George Catlin and His Indian Gallery (Hardcover)

Catlin, who, of all other writers, has had the most perfect opportunities, is, of all others, most remiss in this particular, and, however much the reader may enjoy his vivid descriptions and graphic illustrations of scenes and incidents, it is impossible to finish his book without a feeling of dissatisfaction.

We see the Indian in a thousand curious and picturesque scenes, but we see him as we see the actor on the stage. However beautiful the dress and faultless the delineation, we do not know him. Our natural curiosity is not gratified by even a glimpse of his every-day character, or peep into the scenes of his every-day life.

In my own reading I have found this to be the one great lack of all writers on the Indian, and to supply this lack, to the extent of my ability, is the purpose and intent of these pages.

Whether the Indian languages have been derived from one, or from several roots, must, and probably will be determined by the eminent philologists who are now making this subject their special study.

Their great number and infinite dissimilarity have always excited the marvel of all who have had cause to look into the matter, either by contact with Indians, or through books. language, more or less imperfect, but amply sufficient for all the needs of an illiterate people, and differing in every essential particular from every other language. This wonderful diversity can only be accounted for by a knowledge of the Indian character and habits.

War is, and so far as we can know from history and tradition, has always been the pleasure and passion of the Indian. With or without cause, tribes occupying lands adjacent to each other were almost constantly on the war-path.

Each tribe, with vanity not entirely aboriginal, believed in its own infinite superiority, and disdained to learn even a few words of its enemy’s language, though this might easily have been done through prisoners. This warlike disposition, and the necessity for widely extended domains (entailed on all people who live solely by the chase) kept the tribes far apart. There were no intermarriages, no social intercourse, no intermingling of any kind, except that of mortal strife. There was no disposition, and little opportunity to learn anything of the language of their neighbors, and thus to adopt words and phrases not properly belonging to their own language.

American Indian Languages: Cultural and Social Contexts (Paperback)
by Shirley Silver

So long as a tribe was surrounded closely by powerful and warlike neighbors, it remained intact, keeping in large villages and under control of one chief. When those neighbors were driven off, or through their own successes elsewhere moved away, and the tribal territory became greatly extended, the tribe broke up into bands for the more easy and convenient supply of food. This was the opportunity of the ambitious sub-chiefs, leaders of bands, who, preferring to be chiefs of small bands rather than sub-chiefs of large ones, took every care to prevent any subsequent concentration except when forced to it by war, or by the imperative demand of the “Medicine Chief”, the supreme expounder of religious doctrine and dogma.

At this moment, there are no less than sixty-six bands of Utes, separated widely in localities, and speaking languages undoubtedly referable to one root, but so various as to dialect, that any but the closest observer might with reason insist that they are different languages.

So, also, there are thirty-four different bands of Sioux, which were rapidly undergoing the same process of disintegration of language, until the government unwittingly stopped it, by concentrating these Indians on reservations.

There are nineteen bands of Shoshones or Snakes, two bands of which, wandering eastward over the Rocky Mountains, became entirely estranged from the parent tribe, and are now known as Bannocks, having lost even their tribal name. They cannot speak or understand a word of their mother tongue.

There are twenty-eight bands of Apaches, speaking dialects of the same language, and undoubtedly off-shoots from the same parent stock; yet, before they were conquered and placed on reservations, they waged incessant war with each other, and no tribes on this continent were more bitterly and uncompromisingly hostile, than were these bands of the same tribe, one to the other.

The Apaches were strong in numbers, warlike in spirit, crafty and energetic in action, and occupied a country almost inaccessible to whites. But for this internecine strife, it would have cost the United States Government many years of bloody and expensive war to have subdued them.

It will thus be seen that his own warlike temperament and disposition to roam have been to the Indian the cause—fruitful as Babel—of the confusion of tongues. There are other causes which may not have been without effect, to add to this confusion. The indisposition or inability of the Plains Indians to learn a spoken language other than their own, undoubtedly led to the adoption of the sign-language as a medium of communication, and the knowledge of this, reacting, forever precluded the necessity of learning any oral language.

Indian Sign Language (Paperback)
by William Tomkins

For sixty years the Cheyennes and Arrapahoes have been the firmest friends, occupying the same country, living in the same camps, making peace or war with the same enemies at the same time, and conducting themselves in everything (except inter-marriages) as if they were one and the same tribe. women, or children of either tribe can hold even the most ordinary conversation in the language of the other.

What makes this fact yet more remarkable is, that while one language is comparatively easy, the other is so exceedingly difficult, that even the best interpreters are forced to resort to sign-language.

Under these most exceptional circumstances, it would seem inevitable that the easy language would in time become the common means of communication of the two tribes. Such, however, is not the case; each tribe uses its own language to communicate with its own people, and the sign-language to communicate with the people of the other tribe.

When the white trader invaded the solitudes of the Indian, he took with him, or soon picked up, a small stock of words which, by his constant use among the tribes have become as it were, common property; thus “squaw”, the Narragansett name for woman, the Algonquin “papoose” for child, “chuck”, food, and many other words have become universal among all the North American Indians east of the Rocky Mountains, when speaking to a white man, or Indian not of their own tribe.

