Chapter I: Ancient America (2)

The upper status of barbarism, in so far as it implies a knowledge of smelting iron, was never reached in aboriginal America. In the Old World it is the stage which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric poems[29] and the Germans in the time of Cæsar. The end of this period and the beginning of true civilization is marked by the invention of a phonetic alphabet and the production of written records. This brings within the pale of civilization such people as the ancient Phoenicians, the Hebrews after the exodus, the ruling classes at Nineveh and Babylon, the Aryans of Persia and India, and the Japanese. But clearly it will not do to insist too narrowly upon the phonetic character of the alphabet. Where people acquainted with iron have enshrined in hieroglyphics so much matter of historic record and literary interest as the Chinese and the ancient Egyptians, they too must be classed as civilized; and this Mr. Morgan by implication admits.

[Footnote 29: In the interesting architectural remains
unearthed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ and Tiryns, there have
been found at the former place a few iron keys and knives, at
the latter one iron lance-head; but the form and workmanship of
these objects mark them as not older than the beginning of the
fifth century B. C., or the time of the Persian wars. With
these exceptions the weapons and tools found in these cities,
as also in Troy, were of bronze and stone. Bronze was in common
use, but obsidian knives and arrow-heads of fine workmanship
abound in the ruins. According to Professor Sayce, these ruins
must date from 2000 to 1700 B. C. The Greeks of that time would
accordingly be placed in the middle status of barbarism. (See
Schliemann's _Mycenæ_, pp. 75, 364; _Tiryns_, p. 171.) In the
state of society described in the Homeric poems the smelting of
iron was well known, but the process seems to have been costly,
so that bronze weapons were still commonly used. (Tylor,
_Anthropology_, p. 279.) The Romans of the regal period were
ignorant of iron. (Lanciani, _Ancient Rome in the Light of
Recent Discoveries_, Boston, 1888, pp. 39-48.) The upper period
of barbarism was shortened for Greece and Rome through the
circumstance that they learned the working of iron from Egypt
and the use of the alphabet from Phoenicia. Such copying, of
course, affects the symmetry of such schemes as Mr. Morgan's,
and allowances have to be made for it. It is curious that both
Greeks and Romans seem to have preserved some tradition of the
Bronze Age:--

[Greek: tois d' ên chalkea men teuchea, chalkeoi de te oikoi,
chalkô d' eirgazonto; melas d' ouk eske sidêros.]
Hesiod, _Opp. Di._ 134.

Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt
Et lapides et item silvarum fragmina rami,
Et flamma atque ignes, postquam sunt cognita primum.
Posterius ferri vis est, ærisque reperta.
Et prior æris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus, etc.
Lucretius, v. 1283.

Perhaps, as Munro suggests, Lucretius was thinking of Hesiod;
but it does not seem improbable that in both cases there may
have been a genuine tradition that their ancestors used bronze
tools and weapons before iron, since the change was
comparatively recent, and sundry religious observances tended
to perpetuate the memory of it.]

[Sidenote: "Civilizations" of Mexico and Peru.]

This brilliant classification of the stages of early culture will be found very helpful if we only keep in mind the fact that in all wide generalizations of this sort the case is liable to be somewhat unduly simplified. The story of human progress is really not quite so easy to decipher as such descriptions would make it appear, and when we have laid down rules of this sort we need not be surprised if we now and then come upon facts that will not exactly fit into them. In such an event it is best not to try to squeeze or distort the unruly facts, but to look and see if our rules will not bear some little qualification. The faculty for generalizing is a good servant but a bad master. If we observe this caution we shall find Mr. Morgan's work to be of great value. It will be observed that, with one exception, his restrictions leave the area of civilization as wide as that which we are accustomed to assign to it in our ordinary speaking and thinking. That exception is the case of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We have so long been accustomed to gorgeous accounts of the civilization of these countries at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards that it may at first shock our preconceived notions to see them set down as in the "middle status of barbarism," one stage higher than Mohawks, and one stage lower than the warriors of the Iliad. This does indeed mark a change since Dr. Draper expressed the opinion that the Mexicans and Peruvians were morally and intellectually superior to the Europeans of the sixteenth century.[30] The reaction from the state of opinion in which such an extravagant remark was even possible has been attended with some controversy; but on the whole Mr. Morgan's main position has been steadily and rapidly gaining ground, and it is becoming more and more clear that if we are to use language correctly when we speak of the civilizations of Mexico and Peru we really mean civilizations of an extremely archaic type, considerably more archaic than that of Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. A "civilization" like that of the Aztecs, without domestic animals or iron tools, with trade still in the primitive stage of barter, with human sacrifices, and with cannibalism, has certainly some of the most vivid features of barbarism. Along with these primitive features, however, there seem to have been--after making all due allowances--some features of luxury and splendour such as we are wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level which they occupy in other points. The Cave men of the Glacial period were ignorant of pottery, and thus had not risen above the upper status of savagery; but their artistic talent, upon which we have remarked, was not such as we are wont to associate with savagery. Other instances will occur to us in the proper place.

[Footnote 30: See his _Intellectual Development of Europe_, New
York, 1863, pp. 448, 464.]

[Sidenote: Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization".]

