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As the question of the Indian population of the country has a
direct bearing upon the extent to which the land was actually
occupied, a few words on the subject will be introduced here,
particularly as the area included in the linguistic map is so
covered with color that it may convey a false impression of the
density of the Indian population. As a result of an investigation of
the subject of the early Indian population, Col. Mallery long ago
arrived at the conclusion that their settlements were not numerous,
and that the population, as compared with the enormous territory
occupied, was extremely small.1
Careful examination since the publication of the above tends to
corroborate the soundness of the conclusions there first formulated.
The subject may be set forth as follows:
The sea shore, the borders of lakes, and the banks of rivers, where
fish and shell-fish were to be obtained in large quantities, were
naturally the Indians’ chief resort, and at or near such places were
to be found their permanent settlements. As the settlements and
lines of travel of the early colonists were along the shore, the
lakes and the rivers, early estimates of the Indian population were
chiefly based upon the numbers congregated along these highways, it
being generally assumed that away from the routes of travel a like
population existed. Again, over-estimates of population resulted
from the fact that the same body of Indians visited different points
during the year, and not infrequently were counted two or three
times; change of permanent village sites also tended to augment
estimates of population.
For these and other reasons a greatly exaggerated idea of the Indian
population was obtained, and the impressions so derived have been
dissipated only in comparatively recent times.
As will be stated more fully later, the Indian was dependent to no
small degree upon natural products for his food supply. Could it be
affirmed that the North American Indians had increased to a point
where they pressed upon the food supply, it would imply a very much
larger population than we are justified in assuming from other
considerations. But for various reasons the Malthusian law, whether applicable elsewhere or not, can not be applied to the
Indians of this country. Everywhere bountiful nature had provided an
unfailing and practically inexhaustible food supply. The rivers
teemed with fish and mollusks, and the forests with game, while upon
all sides was an abundance of nutritious roots and seeds. All of
these sources were known, and to a large extent they were drawn upon
by the Indian, but the practical lesson of providing in the season
of plenty for the season of scarcity had been but imperfectly
learned, or, when learned, was but partially applied. Even when
taught by dire experience the necessity of laying up adequate
stores, it was the almost universal practice to waste great
quantities of food by a constant succession of feasts, in the
superstitious observances of which the stores were rapidly wasted
and plenty soon gave way to scarcity and even to famine.
Curiously enough, the hospitality which is so marked a trait among
our North American Indians had its source in a law, the invariable
practice of which has had a marked effect in retarding the
acquisition by the Indian of the virtue of providence. As is well
known, the basis of the Indian social organization was the kinship
system. By its provisions almost all property was possessed in
common by the gens or clan. Food, the most important of all, was by
no means left to be exclusively enjoyed by the individual or the
family obtaining it.
For instance, the distribution of game among the families of a party
was variously provided for in different tribes, but the practical
effect of the several customs relating thereto was the sharing of
the supply. The hungry Indian had but to ask to receive and this no
matter how small the supply, or how dark the future prospect. It was
not only his privilege to ask, it was his right to demand.
Undoubtedly what was originally a right, conferred by kinship
connections, ultimately assumed broader proportions, and finally
passed into the exercise of an almost indiscriminate hospitality. By
reason of this custom, the poor hunter was virtually placed upon
equality with the expert one, the lazy with the industrious, the
improvident with the more provident. Stories of Indian life abound
with instances of individual families or parties being called upon
by those less fortunate or provident to share their supplies.
The effect of such a system, admirable as it was in many
particulars, practically placed a premium upon idleness. Under such
communal rights and privileges a potent spur to industry and thrift
is wanting.
