The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-11-21

people. o., r,u.
The Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Chero-
kaes now ON the Oklahoma reservations with the
Mnskbopees and Semnoles formed group by
tberspves and spoke a radical language OF their
own differing only in family patois When we Ell
fer the Rocky mountain region, we come IN con-
tact with the Cheyennes Comanches and rowing
+;bas of the Sioux and Apaches, who had strayed
away from their own territories.
Tn Colorado. Utah and Idaho, the Bannocks.
sbosbones and Yutes roamed in the lowest state Of
barbarisn. and are classified by some ethnoogists
as one great and separate family.
Advancing towards the Canadian boundary, we
enter the hunting grounds of the Selfish Nation,
commonly called Flat-Heads. The land OF the
Flat-Heads was that part of Montana lying west of
and near to the base of the main range OF the
Rocky mountains. In northern Montana roamed
the Black-Feet and around them dwelt nine other
tribes including the Spokanes, the Occur dAlenes,
the Kalispels, the Nez Perces, Pend dOreilles and
the Crows.
Descending to the Pacific coast line, AM al
together different class of people-saving the in
trusive Apache and Apache Navajo possessed the
deserts the river depressons and the Colorado del
ta With these the reader is already partially IA
miliar. and they will not detain
The Indians of the United States and Canada,
at the time of which we write were separated by
their mode of living into two national divisions.
These were the sedentaries living in villages like
the Hurons or, forming confederation like the
Iroquois who practiced rude horticulture and
stored Indian corn and beans for the winter
months, and the hunters and fishers, rovers Of the
forest and the plain, like the Algonquin and Daco-
tab. The sedentary races raised Indian corn,
pumpkins and tobacco. Corn supplemented by
fish and the flesh of wild animals. was their only
food. They knew nothing of alcoholic drinks,
bread, salt, pepper or vegetables.
remarkable fact, which seems to prove that
the American savage was familiar with the dsas-
trous effects of marriage between blood relations
of inbreeding, that warrior ever took
wife from the members of his own clan. The men
and women of the clan were nearly all, by consan-
guinity, related to one another. Immemorial tribal
law barred their marriage. The or woman
selected partner from another clan and the chill
dren of the marriage belonged to the clan of the
mother The children did not inherit from the
father, all his property even his weapons descend
ing by right to his brothers or to the sons of his
sisters. The children inherited from the mother.
And the reason for this custom that there could
be no doubt who was the mother of the child, but,
such was the looseness of morals among the In
dams, the husband might not always be the father
The religion of all the Indians was a stew Of
ridiculous fables of absurd superstitions and very
often of obscure and cruel rites Every nation had
its own divinities which it evolved from animate
or nanimate things or beings in the water in the
air or in the earth.
The Algonquins worshipped the Great Hare, the
and evil spirits, which they called Manitous.
The Iroquois, the Attiwandarons and the Hurons
peopled the universe with demons known as Okis
The Iroquois sacrificed human beings to their war,
god, Ariskone; the Pawnees slaughtered young
girls offering to the sum- and the Tanos and
southern tribes when in dire straits offered young
girls in sacrifice to their tutelary demons.
The spirits of the air dwet with thunder, light
ming, the moon, eclipses hurricanes, or in what
ever was unusual and carried fear to their hearts,
Rattlesnakes and other venomous reptiles, certain
animals and, with some, the bear, the coyote and
the beaver, because of their superior intelligence
were regarded as divinities. Many tribes believed
that the sky was inhabited by great and power
full being who arranged the seasons controlled the
winds and the waves and was able to help man
when he was encompassed with danger At times
they offered to their divnities, particularly to the
heavenly elements and the spirits dwelling in them
either to invoke their good will in some enterprise
or to placate them, gifts of tobacco or weapons
which they cast into water or fire.
Belief in the Immortality of the soul was uni
versal among the tribes with the solitary exception
of the Peourian Illinois, who believed that soul and
body expired at the same time.
They pushed their belief in immortality to its
limit, for they accorded life after death to all ami
mails, and in some instances to inorganic things.
1t is impossible to state, with any approach to
accuracy, what was the population of North Amer
lea, excluding Mexico, when Champlain entered the
st. Lawrence in 1912 To Judge from the number
of tribes, we might quite naturally assume the pop
1llatinn 70 he n1,rnaro,,s e