Posted on 07/26/2002 5:10:10 PM PDT by vannrox
Inside a sealed tank in a Suitland, Md., warehouse rests a brain that, for the past 86 years, has refused to die. The lump of preserved tissue doesn't pulsate or glow like the gory centerpiece of some late-night monster movie. Rather, it reaches out and grabs people because it's infused with the symbolic power of a real-life horror story... the near-destruction of several Native American tribes by white California settlers in the late 1800s.
Here we can see two men. One is he who walked the moccasin trails of James Fenimore Cooper's imagination ... Chingachgook, the noble man of "The Leatherstocking Tales", the Last of the Mohicans. In Cooper's fictional account of the fate of the Mohican people, Chingachgook was the lonely figure left behind by his people. Slowly they all died; vanished ... until Chingachgook was left as the sole inheritor of his people's legacy.
The second man was he who walked in the shadows of northern California's rugged high country. Unlike Chingachgook, he was real. His was not a tale of fiction, but the reality of the darker side of humanity. He was a son of his people ... the Yahi. Like Chingachgook, he was the lonely figure left behind in a world strange and frighteningly different. His people had all died; vanished ... he too was the sole inheritor of his tribe's legacy. He, Ishi, was the last of the Yahi. And he was to bequeath his legacy to the world so all would know that the proud Yahi once flourished in this world
Who were Ishi's lost people? Who were the Yahi? They were the southernmost people of the Yana tribe whose homeland had been the Mount Lassen Foothills of northern California. The Yana ancestors had once inhabited the fertile upper Sacramento Valley, at a time when there was but one single Hokan language (one of six North American linguistic families). It is believed that 3 to 4 thousand years ago, Hokan, like all languages, evolved into a dozen new tongues spoken by the various Hokan people who continued to occupy these valleys, living the life of hunter-gatherers, for millennia. They harvested wild roots, berries, bark, and foliage. They fished the numerous streams. The surrounding hills and mountains were bountiful hunting grounds. Deer and other game were tracked as they made their seasonal migrations to the high grounds and harvested by bow and arrow. Food sources were abundant in the game laden hills, valley forests, streams, and meadows. Such was the undisturbed Yana way of life for 2 to 3 thousand years.
Having flourished in the rich valley for ages, the Yana were dispossessed as others have been since time immemorial. They were victims of the powerful, numerous Winton. Desiring the fertile valleys of the Sacramento, the invading Winton drove the Yana from their homes. The exiled people were driven into the hill country and forced to adapt to this new environment. Adapt they did and here they would stay for a thousand years. The exodus forced an instant cultural evolution, from valley to hill people. The new country, formerly Yana hunting grounds, was situated east of the Sacramento River, south of the Pit River. Present day Red Bluff, California, along I-5, stands just 6-10 miles west of the Yank's territory. It was not the fertile lowlands they were accustomed to. It was not as bountiful as the valley. Life was much harder to sustain in the high country, but the Yana were a strong people ... Isolated, independent, resilient, and self-interested, they would fight to survive. They were proud and they were deeply rooted. Tribal history was infused into their hearts and burned into their minds. They knew where they came from, what they were, and who they were. They were Yana.
The bordering environs were of no great consequence to the Yana. They gave no indication they wished to leave the foothills of Mount Lassen, nor did the neighboring peoples covet the harsh, nearly desolate lands they possessed. Though isolated, the Yana were not immobilized in their country. They moved freely about, maintaining friendly relations and trade with some tribes; engaged in hostile clashes and raids with others. Rugged, strong, and fierce fighters, the Yana terrified their enemies, most especially the Winton who had the dubious honor of being the primary target for Yana raiding. In a somewhat bitter irony, the Winton, who first drove the Hokan-Yana people from their Sacramento homeland long ago, were now the recipients of Yana terror. And it was primarily the Wintu who influenced white settlers' perception of the Yana with tales of being victimized by "wild Indians" who swooped down upon them, carrying off captives and raiding their villages. Though the conflict was a mutual affair, the picture painted by the Wintu was one of a fierce, war-like people who must be eradicated from the region. The image was to remain in the minds of many settlers who took up the task with less than honorable enthusiasm.
