America and Indian race — страница 8

tribes of the east. The Tonkawa of Texas were know to all their neighbours as the "Man-Eaters". Apparently the only native intoxicant was tiswin, a sort of mild beer fermented from corn by the Apache and neighbouring tribes. Domesticated Animals The dog was practically the only domesticated animal before the advent of the whites and was found in nearly all tribes, being used as a beast of burden by day and as a constant sentinel by night, while with some tribes the flesh was also a favourite dish. He was seldom, if ever, trained to hunting. There were no wild horses, cows, pigs, or chickens. Therefore, the Indians knew nothing about these animals. In Massachusetts, they began to domesticate the turkey. Eagles and other birds were occasionally kept for their feathers,

and the children sometimes had other pets than puppies. The horse, believed to have been introduced by the Spaniards, speedily became as important a factor in the life of the plains tribes as the buffalo itself. In the same way the sheep and goats, introduced by the early Franciscans, have become the chief source of wealth to the Navajo, numbering now half a million animals from which they derive an annual income of over a million dollars. Industries and Arts In the fabrication of domestic instruments, weapons, ornaments, ceremonial objects, boats, seines, and traps, in house-building and in the making of pottery and baskets, the Indian showed considerable ingenuity in design and infinite patience of execution. In the division of labour, the making of weapons, hunting and fishing

requirements, boats, pipes, and most ceremonial objects fell to the men, while the domestic arts of pottery and basket-making, weaving and dressing of skins, the fashioning of clothing and the preparation and preservation of food commonly devolved upon the women. Among the sedentary or semi-sedentary tribes house-building belonged usually to the men, although the women sometimes assisted. On the plains the entire making and keeping of the tipi were appointed to the women. In many tribes the man cut, sewed, and decorated his own buckskin suit, and in some of the Pueblo villages the men were the basket-weavers. While the house, in certain tribes, evinced considerable architecture skill, its prime purpo se was always utilitarian, and there was usually but little attempt at

decorative effect, excepting the Haida, Tlingit, and others of the north-west coast, where the great carved and painted totem poles, sometimes sixty feet in height, set up in front of every dwelling, were a striking feature of the village picture. The same tribes were notable for their great sea-going canoes, hollowed out from a single cedar trunk, elaborately carved and painted, and sometimes large enough to accommodate forty men. The skin boat or kaiak of the Eskimo was a marvel of lightness and buoyancy, being practically unsinkable. The birch-bark canoe of the eastern tribes was especially well-adapted to its purposes of inland navigation. In the southern states we find the smaller "dug-out" log canoe. On the plains the boat was virtually unknown, except for the

tub-shaped skin boat of the Mandan and associated tribes of the upper Missouri. The Eskimo were noted for their artistic carvings of bones and walrus ivory; the Pueblo for their turquoise-inlaid work and their wood carving, especially mythologic figurines, and the Atlantic and California coast tribes for their work in shell. The wampum, or shell beads, made chiefly from the shells of various clams found along the Atlantic coast have become historic, having been extensively used not only for dress ornamentation, but also on treaty belts, as tribal tribute, and as a standard of value answering the purpose of money. The ordinary stone hammer or club, found in nearly every tribe, represented much patient labour, while the whole skill of the artist was frequently expended upon the

stone-carved pipe. The black stone pipes of the Cherokee were famous in the southern states, and the red stone pipe of catlinite from a single quarry in Minnesota was reputed sacred and was smoked at the ratification of all solemn tribal engagements throughout the plains and the lake-region. Knives, lance-blades, and arrow-heads were also usually of stone, preferably flint or obsidian. Along the Gulf Coast, keen-edged knives fashioned from split canes were in use. Corn mortars and bowls were usually of wood in the timber region and of stone in the arid country. Hide-scrapers were of bone, and spoons of wood or horn. Metal-work was limited chiefly to the fashioning of gorgets and other ornaments hammered out from native copper, found in the southern Alleghenies, about Lake