Ohio History Journal

A VANISHING RACE.

 

 

MRS. JENNIE C. MORTON.

Frankfort, Ky.

 

 

Read by the author before the Ohio Valley Historical Association, at their

meeting with the Kentucky State Historical Society in

the New Capitol, October 16th, 1909.

Whether we call the Indian, North American or South

American, we know the Indian race historically as a peculiar and

distinctly marked people-disappearing gradually into oblivion.

An authentic history of the race has not been written, but

the traditions concerning it, tinged with probability, is that the

race is descended from those fierce and terrible Asiatics, the

Tartars.

The pathways of the Indian, unlike any other nation of equal

intelligence wandering down through the ages, are reddened

with the blood of the slain, or they are smoking with human

sacrifices, to gratify their horrible thirst for capture or revenge,

and barbaric amusement. Students of Ethnology are agreed upon

the origin of the Indian as a branch of the Asiatic people we

have mentioned, because of the resemblance of some tribes on

our Continent, to the Japanese in cast of feature; but the stern

and forbidding statures and smileless faces of the Indian limit

the resemblance, if indeed it exists.

This article is not written to reproduce in history an account

of the revolting habits, customs, manners, arts and language of

this strange race. Only that which arrests the attention now of

civilized people in their efforts to train, control, civilize and

educate it, should be dwelt upon.

However senseless to us-their arts and their ideas, their

weird and wonderful fables-yet they are above our contempt,

and beyond our ridicule, these brown simoons of humanity-the

Indians. They have been driven from every country and every

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A Vanishing Race.                   49

 

island they have possessed-never subjugated, rarely civilized-

their beginning lost in antiquity-and their end as a race so

nigh, that it is reckoned by scientists and ethnologists today as

they reckon an eclipse.

The genius of the twentieth century in descriptive power and

picture illumination and illustration of the Indian (Edward S.

Curtis), gives in his series of the North American Indian a thrill-

ing and pathetic picture of the passing of the Indian. It is called

"The Vanishing Race." In Indian file they are marching through

a treeless land toward illimitable space, where the darkness

deepens into blackness.

"In their faces stern defiance

In their hearts the feuds of ages

The hereditary hatred

The ancestral thirst for vengeance."

- Longfellow.

The leader of the solemn file seems only a shadow as he

steps into the awful gloom, and the others follow one by one to

vanish like their leader, in the smoke of oblivion, and all-con-

quering silence of "the bourne from which no traveler returns."

We learn from historians of the race that it is gradually

disappearing toward the setting sun. The tribes that remain,

we are told, are being educated and civilized. The far west

Indians in some instances adopt the American dress, cultivate

the habits of the white man become polite and polished, and a

few marry Americans and are apparently christianized.

But above and around them seems to hang the shadow of the

curse of hatred. There are memories they never escape from,

no matter for their oft-times poetic natures, that find in nature

their kindred tastes in thought and color. The Indian chief of

other times painted himself in colors of the autumn leaves.

Longfellow more than a half century ago decorated the Indians

of the northwest with the jewels of his fancy in prodigal splendor

in that wonderful poetic history and charming love story that he

read so much real history to produce; along with personal ac-

quaintance with the Indian:

Vol. XX.-4.

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50        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

"He who builds his birch canoe-

By the river

In the bosom of the forest -

And it floated on the river

Like a yellow leaf in Autumn

Like a yellow water-lily -

Paddles none had Hiawatha,

Paddles none he had or needed

For his thoughts as paddles served him

And his wishes served to guide him

Swift or slow at will he glided

Veered to right or left at pleasure."

Hiawatha was given as a model Indian, as his Princess, Min-

nehaha was given as a model woman of her race, queen of the

Dacotahs, but those who have lived among the North American

Indians, beyond the Mississippi and the Yukon, fail to find rep-

resentatives of these two splendid barbaric figures in poetical lit-

erature there.

The white man can not trust the Indian, no matter for his

seeming friendliness and kindness. Their frequent outbreaks of

hostility, disregarding all the laws of the government and hu-

manity, show too plainly they, as a race, are the white man's

never forgiven enemy.

If we were writing a monograph, purely historical and eth-

nological of the Indian, we should go back to the earliest author-

ities upon these subjects, but this is unnecessary, in view of the

splendid history of Edward S. Curtis, to whose picture we have

alluded in the foregoing pages and whose history of this race

is said to be the most wonderful triumph in historic, as well as

pictorial art. We give his own words in the "General Introduc-

tion" to his marvelous work.

"The value of such a work in great measure will lie in breadth

of its treatment, in its wealth of illustration, and in the fact that

it represents the result of personal study of a people who are

rapidly losing the traces of their aboriginal character, and who

are destined ultimately to become assimilated with the superior

race."