The difficulty which people usually find in realizing the true position of the ancient Mexican culture arises partly from the misconceptions which have until recently distorted the facts, and partly from the loose employment of terms above noticed. It is quite correct to speak of the Australian blackfellows as "savages," but nothing is more common than to hear the same epithet employed to characterize Shawnees and Mohawks; and to call those Indians "savages" is quite misleading. So on the other hand the term "civilization" is often so loosely used as to cover a large territory belonging to "barbarism." One does not look for scientific precision in newspapers, but they are apt to reflect popular habits of thought quite faithfully, and for that reason it is proper here to quote from one. In a newspaper account of Mr. Cushing's recent discoveries of buried towns, works of irrigation, etc., in Arizona, we are first told that these are the remains of a "splendid prehistoric civilization," and the next moment we are told, in entire unconsciousness of the contradiction, that the people who constructed these works had only stone tools. Now to call a people "civilized" who have only stone tools is utterly misleading. Nothing but confusion of ideas and darkening of counsel can come from such a misuse of words. Such a people may be in a high degree interesting and entitled to credit for what they have achieved, but the grade of culture which they have reached is not "civilization."

[Sidenote: Value and importance of the term "barbarism."]

With "savagery" thus encroaching upon its area of meaning on the one side, and "civilization" encroaching on the other, the word "barbarism," as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight. If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them "savages." Yet the term "barbarism" is a very useful one; indispensable, indeed, in the history of human progress. There is no other word which can serve in its stead as a designation of the enormous interval which begins with the invention of pottery and ends with the invention of the alphabet. The popular usage of the word is likely to become more definite as it comes to be more generally realized how prodigious that interval has been. When we think what a considerable portion of man's past existence has been comprised within it, and what a marvellous transformation in human knowledge and human faculty has been gradually wrought between its beginning and its end, the period of barbarism becomes invested with most thrilling interest, and its name ceases to appear otherwise than respectable. It is Mr. Morgan's chief title to fame that he has so thoroughly explored this period and described its features with such masterly skill.

[Sidenote: The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified in ancient America.]

[Sidenote: Survivals of bygone epochs of culture.]

It is worth while to observe that Mr. Morgan's view of the successive stages of culture is one which could not well have been marked out in all its parts except by a student of American archæology. Aboriginal America is the richest field in the world for the study of barbarism. Its people present every gradation in social life during three ethnical periods--the upper period of savagery and the lower and middle periods of barbarism--so that the process of development may be most systematically and instructively studied. Until we have become familiar with ancient American society, and so long as our view is confined to the phases of progress in the Old World, the demarcation between civilized and uncivilized life seems too abrupt and sudden; we do not get a correct measure of it. The oldest European tradition reaches back only through the upper period of barbarism.[31] The middle and lower periods have lapsed into utter oblivion, and it is only modern archæological research that is beginning to recover the traces of them. But among the red men of America the social life of ages more remote than that of the lake villages of Switzerland is in many particulars preserved for us to-day, and when we study it we begin to realize as never before the continuity of human development, its enormous duration, and the almost infinite accumulation of slow efforts by which progress has been achieved. Ancient America is further instructive in presenting the middle status of barbarism in a different form from that which it assumed in the eastern hemisphere. Its most conspicuous outward manifestations, instead of tents and herds, were strange and imposing edifices of stone, so that it was quite natural that observers interpreting it from a basis of European experience should mistake it for civilization. Certain aspects of that middle period may be studied to-day in New Mexico and Arizona, as phases of the older periods may still be found among the wilder tribes, even after all the contact they have had with white men. These survivals from antiquity will not permanently outlive that contact, and it is important that no time should be lost in gathering and putting on record all that can be learned of the speech and arts, the customs and beliefs, everything that goes to constitute the philology and anthropology of the red men. For the intelligent and vigorous work of this sort now conducted by the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, under the direction of Major Powell, no praise can be too strong and no encouragement too hearty.

[Footnote 31: Now and then, perhaps, but very rarely, it just
touches the close of the middle period, as, e. g., in the lines
from Hesiod and Lucretius above quoted.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal America.]

A brief enumeration of the principal groups of Indians will be helpful in enabling us to comprehend the social condition of ancient America. The groups are in great part defined by differences of language, which are perhaps a better criterion of racial affinity in the New World than in the Old, because there seems to have been little or nothing of that peculiar kind of conquest with incorporation resulting in complete change of speech which we sometimes find in the Old World; as, for example, when we see the Celto-Iberian population of Spain and the Belgic, Celtic, and Aquitanian populations of Gaul forgetting their native tongues, and adopting that of a confederacy of tribes in Latium. Except in the case of Peru there is no indication that anything of this sort went on, or that there was anything even superficially analogous to "empire," in ancient America. What strikes one most forcibly at first is the vast number of American languages. Adelung, in his "Mithridates," put the number at 1,264, and Ludewig, in his "Literature of the American Languages," put it roundly at 1,100. Squier, on the other hand, was content with 400.[32] The discrepancy arises from the fact that where one scholar sees two or three distinct languages another sees two or three dialects of one language and counts them as one; it is like the difficulty which naturalists find in agreeing as to what are species and what are only varieties. The great number of languages and dialects spoken by a sparse population is one mark of the universal prevalence of a rude and primitive form of tribal society.[33]

[Footnote 32: Winsor, "Bibliographical Notes on American
Linguistics," in his _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i. pp.
420-428, gives an admirable survey of the subject. See also
Pilling's bibliographical bulletins of Iroquoian, Siouan, and
Muskhogean languages, published by the Bureau of Ethnology.]

[Footnote 33: _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp. 147-174.]