There is an obverse side to this problem, which a long and intimate
acquaintance with the Indians in their villages has forced upon the
writer. The communal ownership of food and the great hospitality
practiced by the Indian have had a very much greater influence upon
his character than that indicated in the foregoing remarks. The
peculiar institutions prevailing in this respect gave to each tribe
or clan a profound interest in the skill, ability and industry of
each member. He was the most valuable person in the community who
supplied it with the most of its necessities. For this reason the
successful hunter or fisherman was always held in high honor, and
the woman, who gathered great store of seeds, fruits, or roots, or
who cultivated a good corn-field, was one who commanded the respect
and received the highest approbation of the people. The simple and
rude ethics of a tribal people are very important to them, the more
so because of their communal institutions; and everywhere throughout
the tribes of the United States it is discovered that their rules of
conduct were deeply implanted in the minds of the people. An
organized system of teaching is always found, as it is the duty of
certain officers of the clan to instruct the young in all the
industries necessary to their rude life, and simple maxims of
industry abound among the tribes and are enforced in diverse and
interesting ways. The power of the elder men in the clan over its
young members is always very great, and the training of the youth is
constant and rigid. Besides this, a moral sentiment exists in favor
of primitive virtues which is very effective in molding character.
This may be illustrated in two ways.
Marriage among all Indian tribes is primarily by legal appointment,
as the young woman receives a husband from some other prescribed
clan or clans, and the elders of the clan, with certain exceptions,
control these marriages, and personal choice has little to do with
the affair. When marriages are proposed, the virtues and industry of
the candidates, and more than all, their ability to properly live as
married couples and to supply the clan or tribe with a due amount of
subsistence, are discussed long and earnestly, and the young man or
maiden who fails in this respect may fail in securing an eligible
and desirable match. And these motives are constantly presented to
the savage youth.
A simple democracy exists among these people, and they have a
variety of tribal offices to fill. In this way the men of the tribe
are graded, and they pass from grade to grade by a selection
practically made by the people. And this leads to a constant
discussion of the virtues and abilities of all the male members of
the clan, from boyhood to old age. He is most successful in
obtaining clan and tribal promotion who is most useful to the clan
and the tribe. In this manner all of the ambitious are stimulated,
and this incentive to industry is very great.
When brought into close contact with the Indian, and into intimate
acquaintance with his language, customs, and religious ideas, there
is a curious tendency observable in students to overlook aboriginal
vices and to exaggerate aboriginal virtues. It seems to be
forgotten that after all the Indian is a savage, with the
characteristics of a savage, and he is exalted even above the
civilized man. The tendency is exactly the reverse of what it is in
the case of those who view the Indian at a distance and with no
precise knowledge of any of his characteristics. In the estimation
of such persons the Indian’s vices greatly outweigh his virtues; his
language is a gibberish, his methods of war cowardly, his ideas of
religion utterly puerile.
The above tendencies are accentuated in the attempt to estimate the
comparative worth and position of individual tribes. No being is
more patriotic than the Indian. He believes himself to be the result
of a special creation by a partial deity and holds that his is the
one favored race. The name by which the tribes distinguish
themselves from other tribes indicates the further conviction that,
as the Indian is above all created things, so in like manner each
particular tribe is exalted above all others. “Men of men” is the
literal translation of one name; “the only men” of another, and so
on through the whole category. A long residence with any one tribe
frequently inoculates the student with the same patriotic spirit.
Bringing to his study of a particular tribe an inadequate conception
of Indian attainments and a low impression of their moral and
intellectual plane, the constant recital of its virtues, the bravery
and prowess of its men in war, their generosity, the chaste conduct
and obedience of its women as contrasted with the opposite qualities
of all other tribes, speedily tends to partisanship. He discovers
many virtues and finds that the moral and intellectual attainments
are higher than he supposed; but these advantages he imagines to be
possessed solely, or at least to an unusual degree, by the tribe in
question. Other tribes are assigned much lower rank in the scale.
The above is peculiarly true of the student of language. He who
studies only one Indian language and learns its manifold curious
grammatic devices, its wealth of words, its capacity of expression,
is speedily convinced of its superiority to all other Indian
tongues, and not infrequently to all languages by whomsoever spoken.
If like admirable characteristics are asserted for other tongues he
is apt to view them but as derivatives from one original. Thus he is
led to overlook the great truth that the mind of man is everywhere
practically the same, and that the innumerable differences of its
products are indices merely of different stages of growth or are the
results of different conditions of environment. In its development
the human mind is limited by no boundaries of tribe or race.
