Indian Population at the Beginning of the Sixteenth: Red Jacket and Iroquois Confederacy

Volume I · Chapter II · Part 2 of 6

The mental characteristics, or the workings of the mind of the Indian, was the same everywhere. He subjected his body to the control of his will. He was schooled in taciturnity-taught to be a silent man-because it was necessary in a society where the sharp weapon was the quick response to an unguarded or insulting word. He was trained, too, to accept physical endurance as a virtue. Apparent insensibility to fear or pain was significant of most sturdy manhood. It was regarded as an evidence of weakness or cowardice for an Indian to allow his countenance to be changed by surprise or suffering. And so his nerves and muscles were steeled against fear or pain, and made absolute slaves to his will. An Inca or King of ancient Peru, caused some of his warriors to be instantly put to death because they had shown some surprise at the appearance of Pizarro's cavalry, the horse being a novelty and wonder to that people. "Coward!" exclaimed Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, when he saw one of his followers startled by muskets fired in the gloom of night by the English garrison at Detroit, and instantly cleaved his head with a tomahawk. "Squaw!" cried Cornstalk, the leader of the Shawnoese in the battle of Point Pleasant, when he saw one of his warriors hiding behind a clump of bushes, and immediately ordered him to be dressed in a petticoat and to carry a pappoose-an Indian baby.
The brain of the Indian seemed to be cast in a poetic mold. In his simple language-too poor to allow a profusion of words-he would express ideas in elegant and poetic forms, his figures of speech being drawn from the objects of nature around him. What he lacked in words, would be supplied by those figures. "I stand in the path," said Pontiac, haughtily, to the commander of a British force that marched into his country, signifying that he held kingly dominion over all that region, and defied the intruder's power. When Red Jacket, the Seneca chief, who became intemperate in his later years, saw all of his eleven children die one after another with consumption, he regarded the calamity as a punishment for his sin. To a lady who had known him many years before, and who, ignorant of his misfortune, enquired of his family, the old chief, with bowed head replied: "Red Jacket was once a great man, and in favor with the Great Spirit. He was a lofty pine among the smaller trees of the forest. But after years of glory he degraded himself by drinking the fire-water of the white man. The Great Spirit has looked upon him in anger, and his lightning has stripped the pine of its branches." At a council at Vincennes, over which Governor Harrison presided, Tecumtha, the great Shawnoese warrior, made a speech. When it was ended, it was observed that no seat was provided for him. An officer handed him one saying, in the foolish phraseology of talk with Indians, "Your father [meaning Harrison] requests you to be seated in this chair." "My father!" said the chief scornfully, whilst his eyes flashed with indignation. Wrapping his broad blanket around him, and assuming the most haughty attitude, the continued: "My father is the Sun, and the Earth is my mother. I will recline upon her bosom." And then he seated himself upon the ground.

Notwithstanding the Indians exhibited many of the nobler traits of human nature, they were, with a few notable exceptions, cruel savages, as whole, throughout the entire country north of the parallel of Alabama, when the Europeans came and made permanent settlements here. Among these exceptions, the most conspicuous were the five nations who formed the Iroquois Confederacy within the domain of the present State of New York, and dwellers in the softer climate around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Iroquois Confederacy was a remarkable fact in history. It was com posed of five large families, each having the dignified title of a nation. These nations were named respectively, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. They were subdivided into smaller families or tribes, each having its symbol-coat-of-arms-such as the bear, the wolf, the eagle, the heron the beaver, the deer, the turkey or the tortoise. They occupied a belt of country extending across the present State of New York from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, south of the Adirondack range of great hills, and north of the Kaatsbergs, or, as they are commonly called, the Catskill Mountains.

When Europeans became acquainted with the nations of this league and the form of their government, they were filled with admiration because of its wisdom and strength. They called these nations "The Romans of the New World," because they seemed to have many things in common with that ancient people, especially in military affairs. As in old Rome the soldiers were honored above all other citizens, so they were among the Iroquois; and the warriors, under their chiefs, were all-powerful in public affairs. Whatever was done in the civil councils of the separate nations, or of the confederacy, was subjected to review by the soldiery, who had the right to call councils whenever they pleased, and approve or disapprove public measures. And so careful were the civil authorities to pay deference to the warriors that general answers to questions of state policy were postponed until the opinions of the soldiers might be known. Therefore, in nearly every such council, decisions were made by unanimous consent.

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