But all this probably made no more than her fair proportion of toil and exposure, when we consider the sufferings and danger and fatigue which fell to the lot of the husband in his hunting and fishing expeditions. The privations which the men sometimes endured in their long tramps through the forests, especially amid the snows and storms and intense cold which reigned in all the northern forests for so large a portion of the year, were indescribably great, especially since the indomitable pride of the hunter often presented his returning home, however urgent his own personal necessities might be, without having first obtained his game. Instances have been known of the Indians wandering in the woods until they have become perfectly exhausted, and of their then lying down and perishing hunger, rather than go home to a starving family, without the means of supplying them with food.
Polygamy
Polygamy prevailed to some extent among the Indian tribes. Of course, since the number of the sexes is everywhere so nearly equal, this practice can never be carried to any very great extent in any human community, even if there were no natural instincts in the heart to war against it. There was no law among the Indians restricting men to a single wife, and prominent personages, such as great warriors and chieftains, often accordingly possessed themselves of more than one. The motive which influenced them, however, in these cases was not, as it would seem, a sensual one. but rather a desire to extend their influence by connecting themselves with powerful families, and to aggrandize themselves in the estimation of the community by enlarging their domestic establishment. The practice, however, being in violation of the natural instincts of man and the essential laws of his constitution, led generally to domestic disquiet and suffering, and sometimes to catastrophes which would have comported well with the strength of the sentiment of jealousy in the heart of the most civilized woman.
Intellectual Superiority of the Caucasian Race
We are surprised sometimes, it is true, at the ingenuity which the Indians exhibited in some of their inventions, and it is, indeed, in some sense wonderful that with materials and implements so imperfect they could manufacture such efficient weapons and carry out such serious contrivances. But, after all, when we come to compare a bark canoe, perfect as it is in its way, with one of the ocean steam-ships of the Caucasian race, or the best made stone-tipped arrow ever shot at a moose or a buffalo, with the double barreled rifled carbines carrying an explosive bullet, with which a French hunter lies in wait for an African lion, we learn the immense distance which separates the powers and attainments of the two races from each other. We must remember, too, that the contrivances which we find Indians now using, and which we think so ingenious, are not the inventions of the individuals that we see using them, not even of the generation now upon the stage. They are the results of the combined ingenuity of a hundred generations! It is somewhat the same, it is true, with our inventions; but with us, not only are the results infinitely greater, but the work is still going on with a steadiness and rapidity of progress almost inconceivable. There is doubtless more real invention exercised, and a greater number of new and ingenious contrivances originated and perfected every single year, in any one of ten thousand machine shops and manufactories now in operation in America, than the Indians can produce as the result of the accumulated efforts of all the generations of their race, from their earliest arrival upon these shores to the present time.
Two Great Means of Civilization
But what ever we may think of the intellectual inferiority of the Indian race, the slowness of their progress in the arts of life was not due wholly to that cause. There are two great essential elements without which civilization can never make any rapid progress, or attain to any great height, in any nation. These two elements are iron, and the art of writing. With the possession of iron to make implements and tools, one man, it is found, can produce the food of ten, thus leaving the other four of the half of the community that we may suppose to be able-bodied, to be employed in other occupations. it is in consequence of this release of so large a portion of the community from the labor of procuring food, through the aid afforded by iron, that arts and inventions arise. Whereas, without iron, it requires five men to produce the food of ten, and the other five consist of the very young, the very old, the sick and the inform. So that, without iron, nearly the whole available strength of the community is required for the production of food, the surplus that remains being barely sufficient to provide, in the simplest possible way, for the demands of nature in respect to shelter and clothing.
Again, with the art of writing the progress made in each separate generation is recorded, and thus the goal attained in one age becomes the starting point in the next. It follows from this art a race that possesses the art of writing may be decisively progressive, but one which is without that art can only be so in a very limited degree. In this latter case the greatest part of what any one genius discovers or learns dies with him, and the next genius that arises must commence the work anew. Thus the nation, even if it is always rising, is always sinking back again to where it was before. Nothing but the art of writing, to provide each generation with the means of recording what it has discovered, will enable it to keep its hold and go on continually ascending.
The Indians accordingly, being without this art, made no advance whatever. If they did not even retrograde, they lived from generation to generation the same.
Chapter 10. The Coming of the Europeans
The Coming of the Europeans
The coming of the Europeans to this country brought new races not only of men, but also of plants and animals, into contact and connection with those previously existing here. The result was that, in the course of two centuries, immense changes were produced in the occupancy of the country, new and higher forms that were introduced from the old world superseding and displacing the inferior and more imperfect ones which before had possession of the new.
Changes in Respect to Animal Life
Some of the more remarkable of these changes are well known. Others equally interesting, in a philosophical point of view, but leading to results less conspicuous, have not attracted so much attention. One very striking case is that of the horse. Certain animals of this species escaped from the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru - very likely a small number at first. They found the region around them producing plenty of grass, and the climate mild and summer-like through the whole year. Of course, they required no care on the part of man, and began soon to multiply with great rapidity; and now, after the lapse of three hundred years, herds of them cover the prairies and plains of the middle and southern regions of America in countless millions, and, of course, other animals, that before occupied the same grounds and fed upon the same herbage, have been displaced by them and have disappeared.
It is somewhat so with the cow. Wild cattle, originally introduced into the country by colonizing companies from Spain, now throng the South American plains in such numbers that they are hunted and slain by hundreds of thousands every year for the sake of the hides. And still the numbers are increasing.
The bovine races of Europe, however, have not been able to spread in a wild state northwardly into the prairies of North America, on account perhaps of the fact that the buffalo, a superior animal of the same kind - superior in respect to strength and ability to maintain his ground - has possession already. Nor were they or the horses able, unaided by man, to occupy the northern regions on the Atlantic; for although these regions were well adapted to produce their peculiar food, the winters were too long and cold for such animals to live through them without artificial aid. With this aid, however, they can do it, and thus, under the fostering charge of man, the green meadows and hill-sides, extending over many thousands of square miles between the lakes and the sea, have been covered with flocks of sheep and herds of horses and cows, while the bear and the moose that formerly had possession of them have passed away. A few lingering specimens only remain to roam in solitude within the narrow limits left to them, and to wonder where their companions can have gone.