Whatever the relationship to other tribes, the Yana's one constant concern was the Yana. Having survived as a people for thousands of years, their culture, history, families, and future were paramount to all else. Whatever occurred in "other" worlds mattered little to them, as long as Yana country was preserved. They had no interest in discovering or exploring the mysteries beyond their borders. In Theodora Kroeber's words, they were "provincials" ... and the provincial proud Yana continued on, with little change to their way of life, into Ishi's life. This traditional Yana culture was the world he was born into during the latter half of the 19th century. At once the same, and yet different. Life within Yana country remained as it was for generations and generations, but the world around them was rapidly altering, pushing, restructuring. It was in a state of immense transition. Changes were in the wind for the Yana Yahi and the boy Ishi was destined to bear the full weight of those winds.
In the late 1840's, the end of the Yahi was set in motion by events which took place far from Yahi lands. The 1848 land grants by Mexico ended the Spanish-Mexican era (which had little effect upon the Yana) and ushered in the Anglo-Saxon era. The exchange of land claims, augmented by the discovery of gold in the riverbeds along the foothills of California's high country, set the stage for the tragic demise of the Yana. The wheels of time were spinning wildly into their world.
There were, at this critical time in northern Californian history, approximately 2 to 3 thousand Yana in a 2,400 square mile homeland, comprised of four sub-tribes. Differing in language, these four each had their own separate territory ... the Northern Yana, the Central Yana, the Southern Yana, and the Yahi. At the time of Ishi's birth (c. 1862), daily life remained much as it had been for thousands of years. However, an external element had begun to pierce Yana life. Immigrant people were encircling, then entering the hill country; hunting, land staking, pasturing livestock. The world was growing smaller; the Yahi were no longer their own concern. Game and vegetation were becoming scarce while hunger was a frequent visitor. The mounting pressure from without was exacting a heavy toll within. Yana population numbers plummeted. Within a decade, as little as 30 Northern and Central Yana were believed to be alive. No Southern Yana were left at all, and the southernmost band of the Yana, Ishi's Yahi, were thought to be entirely gone. What happened to these Hokan people who had occupied and survived the rugged terrain of northern California's hill country for a millennium? ... Tragedy struck with lightning swiftness.
The discovery of gold brought to the California hills a frenzied, unbridled, ruthless group who flooded the "new" territory by the thousands. Unrestrained by authorities (as were the Spanish-Mexicans), these new arrivals to California came bearing an entirely different perspective on the native people. Simply put, they were a breed apart. They weren't interested in co-existing or establishing friendly relations with the inhabitants of the hills. These were, for the most part, callous, hardened men ... miners, trappers, hunters, adventurers, and criminals. Many of the immigrant families that followed, though not necessarily psychotic, were equally hardened ... transformed from who they once were prior to their western trek. (Not all who migrated westward were ruthless killers. Unfortunately, those who were left a greater mark.) Just as LOTM's Magua was embittered and traumatized by life's cruelties, so too were these semi-nomads. Hardship, heartache, tragedy, and despair disallowed their humanity to flourish or respond to pleas for help. (There were numerous accounts of travelers who, upon reaching the rough mountain passes, abandoned sick family members, including children, to their own fate.) By journey's end, many who came seeking a new life had changed; they were perverse, ruthless, twisted ... willing to stand by while others died, or all to eager to abandon even their loved ones if the inconvenience proved too great. They came, whether or not it was consciously understood, to dispossess those already there. To this new breed of immigrants, the Yana were to be either exploited or exterminated. In the course of a boy's lifetime, they achieved both.
As more ranchers sought pasture land, and more families cleared claims and hunted game, Yahi survival became that more tenuous. Hunger often drove Yahi to take cattle or sheep. Anger often drove ranchers to take Yahi. They were hunted down, killed, kidnapped, and enslaved. Scalping suddenly became a home business. Villages were attacked without provocation, leaving 30 or 40 dead at a time. Despite the enormity of the enemy's numbers, the Yana resisted. In a spirited last stand that rivaled the defenders of the Alamo, of all the Yana it was the Yahi who offered the greatest resistance. They raided the ranches and farms; they killed whites and ransacked cabins. Stories of murdered children (a few were true) spread wildly across the new settlements, inciting vigilante groups to seek their own justice. Murder for murder. Raid for raid. Brutal retaliation was the name of the game. Diseases ran rampant. The Yahi declined with horrid rapidity. It was among the bloodiest wars of the western frontiers and the outcome was never really in doubt. Nonetheless, despite the tragedy of this clash, there is something heroic and admirable in its events. It was at one time hauntingly sorrowful and yet inspiring. The will ... the spirit of resistance... the determination to protect, defend, and survive is a tribute to the Yahi people. This spirit was personified in Ishi ... the real-life counterpart to the Mohican Chingachgook.
