Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/830

 INDIANS

752

INDIANS

duct of war matters was often in the keeping of special clans, and in some tribes, as the Creeks, war and peace negotiations and ceremonials belonged to certain towns designated respectively as "red" and "white". With the Iroquois, and probably with other tribes, the final decision for war or peace rested with a council of the married women. On the plains the warriors of a tribe were organized into military societies of differing degrees of rank, from the boys in training to the old men who had passed their active period. Mili- tary service was entirely voluntary with the individual, who, among the eastern tribes, signified his acceptance in some pulilic manner, as by striking the red-painted war-post, or, on the plains, by smoking the pipe sent

Big Bow and Son, Kiowa Indians, in Full Hl ckskin Dress

round by the organizers of the expedition. Con- trary to European practice, the command usually rested with several leaders of equal rank, who were not necessarily recognized as chiefs on other occasions. The departure and the return were made according to fixed ceremonial forms, with solemn chants of defiance, victory, or grief at defeat. In some tribes there were small societies of chosen warriors pledged never to turn or flee from an enemy except by express per- mission of their fellows, but in general the Indian warrior chose not to take large risks, although brave enough in desperate circumstance.

To the savage every member of a hostile tribe was equally an enemy, and he gloried as much in the death of the infant or its mother as in that of tlie warrior father. Victory meant indi.scriminate mas- sacre, with most revolting mutilation of the dead, followed in the early period in nearly every portion of the East and South by a cannilial feast. The custom of scalping the dead, so general in the later Indian wars, has been shown by Friederici to have lieen con- fined originally to a limited area east of the Missis- sippi, gradually .superseding the earlier custom of beheading. In many western tribes the warrior's prowess was rated not by the number of his scalp trophies, but by the numlier of his cnups (French term) or strokes upon the enemy, for whicn there was

a regular scale according to kind, the highest honour being accorded not to the one who secured the scalp, but to the warrior who struck the first blow upon the enemy, even though with no more than a willow rod. The scalp dance was performed not by the warriors, but by the women, who thus rejoiced over the success of their husbands and brothers. There was no dis- tinctive "war dance".

Captives among the eastern .tribes were either condemned to death with every horrilile form of torture or ceremonially adopted into the trilie, the decision usually resting with the women. If adopted, he at once became a member of a family, usually as representative of a deceased memljer. and at once acquired full tribal rights. In the Huron wars whole towns of the defeated nation vohintarily sulmiitted and were adopted bodily into the Iroquois tribes. On the jilains torture was not common. Adults were seldom spared, but children were frequently .saved and either regularly adopted or brought up in a mild sort of slavery. Along the north-west coast and as far south as California slavery prevailed in its harshest form and was the usual fate of the captive.

SdcUiI Organization. — Among most of the tribes east of the Mississippi, among the Pueblos, Navaho, and others of the South-West. and among theTlingit and Ilaida of the north-west coa.st, society was based on the clan system, under which the tribe was sub- tlivideil into a numlier of large family groups, the members of which were consitlered as closely related and jirohibited from intermarrying. The children visually followed the clan of the mother. The clans themselves were sometimes grU|)ed into larger bodies of related kindred, to which the name of phratrics has I Kcu ap])hed. The clans were usually, but not always, named from animals, and each elan paid special reverence to its tutelary animal. Thus the Cherokee had .seven clans, Wolf, Deer, Hinl, I'aint, and three others with names not readily translated. .\ Wolf man could not marry a Wolf woman, but might marry a Deer woman, or one of any other of the elans, an<l his cliil<lren were of the Deer or other clan aecordingly. In some tribes the name of the individual indicated the clan, as "Round Foot" in the W iilf clan and "Crawler" in the Turtle clan. Certain functions of war, peace, or ceremonial were usually hereditary in special elans, and revenge for injuries within the tribe devolved u|)on the clan relatives of the jierson injured. The tribal council was niaile up of the hereditary or elected chiefsof clans, and any alien taken into the tribe had to be specifically adopteil into a family and clan.

The clan system was by no means universal, as suppo.sed by Morgan and his followers of forty years ago, but is now known to have been limited to par- ticular regions, and seems to have been originally an artificial contrivance to protect land and other prop- erty descent. It was ab.sent almost everywhere west of the Missouri, excepting in the South-West, and appears also to have been unknown throughout the greater part of Briti.sh .Vmerica, the interior of .\la.ska, and probably among the Eskimo. Among the plains tribes the unit was the ban<l, whose members camped together under their own chief in an appointed place in the tribal camp circle and were subject to no mar- riage prohibition, but usually married among them- selves.

With a few notable exceptions, there was very little idea of trilial solidarity or supreme authority, and where a chief appears in history as trilial dictator, as in the case of Powhatan in ^"irginia, it was usually due to his own strong personality. The real author- ity was with the council as interpreter of ancient tribal customs. Even .such well-known tribes as the Creeks anrl Cherokee were really only aggregates of clo.sely cognate villages, each acting independently or in co-operation with the others as suited its immediate convenience. Even in the smaller and more compact