The Founding of New England. James Truslow Adams

any member of a clan, the punishment of the guilty party became the duty of every other member. Under the compelling influence of such a code, the individual may often have had to appear more revengeful than he really was; and, as a matter of fact, the old law of an eye for an eye had already become softened by possibilities of compensation, through adoption or otherwise, even in the case of murder. Although prisoners of war were frequently tortured with fiendish ingenuity before being killed, in this case, also, adoption offered a milder alternative, often exercised. Scalping, as a sign of victory, was supposed to be performed only on the dead, and, although this theory did not always hold good,²² it must be remembered that the whites., as well as the Indians, engaged in the practice, with the difference that, while the natives did it for honor, the settlers did it for money. New England men, and even New England women, sold scalps to the authorities at so much a head; and, among the Pennsylvanians, prices went as high as fifty dollars for a female scalp, and one hundred and thirty for that of a boy under ten.²³ With the Indian, it was merely a custom to which he had become inured; and it should be noted that he wore his own hair accordingly, and carefully refrained from shaving the scalp-lock, which it might be his enemy’s glory, some day, to remove.

The influence of a formal code is seen also in his bearing of pain. In public, he would suffer torture of the most excruciating sort with complete stoicism, as required by the opinion of his fellows; whereas, in private, when not thus sustained, he would be childish in his self-abandon over the tooth-ache or other discomfort.²⁴ Hospitality was a cardinal virtue, to such an extent that “in some languages there was but one word both for generosity and bravery, and either was a sure avenue to distinction.”²⁵ Fierce and bloodthirsty in war, in domestic life he was affectionate to an extreme, especially toward children. His code, though different from the white man’s, was apparently adhered to quite as strictly; but, when the two were brought into contact, the vices inherent in each tended to develop, and it is natural that the weaker came to be considered hopelessly lazy, cruel, drunken, and untrustworthy.

At the time of discovery, the natives encountered along the Atlantic coast had advanced from savagery to the lower status of barbarism, and were still in the Stone Age. Although agriculture was practised to a considerable extent, the Indians, having no domestic animals, were still dependent upon the chase for a material part of their diet, and so must be considered as in the hunting stage, their advancement in culture being limited by that condition.²⁶ Their political organization was much misunderstood by the whites, with disastrous results. The settlers, utterly ignorant of savage life, tried to interpret such things as they saw in terms of their own institutions; whence came the kings, princes, and nobles, who parade the pages of our early writers. It is needless to say that nothing in Indian society in any way corresponded to these terms; and the failure of the whites to apprehend that Indian institutions had almost nothing in common with their own was the source of endless trouble and much needless bloodshed.

Among such Indians as had attained to some degree of social organization, which included the majority on the continent and all of those with whom the settlers came in contact, the primary unit was the clan, or gens. Within a clan, or gens, everyone was, or was supposed to be, descended from a common ancestor, and thus related to all the others—in the former the line of descent being traced through the female, and in the latter, through the male. Otherwise, the two organizations were identical, and we shall, therefore, speak in terms of the clan only. Clan members were absolutely forbidden to intermarry; they had the right to elect and depose the sachem and chiefs, to bestow names upon individuals, and to adopt strangers. They possessed common religious observances, were buried in one place, had mutual rights of inheritance in the property of deceased members, were under obligation to defend one another, and participated in the council.²⁷ The latter was essentially democratic, every man and woman in the clan having a voice, the sachem and chiefs being elected and deposed at will. The sachem was a civil officer having nothing to do with war, and the office was hereditary within the clan, though the succeeding relative, usually a brother or nephew, was elected. Chief was a very vague term, merely indicating one who had been elected for some special fitness, the number of chiefs being roughly proportioned to the size of the clan. Both sachem and chiefs attended the larger council of the tribe. While articles of personal property, such as clothes or weapons, were owned by the individual, the title to all land was in the clan, and the individual had the right of use only. Ownership in fee by the individual, as practised by the whites, was not known at all to the natives, nor was the native institution understood by the whites during the first years, so that the so-called land sales by the Indians were the cause of constant misunderstandings and ill-feeling.²⁸

Generally, each clan possessed a totem, or animal, from which it derived its name. These names, however, were not, as a rule, the common ones for the animal or object, but denoted a characteristic feature or haunt, and were less childish than they have been made to seem. Thus the Turtle Clan did not use the common word, ha’nowa, but hadiniaden, “they have upright necks.”²⁹ A curious importance was attached by the Indian to the names of individuals, and that first given in infancy was usually changed at puberty, and even at other times. Certain names were given only in certain clans, and the individual had property rights in his own name, which he could lend, sell, or even pawn.

The clan was thus the Indian’s little world. To its organization, and his own position in it, he owed almost all that made life worth living from the social standpoint—his name, to which a potent influence attached, his ceremonial rights, his rights of inheritance, his property rights in land, his obligation to defend and succor his fellow clansmen, his right to be protected in return, and, finally, his political right to elect and depose his sachem and chiefs. Notwithstanding the extremely democratic and individualistic nature of Indian society, and the looseness of its political organization, the influence of the clan sentiment upon the individual must have had enormous weight.³⁰ Above the clan was the tribe, which is difficult to define, but clearly marked, and which was the highest form of organization ordinarily attained by the natives—confederacies, such as the Iroquois, being exceptional. Tribal organization is more obvious to the untrained observer than that of clans, and whenever the settlers found a body of natives possessing an apparent degree of independence or territorial isolation, they gave them a tribal designation, derived from the dialect, locality, or name of the leader, though such designations are of almost no value for scientific classification.³¹ The tribe, which was composed of several clans, may be said to have had a common religious worship, a name, a definite territory, and the exclusive use of a dialect, together with the right to invest and depose the sachems and chiefs of the several clans.³² These chiefs and sachems formed the tribal council, which controlled the tribe’s “foreign policy,” sent and received ambassadors, made alliances, and declared war and peace, although it was a weak organization for military purposes. The assumed natural condition was war, not peace, and every tribe was theoretically at war with every other, unless a specific treaty of peace had been made. On the other hand, there was no forced military service, and public opinion or personal inclination alone sent the warrior along the war-path. Any person could organize an expedition at any time, and service was voluntary, operations, as a rule, being conducted suddenly, secretly, and on a small scale.

      As among all primitive peoples, the food-quest was one of the dominating factors in the Indian’s mode of life. This included hunting, both with weapons and with traps, fishing, by net and line, and agriculture, with primitive implements and manuring. Game was fairly abundant for a sparse population, and the bays, rivers, and lakes swarmed with many sorts of fish. Maize, the fundamental food-crop of all eastern North America, was raised as far north as northern Maine; pumpkins, beans, and other native vegetables were cultivated also, and tobacco was grown even beyond the northern limits of maize. Not only these crops, but the whole complex of cultivation which the Indians had developed, was of profound importance to the settlers, who, it maybe noted, also adopted in its entirety the native method of making maple-sugar.

In many cases, the quest of these various foods gave rise to seasonal migrations, from which was derived the false idea that the Indians were nomadic. Although this was not true, they nearly always did have two, and even three, places of residence—one in the summer, conveniently located for their fields of corn;