore, by judicious management, the gover)ior effected the purchase upon probably as low, if not lower, terms than if he had been obliged to treat with only one o'f them. For this tract the Piankeshaws received $700 in goods and $200 per annum for ten years ; the compensation of the Delawares was an annuity of $300 for ten years.

emigrated to Missouri upon the tract of land granted jointly to them and the Shawness, in 1793, by the Spanish authorities. Others of their number who remained scattered themselves among the Miamis, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos ; while still others, including the Moravian converts, went to Canada. At that time, 1819, the total number of those residing in Indiana was computed to be eight hundred souls.

In 1829 the majority of the nation were settled on the Kansas and Missouri rivers. They numbered about 1,000, were brave, enterprising hunters, cultivated lands and were friendly to the whites. In 1853 they sold to the government all the lands granted them, excepting a reservation in Kansas. During the late Rebellion they sent to the United States army one hundred and seventy out of their two-hundred able-bodied men. Like their ancestors they proved valiant and trustworthy soldiers. Of late years they have almost entirely lost their aboriginal customs and manners. They live in houses, have schools and churches, cultivate farms, and, in fact, bid fair to become useful and prominent citizens of the great Republic.

Chaptek Yiii And Their Manners Ajstd Customs

Before the arrival of the Europeans the nse of iron was but little known to the !North American Indians. Marquette, in speaking of the Illinois, states that they were entirely ignorant of the use of iron tools, their weapons being made of stone. This was true of all the Indians who made their homes north of the Ohio, but south of that stream metal tools were occasionally met with. When Hernando De Soto, in 1539-43, was traversing the southern part of that territory, now known as the United States, in his vain search for gold, some of his followers found the natives on the Savanna River using hatchets made of cojjper. It is evident that these hatchets were of a native manufacture, for they were " said to have a mixture of gold."

The southern Indians " had long bows, and their arrows were made of certain canes like reeds, very heavy, and so strong that a sharj) cane passe th through a target. Some they arm in the point with the sharp bone of a fish, like a chisel, and in others they fasten certain stones like points of diamonds." These bones or " scale of the armed fish " were neatly fastened to the head of the arrows with splits of cane and fish glue. The northern Indians used arrows with stone points. Father Rasles thus describes them : " Arrows are the principal arms which they use in war and in the chase. They are pointed at the end with a stone, cut and sharpened in the shape of a serpent's tongue ; and, if no knife is at hand, they use them also to skin the animals they have killed." " The bow-strings were prepared from the entrails of a stag, or of a stag's skin, which they know how to dress as well as any man in France, and with as many different colors. They head their arrows with the teeth of fishes and stone, which they work very finely and handsomely."

Most of the hatchets and knives of the northern Indians were likewise made of sharpened stones, " which they fastened in a cleft piece of wood with leathern thongs." Their tomahawks were constructed from stone, the horn of a stag, or " from wood in the shape of a cut- lass, and terminated by a large ball." The tomahawk was held in one hand and a knife in the other. As soon as they dealt a blow on the head of an enemy, they immediately cut it round with the knife, and took off the scalp with extraordinary rapidity.

Du Pratz thus describes their method of felling trees with stone implements and with fire : " Cutting instruments are almost continuually wanted ; but as they had no iron, which of all metals is the most useful in human society, they were obliged, with infinite pains, to form hatchets out of large flints, by sharpening their thin «8dge, and making a hole through them for receiving the handle. To cut down trees with these axes would have been almost an impracticable work ; they were, therefore, obliged to light tires round the roots of them, and to cut a^yay the charcoal as the fire eat into the tree. "

Charlevoix makes a similar statement : " These people, before we provided them with hatchets and other instruments, were very much at a loss in felling their trees, and making them fit for such uses as they intended them for. They burned them near the root, and in order to split and cut them into proper lengths they made use of hatchets made of flint, which never broke, but which required a prodigious time to sharpen. In order to fix them in a shaft, they cut off the top of a young tree, making a slit in it, as if they were going to draft it, into which slit they inserted the head of the axe. The tree, growing together again in length of time, held the head of the hatchet so firm that it was impossible for it to get loose ; they then cut the tree at the length they deemed sufficient for the handle."

When they were about to make wooden dishes, porringers or spoons, they cut the blocks of wood to the required shape with stone hatchets, hollowed them out with coals of fire, and polished them with beaver teeth.