Just as the Mohicans in the eastern frontiers were hopelessly caught in territorial conflicts, so too were the Yana. The greatest differences were duration and fate. The Mohicans had engaged in a defense of their lands for two centuries; the Yana for twenty two years. The Mohicans survived as a people; the Yana vanished. Like the fictional Chingachgook, Cooper's grieving last Mohican; Ishi was destined to be an historic grieving last Yahi.
Recalling once again Cooper's tale of tragedy and destruction, we find the story of Chingachgook and his son Uncas riveting, touching. They are running out of time, struggling to hang on, but the Mohicans begin to vanish. One by one they are gone, until only a father and his son remain. We feel the weight on Chingachgook's shoulders as he vainly attempts to steer life's canoe to placid waters. In the end, he can not fight against the current and finds himself coasting along the turbulent water alone. It is an American tragedy that Cooper speaks of ... one he knew full well to be much more than a fictional work. Yet even Cooper's great imagination could not have foreseen the likes of an Ishi stumbling out from a stone age world into the 20th century.
While still a child, Ishi's own father was killed in a village massacre. The boy and his mother escaped by jumping into a nearby river. On and on it went. The Yahi were being slaughtered, until only a remnant band of 40 remained. Unbelievably, the survivors of this tiny band hid successfully for nearly a half century, undetected by the outside world. It was firmly believed, even by locals who went up into the foothills of the Lassen, that the Yahi, or "Mill Creek Indians", were a people of the past. Gone. No record of their history, origins, culture, or language having survived. In time, however, the world would be forced to confront and rediscover the Yahi.
Living in the Shadows of Life
In November of 1908, a surveyor team hired by the Oro Light and Power Company, accompanied by guide Merle Apperson traveled to Deer Creek, the heart of Yahi country. Assuming the country to be uninhabited, the crew went about its business with not a thought to the former occupants. Two of the group were returning to camp one day when they had an unexpected run in. What they unwittingly and carelessly stumbled upon was an Indian man fishing in the creek. They hurried back to relate their tale of a "wild Indian", but most brushed it off as nonsense. Not Merle Apperson. The following morning he led the way along Deer Creek to where he suspected there may have been a camp. He was right. The surveyors walked into the tiny village. As far as they could tell, it was inhabited by three "wild" Indians ... an old man, an old sick woman, and a younger woman. The man they had seen the day before was not visible. These were Yahi ... Ishi's mother, "sister", and the elderly man. This small remnant of the 40 Yahi had been hiding for years, eluding capture or detection by living in their cunningly hidden settlement like trapped animals. Their existence was drab ... depressing. Starvation, fear, illness, grief ... such was their daily burden. The younger woman and the old man fled to hide as the intruders approached the village, but the old woman could not run. She had been covered with blankets in the hope that she would not be noticed.
The men entered the hideaway and surveyed it well. They poked around, eyeing whatever goods were present. They then shook the blankets and discovered the Indian. Her mourning was obvious by her shorn hair. Her deer thong wrapped legs were swollen and she could not walk. She was weak, sick, and in pain and she shook with fear as the strangers looked her over. An attempt was made to communicate but with no success. What a moment of terror this must have been for Ishi's mother. Incredibly, after seeing with their own eyes the pitiful state this woman was in, the intruders ransacked the village, taking with them every last thing that could be carried out. Everything, even food. With that, they coldly walked out of there, leaving the woman to die. According to Apperson, he alone was appalled at his companions' actions and protested the thievery. He claims he pleaded with the others that they should at least transport the woman to their camp for care. His protestations fell upon deaf ears. What these men had done with such chillingly casual ease was strip four terrified, starving people of their meager possessions, including items they needed to find food. They had handed down a death sentence, with no mercy or cause, to the last four surviving members of a people who had inhabited, thrived, and survived the northern California region for thousands of years. In a fateful moment, brought on by the actions of callous men, the Yahi people apparently had come to an end.
