The Indians of the Gulf Region (Part 3)

When a young chief desired to marry, he would send a few of his principal men to select from the daughters of the first families one of the youngest and most beautiful of the marriageable ones. The chosen bride was then painted and decorated in the most tasteful manner, preparatory to the nuptials. Brilliant colors, and costly pearls and shells, adorned her person. She was covered from her waist almost to her knees with a beautiful tunic of rich feathers. Then she was placed in a sedan chair, the top of which was an arch of green boughs festooned and garlanded with flowers. In that state she was conveyed to the presence of her future lord on the shoulders of six noblemen who were preceded by musicians and two men bearing magnificent feather fans, and followed by dancing-girls and the immediate relatives of the bride. When arrived at the residence of the chief, she was received by the lords in waiting, who conducted her to a seat by the side of her husband, on an elevated dais, where great pomp and ceremony were displayed by those in attendance. The bride and groom were constantly fanned by beautiful maidens, if the weather was warm; and they were regaled with the unfermented juice of the grape, in its season, or with a kind of sherbert made of orange juice, at other times. At near the sun-setting the chief and his young wife walked out into an open field, followed by all the people, and at the last parting ray of the luminary, they prostrated themselves toward the west and invoked the blessings of the Sun upon themselves and their children. From that moment until the stars appeared the people indulged in music and dancing--the music of the reed and a sort of tambourine and the dancing of young men and maidens--when the chief and his bride retired to their dwelling, there, with friends, to partake of a marriage-feast by the light of lamps.

Such is an outline picture of the people with whom the Spaniards first came in contact on the continent after the discoveries of Columbus and his cotemporaries. These, with the Iroquois Confederacy, are the two notable exceptions spoken of, to the general character and habits of the dusky nations who then inhabited North America. We now have a tolerably correct impression of these barbarian and savage communities whose history, down to the present time, forms an important part of that of our Republic. Some of them have gone up in the social scale, and others have gone down: some of them have disappeared, and other tribes have been discovered. All are gradually fading away from the earth; and the time cannot be far distant when the last of the dusky race may sit on the verge of the Pacific Ocean, with his face toward the setting sun, and chant the death-song of his people, saying:

But they will leave behind them myriads of memories of their existence here, in their beautiful and significant names of our mountains and valleys, our lakes and rivers, our states, counties, villages and cities. We may say to our people,

At this point in our story, the scene shifts, as in a dissolving view, to another continent, and presently appears the grand procession of discoverers who opened the way to settlements in this new-found land.