Indigenous Peoples’ Day

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We have just passed Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the politically correct replacement for Columbus Day. In that connection, in celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I present the following, excerpted from The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman:

Of these our visitor, young Mahto-Tatonka, was the eldest, and some reported him as likely to succeed to his father’s honors. [as head of the tribe] Though he appeared not more than twenty-one years old, he had oftener struck the enemy, and stolen more horses and more squaws, than any young man in the village. Horse-stealing is well known as an avenue to distinction on the prairies and the other kind of depredation is esteemed equally meritorious. Not that the act can confer fame from its own intrinsic merits. Any one can steal a squaw, and if he chooses afterwards to make an adequate present to her rightful proprietor, the easy husband for the most part rests content, his vengeance falls asleep, and all danger from that quarter is averted. Yet this is regarded as a pitiful and meanspirited transaction. The danger is averted but the glory of the achievement also is lost. Mahto-Tatonka proceeded after a more dashing fashion. Out of the several dozen squaws whom he had stolen, he could boast that he had never paid for one, but snapping his fingers in the face of the injured husband, had defied the extremity of his indignation, and no one yet dared to lay the finger of violence upon him. He was following close in the footsteps of his father. The young men and the young squaws, each in their way, admired him. The former would always follow him to war, and he was esteemed to have an unrivaled charm in the eyes of the later. Perhaps his impunity may excite some wonder. An arrow-shot from a ravine, or a stab given in the dark, require no great valor, and are especially suited to the Indian genius; but Mahto-Tatonka had a strong protection. It was not alone his courage and audacious will that enabled him to career so dashingly among his compeers. His enemies did not forget that he was one of thirty warlike brethren, all growing up to manhood. Should they wreak their anger upon him, many keen eyes would be ever upon them, and many fierce hearts thirst for their blood. The avenger would dog their footsteps everywhere. To kill Mahto-Tatonka would be an act of suicide.

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The squaws of each lazy warrior had made him a shelter from the sun, by stretching a few buffalo robes, or the corner of a lodge-covering, upon the poles; and here he sat in the shade, with a favorite young squaw, perhaps at his side, glittering with all imaginable trinkets. Before him stood the insignia of his rank as a warrior, his white shield of bull-hide, his medicine-bag, his bow and quiver, his lance and his pipe, raised aloft on a tripod of poles. Except the dogs, the most active and noisy tenants of the camp were the old women, ugly as Macbeth’s witches, with hair streaming loose in the wind, and nothing but the tattered fragment of an old buffalo-robe to hide their shrivelled limbs. The day of their favoritism passed two generations ago; now the heaviest labors of the camp devolved upon them; they must harness the horses, pitch the lodges, dress the buffalo-robes, and bring in the meat for the hunters. With the cracked voices of these hags, the clamor of the dogs, the shouting and laughing of children and girls, and the listless tranquillity of the warriors, the whole scene had an effect too lively and picturesque to be forgotten.

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The moving spirit of the establishment was an old hag of eighty. Human imagination never conceived hobgoblin or witch more ugly than she. You could count all her ribs through the wrinkles of her leathery skin. Her withered face more resembled an old skull than the countenance of a human being, even to the hollow, darkened sockets, at the bottom of which glittered her little black eyes. Her arms had dwindled into nothing but whip-cord and wire. Her hair, half black, half grey hung in total neglect nearly to the ground, and her sole garment consisted of the remnant of a discarded buffalo-robe tied round her waist with a string of hide. Yet the old squaw’s meager anatomy was wonderfully strong. She pitched the lodge, packed the horses, and did the harvest labor of the camp. From morning til night she bustled about the lodge, screaming like a screech-owl when anything displeased her.

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He gave me the pipe, confidently expressing that I in return would make him a present of equal or greater value. This is the implied condition of every present among the Indians, and should it not be complied with, the present is usually reclaimed.

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So bounteous an entertainment looks like an outgushing of goodwill; but doubtless, half at least of our kind hosts, had they met us alone and unarmed on the prairie, would have robbed us of our horses, and perhaps bestowed an arrow on us besides.