[Sidenote: Tribes in the upper status of savagery.]

The lowest tribes in North America were those that are still to be found in California, in the valley of the Columbia river, and on the shores of Puget Sound. The Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay were on about the same level of savagery. They made no pottery, knew nothing of horticulture, depended for subsistence entirely upon bread-roots, fish, and game, and thus had no village life. They were mere prowlers in the upper status of savagery.[34] The Apaches of Arizona, preëminent even among red men for atrocious cruelty, are an offshoot from the Athabaskan stock. Very little better are the Shoshones and Bannocks that still wander among the lonely bare mountains and over the weird sage-brush plains of Idaho. The region west of the Rocky Mountains and north of New Mexico is thus the region of savagery.

[Footnote 34: For a good account of Indians in the upper status
of savagery until modified by contact with civilization, see
Myron Eells, "The Twana, Chemakum, and Klallam Indians of
Washington Territory," _Smithsonian Report_, 1887, pp.
605-681.]

[Sidenote: The Dakota family of tribes.]

Between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast the aborigines, at the time of the Discovery, might have been divided into six or seven groups, of which three were situated mainly to the east of the Mississippi river, the others mainly to the west of it. All were in the lower period of barbarism. Of the western groups, by far the most numerous were the Dakotas, comprising the Sioux, Poncas, Omahas, Iowas, Kaws, Otoes, and Missouris. From the headwaters of the Mississippi their territory extended westward on both sides of the Missouri for a thousand miles. One of their tribes, the Winnebagos, had crossed the Mississippi and pressed into the region between that river and Lake Michigan.

[Sidenote: The Minnitarees and Mandans.]

A second group, very small in numbers but extremely interesting to the student of ethnology, comprises the Minnitarees and Mandans on the upper Missouri.[35] The remnants of these tribes now live together in the same village, and in personal appearance, as well as in intelligence, they are described as superior to any other red men north of New Mexico. From their first discovery, by the brothers La Vérendrye in 1742, down to Mr. Catlin's visit nearly a century later, there was no change in their condition,[36] but shortly afterward, in 1838, the greater part of them were swept away by small-pox. The excellence of their horticulture, the framework of their houses, and their peculiar religious ceremonies early attracted attention. Upon Mr. Catlin they made such an impression that he fancied there must be an infusion of white blood in them; and after the fashion of those days he sought to account for it by a reference to the legend of Madoc, a Welsh prince who was dimly imagined to have sailed to America about 1170. He thought that Madoc's party might have sailed to the Mississippi and founded a colony which ascended that river and the Ohio, built the famous mounds of the Ohio valley, and finally migrated to the upper Missouri.[37] To this speculation was appended the inevitable list of words which happen to sound somewhat alike in Mandan and in Welsh. In the realm of free fancy everything is easy. That there was a Madoc who went somewhere in 1170 is quite possible, but as shrewd old John Smith said about it, "where this place was no history can show."[38] But one part of Mr. Catlin's speculation may have hit somewhat nearer the truth. It is possible that the Minnitarees or the Mandans, or both, may be a remnant of some of those Mound-builders in the Mississippi valley concerning whom something will presently be said.

[Footnote 35: An excellent description of them, profusely
illustrated with coloured pictures, may be found in Catlin's
_North American Indians_, vol. i. pp. 66-207, 7th ed., London,
1848; the author was an accurate and trustworthy observer. Some
writers have placed these tribes in the Dakota group because of
the large number of Dakota words in their language; but these
are probably borrowed words, like the numerous French words in
English.]

[Footnote 36: See Francis Parkman's paper, "The Discovery of
the Rocky Mountains," _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1888. I hope
the appearance of this article, two years ago, indicates that
we have not much longer to wait for the next of that
magnificent series of volumes on the history of the French in
North America.]

[Footnote 37: _North American Indians_, vol. ii., Appendix A.]

[Footnote 38: Smith's _Generall Historie of Virginia, New
England and the Summer Isles_, p. 1, London, 1626.]

[Sidenote: Pawnees, etc.]

The third group in this western region consists of the Pawnees and Arickarees,[39] of the Platte valley in Nebraska, with a few kindred tribes farther to the south.

[Footnote 39: For the history and ethnology of these
interesting tribes, see three learned papers by J. B. Dunbar,
in _Magazine of American History_, vol. iv. pp. 241-281; vol.
v. pp. 321-342; vol. viii. pp. 734-756; also Grinnell's _Pawnee
Hero Stories and Folk-Tales_, New York, 1889.]

[Sidenote: Maskoki family.]

Of the three groups eastward of the Mississippi we may first mention the Maskoki, or Muskhogees, consisting of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and others, with the Creek confederacy.[40] These tribes were intelligent and powerful, with a culture well advanced toward the end of the lower period of barbarism.

[Footnote 40: These tribes of the Gulf region were formerly
grouped, along with others not akin to them, as "Mobilians."
The Cherokees were supposed to belong to the Maskoki family,
but they have lately been declared an intrusive offshoot from
the Iroquois stock. The remnants of another alien tribe, the
once famous Natchez, were adopted into the Creek confederacy.
For a full account of these tribes, see Gatschet, _A Migration
Legend of the Creek Indians_, vol. i., Philadelphia, 1884.]

[Sidenote: Algonquin family of tribes.]

