Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/39

] of the chiefs were sometimes more spacious, and constructed with care, but of the same materials. Their villages were sometimes surrounded by defensive palisades. Skins, taken in the chase, served them for repose. Though principally dependent upon the hunting and fishing, its uncertain supply had led them to cultivate around their dwellings some patches of maize, but their exertions were desultory, and they were often exposed to the severity of famine. Every family did everything necessary within itself; and interchange of articles of commerce was hardly at all known among them.

In strictness of speech, the Indians could not be said to have either government or laws. Questions of public interest relating to war, peace, change of hunting grounds, and the like, were discussed in a meeting of the whole tribe, where old and young participated, and the most plausible speaker, or the most energetic and daring warrior, generally carried the day. The chiefs among them, were such by superior merit, or superior skill or cunning, not on any principle of appointment recognized among civilized communities; and they exercised their authority as best they might, without being able to compel obedience. The most powerful influences, however, under which the Indians were brought was that exercised by those who had the skill to work upon their ignorance and credulity to establish a claim to their obedience. Like all rude and barbarous tribes, they were very superstitious, and the priests, or "medicine men," were equally feared and observed by the Indians generally. As a consequence of this, the tribes varied in their apparent forms of government. Some were the slaves of a spiritual despotism; some resembled a limited monarchy; others an oligarchy; and others yet a democracy, in which the principal warriors stood nearly on a level.

In cases of dispute and dissension, each Indian held to the right of retaliation, and relied on himself almost always to effect his revenge for injuries received. Blood for blood was the rule, and the relations of the slain man were bound to obtain bloody revenge for his death. This principle gave rise, as a matter of course, to innumerable and bitter feuds, and wars of extermination where that was possible. War, indeed, rather than peace and the arts of peace, was the Indian's glory and delight; war, not conducted on the grand scale of more civilized, if not more Christian-like, people, but war where individual skill, endurance, gallantry and cruelty were prime requisites. For such a purpose as revenge the Indian was capable of making vast sacrifices, and displayed a patience and perseverance truly heroic; but when the excitement was over, he sank back into a listless, unoccupied, well nigh useless savage. The intervals of his more exciting pursuits the Indian filled up in the decoration of his person with all the refinements of paint and feathers, with the manufacture of his arms—the club, and the bow and arrows—and of canoes of bark, so light, that they could easily be carried on the shoulder from stream to stream. His amusements were the war-dance and song, and