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Morin, the trapper, having been absent for a day or two, had returned, it seemed, bringing all his family with him. He had taken to himself a wife, for whom he had paid the established price of one horse. This looks cheap at first sight, but in truth the purchase of a squaw is a transaction which no man should enter into without mature deliberation, since it involves not only the payment of the price, but the burden of feeding and supporting a rapacious horde of the bride’s relatives, who hold themselves entitled to feed upon the indiscreet white man. They gather around him like leeches, and drain him of all he has.

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The western Dahcotahs have no fixed habitations. Hunting and fighting, they wander incessantly, through summer and winter. Some follow the herds of buffalo over the waste of prairie; others traverse the Black Hills, thronging, on horseback and on foot, through the dark gulfs and sombre gorges, and emerging at last upon the “Parks,” those beautiful but most perilous hunting-grounds. The buffalo supplies them with the necessaries of life; with habitations, food, clothing, beds, and fuel; strings for their bows, glue, thread, cordage, trail-ropes for their horses, coverings for their saddles, vessels to hold water, boats to cross streams, and the means of purchasing all that they want from the traders. When the buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away.

War is the breath of their nostrils. Against most of the neighboring tribes they cherish a rancorous hatred, transmitted from father to son, and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation. Many times a year, in every village, the Great Spirit is called upon, fasts are made, the war-parade is celebrated, and the warriors go out by handfuls at a time against the enemy. This fierce spirit awakens their most eager aspirations, and calls forth their greatest energies. ... It is seldom that distinction and influence are attained among them by any other course than that of arms.

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The parade over, we were entertained with an episode of Indian domestic life. A vicious-looking squaw, beside herself with rage, was berating her spouse, who, with a look of total unconcern, sat cross-legged in the middle of his lodge, smoking his pipe in silence. At length, maddened by his coolness, she made a rush at the lodge, seized the poles which supported it, and tugged at them, one after the other, till she brought down the whole structure, poles, hides, and all, clattering on his head, burying him in the wreck of his habitation. He pushed aside the hides with his hand, and presently his head emerged, like a turtle’s from its shell. Still he sat smoking sedately as before, a wicked glitter in his eyes alone betraying the pent-up storm within. The squaw, scolding all the while, proceeded to saddle her horse, bestride him, and canter out of the camp, intending it seemed, to return to her father’s lodge, wherever that might be. The warrior, who had not deigned even to look at her, now coolly arose, disengaged himself from the ruins, tied a cord of hair by way of bridle round the jaw of his buffalo horse, broke a stout cudgel, about four feet long, from the butt-end of a lodge-pole, mounted, and galloped majestically over the prairie to discipline his offending helpmeet.

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I lay down; but had I not been extremely fatigued, the noise of the next lodge would have prevented my sleeping. There was the monotonous thumping of the Indian drum, mixed with occasional sharp yells, and a chorus chanted by twenty voices. A grand scene of gambling was going forward with all the appropriate formalities. The players were staking on the chances of the game their ornaments, their horses, and as the excitement arose, their garments, and even their weapons; for desperate gambling is not confined to the hells of Paris. The men of the plains and forests no less resort to it as a relief to the tedious monotony of their lives, which alternate between fierce excitement and listless inaction. I fell asleep with the dull noise of the drum still sounding on my ear; but these orgies lasted without intermission till daylight.