The Algonquin family, bordering at its southern limits upon the Maskoki, had a vast range northeasterly along the Atlantic coast until it reached the confines of Labrador, and northwesterly through the region of the Great Lakes and as far as the Churchill river[41] to the west of Hudson's Bay. In other words, the Algonquins were bounded on the south by the Maskoki,[42] on the west by the Dakotas, on the northwest by the Athabaskans, on the northeast by Eskimos, and on the east by the ocean. Between Lake Superior and the Red River of the North the Crees had their hunting grounds, and closely related to them were the Pottawatomies, Ojibwas, and Ottawas. One offshoot, including the Blackfeet, Cheyennes, and Arrapahos, roamed as far west as the Rocky Mountains. The great triangle between the upper Mississippi and the Ohio was occupied by the Menomonees and Kickapoos, the Sacs and Foxes, the Miamis and Illinois, and the Shawnees. Along the coast region the principal Algonquin tribes were the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenape or Delawares, the Munsees or Minisinks of the mountains about the Susquehanna, the Mohegans on the Hudson, the Adirondacks between that river and the St. Lawrence, the Narragansetts and their congeners in New England, and finally the Micmacs and Wabenaki far down East, as the last name implies. There is a tradition, supported to some extent by linguistic evidence,[43] that the Mohegans, with their cousins the Pequots, were more closely related to the Shawnees than to the Delaware or coast group. While all the Algonquin tribes were in the lower period of barbarism, there was a noticeable gradation among them, the Crees and Ojibwas of the far North standing lowest in culture, and the Shawnees, at their southernmost limits, standing highest.

[Footnote 41: Howse, _Grammar of the Cree Language_, London,
1865, p. vii.]

[Footnote 42: Except in so far as the Cherokees and Tuscaroras,
presently to be mentioned, were interposed.]

[Footnote 43: Brinton, _The Lenape and their Legends_, p. 30.]

[Sidenote: Huron-Iroquois family of tribes.]

We have observed the Dakota tribes pressing eastward against their neighbours and sending out an offshoot, the Winnebagos, across the Mississippi river. It has been supposed that the Huron-Iroquois group of tribes was a more remote offshoot from the Dakotas. This is very doubtful; but in the thirteenth or fourteenth century the general trend of the Huron-Iroquois movement seems to have been eastward, either in successive swarms, or in a single swarm, which became divided and scattered by segmentation, as was common with all Indian tribes. They seem early to have proved their superiority over the Algonquins in bravery and intelligence. Their line of invasion seems to have run eastward to Niagara, and thereabouts to have bifurcated, one line following the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the other that of the Susquehanna. The Hurons established themselves in the peninsula between the lake that bears their name and Lake Ontario. South of them and along the northern shore of Lake Erie were settled their kindred, afterward called the "Neutral Nation."[44] On the southern shore the Eries planted themselves, while the Susquehannocks pushed on in a direction sufficiently described by their name. Farthest of all penetrated the Tuscaroras, even into the pine forests of North Carolina, where they maintained themselves in isolation from their kindred until 1715. These invasions resulted in some displacement of Algonquin tribes, and began to sap the strength of the confederacy or alliance in which the Delawares had held a foremost place.

[Footnote 44: Because they refused to take part in the strife
between the Hurons and the Five Nations. Their Indian name was
Attiwandarons. They were unsurpassed for ferocity. See Parkman,
_Jesuits in North America_, p. xliv.]

[Sidenote: The Five Nations.]

But by far the most famous and important of the Huron-Iroquois were those that followed the northern shore of Lake Ontario into the valley of the St. Lawrence. In that direction their progress was checked by the Algonquin tribe of Adirondacks, but they succeeded in retaining a foothold in the country for a long time; for in 1535 Jacques Cartier found on the site which he named Montreal an Iroquois village which had vanished before Champlain's arrival seventy years later. Those Iroquois who were thrust back in the struggle for the St. Lawrence valley, early in the fifteenth century, made their way across Lake Ontario and established themselves at the mouth of the Oswego river. They were then in three small tribes,--the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas,--but as they grew in numbers and spread eastward to the Hudson and westward to the Genesee, the intermediate tribes of Oneidas and Cayugas were formed by segmentation.[45] About 1450 the five tribes--afterwards known as the Five Nations--were joined in a confederacy in pursuance of the wise counsel which Hayowentha, or Hiawatha,[46] according to the legend, whispered into the ears of the Onondaga sachem, Daganoweda. This union of their resources combined, with their native bravery and cunning, and their occupation of the most commanding military position in eastern North America, to render them invincible among red men. They exterminated their old enemies the Adirondacks, and pushed the Mohegans over the mountains from the Hudson river to the Connecticut. When they first encountered white men in 1609 their name had become a terror in New England, insomuch that as soon as a single Mohawk was caught sight of by the Indians in that country, they would raise the cry from hill to hill, "A Mohawk! a Mohawk!" and forthwith would flee like sheep before wolves, never dreaming of resistance.[47]

[Footnote 45: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 125.]

[Footnote 46: Whether there was ever such a person as Hiawatha
is, to say the least, doubtful. As a traditional culture-hero
his attributes are those of Ioskeha, Michabo, Quetzalcoatl,
Viracocha, and all that class of sky-gods to which I shall
again have occasion to refer. See Brinton's _Myths of the New
World_, p. 172. When the Indian speaks of Hiawatha whispering
advice to Daganoweda, his meaning is probably the same as that
of the ancient Greek when he attributed the wisdom of some
mortal hero to whispered advice from Zeus or his messenger
Hermes. Longfellow's famous poem is based upon Schoolcraft's
book entitled _The Hiawatha Legends_, which is really a
misnomer, for the book consists chiefly of Ojibwa stories about
Manabozho, son of the West Wind. There was really no such
legend of Hiawatha as that which the poet has immortalized. See
Hale, _The Iroquois Book of Rites_, pp. 36, 180-183.]

