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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

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[ Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, gives a description of one of
these ceremonies at length. Those of the Iroquois on such occasions were
similar. Many other tribes had the same custom, but attended with much
less form and ceremony. Compare Perrot, 73-76. ]

The Hurons were notorious thieves; and perhaps the Iroquois were not much
better, though the contrary has been asserted. Among both, the robbed
was permitted not only to retake his property by force, if he could,
but to strip the robber of all he had. This apparently acted as a
restraint in favor only of the strong, leaving the weak a prey to the
plunderer; but here the tie of family and clan intervened to aid him.
Relatives and clansmen espoused the quarrel of him who could not right
himself.

[ The proceedings for detecting thieves were regular and methodical,
after established customs. According to Bressani, no thief ever
inculpated the innocent. ]

Witches, with whom the Hurons and Iroquois were grievously infested,
were objects of utter abomination to both, and any one might kill them at
any time. If any person was guilty of treason, or by his character and
conduct made himself dangerous or obnoxious to the public, the council of
chiefs and old men held a secret session on his case, condemned him to
death, and appointed some young man to kill him. The executioner,
watching his opportunity, brained or stabbed him unawares, usually in the
dark porch of one of the houses. Acting by authority, he could not be
held answerable; and the relatives of the slain had no redress, even if
they desired it. The council, however, commonly obviated all difficulty
in advance, by charging the culprit with witchcraft, thus alienating his
best friends.

The military organization of the Iroquois was exceedingly imperfect and
derived all its efficiency from their civil union and their personal
prowess. There were two hereditary war-chiefs, both belonging to the
Senecas; but, except on occasions of unusual importance, it does not
appear that they took a very active part in the conduct of wars. The
Iroquois lived in a state of chronic warfare with nearly all the
surrounding tribes, except a few from whom they exacted tribute. Any man
of sufficient personal credit might raise a war-party when he chose.
He proclaimed his purpose through the village, sang his war-songs,
struck his hatchet into the war-post, and danced the war-dance. Any who
chose joined him; and the party usually took up their march at once,
with a little parched-corn-meal and maple-sugar as their sole provision.
On great occasions, there was concert of action,--the various parties
meeting at a rendezvous, and pursuing the march together. The leaders of
war-parties, like the orators, belonged, in nearly all cases, to the
class of subordinate chiefs. The Iroquois had a discipline suited to the
dark and tangled forests where they fought. Here they were a terrible
foe: in an open country, against a trained European force, they were,
despite their ferocious valor, far less formidable.

In observing this singular organization, one is struck by the incongruity
of its spirit and its form. A body of hereditary oligarchs was the head
of the nation, yet the nation was essentially democratic. Not that the
Iroquois were levellers. None were more prompt to acknowledge
superiority and defer to it, whether established by usage and
prescription, or the result of personal endowment. Yet each man, whether
of high or low degree, had a voice in the conduct of affairs, and was
never for a moment divorced from his wild spirit of independence.
Where there was no property worthy the name, authority had no fulcrum and
no hold. The constant aim of sachems and chiefs was to exercise it
without seeming to do so. They had no insignia of office. They were no
richer than others; indeed, they were often poorer, spending their
substance in largesses and bribes to strengthen their influence. They
hunted and fished for subsistence; they were as foul, greasy, and
unsavory as the rest; yet in them, withal, was often seen a native
dignity of bearing, which ochre and bear's grease could not hide, and
which comported well with their strong, symmetrical, and sometimes
majestic proportions.

To the institutions, traditions, rites, usages, and festivals of the
league the Iroquois was inseparably wedded. He clung to them with Indian
tenacity; and he clings to them still. His political fabric was one of
ancient ideas and practices, crystallized into regular and enduring
forms. In its component parts it has nothing peculiar to itself.
All its elements are found in other tribes: most of them belong to the
whole Indian race. Undoubtedly there was a distinct and definite effort
of legislation; but Iroquois legislation invented nothing. Like all
sound legislation, it built of materials already prepared. It organized
the chaotic past, and gave concrete forms to Indian nature itself.
The people have dwindled and decayed; but, banded by its ties of clan and
kin, the league, in feeble miniature, still subsists, and the degenerate
Iroquois looks back with a mournful pride to the glory of the past.

