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PHILADELPHIA GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
PHILADELPHIA GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Alas! for them, their day is o'er, Their fires are out on hill and shore; No more for them the wild deer bounds, The plough is on their hunting grounds; The pale man's axe rings through their woods, The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods, Their pleasant springs are dry; * * * * * * CHARLES SPRAGUE....
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FOREWORD
FOREWORD
When the white race came into the country of the red race, the red race long had had their own ways of living and their own code of right and wrong. They were red, but they were thinking men and women, not mere animals. The white people brought their ways, which were different from the Indians' ways. So the two races could not live together. To the white people, many methods of the Indians were wrong; to the Indians, many of the white people's methods were wrong. The white people won the rulersh
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
It was in early spring, about the year 1644, that the warrior Piskaret of the Adirondack tribe of the Algonkins set forth alone from the island Allumette in the Ottawa River, Canada, to seek his enemies the Iroquois. For there long had been bitter, bitter war between the vengeful Algonkins[ 1 ] and the cruel Hurons on the one side, and the proud, even crueler Five Nations of the Iroquois on the other side. At first the Adirondacks had driven the Mohawks out of lower Canada and into northern New
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
Piskaret was a hero. From lip to lip the story of his lone trail was repeated through the bark lodges of the Algonkins, and the long houses of the fierce Hurons, and even among the gentle nuns and gaunt priests of the brave mission settlements upon the lower St. Lawrence River. But the nuns and priests did not favor such bloody deeds, which led only to more. Their teachings were all of peace rather than war between men. Yet each and every one of them was as bold as Piskaret, and to bring about p
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The first English-speaking settlement that held fast in the United States was Jamestown, inland a short distance from the Chesapeake Bay coast of Virginia, in the country of the Great King Powatan. The Powatans, of at least thirty tribes, in this 1607 owned eight thousand square miles and mustered almost three thousand warriors. They lived in a land rich with good soil, game and fish; the men were well formed, the women were comely, the children many. But before the new settlers met King Powatan
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
While in Virginia the white colonists were hard put to it by the Powatans, the good ship Mayflower had landed the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers on the Massachusetts Bay shore to the north, among the Pokanokets. The Po-kan-o-kets formed another league, like the league of the Powatans. There were nine tribes, holding a section of southeastern Massachusetts and of water-broken eastern Rhode Island. The renowned Massasoit of the Wam-pa-no-ag tribe was the grand sachem. In Rhode Island, on the east shore o
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
When King Philip had planned his war, he well knew that he might depend upon Wetamoo, the squaw sachem of Pocasset. After the death of the luckless Alexander, Wetamoo married a Pocasset Indian named Petananuit. He was called by the English "Peter Nunnuit." This Peter Nunnuit appears to have been a poor sort of a husband, for he early deserted to the enemy, leaving his wife to fight alone. Wetamoo was not old. She was in the prime of life, and as an Indian was beautiful. Not counting her faithles
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
Soon after the Mohawks broke the peace with the French and Algonkins in Canada, and in 1647 killed Piskaret the champion, they and the others of the Five Nations drove the Hurons and Algonkins into flight. The Hurons, styled in English Wyandots, fled clear into Michigan and spread down into northern Ohio. Of the Algonkins there were three nations who clung together as the Council of the Three Fires. These were the Ottawas, the Ojibwas and the Potawatomis. The Ottawas were known as the "Trade Peo
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
Old Fort Detroit was a stockade twenty feet high, in the form of a square about two-thirds of a mile around. It enclosed a church and eighty or one hundred houses, mainly of French settlers with a sprinkling of English traders. In the block-houses at the corners and protecting the gates, light cannon were mounted. The garrison consisted of only one hundred and twenty men of the Eightieth Foot. In the village there were perhaps forty other men. On both sides of the river lay the fertile farms of
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