After the departure of the thieves, Ishi returned. No food, tools, utensils, or comforts were left. It was he and his mother ... alone. The other two never returned, nor was Ishi able to find any sign of them. They were gone. Dead. Ishi reasoned they had either drowned during their desperate escape, or had been eaten by one of the numerous predators in the back country. What a tragic, sad end to people who managed to survive so long against desperately fatal odds. Before long, even Ishi's last living Yahi relative, his mother, was dead. He was now truly, truly alone. It is chillingly haunting to even attempt to hear in one's mind the death song Ishi must have sang for his companions, for his mother. What a mournful sound must have risen from the cliffs along Deer Creek in 1908.
Imagine if you can, bearing the burden of grief that Ishi bore. From the time he was a child, he witnessed the systematic slaughter of his people. He lived his entire life in fear. Always hiding, always running. He watched helplessly as his friends and relatives were killed, lost, or died of hunger. He struggled to survive while his world grew smaller and smaller. His tiny circle of companions, his last connection to the Yahi and their long tradition, disappeared. They dwindled away before him and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Everything was gone. His world had vanished and he had not one soul to turn to, to talk to, to walk with. He was the only Yahi speaking person alive in the world. No one else, they were all gone, but he ... Ishi. He was the finale.
Crossing the Rubicon Trail
Miraculously, Ishi survived the death sentence of 1908. With no home, shelter, tools, food, or friend he somehow found a way to live. Grief was his constant companion, loneliness his curse, ... but despair never overtook this last Yahi. He went on despite life's tragic burdens. His survival is a beautiful tribute to the resiliency of the human spirit. Ishi, though broken hearted, starving, lonely, and scared ... wanted to live. Yahi history; its beginnings, events, culture, language, and its people was alive and infused into one last soul. As long as Ishi lived, the Yahi lived. Thousands of years had rolled by in its momentous course until they had climaxed into one last, single moment ... one person. Ishi WAS Yahi.
Three years had passed since the raid on his village and the death of his family. It had been that long since he had heard a single utterance from the lips of another Yahi. Nearly dead from starvation, and perhaps desperate for human companionship, Ishi made a decision. Knowing he would die if he stayed at Deer Creek, and fearing he would be killed if he left, Ishi took a chance. A chance on life. He would depart the Yahi world and enter the world of the whites. Maybe he would die, maybe he would live. He had to try.
On the morning of August 29, 1911, in a slaughter house corral, two miles from the town of Oroville, a nearly dead "wild man" is discovered. He is emaciated, exhausted, frightened, and starved. The sheriff takes the Indian into custody, but is baffled as to what to do next. Locked in a cell, unable to communicate with any number of Indians brought before him, the traumatized man awaited his yet unknown fate.
In a carnival atmosphere, Ishi, the "wild man" caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. News of his discovery reached two professors of anthropology at the University of California, Alfred L. Kroeber and T. T. Waterman. Both men had an interest in the human saga being played out in Oroville for several reasons. Beyond the obvious general anthropological interest, they had been searching for the lost "wild man" that had been sited three years earlier by the surveyor crew a few miles north of Oroville ... in the Deer Creek region. They wondered if this could be him.
Two days after Ishi's discovery, Waterman was on a train to Oroville to assume responsibility for the "wild man." Kroeber and Waterman became guardians of Ishi, the last Yahi. For nearly five years Ishi lived at the university's museum while teaching the professors whatever he was able to communicate about the Yahi people. There was no other speakers of his tongue so communication was difficult and tedious. Kroeber persevered and managed to learn and communicate in 'conversational' Yahi, while Ishi learned about life in 20th century America.
The bond that developed between Kroeber and Ishi was, by all accounts, a close one. They both came to depend upon one another, not only for the pursuits of study they were engaged in, but on a personal level. For Ishi, this relationship must have been especially precious, for he had been alone for so long. (It was Kroeber who named him "Ishi", which is Yahi for 'man'. Yahi tradition prevented Ishi from speaking his own name or the names of the dead.)