Would the Iroquois, left undisturbed to work out their own destiny,
ever have emerged from the savage state? Advanced as they were beyond
most other American tribes, there is no indication whatever of a tendency
to overpass the confines of a wild hunter and warrior life. They were
inveterately attached to it, impracticable conservatists of barbarism,
and in ferocity and cruelty they matched the worst of their race.
Nor did the power of expansion apparently belonging to their system ever
produce much result. Between the years 1712 and 1715, the Tuscaroras,
a kindred people, were admitted into the league as a sixth nation; but
they were never admitted on equal terms. Long after, in the period of
their decline, several other tribes were announced as new members of the
league; but these admissions never took effect. The Iroquois were always
reluctant to receive other tribes, or parts of tribes, collectively,
into the precincts of the "Long House." Yet they constantly practised a
system of adoptions, from which, though cruel and savage, they drew great
advantages. Their prisoners of war, when they had burned and butchered
as many of them as would serve to sate their own ire and that of their
women, were divided, man by man, woman by woman, and child by child,
adopted into different families and clans, and thus incorporated into the
nation. It was by this means, and this alone, that they could offset the
losses of their incessant wars. Early in the eighteenth century, and
ever-long before, a vast proportion of their population consisted of
adopted prisoners.

[ Relation, 1660, 7 (anonymous). The Iroquois were at the height of
their prosperity about the year 1650. Morgan reckons their number at
this time at 25,000 souls; but this is far too high an estimate. The
author of the Relation of 1660 makes their whole number of warriors
2,200. Le Mercier, in the Relation of 1665, says 2,350. In the Journal
of Greenhalgh, an Englishman who visited them in 1677, their warriors are
set down at 2,150. Du Chesneau, in 1681, estimates them at 2,000; De la
Barre, in 1684, at 2,600, they having been strengthened by adoptions.
A memoir addressed to the Marquis de Seignelay, in 1687, again makes them
2,000. (See N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 162, 196, 321.) These estimates imply
a total population of ten or twelve thousand.

The anonymous writer of the Relation of 1660 may well remark: "It is
marvellous that so few should make so great a havoc, and strike such
terror into so many tribes." ]

It remains to speak of the religious and superstitious ideas which so
deeply influenced Indian life.


RELIGION AND SUPERSTITIONS.

The religious belief of the North-American Indians seems, on a first view,
anomalous and contradictory. It certainly is so, if we adopt the popular
impression. Romance, Poetry, and Rhetoric point, on the one hand,
to the august conception of a one all-ruling Deity, a Great Spirit,
omniscient and omnipresent; and we are called to admire the untutored
intellect which could conceive a thought too vast for Socrates and Plato.
On the other hand, we find a chaos of degrading, ridiculous, and
incoherent superstitions. A closer examination will show that the
contradiction is more apparent than real. We will begin with the lowest
forms of Indian belief, and thence trace it upward to the highest
conceptions to which the unassisted mind of the savage attained.

To the Indian, the material world is sentient and intelligent. Birds,
beasts, and reptiles have ears for human prayers, and are endowed with an
influence on human destiny. A mysterious and inexplicable power resides
in inanimate things. They, too, can listen to the voice of man, and
influence his life for evil or for good. Lakes, rivers, and waterfalls
are sometimes the dwelling-place of spirits; but more frequently they are
themselves living beings, to be propitiated by prayers and offerings.
The lake has a soul; and so has the river, and the cataract. Each can
hear the words of men, and each can be pleased or offended. In the
silence of a forest, the gloom of a deep ravine, resides a living mystery,
indefinite, but redoubtable. Through all the works of Nature or of man,
nothing exists, however seemingly trivial, that may not be endowed with a
secret power for blessing or for bane.

Men and animals are closely akin. Each species of animal has its great
archetype, its progenitor or king, who is supposed to exist somewhere,
prodigious in size, though in shape and nature like his subjects.
A belief prevails, vague, but perfectly apparent, that men themselves owe
their first parentage to beasts, birds, or reptiles, as bears, wolves,
tortoises, or cranes; and the names of the totemic clans, borrowed in
nearly every case from animals, are the reflection of this idea.