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Morning came, and Kongra Tonga, mounting his horse, rode out with the hunters. It may not be amiss to glance at him for an instant in his character of husband and father. Both he and his squaw, like most other Indians, were very fond of their children, whom they indulged to excess, and never punished, except in extreme cases, when they would throw a bowl of cold water over them. Their offspring became sufficiently undutiful and disobedient under this system of education, which tends not a little to foster the wild idea of liberty and utter intolerance of restraint which lie at the foundation of the Indian character. It would be hard to find a fonder father than Kongra-Tonga. There was urchin in particular, rather less than two feet high, to whom he was exceedingly attached; and sometimes spreading a buffalo-robe in the lodge, he would seat himself upon it, place his small favorite upright before him, and chant in a low tone some of the words used as an accompaniment to the war-dance. The little fellow, who could just manage to balance himself by stretching out both arms, would lift his feet and turn lowly round and round in time to his father’s music, while my host would laugh with delight, and look smiling up into my face to see if I were admiring this precocious performance of his offspring. In his capacity of husband he was less tender. The squaw who lived in the lodge with him had been his partner for many years. She took good care of his children and his household concerns. He liked her well enough, and as far as I could see, they never quarreled; but his warmer affections were reserved for younger and more recent favorites. Of these, he had at present only one, who lived in a lodge apart from his own. One day while in this camp, he became displeased with her, pushed her out, threw after her ornaments, dresses, and everything she had, and told her to go home to her father. Having consummated this summary divorce, for which he could show good reasons, he came back, seated himself in his usual place, and began to smoke with an air of the utmost tranquility and self-satisfaction.

I was sitting in the lodge with him on that very afternoon, when I felt some curiosity to learn the history of the numerous scars that appeared on his naked body. Of some of them I did not venture to inquire, for I already understood their origin. Each of his arms was marked as if deeply gashed with a knife at regular intervals, and there were other scars also of a different character, on his back and on either breast. They were the traces of the tortures which these Indians, in common with a few other tribes, inflict on themselves at certain seasons; in part, it may be, to gain the glory of courage and endurance, but chiefly as an act of self-sacrifice to secure the favor of the spirits. The scars on the breast and back were produced by running through the flesh strong splints of wood, to which heavy buffalo-skulls are fastened by cords of hide, and the wrench runs forward with all his strength, assisted by two companions, who take hold of each arm, until the flesh tears apart and the skulls are left behind. Others of Kongra-Tonga’s scars were the result of accidents; but he had many received in war. He was one of the most noted warriors in the village. In the course of his life he has slain, as he boasted to me, fourteen men. And though, like other Indians, he was a braggart and liar, yet in this statement common report bore him out. Being flattered by my inquiries, he told me tale after tale, true or false, of his warlike exploits; and there was one among the rest illustrating the worst features of Indian character too well for me to omit it. Pointing out the opening of the lodge towards the Medicine Bow Mountain, not many miles distant, he said he was there a few summers ago with a war-party of his young men. Here they found two Snake Indians, hunting. They shot one of them with arrows, and chased the other up the side of the mountain till they surrounded him, and Kongra-Tonga himself, jumping forward among the trees, seized him by the arm. Two of his young men then ran up and held him fast while he scalped him alive. Then they built a great fire, and cutting the tendons of their captive’s wrists and feet, threw him in, and held him down with long poles until he was burnt to death. He garnished his story with descriptive particulars much too revolting to mention. His features were remarkably mild and open, and without the fierceness of expression common among these Indians; and as he detailed these devilish cruelties, he looked up into my face with the air of earnest simplicity which a little child would wear in relating to its mother some anecdote of its youthful experience.

Old Mene-Seela’s lodge could offer another illustration of the ferocity of Indian warfare. A bright-eyed, active little boy was living there who had belonged to a village of Gros-Ventre Blackfeet, a small but bloody and treacherous band, in close alliance with the Arapahoes. About a year before, Kongra-Tonga and a party of warriors had found about twenty lodges of these Indians upon the plains a little to the eastward of our present camp; and surrounding them in the night, they butchered men, women, and children, preserving only this little boy alive. He was adopted into the old man’s family, and was now fast becoming identified with the Ogillallah children among whom he mingled on equal terms.