"The task has not been an easy one, for, although enlight-

ened at times by the readiness of the Indians to impart their

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A Vanishing Race.                  51

 

knowledge, it more often required days and weeks of patient

endeavor before my assistants and I succeeded in overcoming

the deep-rooted superstition, conservatism, and secretiveness so

characteristic of primitive people who are ever loath to afford a

glimpse of their inner life to those who are not of their own.

Once the confidence of the Indian gained, the way led gradually

through the difficulties, but long and serious study was necessary

before the knowledge of the esoteric rites and ceremonies could

be gleaned."

The author has given study to his subject, and he has given

to the world a beautiful and deeply interesting illustrated history

of "The Vanishing Race."

The deer has fled, the buffaloes are gone, the bear and the

panther no longer roam unchallenged the field and forest, and it

is meet that the Indian should follow his companions into the

wilds of oblivion, and the dark and forbidding mountain silences

of nature.

It is from Washington Irving's Life of Christopher Columbus

that we learn the origin of the name Indian. He says, on page

three of the book: "As Columbus supposed himself to have

landed on an Island at the extremity of India, he called the na-

tives by the general appellation of Indians, which name was uni-

versally adopted before the true nature of his discovery was

known, and has since been extended to all the aboriginals of the

new world. He found the Indians living upon the sunny islands

in a state of nature, like unto the beasts of the forest, and the

inhabitants of the sea. Columbus imagined that the Indians had

no system of religion, but a disposition to receive its impression,

as they regarded with great reverence and attention the religious

ceremonies of the Spaniards, soon repeating by rote any prayer

taught them, and making the sign of the cross with the most

edifying devotion. They had an idea of a future state, but lim-

ited and confused. They confess the soul to be immortal, says

Peter Martyr, and having put off the bodily clothing they im-

agine it goes forth to the woods and the mountains, and that it

lives there perpetually in caves; nor do they exempt it from eating

and drinking, but that it should be fed there.

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52       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

"The answering voices heard from caves and hollows, which

the Latins call echoes, they suppose to be the souls of the departed

wandering through those places." To this day there are Indians

who believe this delusion.

We remember one summer while in Waukesha, Wis., we

visited the grave mound of the Chief Waukesha, in Cutler Park,

and wrote some verses concerning him and his grave. They were

published and republished in the northwest, and republished in

a Waukesha newspaper, "The Freeman," the following summer

when we returned there for an outing. In this way a grandson

and a nephew of the dead chief, for whom Waukesha was called

heard of his grave and made a pilgrimage to it, and placed upon

the old warrior's breast a pipe and tobacco for him to smoke

when his soul wandered back to the grave, a mound of eight or

ten feet in height.

In the September Register of 1905 is a history of the Indian

school in Kentucky, at old White Sulphur Springs, of Scott

county. It is said it was the first government school established

in America for the benefit of the Indian. It was placed under

the care and superintendence of Richard M. Johnson, first Con-

gressman, and afterwards Vice-President of the United States.

We learn from the history of Scott county that it flourished for

a number of years, but finally was abandoned, and the Indians

were sent with the Cherokees and Choctaws of Mississippi across

the great divide. A son, now an Indian chief, wrote to us that

his father cherished the recollection of his school days at White

Sulphur, and that he loved Col. Richard M. Johnson, and had

a son called for him, Richard Johnson Ross, who, he writes, was

a major in the Confederate Army in 1864, and died at Carriage

Point, in Chickasaw Nation. We give his eulogy upon Col. Dick

Johnson, as the people of Scott county called him:

Richard Johnson was a popular man among Southern In-

dians after he started and opened his Indian school in Kentucky.

He had a noble impulse, his heart was big, and he called Indian

boys to the paths of peace and learning. Returning to their In-

dian homes they were stars in a dark night. Their influence

was mild and always good among their people. There is a clock

in the Kentucky State Historical Society, presented by Judge and

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A Vanishing Race.                    53

 

Mrs. William Lindsay, of Frankfort, once used in the Indian

school at White Sulphur.

From this school sprang the missionary spirit that since has

striven to win the Indian to the paths of learning, peace and

prosperity. We are told by teachers in the Indian schools that

many of them are men of bright minds. When they do not learn

it is indifference, and not want of capacity to understand that

prevents them  from becoming scholars.   They are naturally

averse to restraint, and concentration of thought upon the learn-

ing of unknown tongues. Their teachers for ages have been their

fine eyes and well trained ears. They look and listen.

"They who love the haunts of Nature

Love the sunshine of the meadow,

Love the shadow of the forest,

Love the wind among the branches

And the rain-shower and the snowstorm

And the rushing of great rivers."