[ This belief occasionally takes a perfectly definite shape. There was a
tradition among Northern and Western tribes, that men were created from
the carcasses of beasts, birds, and fishes, by Manabozho, a mythical
personage, to be described hereafter. The Amikouas, or People of the
Beaver, an Algonquin tribe of Lake Huron, claimed descent from the
carcass of the great original beaver, or father of the beavers. They
believed that the rapids and cataracts on the French River and the Upper
Ottawa were caused by dams made by their amphibious ancestor. (See the
tradition in Perrot, Mémoire sur les Mœurs, Coustumes et Relligion des
Sauvages de l'Amérique Septentrionale, p. 20.) Charlevoix tells the same
story. Each Indian was supposed to inherit something of the nature of
the animal whence he sprung. ]

An Indian hunter was always anxious to propitiate the animals he sought
to kill. He has often been known to address a wounded bear in a long
harangue of apology. [ McKinney, Tour to the Lakes, 284, mentions the
discomposure of a party of Indians when shown a stuffed moose. Thinking
that its spirit would be offended at the indignity shown to its remains,
they surrounded it, making apologetic speeches, and blowing tobacco-smoke
at it as a propitiatory offering. ] The bones of the beaver were treated
with especial tenderness, and carefully kept from the dogs, lest the
spirit of the dead beaver, or his surviving brethren, should take
offence. [ This superstition was very prevalent, and numerous examples
of it occur in old and recent writers, from Father Le Jeune to Captain
Carver. ] This solicitude was not confined to animals, but extended to
inanimate things. A remarkable example occurred among the Hurons,
a people comparatively advanced, who, to propitiate their fishing-nets,
and persuade them to do their office with effect, married them every year
to two young girls of the tribe, with a ceremony more formal than that
observed in the case of mere human wedlock. [ 1 ] The fish, too, no less
than the nets, must be propitiated; and to this end they were addressed
every evening from the fishing-camp by one of the party chosen for that
function, who exhorted them to take courage and be caught, assuring them
that the utmost respect should be shown to their bones. The harangue,
which took place after the evening meal, was made in solemn form; and
while it lasted, the whole party, except the speaker, were required to
lie on their backs, silent and motionless, around the fire. [ 2 ]

[ 1 There are frequent allusions to this ceremony in the early writers.
The Algonquins of the Ottawa practised it, as well as the Hurons.
Lalemant, in his chapter "Du Regne de Satan en ces Contrées" (Relation
des Hurons, 1639), says that it took place yearly, in the middle of
March. As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins,
mere children were chosen. The net was held between them; and its spirit,
or oki, was harangued by one of the chiefs, who exhorted him to do his
part in furnishing the tribe with food. Lalemant was told that the
spirit of the net had once appeared in human form to the Algonquins,
complaining that he had lost his wife, and warning them, that, unless
they could find him another equally immaculate, they would catch no more
fish. ]

[ 2 Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, 257. Other old writers
make a similar statement. ]

Besides ascribing life and intelligence to the material world, animate
and inanimate, the Indian believes in supernatural existences, known among
the Algonquins as _Manitous_, and among the Iroquois and Hurons as _Okies_
or _Otkons_. These words comprehend all forms of supernatural being,
from the highest to the lowest, with the exception, possibly, of certain
diminutive fairies or hobgoblins, and certain giants and anomalous
monsters, which appear under various forms, grotesque and horrible,
in the Indian fireside legends. [ Many tribes have tales of diminutive
beings, which, in the absence of a better word, may be called fairies.
In the Travels of Lewis and Clarke, there is mention of a hill on the
Missouri, supposed to be haunted by them. These Western fairies
correspond to the _Puck Wudj Ininee_ of Ojibwa tradition. As an example
of the monsters alluded to, see the Saginaw story of the Weendigoes, in
Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, II. 105. ] There are local manitous of
streams, rocks, mountains, cataracts, and forests. The conception of
these beings betrays, for the most part, a striking poverty of
imagination. In nearly every case, when they reveal themselves to mortal
sight, they bear the semblance of beasts, reptiles, or birds, in shapes
unusual or distorted. [ The figure of a large bird is perhaps the most
common,--as, for example, the good spirit of Rock Island: "He was white,
with wings like a swan, but ten times larger."--Autobiography of
Blackhawk, 70. ] There are other manitous without local habitation,
some good, some evil, countless in number and indefinite in attributes.
They fill the world, and control the destinies of men,--that is to say,
of Indians: for the primitive Indian holds that the white man lives under
a spiritual rule distinct from that which governs his own fate. These
beings, also, appear for the most part in the shape of animals.
Sometimes, however, they assume human proportions; but more frequently
they take the form of stones, which, being broken, are found full of
living blood and flesh.