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After a while, however, the Eagle-Feather discovered in the distance some appearance of game, and set off with his son in pursuit of it, while I went forward with The Panther. This was a mere nom de guerre; for, like many Indians, he concealed his real name out of some superstitious notion. He was a noble-looking fellow. As he suffered his ornamented buffalo robe to fall in folds about his loins, his stately and graceful figure was fully displayed; and while he sat his horse in an easy attitude, the long feathers of the prairie-cock fluttering from the crown of his head, he seemed the very model of a wild prairie-rider. He had not the same features with those of other Indians. Unless his face greatly belied him, he was free from the jealousy, suspicion, and malignant cunning of his people. For the most part, a civilized white man can discover very few points of sympathy between his own nature and that of an Indian. With every disposition to do justice to their good qualities, he must be conscious that an impassable gulf lies between him and his red brethren. Nay, so alien to himself do they appear, that, after breathing the air of the prairie for a few months or weeks, he begins to look upon them as a troublesome and dangerous species of wild beast. Yet, in the countenance of The Panther, I gladly read that there were at least some points of sympathy between him and me.

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We are tearing down the statues of people like Christopher Columbus, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson. There is now a new understanding of things. We now understand that the White man has been a great evil force in the world. He has wronged everyone — wronged all of the other races — Black, Red, Yellow, etc. He owned Black slaves, he took land that rightfully belonged to native Americans, etc. This is the outlook of the liberal Left and one being forced upon Americans. According to these people we need to destroy the basic foundations of our bad system and start anew. Down with the old and outdated and build anew with our new understanding of things.

What is the source of all this foolishness? The great universities, the intellectual centers, of the Western world. (Is there anyone with good sense left in this world? If so please stand up!)

Great gulfs can separate different cultures. Mentality. There can be great chasms between mentalities. Religion has a lot to do with mentality. To understand mentality look to religion. The indigenous Indians of the Americas were very religious. They fasted and prayed to the Great Spirit. They sought his help in slaughtering their enemies. They had their shamans who acted as mediums between the visible and spirit worlds. They looked for spiritual revelation through dreams and visions. They were attuned to the spirit world, to the occult, to the world of magic, to sorcery. They also had their own lore and were very superstitious. They thought they were descended from Grizzly bear, or mountain lion, or some animal or bird.

The Great Spirit the native Americans looked to was far different from the God of Christianity. The Bible forbids the Christian to have anything to do with the occult, magic, or sorcery. Doing so is serious sin. There is a reason for these instructions to the Christian.

Let us ask the following questions: How did the indigenous Indian culture and mentality differ from white Christian culture and mentality? What explains the differences?

Part of the answer lies in the five or six thousand year history of western man. Western countries have laws whose origins go back at least four or five thousand years to the ancient civilizations of the middle east. Thoughtful men of old understood a need for uniform laws to govern a society and laws were created and proclaimed according some concept of justice. And then court systems were established to enforce them. Modern societies also have police forces to enforce laws. How does this arrangement compare with native American cultures?

Most Christian countries have laws that have been greatly influenced by the Ten Commandments of the Bible and Christian teaching. For example, Thou shall not murder, Thou shall not steal, Thou shall not commit adultery, etc. Jesus taught “love your neighbor”, and the importance of things like humility, forgiveness of wrongs done to you by others, and peacefulness. How do the outlooks, attitudes, and values of native American societies compare with the teachings of Jesus, the New Testament, and Christianity?

The Indians placed great emphasis on the importance of courage and bravery in fighting. Their culture was a war-oriented culture. How does this outlook compare with the emphasis placed on peacefulness taught by Jesus?

The characters of people are created in their formative childhood years according to what they have been taught as children. What Christian children are taught in the way of what is right and wrong is dramatically different from what the Indian children were taught. People become molded and programmed by the ideas, outlooks, values, and experiences that they encounter in childhood.

We see that in Indian culture men didn’t do squaw’s work. The hard, physical, menial, dirty, mundane work like harnessing the horses, pitching the lodges, dressing the buffalo-skins, making clothing and teepee coverings, preparing food, etc. was squaw’s work, unfit for a man. Work befitting a man was hunting and fighting. The men would lazily lay around while the women worked. Of course, the squaws were in no position to challenge this arrangement. A old scrawny squaw was in no position to argue with a big, muscular, six foot man in top condition and trained for warfare.

20 Oct 2021