Early settlers in the neighborhood of Thorntown, Indiana, noticed that the Indians made their hominy-blocks in a similar manner. Kound stones were heated and placed upon the blocks which were to be excavated. The charred wood was dug out with knives, and then the surface was polished with stone implements. These round stones were the common property of the tribe, and were used by individual families as occasion required.

" They dug their ground with an instrument of wood, which was fashioned like a broad mattock, wherewith they dig their vines as in France ; they put two grains of maize together."

Their Implements And Potteky

The pot ladle, called by them mikoine, laid at the side. " In the north they often made use of wooden kettles, and made the water boil by throwing into it red hot pebbles. Our iron pots are esteemed by them as much more commodious than their own."

That the ]S"orth American Indians not only used, but actually manufactured, pottery for various culinary and religious purposes admits of no argument. Hennepin remarks ; " Before the arrival of the Eurojjeans in ISTorth America both the northern and southern savages made use of, and do to this day use, earthen pots, especially such as have no commerce with the Europeans, from whom they may jsrocure kettles and other movables." M. Pouchot, who was acquainted with the manners and customs of the Canadian Indians, states " that they formerly had usages and utensils to which they are now scarcely accustomed. They made j^ottery and drew fire from wood."

In 1700, Father Gravier, in speaking of the Yazoos, says : " You see there in their cabins neither clothes, nor sacks, nor kettles, nor guns ; they carry all with them, and have no riches hiit earthen pots, quite well made, especially little glazed as neat as you would see in France." The Illinois also occasionally used glazed pitchers. The manufacturing of these earthen vessels was done by the women. By the southern Indians the earthenware goods were used for religious as well as domestic purposes. Gravier noticed several in their temples, containing bones of departed warriors, ashes, etc.

The American Indians, both northern and southern, had most of their villages fortified either by wooden palisades, or earthen breastworks and palisades combined. De Soto, on the 19th of June, 1541, entered the town of Pacaha, which was very great, walled, and beset with towers, and many loopholes were in the towers and wall. Charlevoix said : " The Indians are more skillful in erecting their 'fortifications than in building their houses. Here you see villages surrounded with good palisades and with redoubts ; and they are very careful to lay in a proper provision of water and stones. These palisades are double, and even sometimes treble, and generally have battlements on the outer circumvallation. The piles, of which they are composed, are interwoven with branches of trees, without any void si3ace between them. This sort of fortification was sufiicient to sustain a long siege whilst the Indians were ignorant of the' use of fire-arms.

These wooden fortifications were used to a comparatively late day. At the siege of Detroit, in 1712, the Foxes and Mascoutins resisted, in a wooden fort, for nineteen days, the attack of a much larger force of Frenchmen and Indians. In order to avoid the fire of the French, they dug holes four or five feet deep in the bottom of their fort.

The western Indians, in their fortifications, made use of both earth and wood. An early American author remarks : " The remains of Indian fortifications seen throughout the western country, have given rise to strange conjectures, and have been supposed to appertain to a period extremely remote ; but it is a fact well known that in some of them the remains of palisadoes were found by the first settlers." When Major Long's party, in 1823, passed through Fort Wayne, they inquired of Metea, a celebrated Pottawatomie chief, well versed in the lore of his tribe, whether he had ever heard of any tradition accounting for the erection of those artificial mounds which are found scattered over the whole country. "He immediately replied that they had heen constructed by the Indians as fortifications before the white man had come among them. He had always heard this origin ascribed to them, and knew three of those constructions which were supposed to have been made by his nation. One is at the fork of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines Rivers, a second on the Ohio, which, from his description, was supposed to be at the mouth of the Muskingum. He visited it, but could not describe the spot accurately, and a third, which he had also seen. Tie stated to be on the headwaters of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan. This latter place is about forty miles northwest of Fort Wayne."

One of the Miami chiefs, whom the traders named Le Gros, told Barron that " he had heard that his father had fought with his tribe in one of the forts at Piqua, Ohio ; that the fort had been erected by the Indians against the French, and that his father had been killed during one of the assaults made upon it."

While at Chicago, and " with a view to collect as much information as possible on the subject of Indian antiquities, we inquired of Robinson whether any traditions on this subject were current among the Indians. He observed that these ancient fortifications were a frequent subject of conversation, and especially those in the nature of excavations made in the ground. He had heard of one made by the Kickapoos and Fox Indians on the Sangamo River, a stream running into the Illinois. This fortification is distinguished by the name of Etnataek. It is Tcnoxon to have served as an intrenchment to the Kickapoos and Foxes, who were met there and defeated by the Pottawatomies, the Ottawas and Chippeways. l^o date was assigned to this transaction. We understand that the Etnataek was near the Kickapoo village on the Sangamo."