We should think the heart of a race that appreciates all

Nature's secrets and treasures would be subdued and gentled by

the sweetness all around them. Not so. The spirit of evil tri-

umphs over Nature-and the Indian's sign and symbol, are said

to be

"Bloody hands with palms uplifted."

They leave the world their pretty conceits in regard to

certain products of agriculture, for instance the Indian corn.

We are told by one historian, that this maize is held in

great veneration, as a special gift from the Great Spirit.

It is well known that corn planting and corn gathering among

some tribes are left entirely to the women and children, and a

few old men. It is not generally known perhaps that this labor

is not compulsory. A good Indian housewife deems this a part of

her prerogative, and prides herself to have a store of corn to

exercise her hospitality in the entertainment of the lodge guests.

Schoolcraft rescued from oblivion much of the legendary lore

of the Indian. Upon this lore and kindred traditions much of

the poetry and literature concerning the Indian has been founded.

But after all they leave the land they knew not how to keep,

without cities of splendid structure, magnificent monuments, or

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54         Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

historical literature, to tell the world of their existence. Instead

we have the dressed skin of wild animals, their beadwork, and

their basketry, their blankets, bows and arrows, stone hatchets

and tomahawks, scalping knives and mounds, in which their peo-

ple are buried, and last their tents and totem poles.

We can not better conclude their melancholy and pathetic

passing away than by quoting again from Hiawatha:

 

"Lo' how all things fade and perish

From the memory of the old men

Pass away the great traditions,

The achievements of the Warriors

The adventures of the hunters--

All the marvelous dreams and visions

Of the Jossakoeds and Prophets--

 

"Great men die and are forgotten

Wise men speak their words of wisdom

Perish in the ears that hear them

Do not reach the generations

That as yet unborn are waiting

In the great mysterious darkness

Of the speechless days that shall be.

 

"Behold your grave-posts

Have no mark, no sign, no symbol

Go and paint them all with figures

Each one with its household symbol,

With its own ancestral totem;

So that those that follow after

May distinguish them and know them."

 

"And they painted on the grave posts

Of the graves yet unforgotten

Each his own ancestral totem

Each the symbol of his household."

 

"Figures of the bear and reindeer

Of the turtle, crane and beaver

Each inverted as a token

That the owner was departed

That the Chief who bore the symbol

Lay beneath in dust and ashes."

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A Vanishing Race.                   55

 

We learn from Hiawatha the totem pole is what, in our time,

is styled a family tree. We have not the transformations repre-

sented in their figurative language, but the meaning is the same.

The totem pole is the significant family history, as interpreted by

the Indian tongue. There are three kinds of totems. The mor-

tuary, historical and ancestral.

Even the Indian desires posthumous history, and would not

have the chieftain, his ancestor, forgotten. Hence on their totem

pole

"Figures mystical and awful

And each figure had its meaning."

Emmett Starr, of Chickasaw Nation, in Indian Territory,

wrote us some years ago that he had written the history of his

tribe, and he had their genealogy running back two hundred

years. In the list of names he sent us we were surprised to find

many Kentucky names familiar in our histories.

But Kentucky, once "the dark and bloody ground" of the

Indians, and her name interpreted to mean this; with her his-

tory reddened with the dye of battles of the Indians and pioneers

from 1769 until 1798, would be expected here and there to find a

namesake among the better classes of Indians. They sometimes

befriended the white pioneers, for whose courage they had great

respect, and in whose humanity they are said sometimes to have

reposed confidence.

Courage attracts the admiration and respect of the world,

and it appeals to the heroic instinct of the Indian, who admires

and envies it beyond every other quality of man or woman.

O. G. Wall, of Friday Harbor, Washington, has just pub-

lished a deeply interesting history of the "Sioux Massacre" of

1862. He was a member of Captain Marsh's company, stationed

at Fort Ridgely at the time, and was an eye witness of the thrill-

ing scenes he describes. "But," he says, "even these facts were

but a slight incentive to assume the arduous task of preserving

the Northwestern Annals, many incidents forever lost, unless

passed to the pages of history ere the final departure of the rap-

idly vanishing (Indian), participants in these scenes of nearly

fifty years ago; for assuredly the waves of time must soon for-

ever close over the unspoken and unwritten of that tragic period."

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56        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.   The stories of the merciless carnage of the Indians, their provocations to massacre, the rights and the wrongs of the In- dian, are given with the skill of free hand drawing. But the Indian himself, though vanishing before the white man's power and progress, also speaks in this interesting book in his eloquent way of his fruitless history, of great deeds, grand works, such as the white man has. Thus we see in this Vanishing Race, as in every other people, a desire to be remembered historically, and that the world should know "From what old ancestral Totem They descended- what their legends - And the story of their valor - As they travel toward the sunset."

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