While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
To be
taken captive by the Indians, was, among the early colonists,
considered the most terrible of all calamities, and it was
indeed a fearful thing to become the victim of their revenge.
But those who were enduring the actual sufferings of captivity,
or suffering still more from terror of uncertain evils, thought
little of the provocation given by the white people. The
innocent suffered for the guilty, and however persevering I
suppose the efforts of the government to be just in its infancy,
in a wild unknown country it was impossible to control
unprincipled marauders. Some atrocious act was first committed
by white men, which drove the Indian to retaliation, and
thinking pale faces were all alike, he did not wait till the
real offender fell into his hands.
When the white men first came, the Indian looked upon
them as superior beings. They were ready to worship Columbus and
his little party, and all others along the coast, until their
simple trust was outraged beyond endurance, they welcomed the
strangers, gave them food when they were hungry, and sheltered
them when they were cold. It was not till their encroachments
became alarming, that the Indians asserted their rights, and if
in all cases they had been as justly and kindly dealt with as by
the Quakers of Pennsylvania, there would not have been so dark a
record of sins, wrongs and tortures. If none but men of
principle had made treaties with them, and all whose duty it was
to observe them, had kept their faith, revenge had not come out
so prominently in Indian character.
But it was not in obedience to national policy that
those who were taken in battle, were put to the torture, burned,
and flayed. The Six
Nations had never found it necessary to build prisons, and dig
dungeons for their own people. If any man committed murder, they
sometimes decided that he should die, and sometimes bade him
flee far away where none who knew him could look upon his face.
But crimes were so rare that they had no criminal code, and when
they overcame their enemies, they either adopted them and
treated them as brethren, or put them immediately to death.
White people have often put Indians to death, and
oftener put them in dungeons to waste and starve, but it was not
part of their practice to adopt them and call them brethren. Had
they sometimes done this, or sent them freely back to their
friends unharmed, they might have conciliated where they were
only made more desperate.
When families are bereaved, they sought to be revenged
on those who had bereaved them, and when warriors returned from
battle, the prisoners were given up to the friends of the
afflicted. With them alone it remained to decide the fate of
those who fell into their hands. If they chose, they adopt them
in place of the husbands, or brothers, who were slain; and if
they so decided they were put to death, and in any way they
decreed. If the manner in which their friend had been killed was
aggravating and greatly enraged them, they were very likely to
decide upon torture, and inflicted it in a manner to produce the
greatest suffering. But in such cases, they sometimes showed
great magnanimity, and "returned good for evil."
Children were often adopted, and by a solemn ceremony
received into a particular tribe, and evermore treated as one of
their own people. You have been in the habit of listening to
heart-rending stories of cruelties to captives, but captives who
were adopted were never cruelly treated. Those who were
immediately put to death experienced great suffering for a few
hours, and those who were preserved were subjected to hardships
which seemed to them unspeakable, but they were such as are
necessarily incident to Indian life. They left no written
chronicles to tell to all future generations the wrongs and
tortures to which they were subjected, but one who sits with
them by their firesides, may have his blood frozen with horror
at the recitals of civilized barbarity.
And there was one species of wrong of which no captive
woman of any nation had to complain when she was thrown upon the
tender mercies of Indian warriors. Not among all the dark and
terrible records which their enemies have delighted to magnify,
is there a single instance of the outrage of that delicacy which
a pure minded woman cherishes at the expense of life, and
sacrifices not to any species of mere animal suffering. Of what
other nation can it thus be written, that their soldiers were
not more terrible at the firesides of their enemies than on the
battle-field, with all the fierce engines of war at their
command. To whatever motive it is to be ascribed, let this at
least stand out on the pages of Indian history as an ever
enduring monument to their honor.
A little book which professes to have been written for
the sole purpose of recording and perpetuating Indian
atrocities, and dwells upon them with infinite delight, alludes
to this redeeming trait in Indian character, but attempts to
ascribe it to the influence of superstition, as it were
necessary to find some evil or deteriorating motive for
everything noble, or pleasing in Indian character. Their
treatment of captives from among Indian nations were the same.
And I know not that there has been any satisfactory solution of
a characteristic which has been found among only one other
civilized Christian or barbarous nation. A wanderer among the
Indian tribes once asked an Indian why they thus honored their
women, and he said "The Great Spirit taught, and would punish us
if we did not."
Among the Germans I believed there existed the
same respect for woman, till they became civilized. They may
have been some superstitious fears mingled with a strong
governing and controlling principle, but it is not on this
account the less marvelous that whole nations, consisting of
millions, should have been so trained, religiously or
domestically, that degree of beauty or fascination placed under
their care, though hundreds of miles in the solitudes of the
wilderness, should have tempted them from the strictest honor
and the most delicate kindness.
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations and History of the Tuscarora Indians