Near the dividing line between sections 4 and 5, township 31 north, of range 11 east, in Kankakee county, Illinois, on the prairie about a mile above the mouth of Eock Creek, are some ancient mounds. " One is very large, being about one hundred feet base in diameter and about twenty feet high, in a conic form, and is said to contain the remains of two hundred Indians who were killed in the celebrated battle between the Illinois and Chippeways, Delawares and Shawnees ; and about two chains to the northeast, and the same distance to the northwest, are two other small mounds, which are said to contain the remains of the chiefs of the two parties.

Uncorroborated Indian traditions are not entitled to any high degree of credibility, and these quoted are introduced to refute the often repeated assertion that the Indians had no tradition concerning the origin of the mounds scattered through the western states, or that they supposed them to have been erected by a race who occupied the continent anterior to themselves.

These mounds were seldom or never used for religious purposes by the Algonquins or Iroquois, but Penicault states that when he visited the Natchez Indians, in 1704, " the houses of the Suns are built on mounds, and are distinguished from each other by their size. The mound upon which the house of the Great Chief, or Sun, is built is Jarger than the rest, and its sides are steej)er. The temple in the village of the Great Sun is about thirty feet high and forty-eight in circumference, with the walls eight feet thick and covered with a matting of canoes, in which they keep up a perpetual fire."

De Soto found the houses of the chiefs built on mounds of different heights, according to their rank, and their villages fortified with palisades, or walls of earth, with gateways to go in and out.

When Gravier, in 1700, visited the Yazoos, he noticed that their temple was raised on a mound of earth. He also, in speaking of the Ohio, states that " it is called by the Illinois and Oumiamis the river of the Ahansea, because the Akansea formerly dwelt on it. The Akansea or Arkansas Indians possessed many traits and customs in common with the Natchez, having temples, pottery, etc. "A still more important fact is noticed by Du Pratz, who was intimately acquainted with the Great Slid. He says: "The temple is about thirty feet square, and stands on an artificial mound about eight feet high, by the side of a small river. The mound slopes insensibly from the main front, which is northward, but on the other side it is somewhat steeper."

According to their own traditions, the l^atchez " were at one time the most powerful nation in all North America, and were looked upon by the other nations as their superiors, and were, on that account, respected by them. Their territory extended from the River IherviUe^ in Louisiana, to the Wahash.^^ They had over five hundred suns, and, consequently, nearly that many villages. Their decline and retreat to the south was owing not to the superiority in arms of the less civilized surrounding tribes, but was due to the pride of their own chiefs, who, to lend an imposing magnificence to their funeral rites, adopted the impolitic custom of having hundreds of their followers strangled at their pyre. Many of the mounds, scattered up and down the valleys of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi, while being the only, may be the time-defying monuments of the departed power and grandem' of these two tribes.

The Indian manner of making a fire is thus related by Hennepin : " Their way of making a fire, which is new and unknown to us, is thus : They take a triangular piece of cedar wood of a foot and a half in length, wherein they bore some holes half through ; then they take a switch, or another small piece of hard wood, and with both their hands rub the strongest upon the weakest in the hole, which is made in the cedar, and while they are thus rubbing they let fall a sort of dust or powder, which turns into fire. This white dust they roll up in a pellet of herbs, dried in autumn, and rubbing them all together, and then blowing upon the dust that is in the pellets, the fire kindles in a moment."

The food of the Indians consisted of all the varieties of game, fishes and wild fruits in the vicinity ; and they cultivated Indian corn, melons and squashes. From corn they made a preparation called sagamite. They pulverized the corn, mixed it with water, and added a small proportion of ground gourds or beans.

The clothing of the northern Indians consisted only of the skins of wild animals, roughly prepared for that purpose. Their southern brethren were far in advance of them in this respect. " Many of the women wore cloaks of the bark of the mulberry tree, or of the feathers of swans, turkeys or Indian ducks. The bark they take from young mulberry slioots that rise from the roots of trees that have been cut down. After it is dried in the sun they beat it to make all the woody parts fall off, and they give the threads that remain a second beating, after which they bleach them by exposing them to the dew. When they are well whitened they spin them about the coarseness of pack-tliread, and weave them in the following manner: They plant two stakes in the ground about a yard and a half asunder, and having stretched a cord from the one to the other, they fasten their threads of bark double to this cord, and then interweave them in a curious manner into a cloak of about a yard square, with a wrought border round the edges."