[Footnote 47: Cadwallader Colden, _History of the Five
Nations_, New York, 1727.]

After the Five Nations had been supplied with firearms by the Dutch their power increased with portentous rapidity.[48] At first they sought to persuade their neighbours of kindred blood and speech, the Eries and others, to join their confederacy; and failing in this they went to war and exterminated them.[49] Then they overthrew one Algonquin tribe after another until in 1690 their career was checked by the French. By that time they had reduced to a tributary condition most of the Algonquin tribes, even to the Mississippi river. Some writers have spoken of the empire of the Iroquois, and it has been surmised that, if they had not been interfered with by white men, they might have played a part analogous to that of the Romans in the Old World; but there is no real similarity between the two cases. The Romans acquired their mighty strength by incorporating vanquished peoples into their own body politic.[50] No American aborigines ever had a glimmering of the process of state-building after the Roman fashion. No incorporation resulted from the victories of the Iroquois. Where their burnings and massacres stopped short of extermination, they simply took tribute, which was as far as state-craft had got in the lower period of barbarism. General Walker has summed up their military career in a single sentence: "They were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent."[51]

[Footnote 48: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 12.]

[Footnote 49: All except the distant Tuscaroras, who in 1715
migrated from North Carolina to New York, and joining the
Iroquois league made it the Six Nations. All the rest of the
outlying Huron-Iroquois stock was wiped out of existence before
the end of the seventeenth century, except the remnant of
Hurons since known as Wyandots.]

[Footnote 50: See my _Beginnings of New England_, chap. i.]

[Footnote 51: F. A. Walker, "The Indian Question," _North
American Review_, April, 1873, p. 370.]

[Sidenote: Horticulture must be distinguished from field agriculture.]

[Sidenote: Perpetual warfare.]

The six groups here enumerated--Dakota, Mandan, Pawnee, Maskoki, Algonquin, Iroquois--made up the great body of the aborigines of North America who at the time of the Discovery lived in the lower status of barbarism. All made pottery of various degrees of rudeness. Their tools and weapons were of the Neolithic type,--stone either polished or accurately and artistically chipped. For the most part they lived in stockaded villages, and cultivated maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes, sunflowers, and tobacco. They depended for subsistence partly upon such vegetable products, partly upon hunting and fishing, the women generally attending to the horticulture, the men to the chase. _Horticulture_ is an appropriate designation for this stage in which the ground is merely scratched with stone spades and hoes. It is incipient agriculture, but should be carefully distinguished from the _field agriculture_ in which extensive pieces of land are subdued by the plough. The assistance of domestic animals is needed before such work can be carried far, and it does not appear that there was an approach to field agriculture in any part of pre-Columbian America except Peru, where men were harnessed to the plough, and perhaps occasionally llamas were used in the same way.[52] Where subsistence depended upon rude horticulture eked out by game and fish, it required a large territory to support a sparse population. The great diversity of languages contributed to maintain the isolation of tribes and prevent extensive confederation. Intertribal warfare was perpetual, save now and then for truces of brief duration. Warfare was attended by wholesale massacre. As many prisoners as could be managed were taken home by their captors; in some cases they were adopted into the tribe of the latter as a means of increasing its fighting strength, otherwise they were put to death with lingering torments.[53] There was nothing which afforded the red men such exquisite delight as the spectacle of live human flesh lacerated with stone knives or hissing under the touch of firebrands, and for elaborate ingenuity in devising tortures they have never been equalled.[54] Cannibalism was quite commonly practised.[55] The scalps of slain enemies were always taken, and until they had attained such trophies the young men were not likely to find favour in the eyes of women. The Indian's notions of morality were those that belong to that state of society in which the tribe is the largest well-established political aggregate. Murder without the tribe was meritorious unless it entailed risk of war at an obvious disadvantage; murder within the tribe was either revenged by blood-feud or compounded by a present given to the victim's kinsmen. Such rudimentary _wergild_ was often reckoned in wampum, or strings of beads made of a kind of mussel shell, and put to divers uses, as personal ornament, mnemonic record, and finally money. Religious thought was in the fetishistic or animistic stage,[56] while many tribes had risen to a vague conception of tutelar deities embodied in human or animal forms. Myth-tales abounded, and the folk-lore of the red men is found to be extremely interesting and instructive.[57] Their religion consisted mainly in a devout belief in witchcraft. No well-defined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine men" were mere conjurers, though possessed of considerable influence.

[Footnote 52: See Humboldt, _Ansichten der Natur_, 3d ed.,
Stuttgart, 1849, vol. i. p. 203.]

[Footnote 53: "Women and children joined in these fiendish
atrocities, and when at length the victim yielded up his life,
his heart, if he were brave, was ripped from his body, cut in
pieces, broiled, and given to the young men, under the belief
that it would increase their courage; they drank his blood,
thinking it would make them more wary; and finally his body was
divided limb from limb, roasted or thrown into the seething
pot, and hands and feet, arms and legs, head and trunk, were
all stewed into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs,
and dances." Jeffries Wyman, in _Seventh Report of Peabody
Museum_, p. 37. For details of the most appalling character,
see Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, pp. 176-182; Stone's
_Life of Joseph Brant_, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge's _Plains of
the Great West_, p. 418, and _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 525-529;
Parkman's _Jesuits in North America_, pp. 387-391; and many
other places in Parkman's writings.]