As Ishi told the Yahi story, Kroeber became anxious to see the country of which he spoke. The village sites, the spots they frequented for food, ... the place where Ishi and his mother parted for the last time. At first, Ishi resisted, afraid to revisit the places at which he had experienced both joy and sorrow. Eventually, he did agree. Ishi was going home. The results of the 1914 excursion to Yahi country are invaluable. Kroeber drew maps, marking crucial sites of Ishi's life, and recorded the place names as the Yahi knew them. There were also photographs taken of both locations and of Ishi demonstrating the Yahi methods of crafting arrow heads, arrows, bows, spears, etc. In a strange way, Kroeber was actually recording the past through living history in the present for the future. It was as if he had reached back in time, pulled forth a man of another age, and asked him; "Please show me what life was like long ago." Ishi was physically contemporary, though culturally and socially antiquated. That alone bears reflection.
The record of Yahi history ... its people, language, beliefs, etc. , that we now have is the result and gift of Ishi's survival and entrance into the modern world. Though he had been cruelly left behind as the sole survivor of his people, Ishi was able to offer his people's legacy and mark to be remembered forever. How close we came to losing knowledge of the Yahi altogether! Through him we have language, Yahi beliefs and myths, cultural information, and most poignantly, a first hand account of what happened to the Yahi in their final chapter. A detailed personal story of tragedy, resilience, determination, and pain. Had the world not known Ishi, the Yahi would have passed away, remembered as nothing more than the fierce, troublesome "Mill Creek Indians" who had a brief and violent appearance on the stage of American expansion.
Ishi's contributions to the search for the Yahi were incomplete. Though he had offered a massive, exhaustive quantity of knowledge, time which had been generous thus far, was running out. Four and a half years of research, demonstrations, instruction ... and still there were so many questions. But the only source of Yahi life could not stay forever. After battling several illnesses during the course of his years at the museum, Ishi eventually contracted tuberculosis. He was exhausted, unable to fight this one last battle. While his friend Professor Kroeber was away in New York, Ishi died on March 25, 1916 in his bed. The last Yahi had departed this world. There was no one left to sing his death song.
Was Ishi the last? Is is possible that somewhere, in some remote area, as yet untouched by man... maybe not in the United States, but elsewhere... there are other remnants of the Pre-Colombian Western World? Who knows? Certainly the Jungles of South and Central America hold primative peoples... Certainly the islands of the South pacific have their share of "Stone Age" Cultures... When will one of these... last remnants of an earlier era... walk out to face the uncertainty of the modern world, and unlock for us the mysteries of our own past?
Thanks to immigration, I feel like that too.
The Union treats the Indians with less cupidity and violence than the several states, but the two governments are alike deficient in good faith. The states extend what they call the benefits of their laws to the Indians, believing that the tribes will recede rather than submit to them; and the central government, which promises a permanent refuge to these unhappy beings in the West, is well aware of its inability to secure it to them.25 Thus the tyranny of the states obliges the savages to retire; the Union, by its promises and resources, facilitates their retreat; and these measures tend to precisely the same end.26
"By the will of our Father in heaven, the Governor of the whole world," said the Cherokees in their petition to Congress,27 "the red man of America has become small, and the white man great and renowned. When the ancestors of the people of these United States first came to the shores of America, they found the red man strong: though he was ignorant and savage, yet he received them kindly and gave them dry land to rest their weary feet. They met in peace and shook hands in token of friendship. Whatever the white man wanted and asked of the Indian, the latter willingly gave. At that time the Indian was the lord, and the white man the suppliant. But now the scene has changed. The strength of the red man has become weakness. As his neighbors increased in numbers, his power became less and less; and now, of the many and powerful tribes who once covered these United States, only a few are to be seen--a few whom a sweeping pestilence has left. The Northern tribes, who were once so numerous and powerful, are now nearly extinct. Thus it has happened to the red man in America. Shall we, who are remnants, share the same fate? "The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from our fathers, who possessed it from time immemorial, as a gift from our common Father in heaven. They bequeathed it to us as their children, and we have sacredly kept it, as containing the remains of our beloved men. This right of inheritance we have never ceded nor ever forfeited. Permit us to ask what better right can the people have to a country than the right of inheritance and immemorial peaceable possession? We know it is said of late by the state of Georgia and by the Executive of the United States that we have forfeited this right; but we think this is said gratuitously. At what time have we made the forfeit? What great crime have we committed whereby we must forever be divested of our country and rights? Was it when we were hostile to the United States and took part with the King of Great Britain during the struggle for independence? If so, why was not this forfeiture declared in the first treaty of peace between the United States and our beloved men? Why was not such an article as the following inserted in the treaty: 'The United States give peace to the Cherokees, but, for the part they took in the late war, declare them to be but tenants at will, to be removed when the convenience of the states within whose chartered limits they live shall require it'? That was the proper time to assume such a possession. But it was not thought of; nor would our forefathers have agreed to any treaty whose tendency was to deprive them of their rights and their country."