The Indians had three varieties of canoes, elm-bark, birch-bark and pirogues. " Canoes of elm-bark were not used for long voyages, as they were very frail. When the Indians wish to make a canoe of elm-bark they select the trunk of a tree which is very smooth, at the time when the sap remains. They cut it around, above and below, about ten, twelve or fifteen feet apart, according to the number of people which it is to carry. After having taken off the whole in one piece, they shave off the roughest of the bark, which they make the inside of the canoe. They make end ties of the thickness of a finger, and of suflicient length for the canoe, using young oak or any other flexible and strong wood, and fasten the two larger folds of the bark between these strips, spreading them apart with wooden bows, which are fastened in about two feet apart. They sew np the two ends of the bark with strips drawn from the inner bark of the elm, giving attention to raise up a little the two extremities, which they call pinces, making a swell in the middle and a curve on the sides, to resist the wind. If there are any chinks, they sew them together with tliongs and cover them with chewing-gum, which they crowd by heating it with a coal of fire. The bark is fastened to the wooden bows by wooden thongs. They add a mast, made of a piece of wood and cross-piece to serve as a yard, and their blankets serve them as sails. These canoes will carry from three to nine persons and all their equipage. They sit upon their heels, without moving, as do also their children, when they are in, from fear of losing their balance, when the whole machine would upset. But this very seldom happened, unless struck by a flaw of wind. They use these vessels particnlarly in their war parties.

" The canoes made of birch bark were much more solid and more artistically constructed. The frames of these canoes are made of strips of cedar wood, which is very flexible, and which they render as thin as a side of a sword-scabbard, and three or four inches wide.

They all touch one another, and come np to a point between the two end strips. This frame is covered with the bark of the birch tree, sewed together like skins, secured between the end strips and tied along the ribs with the inner bark of the roots of the cedar, as we twist willows around the hoops of a cask. All these seams ai-e covered with gum, as is done with canoes of elm bark. They then put in cross-bars to hold it and to serve as seats, and a long pole, which they lay on from fore to aft in rough weather to prevent it from being broken by the shocks occasioned by pitching. They have with them three, six, twelve and even twenty -four places, which are designated as so many seats. The French are almost the only people who use these canoes for their long voyages. They will carry as much as three thousand pounds." These were vessels in which the fur trade of the entire northwest has been carried on for so many years. They were very light, four men being able to carry the largest of them over portages. At night they were unloaded, drawn upon the shore, turned over, and served the savages or traders as huts. They could endure gales of wind that would play havoc with vessels of European manufacture. In calm water the canoe men, in a sitting posture, used paddles ; in stemming currents, rising from their seats, they substituted poles for paddles, and in shooting rapids, they rested on their knees.

Pirogues were the trunks of trees hollowed out and pointed at the extremities. A fire was started on the trunk, out of which the pirogue was to be constructed. The fire was kept within the desired limits by the dripping of water upon the edges of the trunk. As a part became charred, it was dug out with stone hatchets, and the fire rekindled. This kind of canoes was especially adapted for the navigation of the Mississippi and Missouri ; the current of these streams carrying down trees, which formed snags, rendered their navigation by bark canoes exceedingly hazardous. It was probably owing to this reason, as well as because there were no birch trees in their country, that the Illinois and Miamis were not, as the Jesuits remarked, " canoe nations ; " they used the awkward, heavy pirogue instead.

Each nation was divided into villages. The Indian village, when unfortified, had its cabins scattered along the banks of a river or the shores of a lake, and often extended for three or four miles. Each cabin held the head of the family, the children, grandchildren, and often the brothers and sisters, so that a single cabin not unfrequently contained as many as sixty persons. Some of their cabins were in the form of elongated squares, of which the sides were not more than five or six feet high. They were made of bark, and the roof was prepared from the same material, having an opening in the top for the passage of smoke. At both ends of the cabin there were entrances. The fire was bnilt under the hole in the roof, and there were as many fires as there were families.