[Footnote 54: One often hears it said that the cruelty of the
Indians was not greater than that of mediæval Europeans, as
exemplified in judicial torture and in the horrors of the
Inquisition. But in such a judgment there is lack of due
discrimination. In the practice of torture by civil and
ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a
definite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or
perverted, gave it a very different character from torture
wantonly inflicted for amusement. The atrocities formerly
attendant upon the sack of towns, as e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg,
etc., might more properly be regarded as an illustration of the
survival of a spirit fit only for the lowest barbarism: and the
Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often exhibited
cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See below, vol.
ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be held
that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible
intensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body,
the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the
Indian. See Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 536-538. Colonel
Dodge was in familiar contact with Indians for more than thirty
years, and writes with fairness and discrimination.

In truth the question as to comparative cruelty is not so much
one of race as of occupation, except in so far as race is
moulded by long occupation. The "old Adam," i. e. the
inheritance from our brute ancestors, is very strong in the
human race. Callousness to the suffering of others than self is
part of this brute-inheritance, and under the influence of
certain habits and occupations this germ of callousness may be
developed to almost any height of devilish cruelty. In the
lower stages of culture the lack of political aggregation on a
large scale is attended with incessant warfare in the shape in
which it comes home to everybody's door. This state of things
keeps alive the passion of revenge and stimulates cruelty to
the highest degree. As long as such a state of things endures,
as it did in Europe to a limited extent throughout the Middle
Ages, there is sure to be a dreadful amount of cruelty. The
change in the conditions of modern warfare has been a very
important factor in the rapidly increasing mildness and
humanity of modern times. See my _Beginnings of New England_,
pp. 226-229. Something more will be said hereafter with
reference to the special causes concerned in the cruelty and
brutality of the Spaniards in America. Meanwhile it may be
observed in the present connection, that the Spanish
taskmasters who mutilated and burned their slaves were not
representative types of their own race to anything like the
same extent as the Indians who tortured Brébeuf or Crawford. If
the fiendish Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly
Las Casas. The latter type would be as impossible among
barbarians as an Aristotle or a Beethoven. Indeed, though there
are writers who would like to prove the contrary, it may be
doubted whether that type has ever attained to perfection
except under the influence of Christianity.]

[Footnote 55: See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, in
_Seventh Report of Peabody Museum_, pp. 27-37; cf. Wake,
_Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 243. Many illustrations are
given by Mr. Parkman. In this connection it may be observed
that the name "Mohawk" means "Cannibal." It is an Algonquin
word, applied to this Iroquois tribe by their enemies in the
Connecticut valley and about the lower Hudson. The name by
which the Mohawks called themselves was "Caniengas," or
"People-at-the-Flint." See Hale, _The Iroquois Book of Rites_,
p. 173.]

[Footnote 56: For accounts and explanations of animism see
Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, London, 1871, 2 vols.; Caspari,
_Urgeschichte der Menschheit_, Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols.;
Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, part i.; and my _Myths and
Mythmakers_, chap. vii.]

[Footnote 57: No time should be lost in gathering and recording
every scrap of this folk-lore that can be found. The American
Folk-Lore Society, founded chiefly through the exertions of my
friend Mr. W. W. Newell, and organized January 4, 1888, is
already doing excellent work and promises to become a valuable
aid, within its field, to the work of the Bureau of Ethnology.
Of the _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, published for the
society by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., nine numbers have
appeared, and the reader will find them full of valuable
information. One may also profitably consult Knortz's _Märchen
und Sagen der nordamerikanischen Indianer_, Jena, 1871;
Brinton's _Myths of the New World_, N. Y., 1868, and his
_American Hero-Myths_, Phila., 1882; Leland's _Algonquin
Legends of New England_, Boston, 1884; Mrs. Emerson's _Indian
Myths_, Boston, 1884. Some brief reflections and criticisms of
much value, in relation to aboriginal American folk-lore, may
be found in Curtin's _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.
12-27.]

But none of the characteristics of barbarous society above specified will carry us so far toward realizing the gulf which divides it from civilized society as the imperfect development of its domestic relations. The importance of this subject is such as to call for a few words of special elucidation.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Ancient Law.]

Thirty years ago, when Sir Henry Maine published that magnificent treatise on Ancient Law, which, when considered in all its potency of suggestiveness, has perhaps done more than any other single book of our century toward placing the study of history upon a scientific basis, he began by showing that in primitive society the individual is nothing and the state nothing, while the family-group is everything, and that the progress of civilization politically has consisted on the one hand in the aggregation and building up of family-groups through intermediate tribal organizations into states, and on the other hand in the disentanglement of individuals from the family thraldom. In other words, we began by having no political communities larger than clans, and no bond of political union except blood relationship, and in this state of things the individual, as to his rights and obligations, was submerged in the clan. We at length come to have great nations like the English or the French, in which blood-relationship as a bond of political union is no longer indispensable or even much thought of, and in which the individual citizen is the possessor of legal rights and subject to legal obligations. No one in our time can forget how beautifully Sir Henry Maine, with his profound knowledge of early Aryan law and custom, from Ireland to Hindustan, delineated the slow growth of individual ownership of property and individual responsibility for delict and crime out of an earlier stage in which ownership and responsibility belonged only to family-groups or clans.