Such is the language of the Indians: what they say is true; what they foresee seems inevitable. From whichever side we consider the destinies of the aborigines of North America, their calamities appear irremediable: if they continue barbarous, they are forced to retire; if they attempt to civilize themselves, the contact of a more civilized community subjects them to oppression and destitution. They perish if they continue to wander from waste to waste, and if they attempt to settle they still must perish. The assistance of Europeans is necessary to instruct them, but the approach of Europeans corrupts and repels them into savage life. They refuse to change their habits as long as their solitudes are their own, and it is too late to change them when at last they are forced to submit.
The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds, like wild beasts; they sacked the New World like a city taken by storm, with no discernment or compassion; but destruction must cease at last and frenzy has a limit: the remnant of the Indian population which had escaped the massacre mixed with its conquerors and adopted in the end their religion and their manners.28 The conduct of the Americans of the United States towards the aborigines is characterized, on the other hand, by a singular attachment to the formalities of law. Provided that the Indians retain their barbarous condition, the Americans take no part in their affairs; they treat them as independent nations and do not possess themselves of their hunting-grounds without a treaty of purchase; and if an Indian nation happens to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon their territory, they kindly take them by the hand and transport them to a grave far from the land of their fathers.
The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor did they succeed even in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity, tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world.29 It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity.
When the Indians were the sole inhabitants of the wilds whence they have since been expelled, their wants were few. Their arms were of their own manufacture, their only drink was the water of the brook, and their clothes consisted of the skins of animals, whose flesh furnished them with food.
The Europeans introduced among the savages of North America firearms, ardent spirits, and iron; they taught them to exchange for manufactured stuffs the rough garments that had previously satisfied their untutored simplicity. Having acquired new tastes, without the arts by which they could be gratified, the Indians were obliged to have recourse to the workmanship of the whites; but in return for their productions the savage had nothing to offer except the rich furs that still abounded in his woods. Hence the chase became necessary, not merely to provide for his subsistence, but to satisfy the frivolous desires of Europeans. He no longer hunted merely to obtain food, but to procure the only objects of barter which he could offer.3 While the wants of the natives were thus increasing, their resources continued to diminish. From the moment when a European settlement is formed in the neighborhood of the territory occupied by the Indians, the beasts of chase take the alarm.4 Thousands of savages, wandering in the forests and destitute of any fixed dwelling, did not disturb them; but as soon as the continuous sounds of European labor are heard in their neighborhood, they begin to flee away and retire to the West, where their instinct teaches them that they will still find deserts of immeasurable extent. "The buffalo is constantly receding," say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their Report of the year 1829; ®a few years since they approached the base of the Allegheny; and a few years hence they may even be rare upon the immense plains which extend to the base of the Rocky Mountains." I have been assured that this effect of the approach of the whites is often felt at two hundred leagues' distance from their frontier. Their influence is thus exerted over tribes whose name is unknown to them, and who suffer the evils of usurpation long before they are acquainted with the authors of their distress.5
Bold adventurers soon penetrate into the country the Indians have deserted, and when they have advanced about fifteen or twenty leagues from the extreme frontiers of the whites, they begin to build habitations for civilized beings in the midst of the wilderness. This is done without difficulty, as the territory of a hunting nation is ill defined; it is the common property of the tribe and belongs to no one in particular, so that individual interests are not concerned in protecting any part of it.