The beds were upon planks on the floor of the cabin, or upon simple hides, which they called appichimoii^ placed along the partitions. They slept upon these skins, wrapped in their blankets, which, during the day, served them for clothing. Each one had his particular place. The man and wife crouched together, her back being against his body, their blankets passed around their heads and feet, so that they looked like a plate of ducks. These bark cabins were used by the Iroquois, and indeed, by many Indian tribes who lived exclusively in the forests.

The prairie Indians, who were unable to procure bark, generally made mats out of platted reeds or flags, and placed these mats around three or four poles tied together at the ends. They were, in form, round, and terminated in a cone. These mats were sewed together with so much skill that, when new, the rain could not penetrate them. This variety of cabins possessed the great advantage that, when they moved their place of residence, the mats of reeds were rolled up and carried along by tlie squaws.

" The nastiness of these cabins alone, and that infection which was a necessary consequence of it, would have been to any one but an Indian a severe punishment. Having no windows, they were full of smoke, and in cold weather they were crowded with dogs. The Indians never changed their garments until they fell off by their very rottenness. Being never washed, they were fairly alive with vermin. In summer the savages bathed every day, but immediately afterward rubbed themselves with oil and grease of a very rank smell. " In winter they remained unwashed, and it was impossible to enter their cabins without being poisoned with the stench."

All their food was very ill-seasoned and insipid, " and there prevailed in all their repasts an uncleanliness which passed all conception. There were very few animals which did not feed cleaner." They never washed their wooden or bark dishes, nor their porringers and spoons. In this connection William Biggs states : " They plucked off a few of the largest feathers, then threw the duck - featliers, entrails and all - into the soup kettle, and cooked it in that manner."

The Indians were cannibals, though human flesh was only eaten at war feasts. It was ofte.i the case that after a prisoner had been tortured his body was thrown into " the war-kettle," and his remains greedily devoured. This fact is uniformly asserted by the early French writers. Members of Major Long's party made especial inquiries at Fort Wayne concerning this subject, and were entirely convinced. They met persons who had attended the feasts, and saw Indians who acknowledged that they had participated in them, Joseph Barron saw the Pottawatomies with hands and limbs, both of white men and Cherokees, which they were about to devour. Among some tribes cannibalism was universal, but it appears that among the Pottawatomies and Miamis it was restricted to a fraternity whose privilege and duty it was on all occasions to eat out of the enemy's flesh ; - at least one individual must be eaten. The flesh was sometimes dried and taken to the villages.

The Indians had some peculiar funeral customs. Joutel thus records some of his observations : " They pay a respect to their dead, as appears by their special care of burying them, and even of putting into lofty cofiins the bodies of such as are considerable among them, as their chiefs and othei'S, which is also practiced among the Accanceas, but they differ in this respect, that the Accanceas weep and make their complaints for some days, whereas the Shawnees and other people of the Illinois nation do just the contrary, for when any of them die they wrap them up in skins and then put them into cofiins made of the bark of trees, then sing and dance about them for twentyfour hours. Those dancers take care to tie calabashes, or gourds, about their bodies, with some Indian corn in them, to rattle and make a noise, and some of them have a drum, made of a great earthen pot, on which they extend a wild goat's skin, and beat thereon with one stick, like our tabors. During that rejoicing they threw their presents on the coffin, as bracelets, pendants or pieces of earthenware. When the ceremony was over they buried the body, with a part of the presents, making choice of such as may be most proper for it. They also bury with it some store of Indian wheat, with a pot to boil it in, for fear the dead person should be hungry on his long journey, and they repeat the ceremony at the year's end. A good number of presents still remaining, they divide them into several lots and play at a game called the stick to give them to the winner."

Indian Superstitions

This was covered with bark, and at about two feet nearer the surface, logs were laid across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by no means fall upon the corpse. If the deceased, before his death, had so expressed his wish, a tree was hollowed out and the corpse deposited within. After the body had become entirely decomposed, the bones were often collected and buried in the earth. Many of these wooden sepulchres were discovered by the early settlers in Iroquois county, Illinois. Doubtless they were the remains of the Pottawatoraies, who at that time resided there.

After a death they took care to visit every place near their cabins, ftriking incessantly with rods and raising the most hideous cries, in order to drive the souls to a distance, and to keep them from lurking about their cabins.