Each primitive Indian has his guardian manitou, to whom he looks for
counsel, guidance, and protection. These spiritual allies are gained by
the following process. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, the Indian boy
blackens his face, retires to some solitary place, and remains for days
without food. Superstitious expectancy and the exhaustion of abstinence
rarely fail of their results. His sleep is haunted by visions, and the
form which first or most often appears is that of his guardian manitou,--
a beast, a bird, a fish, a serpent, or some other object, animate or
inanimate. An eagle or a bear is the vision of a destined warrior; a
wolf, of a successful hunter; while a serpent foreshadows the future
medicine-man, or, according to others, portends disaster. [ 1 ] The
young Indian thenceforth wears about his person the object revealed in
his dream, or some portion of it,--as a bone, a feather, a snake-skin,
or a tuft of hair. This, in the modern language of the forest and
prairie, is known as his "medicine." The Indian yields to it a sort of
worship, propitiates it with offerings of tobacco, thanks it in
prosperity, and upbraids it in disaster. [ 2 ] If his medicine fails to
bring the desired success, he will sometimes discard it and adopt
another. The superstition now becomes mere fetich-worship, since the
Indian regards the mysterious object which he carries about him rather as
an embodiment than as a representative of a supernatural power.

[ 1 Compare Cass, in North-American Review, Second Series, XIII. 100.
A turkey-buzzard, according to him, is the vision of a medicine-man.
I once knew an old Dahcotah chief, who was greatly respected, but had
never been to war, though belonging to a family of peculiarly warlike
propensities. The reason was, that, in his initiatory fast, he had
dreamed of an antelope,--the peace-spirit of his people.

Women fast, as well as men,--always at the time of transition from
childhood to maturity. In the Narrative of John Tanner, there is an
account of an old woman who had fasted, in her youth, for ten days,
and throughout her life placed the firmest faith in the visions which had
appeared to her at that time. Among the Northern Algonquins, the
practice, down to a recent day, was almost universal. ]

[ 2 The author has seen a Dahcotah warrior open his medicine-bag,
talk with an air of affectionate respect to the bone, feather, or horn
within, and blow tobacco-smoke upon it as an offering. "Medicines"
are acquired not only by fasting, but by casual dreams, and otherwise.
They are sometimes even bought and sold. For a curious account of
medicine-bags and fetich-worship among the Algonquins of Gaspé, see Le
Clerc, Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie, Chap. XIII. ]

Indian belief recognizes also another and very different class of beings.
Besides the giants and monsters of legendary lore, other conceptions may
be discerned, more or less distinct, and of a character partly mythical.
Of these the most conspicuous is that remarkable personage of Algonquin
tradition, called Manabozho, Messou, Michabou, Nanabush, or the Great
Hare. As each species of animal has its archetype or king, so, among the
Algonquins, Manabozho is king of all these animal kings. Tradition is
diverse as to his origin. According to the most current belief, his
father was the West-Wind, and his mother a great-granddaughter of the
Moon. His character is worthy of such a parentage. Sometimes he is a
wolf, a bird, or a gigantic hare, surrounded by a court of quadrupeds;
sometimes he appears in human shape, majestic in stature and wondrous in
endowment, a mighty magician, a destroyer of serpents and evil manitous;
sometimes he is a vain and treacherous imp, full of childish whims and
petty trickery, the butt and victim of men, beasts, and spirits. His
powers of transformation are without limit; his curiosity and malice are
insatiable; and of the numberless legends of which he is the hero,
the greater part are as trivial as they are incoherent. [ 1 ] It does
not appear that Manabozho was ever an object of worship; yet, despite his
absurdity, tradition declares him to be chief among the manitous, in
short, the "Great Spirit." [ "Presque toutes les Nations Algonquines ont
donné le nom de Grand Lièvre au Premier Esprit, quelques-uns l'appellent
Michabou (Manabozho)."--Charlevoix, Journal Historique, 344. ] It was he
who restored the world, submerged by a deluge. He was hunting in company
with a certain wolf, who was his brother, or, by other accounts, his
grandson, when his quadruped relative fell through the ice of a frozen
lake, and was at once devoured by certain serpents lurking in the depths
of the waters. Manabozho, intent on revenge, transformed himself into
the stump of a tree, and by this artifice surprised and slew the king of
the serpents, as he basked with his followers in the noontide sun.
The serpents, who were all manitous, caused, in their rage, the waters of
the lake to deluge the earth. Manabozho climbed a tree, which, in answer
to his entreaties, grew as the flood rose around it, and thus saved him
from the vengeance of the evil spirits. Submerged to the neck, he looked
abroad on the waste of waters, and at length descried the bird known as
the loon, to whom he appealed for aid in the task of restoring the world.
The loon dived in search of a little mud, as material for reconstruction,
but could not reach the bottom. A musk-rat made the same attempt,
but soon reappeared floating on his back, and apparently dead. Manabozho,
however, on searching his paws, discovered in one of them a particle of
the desired mud, and of this, together with the body of the loon, created
the world anew. [ 2 ]