During the French-and-Indian war with England, and during the war waged by Pontiac, there was one prominent chief who did not take up the hatchet. His name was the English one of John Logan. He was a Mingo, or Iroquois, of a Cayuga band that had drifted south into east central Pennsylvania. There Chief Shikellemus, his father, had settled and had proved himself a firm friend of the whites. Old Shikellemus invited the Moravian missionaries to take refuge on his lands. He spoke good English. He ac
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
At the last of September a Shawnee scout ran breathless into the Chief Cornstalk town. He brought word that far across the Ohio River, in north-western (now West) Virginia, he and his comrade had met a great column of Long Knives, advancing over the mountains, as if to invade the Indian country. His comrade had been killed. He himself had come back, with the word. Taking eleven hundred warriors—the pick of the Shawnees, the fighting Delawares, the Wyandots, the Mingo Cayugas and the Mingo Seneca
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
During the Revolution, by which the United States became an independent nation, the great majority of the Indian tribes within reach took active part on the side of the British. The Iroquois fought out of friendship, they said; the tribes farther west fought in the hope of keeping the settlers out of the Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana country. For some years after the war, which closed in 1782, there was a dispute between the United States and England over the carrying out of certain terms in the tr
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
President Washington was almost beside himself when he got the frank report from General Saint Clair. Another American army—as good a selection as had opposed the British themselves in many a battle of the Revolution—had been fairly outwitted and fairly defeated, by Indians. General Anthony Wayne was appointed to try next. "Mad Anthony," soldiers and citizens had styled him, because of his head-long valor in the Revolution. He was a good man for the job, if he did not act too fast and get ambush
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
In the battle of the Fallen Timbers, when General "Big Wind" broke the back of the Ohio nations, two young warriors fought against each other. One was Lieutenant William Henry Harrison, aged twenty-one, of the Americans. The other was Sub-chief Tecumseh, aged twenty-six, of the Shawnees. They were the sons of noted fathers. Benjamin Harrison, the father of Lieutenant Harrison, had been a famous patriot and a signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Puck-ee-shin-wah, the father of Tecum
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
In Vincennes, the white chief, Governor William Henry Harrison, had grown tired of the insults and defiance from the Prophet. He took nine hundred regulars and rangers, to visit the Prophet's Town, himself, and see what was what. He camped within a mile of the sacred place, on a timber island of the marshy prairie seven miles north-east of the present city of Lafayette, Indiana. During the darkness and early daylight of November 7, this 1811, he was attacked by the Prophet's warriors. He roundly
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
As fast as Tecumseh and the Open Door, or their messengers, traveled, they left in their trail other prophets. Soon it was a poor tribe indeed that did not have a medicine-man who spoke from the Great Spirit. When Tecumseh first visited the Creeks, in Georgia and Alabama, they were not ready for war. They were friendly to the whites, and were growing rich in peace. The Creeks belonged to the Musk-ho-ge-an family, and numbered twenty thousand people, in fifty towns. They had light complexions, an
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
The two small nations of the Sacs and the Foxes had lived as one family for a long time. They were of the Algonquian tongue. From the northern Great Lakes country they had moved over to the Mississippi River, and down to Illinois and Iowa. Their number was not more than six thousand. They were a shave-head Indian, of forest and stream, and accustomed to travel afoot or in canoes. The Foxes built their bark-house villages on the west side of the Mississippi, in Iowa's "great nose." They called th
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
This is the story of one slight little Indian woman, aged sixteen, who opened the trail across the continent, for the march of the United States flag. When in March, 1804, the United States took over that French Province of Louisiana which extended from the upper Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains, a multitude of Indians changed white fathers. These Western Indians were much different from the Eastern Indians. They were long-hair Indians, and horse Indians, accustomed to the rough buf
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
While the United States was getting acquainted with the Western Indians, there lived among the Mandans in the north a most noted hero—the chief Mah-to-toh-pa, or Four Bears. Young Captain Lewis the Long Knife Chief, and stout Captain Clark the Red Head, who with their exploring party wintered among the Mandans in 1804-1805, and enlisted the Snake Bird-woman as guide, were the first white men to write a clear account of the curious Mandans; but they did not tell the half. For a curious people ind