Again, a long acquaintance with many tribes in their homes leads to
the belief that savage people do not lack industry so much as
wisdom. They are capable of performing, and often do perform, great
and continuous labor. The men and women alike toil from day to day
and from year to year, engaged in those tasks that are presented
with the recurring seasons. In civilization, hunting and fishing are
often considered sports, but in savagery they are labors, and call
for endurance, patience, and sagacity. And these are exercised to a
reasonable degree among all savage peoples.
It is probable that the real difficulty of purchasing quantities of
food from Indians has, in most cases, not been properly understood.
Unless the alien is present at a time of great abundance, when there
is more on hand or easily obtainable than sufficient to supply the
wants of the people, food can not be bought of the Indians. This
arises from the fact that the tribal tenure is communal, and to get
food by purchase requires a treaty at which all the leading members
of the tribe are present and give consent.
As an illustration of the improvidence of the Indians generally, the
habits of the tribes along the Columbia River may be cited. The
Columbia River has often been pointed to as the probable source of a
great part of the Indian population of this country, because of the
enormous supply of salmon furnished by it and its tributaries. If an
abundant and readily obtained supply of food was all that was
necessary to insure a large population, and if population always
increased up to the limit of food supply, unquestionably the theory
of repeated migratory waves of surplus population from the Columbia
Valley would be plausible enough. It is only necessary, however, to
turn to the accounts of the earlier explorers of this region, Lewis
and Clarke, for example, to refute the idea, so far at least as the
Columbia Valley is concerned, although a study of the many diverse
languages spread over the United States would seem sufficiently to
prove that the tribes speaking them could not have originated at a
common center, unless, indeed, at a period anterior to the formation
of organized language.
The Indians inhabiting the Columbia Valley were divided into many
tribes, belonging to several distinct linguistic families. They all
were in the same culture status, however, and differed in habits and
arts only in minor particulars. All of them had recourse to the
salmon of the Columbia for the main part of their subsistence, and
all practiced similar crude methods of curing fish and storing it
away for the winter. Without exception, judging from the accounts of
the above mentioned and of more recent authors, all the tribes
suffered periodically more or less from insufficient food supply,
although, with the exercise of due forethought and economy, even
with their rude methods of catching and curing salmon, enough might
here have been cured annually to suffice for the wants of the Indian
population of the entire Northwest for several years.
In their ascent of the river in spring, before the salmon run, it
was only with great difficulty that Lewis and Clarke were able to
provide themselves by purchase with enough food to keep themselves
from starving. Several parties of Indians from the vicinity of the
Dalles, the best fishing station on the river, were met on their
way down in quest of food, their supply of dried salmon having been
entirely exhausted.
Nor is there anything in the accounts of any of the early visitors
to the Columbia Valley to authorize the belief that the population
there was a very large one. As was the case with all fish-stocked
streams, the Columbia was resorted to in the fishing season by many
tribes living at considerable distance from it; but there is no
evidence tending to show that the settled population of its banks or
of any part of its drainage basin was or ever had been by any means
excessive.
The Dalles, as stated above, was the best fishing station on the
river, and the settled population there may be taken as a fair index
of that of other favorable locations. The Dalles was visited by Ross
in July, 1811, and the following is his statement in regard to the
population:
The main camp of the Indians is situated at the head of the narrows,
and may contain, during the salmon season, 3,000 souls, or more; but
the constant inhabitants of the place do not exceed 100 persons, and
are called Wy-am-pams; the rest are all foreigners from different
tribes throughout the country, who resort hither, not for the
purpose of catching salmon, but chiefly for gambling and
speculation.2
And as it was on the Columbia with its enormous supply of fish, so
was it elsewhere in the United States.
