French Pathfinders in North America | Page 4

and covering
the most of the valley of the Missouri.
The Pawnee group occupied the Platte valley, in Nebraska, and the
territory extending thence southward; and the Shoshonee group had for
its best representatives the renowned Comanches, the matchless
horsemen of the plains.
On the Pacific coast were several tribes, but none of any special
importance. In the Columbia and Sacramento valleys were the lowest
specimens of the Indian race, the only ones who may be legitimately
classed as savages. All the others are more properly known as
barbarians.
In New Mexico and Arizona is a group of remarkable interest, the
Pueblo Indians, who inhabit large buildings (pueblos) of stone or
sun-dried brick. In this particular they stand in a class distinct from all
other native tribes in the United States. They comprise the Zuñis,
Moquis, Acomans, and others, having different languages, {11} but
standing on the same plane of culture. In many respects they have
advanced far beyond any other stock. They have specially cultivated
the arts of peace. Their great stone or adobe dwellings, in which
hundreds of persons live, reared with almost incredible toil on the top
of nearly inaccessible rocks or on the ledges of deep gorges, were
constructed to serve at the same time as dwelling-places and as
strongholds against the attacks of the roaming and murdering Apaches.
These people till the thirsty soil of their arid region by irrigation with
water conducted for miles. They have developed many industries to a
remarkable degree, and their pottery shows both skill and taste.

These high-class barbarians are especially interesting because they
have undergone little change since the Spaniards, under Coronado, first
became acquainted with them, 364 years ago. They still live in the
same way and observe the same strange ceremonies, of which the
famous "Snake-dance" is the best known. They are, also, on a level of
culture not much below that of the ancient Mexicans; so that from the
study of them we may get a very good idea of the people whom Cortes
found and conquered.

{15}
Chapter II
SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE
Mistakes of the Earliest European Visitors as to Indian Society and
Government.--How Indian Social Life originated.--The Family Tie the
Central Principle.--Gradual Development of a Family into a
Tribe.--The Totem.
The first white visitors to America found men exercising some kind of
authority, and they called them kings, after the fashion of European
government. The Spaniards even called the head-chief of the Mexicans
the "Emperor Montezuma." There was not a king, still less an emperor,
in the whole of North America. Had these first Europeans understood
that they were face to face with men of the Stone Age, that is, with men
who had not progressed further than our own forefathers had advanced
thousands of years ago, in that dim past when they used weapons and
implements of stone, and when they had not as yet anything like
written language, they would have been saved many blunders. They
would not have called native chiefs by such high-sounding titles as
"King {16} Powhatan" and "King Philip." They would not have styled
the simple Indian girl, Pocahontas, a princess; and King James, of
England, would not have made the ludicrous mistake of being angry
with Rolfe for marrying her, because he feared that when her father
died, she would be entitled to "the throne," and Rolfe would claim to be

King of Virginia!
The study of Indian life has this peculiar interest, that it gives us an
insight into the thinking and acting of our own forefathers long before
the dawn of history, when they worshiped gods very much like those of
the Indians.
All the world over, the most widely separated peoples in similar stages
of development exhibit remarkably similar ideas and customs, as if one
had borrowed from the other. There is often a curious resemblance
between the myths of some race in Central Africa and those of some
heathen tribe in Northern Europe. The human mind, under like
conditions, works in the same way and produces like results. Thus, in
studying pictures of Indian life as it existed at the Discovery, we have
before us a sort of object-lesson in the condition of our own remote
ancestors.
Now, the first European visitors made serious {17} errors in describing
Indian life. They applied European standards of judgment to things
Indian. A tadpole does not look in the least like a frog. An uninformed
person who should find one in a pool, and, a few weeks later, should
find a frog there, would never imagine that the tadpole had changed
into the frog. Now, Indian society was in what we may call the tadpole
stage. It was quite unlike European society, and yet it contained exactly
the same elements as those out of