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
The Nez Percés or "Pierced Noses" really were not Pierced Noses any more than any other Indians; for the North American red men, the country over, wore ornaments in their noses when they chose to. But as the Pierced Noses this nation in the far Northwest was known. They were members of the Sha-hap-ti-an family of North Americans—a family not so large as the Algonquian, Siouan, Shoshonean and several other families, yet important. Their home was the valley and river country of western Idaho, and
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
The Assiniboins are of the great Sioux family. Today there are in the United States about one thousand of them. But when they were a free and powerful people they numbered as high as ten thousand, and ranged far—from the Missouri River in northern North Dakota and northern Montana clear into Canada, above. This cold, high country of vast plains made them hardy and roaming. In their proud bearing and good size they resembled the Dakota Sioux, but with the Sioux they had little to do, except in wa
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Southwest from the Mandans there lived the Crow nation. They roved through the Yellowstone River country of southern Montana to the Rocky Mountains; and southward through the mountains into the Wind River and Big Horn country of western Wyoming. West from the Mandans there lived the Blackfeet nation. They roved through the Missouri country of northern Montana, and north into Canada. The land of the Crows and of the Blackfeet overlapped. The two peoples were at war, on the plains and in the mount
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
The Kiowas are of the great Athapascan family of Indians. In their war days they ranged from the Platte River of western Nebraska down into New Mexico and Texas. But their favorite hunting grounds lay south of the Arkansas River of western Kansas and southeastern Colorado. It was a desert country, of whity-yellow sand and sharp bare hills, with the Rocky Mountains distant in the west, and the only green that of the trees and brush along the water-courses. Nevertheless it was a very good kind of
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
The name Sioux comes down from a longer Chippewa word meaning "adder" or "enemy." The Indians who bore this name were the powerful Dakotas—the true Sioux of history. The wide Nation of the Lakota, as these Sioux called themselves, was a league of seven council fires. The four divisions of the Santees lived in Minnesota; the two divisions of the Yanktons lived between them and the Missouri River; the one large division of the Tetons lived in their Dakota country, west of the Missouri River. The S
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
The Ponca Indians were members of the large Siouan family. They had not always been a separate tribe. In the old days they and the Omahas and the Kansas and the Osages had lived together as Omahas, near the mouth of the Osage River in eastern Nebraska. Soon they divided, and held their clan names of Poncas, Omahas, Kansas and Osages. The Poncas and Omahas clung as allies. Finally the Poncas remained by themselves, low down on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska. When the captains, Lewis and
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
The treaty that Chief Red Cloud at last signed in the fall of 1868 was half white and half red. The white part made the Sioux agree to a reservation which covered all of present South Dakota west of the Missouri River. Here they were to live and be fed. The red part, put in by Red Cloud, said that the whole country west of the reservation to the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming, and north of the North Platte River, should be Indian country. Here the Sioux and their Indian friends were to h
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
After Colonel Nelson A. Miles of the Fifth Infantry had driven Sitting Bull and Chief Gall of the Sioux into Canada and his troops were trying to stop their raids back, at present Fort Keogh near Miles City on the Yellowstone River in southeastern Montana he received word of another Indian war. The friendly Pierced Noses of Oregon had broken the peace chain. They had crossed the mountains and were on their way north, for Canada. That the Pierced Noses had taken the war trail was astonishing news
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
In 1889 the Sioux, upon their reservations in South Dakota, were much dissatisfied. Their cattle were dying, their crops had failed, there were no buffalo, and the Government supplies were not being issued according to promise. The Sioux no longer occupied the Great Sioux reservation of western South Dakota. By several treaties they had sold the greater portion of that land. The last treaty, signed only this year, had left them five tracts, as reservations. On the Missouri River at the middle no
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