Even the practice of agriculture, with its result of providing a
more certain and bountiful food supply, seems not to have had the
effect of materially augmenting the Indian population. At all
events, it is in California and Oregon, a region where agriculture
was scarcely practiced at all, that the most dense aboriginal
population lived. There is no reason to believe that there ever
existed within the limits of the region included in the map, with
the possible exception of certain areas in California, a population
equal to the natural food supply. On the contrary, there is every
reason for believing that the population at the time of the
discovery might have been many times more than what it actually was
had a wise economy been practised.
The effect of wars in decimating the people has often been greatly
exaggerated. Since the advent of the white man on the continent,
wars have prevailed to a degree far beyond that existing at an
earlier time. From the contest which necessarily arose between the
native tribes and invading nations many wars resulted, and their
history is well known. Again, tribes driven from their ancestral
homes often retreated to lands previously occupied by other tribes,
and intertribal wars resulted therefrom. The acquisition of firearms
and horses, through the agency of white men, also had its influence,
and when a commercial value was given to furs and skins, the Indian
abandoned agriculture to pursue hunting and traffic, and sought
new fields for such enterprises, and many new contests arose from
this cause. Altogether the character of the Indian since the
discovery of Columbus has been greatly changed, and he has become
far more warlike and predatory. Prior to that time, and far away in
the wilderness beyond such influence since that time, Indian tribes
seem to have lived together in comparative peace and to have settled
their difficulties by treaty methods. A few of the tribes had
distinct organizations for purposes of war; all recognized it to a
greater or less extent in their tribal organization; but from such
study as has been given the subject, and from the many facts
collected from time to time relating to the intercourse existing
between tribes, it appears that the Indians lived in comparative
peace. Their accumulations were not so great as to be tempting, and
their modes of warfare were not excessively destructive. Armed with
clubs and spears and bows and arrows, war could be prosecuted only
by hand-to-hand conflict, and depended largely upon individual
prowess, while battle for plunder, tribute, and conquest was almost
unknown. Such intertribal wars as occurred originated from other
causes, such as infraction of rights relating to hunting grounds and
fisheries, and still oftener prejudices growing out of their
superstitions.
That which kept the Indian population down sprang from another
source, which has sometimes been neglected. The Indians had no
reasonable or efficacious system of medicine. They believed that
diseases were caused by unseen evil beings and by witchcraft, and
every cough, every toothache, every headache, every chill, every
fever, every boil, and every wound, in fact, all their ailments,
were attributed to such cause. Their so-called medicine practice was
a horrible system of sorcery, and to such superstition human life
was sacrificed on an enormous scale. The sufferers were given over
to priest doctors to be tormented, bedeviled, and destroyed; and a
universal and profound belief in witchcraft made them suspicious,
and led to the killing of all suspected and obnoxious people, and
engendered blood feuds on a gigantic scale. It may be safely said
that while famine, pestilence, disease, and war may have killed
many, superstition killed more; in fact, a natural death in a savage
tent is a comparatively rare phenomenon; but death by sorcery,
medicine, and blood feud arising from a belief in witchcraft is
exceedingly common.
Scanty as was the population compared with the vast area teeming
with natural products capable of supporting human life, it may be
safely said that at the time of the discovery, and long prior
thereto, practically the whole of the area included in the present
map was claimed and to some extent occupied by Indian tribes; but
the possession of land by the Indian by no means implies occupancy
in the modern or civilized sense of the term. In the latter sense
occupation means to a great extent individual control and ownership. Very different was it with the Indians. Individual
ownership of land was, as a rule, a thing entirely foreign to the
Indian mind, and quite unknown in the culture stage to which he
belonged. All land, of whatever character or however utilized, was
held in common by the tribe, or in a few instances by the clan.
Apparently an exception to this broad statement is to be made in the
case of the Haida of the northwest coast, who have been studied by
Dawson. According to him3 the land is divided among the different
families and is held as strictly personal property, with hereditary
rights or possessions descending from one generation to another.
“The lands may be bartered or given away. The larger salmon streams
are, however, often the property jointly of a number of families.”
The tendency in this case is toward personal right in land.
Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico, 1891
Linguistic
Families
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