LITMIR.BIZ

      Diego de Landa’s Maya

       Alphabet.

      1. The Aborigines.—When America became known to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, it was by no means an uninhabited country. Wherever the discoverers effected a landing, and however far they pushed inland, they found themselves confronted by native inhabitants of varying degrees of savagery. Hence the settlement of both Americas, from first to last, has been dependent upon the supplanting of one race by another or upon their intermixture.

      2. Characteristics of the Indians.—The original inhabitants of both continents have been known as Indians, in consequence of a mistake made by Columbus (§§ 5-7). The North American Indians were fiercer foes than the native Mexicans and Peruvians whom the Spaniards, under Cortez and Pizarro, overcame, and with whom they intermarried. We know, however, from linguistic characteristics, that all the aborigines from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn belonged to the same race. How they first came to America is a matter of dispute; but their main peculiarities are well understood. In Peru and Mexico they had made some progress toward civilization. They constructed good roads, were not unskillful artisans, and had even learned some astronomy. But they lived in large communal groups under their chiefs, and had made slight advance in the art of government; hence they fell an easy prey to small bodies of Spaniards. Similar in character to the Mexicans, but inferior to them, were the Pueblos and Cliff-dwellers of the region of New Mexico, Arizona, and Lower California, as well as the Natchez Indians of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Most of the North American Indian tribes lived in villages of wigwams and had a primitive form of government. In each village there was a communal, or “long,” house, in which clan business was transacted. In a few cases this “long” house gave shelter to a whole tribe. These Indians, except among the Southern tribes mentioned below, were chiefly in what is called the hunter and fisher state, although they frequently practiced a rude form of agriculture. Sometimes, however, as in the case of the Digger Indians, they subsisted mainly on roots.^[1]

      Inscription Rock, New Mexico.

3. The Principal Indian Tribes.—Of the North American Indians with whom our own forefathers came chiefly in contact, there were four principal groups, commonly known as the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Southern Indians, and the Dakotahs. The Algonquins were the most numerous, although it is doubtful if at any time they numbered ninety thousand. Ranging through the vast forests from Kentucky to Hudson Bay and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, they were naturally in frequent conflict with the whites. Opposed to these, and wedged into the very center of their territory, were the fierce Iroquois, the craftiest of their race, whose tribal names—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—are inseparably connected with rivers and lakes in the State of New York. They formed a loose confederacy, called by the whites the “Five Nations.”^[2] The Southern Indians showed a milder disposition and were given to agriculture and rude manufactures. Of these the Creeks were the most advanced; beneath them in point of civilization were the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles.^[3] West of the Mississippi ranged the wandering Dakotahs or Sioux, fierce fighters, whose descendants have given trouble down to our own day. Of the inferior tribes living in the extreme north of the continent, we need take no special account.

PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERERS.

       Table of Contents

      Cliff Dwellings on the

       Rio Mancos.

      Old Mill at Newport, long

       erroneously supposed to have been

       built by the Northmen.

      Long House of the Iroquois.

      4. The Northmen.—While Columbus and his followers were the real discoverers of America in the sense that they first made it generally known to Europe, it is practically certain that they were not the first Europeans to set foot on the new continent. It is possible that seamen from France and England preceded Columbus, but there is much better reason to believe that Scandinavians from Iceland, having first discovered Greenland, visited the North American mainland as early as the year 1000. Evidence to this effect is found in the so-called Sagas of the Northmen, poetic chronicles based on tradition and dating from about two centuries after the events which they recorded. According to these stories, navigators were driven south from Greenland to a strange shore about the year 985. Fourteen years later, Leif, son of Eric the Red, having introduced Christianity from Norway into Iceland and Greenland, visited the newly discovered land, with thirty-five companions. They wintered in a country which, from its abundance of wild grape vines, they called Vinland, built some houses, and then returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber. Several other voyages were made thither and a temporary colony was established, the latest mention of a voyage dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century. Such is the story of the Sagas. The main features of the account are generally held to be correct, but the location of the Northmen’s Vinland cannot be determined, and no archæological remains have been found on the American continent to corroborate the Sagas.^[4]

      North Pueblo of Taos.

      Specimen of Saga Manuscript.

Скачать книгу