The multitude of languages is a peculiarity of savage life. Let the student remember the condition, in this respect, of Northern and Western Europe, even as late as the time of Julius C sar; of Africa and South America at the present day, and (without intending to be facetious, and with the desire simply to call attention to the tenacity with which barbarous peculiarities of language hold their grip on human nature,) of England, Scotland, and Wales, through which, even in this enlightened age, an American can scarcely travel satisfactorily to himself without an interpreter.

As in all other matters where mere guess-work forms the basis of argument, authorities differ extremely as to the probable Indian population of the country now known as the United States at the time of its first settlement by whites, these estimates varying from three hundred thousand to three millions. Basing my guess on my knowledge of the warlike disposition of the Indians; of their natural tendency constantly to split into bands, which possibly soon became fiercely hostile to each other; of the wide extent of territory required by each tribe, not only for its food-supply, but for its safety; and of the almost universal lack of fecundity of their women, I am of opinion that the number of the aboriginal inhabitants of the territory mentioned has never at any one time much exceeded half a million of souls.

The number of Indians has always been, and is now, very greatly overrated. This comes from the vanity of the individual Indian, who, if asked about his tribe, will tell you that they are as “the leaves on the trees” for numbers; and from the interested reports of agents, who dearly like to feed, on paper, a tribe of a thousand Indians, but which has actually only five hundred (or less) mouths.

Catlin, on the authority of Major Pilcher, an Indian Agent, estimates the Blackfeet at sixty thousand (about 1835). There were really, probably, not more than a fourth of that number.

All Indians have a strong superstitious repugnance to being counted, and this of late years, (that is since the government has been issuing rations to Indians), is liable to a suspicion of self-interest, the Indians themselves entirely appreciating the advantage of getting from the agent five hundred rations for three hundred or less mouths.

The number of Indians in the United States (exclusive of Alaska), as stated in the last official report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, is, in round numbers, two hundred and fifty-three thousand. This is probably at least one-fifth too great, but it will be impossible to arrive at the exact population so long as the government makes it to the interest both of the agent and of the Indian to exaggerate their numbers.

The Indians have, undoubtedly, greatly diminished in numbers within the last fifty years. This is not due to unusual wars, nor even to the white man’s fire-water (as is commonly believed), but principally to those great Indian exterminators, small pox, measles, and cholera, and to that “humane” policy of the government, which takes Indians from salubrious mountainous regions, and settles them on reservations in malarious districts, where they are soon decimated by fever and nostalgia. Speak of Indians as “nomads”. They are nomadic, but this peculiar life does not prevent their having the strongest possible “home” attachment, and the most ardent love of country. I have already spoken of the wide extent of territory necessary to the comfortable existence of even a small tribe. During the spring, summer, and autumn, the tribe roams at will throughout the whole length and breadth of this territory, wherever it is led by abundance of grass for their ponies, or food for themselves, the camp being changed as frequently as necessity or caprice indicates. Within the limits of their territory, and during the seasons mentioned, Indians are veritable “nomads”.

The winter encampment is regarded by them as permanent, its location not being changed during the whole three, four, or five months of cold and bad weather. The spot selected for the winter encampment one year may be many miles away from that selected the year before or the year after; but the memory of each is affectionately cherished; a specially good and happy encampment not unfrequently giving the name to the year.

Outside the limits of their territory Indians never go, except on war or hunting parties; on rare occasions to pay a visit of ceremony to a neighboring friendly tribe; or on long solitary journeys, as will be described.

Within the limits of their territory they are “nomads”, but the territory itself is their home. Their attachment to it is one of the strongest traits of their character. No people are more truly “lovers of their country,” no people suffer more from “home-sickness,” when forced to leave it.

The mental capacity of the Indian is of superior order. His perceptive faculties are remarkably developed, and his reasoning powers are not to be despised, however crude. He is thoroughly master of all branches of education necessary to the comfort and safety of his savage life, thus giving evidence of capacity for a higher order of education.

That he has shown little aptitude for, or devotion to, the rudiments of our civilized education, is due partly to his excitability of temperament and impatience of restraint, and partly to the simple fact that those who had charge of his education cared more for their compensation than for the progress of their pupils, or were impressed with the idea that the necessities of his soul were paramount to those of his intellect. Until very recently the efforts at Indian education were so ill-directed, so entirely unadapted to the real necessities of the problem, as to be absurd.

No important question can be decided among Indians without a vast amount of verbiage; and the faculty of speech-making seems to be even more universal among Red, than White Americans.

Every male Indian is his own reporter, his own newspaper. He is expected and required to sound his own praises, and to be modest about it would only redound to his discredit.

Knowing that he is obliged to speak in public, he spends no little time, not only in the preparation and elaboration of the matter of his speech, but by frequent rehearsal satisfies himself in the manner.

Almost every warrior speaks well, some few of them eloquently; but his best efforts are those addressed to his own people, when seeking to establish his reputation as a warrior and orator, or when endeavoring to sway his audience to his own views on some contested point of Indian policy. As a rule, his speeches to white people are trite and commonplace, a parade of the Indian poverty, as compared to the white man’s wealth; and his peroration is almost invariably a whining and abject appeal to the charity of his hearers.

Books on Native Americans