[ 1 Mr. Schoolcraft has collected many of these tales. See his Algic
Researches, Vol. I. Compare the stories of Messou, given by Le Jeune
(Relations, 1633, 1634), and the account of Nanabush, by Edwin James,
in his notes to Tanner's Narrative of Captivity and Adventures during a
Thirty-Years' Residence among the Indians; also the account of the Great
Hare, in the Mémoire of Nicolas Perrot, Chaps. I., II. ]

[ 2 This is a form of the story still current among the remoter
Algonquins. Compare the story of Messou, in Le Jeune, Relation, 1633,
16. It is substantially the same. ]

There are various forms of this tradition, in some of which Manabozho
appears, not as the restorer, but as the creator of the world, forming
mankind from the carcasses of beasts, birds, and fishes. [ 1 ] Other
stories represent him as marrying a female musk-rat, by whom he became
the progenitor of the human race. [ 2 ]

[ 1 In the beginning of all things, Manabozho, in the form of the Great
Hare, was on a raft, surrounded by animals who acknowledged him as their
chief. No land could be seen. Anxious to create the world, the Great
Hare persuaded the beaver to dive for mud but the adventurous diver
floated to the surface senseless. The otter next tried, and failed like
his predecessor. The musk-rat now offered himself for the desperate
task. He plunged, and, after remaining a day and night beneath the
surface, reappeared, floating on his back beside the raft, apparently
dead, and with all his paws fast closed. On opening them, the other
animals found in one of them a grain of sand, and of this the Great Hare
created the world.--Perrot, Mémoire, Chap. I. ]

[ 2 Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 16.--The musk-rat is always a conspicuous
figure in Algonquin cosmogony.

It is said that Messou, or Manabozho, once gave to an Indian the gift of
immortality, tied in a bundle, enjoining him never to open it. The
Indian's wife, however, impelled by curiosity, one day cut the string,
the precious gift flew out, and Indians have ever since been subject to
death. Le Jeune, Relation, 1634, 13. ]

Searching for some higher conception of supernatural existence, we find,
among a portion of the primitive Algonquins, traces of a vague belief in
a spirit dimly shadowed forth under the name of Atahocan, to whom it does
not appear that any attributes were ascribed or any worship offered,
and of whom the Indians professed to know nothing whatever; [ 1 ] but
there is no evidence that this belief extended beyond certain tribes of
the Lower St. Lawrence. Others saw a supreme manitou in the Sun. [ 2 ]
The Algonquins believed also in a malignant manitou, in whom the early
missionaries failed not to recognize the Devil, but who was far less
dreaded than his wife. She wore a robe made of the hair of her victims,
for she was the cause of death; and she it was whom, by yelling, drumming,
and stamping, they sought to drive away from the sick. Sometimes,
at night, she was seen by some terrified squaw in the forest, in shape
like a flame of fire; and when the vision was announced to the circle
crouched around the lodge-fire, they burned a fragment of meat to appease
the female fiend.

[ 1 Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 16; Relation, 1634, 13. ]

[ 2 Biard, Relation, 1611, Chap. VIII.--This belief was very prevalent.
The Ottawas, according to Ragueneau (Relation des Hurons, 1648, 77),
were accustomed to invoke the "Maker of Heaven" at their feasts; but they
recognized as distinct persons the Maker of the Earth, the Maker of
Winter, the God of the Waters, and the Seven Spirits of the Wind.
He says, at the same time, "The people of these countries have received
from their ancestors no knowledge of a God"; and he adds, that there is
no sentiment of religion in this invocation. ]

The East, the West, the North, and the South were vaguely personified as
spirits or manitous. Some of the winds, too, were personal existences.
The West-Wind, as we have seen, was father of Manabozho. There was a
Summer-Maker and a Winter-Maker; and the Indians tried to keep the latter
at bay by throwing firebrands into the air.

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