The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
It is by such considerations that we get a glimpse of some of the
general principles which attended the early periods of discovery and
settlement, in all parts of the continent. Adventurers came to find
gold, or furs, to amass wealth, get power, or to perform mere exploits.
Nobody cared much for the native race, beyond the fact of their being
the medium to lead to these specified objects. There were none, to
record accurately, their arts, and other peculiarities, which now excite
intense interest. They died away very fast, whole tribes becoming
extinct within a generation or two. The European fabrics, then
introduced, were so much superior to their own, that they, at once,
discontinued such rude arts as they practised, at least in our northern
latitudes. New adventurers followed in the track of Columbus, Amerigo,
Cabot, and their compeers and followers, who, in the lapse of time,
picked up, from the soil, pieces of coarse pottery, pestles and such
like things, and holding them up, said,--"See these!--here are evidences
of very great skill, and very high antiquity."
It is not the intention by any means, to assert, that there were not
antiquities of a far higher era, and nobler caste, but merely to impress
upon inquirers, the necessity of discriminating the different eras in
the chronology of our antiquities. All Indian pottery, north of the
capes of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, is of, or preceding the era of
the discovery; but there is found in graves, a species of pottery, and
vitrified ware, which was introduced, in the early stages of traffic, by
Europeans. Of this transition era between the dying away of the Indian
arts, and the introduction of the European, are the rude pastes, enamel
and glass beads, and short clay pipes of coarse texture, found in Indian
cemeteries, but not in the tumuli. In place of these, our ancient
Indians used wrought and unwrought sea shells of various species, and
pipes carved out of steatites and other soft materials.
* * * * *
Mr. Anderson remarks in his biography of Catharine Brown, that "the
Cherokees are said to possess a language, which is more precise and
powerful than any into which learning has poured richness of thought, or
genius breathed the enchantments of fancy and eloquence."
David Brown, in one of his letters, in the same volume, terms his people
the Tsallakee, of which we must therefore take "Cherokee," to be a
corruption. It is seen by the Cherokee alphabet, that the sound of _r_
does not occur in that language.
FAITH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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