The Indians believed that every animal contained a Manitou or God, and that these spirits could exert over them a beneficial or prejudicial influence. The rattlesnake was especially venerated by them. Henry relates an instance of this veneration. He saw a snake, and procured his gun, with the intention of dispatching it. The Indians begged him to desist, and, "with their pipes and tobacco pouches in their hands, approached the snake. They surrounded it, all addressing it by turns and calling it their grandfather, but yet kept at some distance. During this part of the ceremony, they filled their pipes, and each blew the smoke toward the snake, which, as it appeared to me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining coiled and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it stretched itself along the ground in visible good humor. The Indians followed it, and, still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeched it to take care of their families during their absence, and also to open the hearts of the English, that they might fill their (the Indians') canoes with rum. This reverence of the Indians for the rattlesnake will account for the vast number of these reptiles met with by early settlers in localities favorable for their increase and security. The clefts in the rocky cliffs below Niagara Falls were so infested with rattlesnakes that the Indians removed their village to a place of greater security.

The Indians had several games, some of which have been already noticed. McCoy mentions a singular occurrence of this nature : "A Miami Indian had been stabbed with a knife, who lingered, and of whose recovery there was no doubt. On the 12th of May a part}' resolved to decide bj a game of moccasin whether the man should live or die. In this game the party seat themselves upon the earth opposite to each other, while one holds a moccasin on the ground with one hand, and holds in the other a small ball ; the ball he affects to conceal in the moccasin, and does either insert it or not, as he shall choose, and then leaves the opposite party to guess where the ball is. In order to deceive his antagonist, he incessantly utters a kind of a sing-song, which is repeated, about tlirice in a minute, and moving his hands in unison with the notes, brings one of them, at every repetition, to the mouth of the moccasin, as though he had that moment inserted the ball. One j)arty played for the wounded man's recovery and the other for his death. Two games were played, in both of which the side for recovery was triumphant, and so they concluded the man* would not die of his wounds."

The Indians had a most excellent knowledge of the topography of their country, and they drew the most exact maps of the countries they were acquainted with. They set down the true north according to tlie polar star ; the ports, harbors, rivers, creeks, and coasts of the lakes ; roads, mountains, woods, marshes and meadows. They counted the distances by journeys and half journeys, allowing to every journey five leagues. These maps were drawn upon birch bark. "Previous to General Brock's crossing over to Detroit, he asked Tecumseh what sort of a country he should have to pass through in case of his proceeding farther. Tecumseh took a roll of elm bark, and extending it on the ground, by means of four stones, drew forth his scalping knife, and, with the point, etched upon the bark a plan of the country, its hills, woods, rivers, morasses, a plan which, if not as neat, was fully as accurate as if it had been made by a professional map-maker.

In marriage, they had no ceremony worth mentioning, the man and the woman agreeing that for so many bucks, beaver hides, or, in short, any valuables, she should be his wife. Of all the passions, the Indians were least influenced by love. Some authors claim that it had no existence, excepting, of course, mere lust, which is possessed by all animals. " By women, beauty was commonly no motive to marriage, the only inducement being the reward which she received. It. was said that the women were purchased by the night, week, month or winter, so that they depended on fornication for a living ; nor was it thought either a crime or shame, none being esteemed as prostitutes but such as were licentious without a reward." Polygamy was common, but was seldom practiced except by the chiefs. On the smallest offense husband and w^ife parted, she taking the domestic utensils and the children of her sex. Children formed the only bond of affection between the two sexes ; and of them, to the credit of the Indian be it said, they were very fond. They never chastised them, the only punishment being to dash, by the hand, water into the face of the refractory child, Joutel noticed this method of correction among the Illinois, and nearly a hundred years later Jones mentions the same custom as existing among the Shawnees.

The Algonquin tribes, diifering in this respect from the southern Indians, had no especial religion. They believed in good and bad spirits, and thought it was only necessary to appease the wicked spirits, for the good ones "were all right anyway." These bad spirits were thought to occupy the bodies of animals, fishes and reptiles, to dwell in high mountains, gloomy caverns, dangerous whirlpools, and all large bodies of water. This will account for the offerings of tobacco and other valuables which they made when passing such places, No ideas of morals or metaphysics ever entered the head of the Indians; they believed what was told them upon those subjects, without having more than a vague impression of their meaning. Some of the Canadian Indians, in all sincerity, compared the Holy Trinity to a piece of pork. There they found the lean meat, the fat and the rind, three distinct parts that form the same piece." Their ideas of heaven was a place full of sensual enjoyments, and free from physical pains. Indeed, it is doubtful if, before their mythology was changed by the partial adoption of some of the doctrines of Christianity, they had any idea of spiritual reward or punishment.