[Sidenote: The patriarchal family not primitive.]

[Sidenote: "Mother-right."]

[Sidenote: Primitive marriage.]

[Sidenote: The system of reckoning kinship through females only.]

In all these brilliant studies Sir Henry Maine started with the patriarchal family as we find it at the dawn of history among all peoples of Aryan and Semitic speech,--the patriarchal family of the ancient Roman and the ancient Jew, the family in which kinship is reckoned through males, and in which all authority centres in the eldest male, and descends to his eldest son. Maine treated this patriarchal family as primitive; but his great book had hardly appeared when other scholars, more familiar than he with races in savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, showed that his view was too restricted. We do not get back to primitive society by studying Greeks, Romans, and Jews, peoples who had nearly emerged from the later period of barbarism when we first know them.[58] Their patriarchal family was perfected in shape during the later period of barbarism, and it was preceded by a much ruder and less definite form of family-group in which kinship was reckoned only through the mother, and the headship never descended from father to son. As so often happens, this discovery was made almost simultaneously by two investigators, each working in ignorance of what the other was doing. In 1861, the same year in which "Ancient Law" was published, Professor Bachofen, of Basel, published his famous book, "Das Mutterrecht," of which his co-discoverer and rival, after taking exception to some of his statements, thus cordially writes: "It remains, however, after all qualifications and deductions, that Bachofen, before any one else, discovered the fact that a system of kinship through mothers only, had anciently everywhere prevailed before the tie of blood between father and child had found a place in systems of relationships. And the honour of that discovery, the importance of which, as affording a new starting-point for all history, cannot be overestimated, must without stint or qualification be assigned to him."[59] Such are the generous words of the late John Ferguson McLennan, who had no knowledge of Bachofen's work when his own treatise on "Primitive Marriage" was published in 1865. Since he was so modest in urging his own claims, it is due to the Scotch lawyer's memory to say that, while he was inferior in point of erudition to the Swiss professor, his book is characterized by greater sagacity, goes more directly to the mark, and is less encumbered by visionary speculations of doubtful value.[60] Mr. McLennan proved, from evidence collected chiefly from Australians and South Sea Islanders, and sundry non-Aryan tribes of Hindustan and Thibet, that systems of kinship in which the father is ignored exist to-day, and he furthermore discovered unmistakable and very significant traces of the former existence of such a state of things among the Mongols, the Greeks and Phoenicians, and the ancient Hebrews. By those who were inclined to regard Sir Henry Maine's views as final, it was argued that Mr. McLennan's facts were of a sporadic and exceptional character. But when the evidence from this vast archaic world of America began to be gathered in and interpreted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to the ground, and as to the point chiefly in contention, Mr. McLennan was proved to be right. Throughout aboriginal America, with one or two exceptions, kinship was reckoned through females only, and in the exceptional instances the vestiges of that system were so prominent as to make it clear that the change had been but recently effected. During the past fifteen years, evidence has accumulated from various parts of the world, until it is beginning to appear as if it were the patriarchal system that is exceptional, having been reached only by the highest races.[61] Sir Henry Maine's work has lost none of its value, only, like all human work, it is not final; it needs to be supplemented by the further study of savagery as best exemplified in Australia and some parts of Polynesia, and of barbarism as best exemplified in America. The subject is, moreover, one of great and complicated difficulty, and leads incidentally to many questions for solving which the data at our command are still inadequate. It is enough for us now to observe in general that while there are plenty of instances of change from the system of reckoning kinship only through females, to the system of reckoning through males, there do not appear to have been any instances of change in the reverse direction; and that in ancient America the earlier system was prevalent.

[Footnote 58: Until lately our acquaintance with human history
was derived almost exclusively from literary memorials, among
which the Bible, the Homeric poems, and the Vedas, carried us
back about as far as literature could take us. It was natural,
therefore, to suppose that the society of the times of Abraham
or Agamemnon was "primitive," and the wisest scholars reasoned
upon such an assumption. With vision thus restricted to
civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to
speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together
indiscriminately as "savages") according to any _à priori_ whim
that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries
of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of
the past that the age of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The
state of society described in the book of Genesis had five
entire ethnical periods, and the greater part of a sixth,
behind it; and its institutions were, comparatively speaking,
modern.]

[Footnote 59: McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History,
comprising a reprint of Primitive Marriage_, etc. London, 1876,
p. 421.]

[Footnote 60: There is much that is unsound in it, however, as
is often inevitably the case with books that strike boldly into
a new field of inquiry.]

[Footnote 61: A general view of the subject may be obtained
from the following works: Bachofen, _Das Mutterrecht_,
Stuttgart, 1871, and _Die Sage von Tanaquil_, Heidelberg, 1870;
McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History_, London, 1876, and _The
Patriarchal Theory_, London, 1884; Morgan's _Systems of
Consanguinity_ (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol.
xvii.), Washington, 1871, and _Ancient Society_, New York,
1877; Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_,
Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, 5th
ed., London, 1889; Giraud-Teulon, _La Mère chez certains
peuples de l'antiquité_, Paris, 1867, and _Les Origines de la
Famille_, Geneva, 1874; Starcke (of Copenhagen), _The Primitive
Family_, London, 1889. Some criticisms upon McLennan and Morgan
may be found in Maine's later works, _Early History of
Institutions_, London, 1875, and _Early Law and Custom_,
London, 1883. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole
field is that in Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i.
pp. 621-797.]