A few European families, occupying points very remote from one another, soon drive away the wild animals that remain between their places of abode. The Indians, who had previously lived in a sort of abundance, then find it difficult to subsist, and still more difficult to procure the articles of barter that they stand in need of. To drive away their game has the same effect as to render sterile the fields of our agriculturists; deprived of the means of subsistence, they are reduced, like famished wolves, to prowl through the forsaken woods in quest of prey. Their instinctive love of country attaches them to the soil that gave them birth,6 even after it has ceased to yield anything but misery and death. At length they are compelled to acquiesce and depart; they follow the traces of the elk, the buffalo, and the beaver and are guided by these wild animals in the choice of their future country. Properly speaking, therefore, it is not the Europeans who drive away the natives of America; it is famine, a happy distinction which had escaped the casuists of former times and for which we are indebted to modern discovery!
It is impossible to conceive the frightful sufferings that attend these forced migrations. They are undertaken by a people already exhausted and reduced; and the countries to which the newcomers betake themselves are inhabited by other tribes, which receive them with jealous hostility. Hunger is in the rear, war awaits them, and misery besets them on all sides. To escape from so many enemies, they separate, and each individual endeavors to procure secretly the means of supporting his existence by isolating himself, living in the immensity of the desert like an outcast in civilized society. The social tie, which distress had long since weakened, is then dissolved; they have no longer a country, and soon they will not be a people; their very families are obliterated; their common name is forgotten; their language perishes; and all traces of their origin disappear. Their nation has ceased to exist except in the recollection of the antiquaries of America and a few of the learned of Europe.
I should be sorry to have my reader suppose that I am coloring the picture too highly; I saw with my own eyes many of the miseries that I have just described, and was the witness of sufferings that I have not the power to portray.
We know that this is not true as a number of Indians were farmers and weavers. Not to mention manufactures of alcohol. You might find it interesting to learn how the Maya for example ingested alcohol. Drinking it is not the only way and their way got you very very drunk.
a.cricket
Such as? Are you referring to the far Westerners? And Tocqueville notes that the even the Indians who chose to try to adopt the European method of husbandry (notably the Cherokee) were squeezed out of the market by far more experienced and skillful immigrants.
No, but before the white man showed up, there was an aboriginal people who sank lower and stood taller than we do.
And all but we wiped them from the face of the earth. While the typically Green melodrama about the noble savage is tiresome, we mustn't allow that to blind us to the fact that a stain of bloodguilt exists upon our nation.
Tocqueville like most Europeans had a romanticized and false view of what Indian culture and life were. It varied far more then the cultures of Europe. Read about the Iroquois and the Algonquian. Learn about the Ohio valley and the Mound Builders.
a.cricket
Granted. And what happened to them?
For the most part they are still there if you look. Except for the mound builders of the Ohio Valley who over farmed their land and starved to death or left about 100 years before Columbus arrived.
The point I am trying to make, perhaps poorly, is that Tocqueville one-dimensional simple noble savage never existed. And basically it was European’s sitting around their salons in Paris that created him.
a.cricket
I disagree in part. Of course the exaggerated image was made, and still remains today (though one wonders why living w/o our comforts is so attractive, no?); however, is there not an element of truth to it, more for the wandering tribes of the deep woods and the south Plains, perhaps? Did they not live and die in a way that at some fundamental level seems better than our way?
NO! Good Grief! You have never been hungry have you? I mean really hungry not just skipped a few meals hungry. Where you eat rotting food and leaves hungry. Never had tetanus. Your teeth worn down to nubs and no dental care. Frost bite. I could go on and on.
I have no desire to be married off at age twelve and share my husband with two or three other wives. Have a baby every couple of years and watch most of them die from simple illness or injury. Worn out and dead for the most part by age thirty. If I managed to avoid being killed or taken captive by my not so friendly neighbors. Not this kid. I have been there, seen that and I burned the T-shirt.
You go live and die like that if you wish. It sounds romantic. It is nasty, brutish and short.
a.cricket
But I have never starved for a week on the hunt, either. But such disregard for pain, and such revelry! It seems as though, despite all the benefits of our way of life, we lose something. To me, anyhow.
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