[Sidenote: Original reason for the system.]

[Sidenote: The primeval human horde.]

[Sidenote: Earliest family-group: the clan.]

[Sidenote: "Exogamy."]

If now we ask the reason for such a system of reckoning kinship and inheritance, so strange according to all our modern notions, the true answer doubtless is that which was given by prudent ([Greek: Pepnymenos]) Telemachus to the goddess Athene when she asked him to tell her truly if he was the son of Odysseus:--"My mother says I am his son, for my part, I don't know; one never knows of one's self who one's father is."[62] Already, no doubt, in Homer's time there was a gleam of satire about this answer, such as it would show on a modern page; but in more primitive times it was a very serious affair. From what we know of the ideas and practices of uncivilized tribes all over the world, it is evident that the sacredness of the family based upon indissoluble marriage is a thing of comparatively modern growth. If the sexual relations of the Australians, as observed to-day,[63] are an improvement upon an antecedent state of things, that antecedent state must have been sheer promiscuity. There is ample warrant for supposing, with Mr. McLennan, that at the beginning of the lower status of savagery, long since everywhere extinct, the family had not made itself distinctly visible, but men lived in a horde very much like gregarious brutes.[64] I have shown that the essential difference between this primeval human horde and a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact that the gradual but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two effects: the lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate the horde into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of youthful mental plasticity made it more possible for a new generation to improve upon the ideas and customs of its predecessors.[65] In these two concomitant processes--the development of the family and the increase of mental plasticity, or ability to adopt new methods and strike out into new paths of thought--lies the whole explanation of the moral and intellectual superiority of men over dumb animals. But in each case the change was very gradual.[66] The true savage is only a little less unteachable than the beasts of the field. The savage family is at first barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos in which it had its origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and forms, instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary character, are to be found among the lowest existing savages, and there are reasons for supposing that such may have been the case even in primeval times. But it was impossible for strict monogamy to flourish in the ruder stages of social development; and the kind of family-group that was first clearly and permanently differentiated from the primeval horde was not at all like what civilized people would recognize as a family. It was the _gens_ or _clan_, as we find it exemplified in all stages from the middle period of savagery to the middle period of barbarism. The _gens_ or _clan_ was simply--to define it by a third synonym--the _kin_; it was originally a group of males and females who were traditionally aware of their common descent reckoned in the female line. At this stage of development there was quite generally though not universally prevalent the custom of "exogamy," by which a man was forbidden to marry a woman of his own clan. Among such Australian tribes as have been studied, this primitive restriction upon promiscuity seems to be about the only one.

[Footnote 62: [Greek:
All' age moi tode eipe kai atrekeôs katalexon,
ei dê ex autoio tosos pais eis Odysêos.
ainôs gar kephalên te kai ommata kala eoikas
keinô, epei thama toion emisgometh' allêloisin,
prin ge ton es Troiên anabêmenai, entha per alloi
Argeiôn hoi aristoi eban koilês epi nêusin
ek tou d' out' Odysêa egôn idon out' eme keinos.

Tên d' au Têlemachos pepnymenos antion êuda
toigar egô toi, xeine, mal' atrekeôs agoreusô.
mêtêr men t' eme phêsi tou emmenai, autar egôge
ouk oid'; ou gar pô tis heon gonon autos anegnô.]
_Odyssey_, i. 206.]

[Footnote 63: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, p. 213; Lubbock,
_Origin of Civilization_, p. 107; Morgan, _Ancient Society_,
part iii., chap. iii. "After battle it frequently happens among
the native tribes of Australia that the wives of the conquered,
of their own free-will, go over to the victors; reminding us of
the lioness which, quietly watching the fight between two
lions, goes off with the conqueror." Spencer, _Principles of
Sociology_, vol. i. p. 632.]

[Footnote 64: The notion of the descent of the human race from
a single "pair," or of different races from different "pairs,"
is a curious instance of transferring modern institutions into
times primeval. Of course the idea is absurd. When the elder
Agassiz so emphatically declared that "pines have originated in
forests, heaths in heaths, grasses in prairies, bees in hives,
herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in nations" (_Essay
on Classification_, London, 1859, p. 58), he made, indeed, a
mistake of the same sort, so far as concerns the origin of Man,
for the nation is a still more modern institution than the
family; but in the other items of his statement he was right,
and as regards the human race he was thinking in the right
direction when he placed _multitude_ instead of _duality_ at
the beginning. If instead of that extremely complex and highly
organized multitude called "nation" (in the plural), he had
started with the extremely simple and almost unorganized
multitude called "horde" (in the singular), the statement for
Man would have been correct. Such views were hardly within the
reach of science thirty years ago.]

[Footnote 65: _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, part ii., chaps.
xvi., xxi., xxii.; _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp.
306-319; _Darwinism, and other Essays_, pp. 40-49; _The Destiny
of Man_, §§ iii.-ix.]

[Footnote 66: The slowness of the development has apparently
been such as befits the transcendent value of the result.
Though the question is confessedly beyond the reach of science,
may we not hold that civilized man, the creature of an infinite
past, is the child of eternity, maturing for an inheritance of
immortal life?]

[Sidenote: Phratry and tribe.]