Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico Collections – Page 33 of 65

Indian Missions

Indian Medicine

Medicine is an agent or influence employed to prevent, alleviate, or cure some pathological condition or its symptoms. The scope of such agents among the Indians was extensive, ranging, as among other primitive peoples, from magic, prayer, force of suggestion, and a multitude of symbolic and empirical means, to actual and more rationally used remedies. Where the Indians are in contact with whites the old methods of combating physical ills are slowly giving way to the curative agencies of civilization. The white man in turn has adopted from the Indians a number of valuable medicinal plants, such as cinchona, jalapa, … Read more

Indian Marriage

Indian Languages

The American languages show considerable variety in phonetics and structure. While some are vocalic and appear melodious to our ear, others contain many consonant sounds to which we are unaccustomed and which seem to give them a harsh character. Particularly frequent are sounds produced by contact between the base of the tongue and the soft palate, similar to the Scotch ch in loch, and a number of explosive l’s, which are produced by pressing the tongue against the palate and suddenly expelling the air between the teeth. Harshness produced by clustering consonants is peculiar to the northwest coast of America. … Read more

Indian Land Tenure

The Indian conceived of the earth as mother, and as mother she provided food for her children. The words in the various languages which refer to the land as ” mother ” were used only in a sacred or religious sense. In this primitive and religious sense land was not regarded as property; it was like the air, it was something necessary tot he life of the race, and therefore not to be appropriated by any individual or group of individuals to the permanent exclusion of all others. Other words referring to the earth as “soil” to be used and … Read more

Indian Kinship

The foundation of social organization, and hence of government, the tangible form of social organization, was originally the bond of real and, legal blood kinship. The recognition and perpetuation of the ties of blood kinship were the first important steps in the permanent social organization of society. Among the North American Indians kinship is primarily the relation subsisting between two or more persons whose blood is derived from common ancestors through lawful marriage. Persons between who in kinship subsists are called kin or kindred. Kinship may be lineal or collateral. By birth through the natural order of descent kindred are … Read more

Indian Industries League

Indian Industries League – A philanthropic organization, originally the Indian industries department of the National Indian Association, but incorporated as an independent body at Boston, Mass., in 1901. Its object is “to open individual opportunities of work, or of education to be used for self-support, to individual Indians, and to build up self-supporting industries in Indian communities.” As a department of the national organization the Indian industries gained its first important impetus in 1892, when it held at the Mechanics Fair, in Boston, an exhibition of Indian bead work and of class-room work in iron, tin, wood, leather, and lace. … Read more

Indian Hunting

Hunting. The pursuit of game may be divided into two sets of activities, which correspond to military strategy and tactics, the one including the whole series of traps, the other hunting weapons and processes. Beginning with the latter, the following 9 classes embrace all the hunting activities of the American Indians: Taking animals with the hand without the aid of apparatus. Examples of this are picking up marine animals on the beach to eat on the spot, robbing birds nests, and seizing birds on their roosts on dark nights. Such unskilled taking developed the utmost cunning, agility, and strength for … Read more

Indian Houses

Indian Houses – The habitations of the Indians of northern America may be classed as community houses (using the term “community” in the sense of comprising more than one family) and single, or family, dwellings. “The house architecture of the northern tribes is of little importance, in itself considered; but as an out come of their social condition and for comparison with that of the southern village Indians, is highly important” (Morgan). The typical community houses, as those of the Iroquois tribes, were 50 to 100 ft long by 16 to 18 ft wide, with frame of poles and with … Read more

Indian Head Deformation

Deformations of the human head have been known since the writings of Herodotus. They are divisible into two main classes, those of pathological and those of mechanical or artificial origin. The latter, with which this article is alone concerned, are again divisible into un-intentional and intentional deformations. One or the other of these varieties of mechanical deformation has been found among numerous primitive peoples, as the ancient Avars and Krimeans, some Turkomans, Malays, Africans, etc., as well as among some civilized peoples, as the French and Wends, in different parts of the Old World, and both varieties existed from prehistoric … Read more

Indian Hatchets

Hatchets, made of iron or steel, and hafted with wood, were an important factor in the colonization of northern America, and the value of the hatchet, as well as that of the ax, was soon recognized by the natives, who obtained these tools through trade. Large numbers of hatchets and axes of both French and English manufacture are obtained from aboriginal dwelling sites. It is not known with certainty just what aboriginal implements and weapons were supplanted by the European hatchet, but it probably superseded, in large part, the grooved ax, the celt, and probably the tomahawk or war club … Read more

Indian Harpoons

Indian Harpoons – Piercing and retrieving weapons with a movable head probably the most ingenious and complicated device invented by the North American aborigines. Before the natives came into contact with the whites, they made harpoons of wood, bone, walrus ivory, shell, stone, sinew, and hide. The several structural parts consisted of the shaft, foreshaft, loose shaft, ice pick, head, hinge, connecting line, assembling line, mainline, hand rest, eyelet, float, and detachers. Besides these there were a multitude of accessories, such as stools, decoys, ice scoops, and canoes. The technique of every part represented the Indian s best skill in … Read more

Indian Hammers

Indian Hammers – Few implements are of so much importance to primitive men as the stone hammer and the several closely allied forms the sledge, the maul, and the stone-head club, which may be described here rather than under the caption Clubs. All of these implements are employed, like the ordinary club, in striking blows that stun, break, crush, or drive, the only distinction to be drawn between the hafted hammer and the club being that the one carries the weight chiefly in the extremity or head, which is usually of heavier or harder material than the handle, while the … Read more

Indian Grass House

Grass house. A dwelling having the shape of an old-fashioned beehive, often described by Spanish and French travelers of the 16th and 17th centuries, which was the typical habitation of the Caddoan tribes, except the Pawnee and Arikara. Its construction was begun by drawing a circle on the ground, and on the outline setting a number of crotched posts, in which beams were laid. Against these, poles were set very closely in a row so as to lean inward; these in turn were laced with willow rods and their tops brought together and securely fastened so as to form a … Read more

Indian Government

Government is the basis of the welfare and prosperity of human society. A government is an organic institution formed to secure the establishment of justice by safeguarding rights and enforcing the performance of duties in accordance with the experience and the established customs and rules of conduct of the governed. The superlative measure of justice obtainable by government is found in the care and protection of the young and the aged, the ready assistance rendered to comrades and the unfortunate, the maintenance of peace, the preservation of the equivalency of rights, the recognition of the equality of persons, the liberty … Read more

Indian Games

Indian games may be divided into two general classes: games of chance and games of dexterity. Games of pure skill and calculation, such as chess, are entirely absent. The games of chance fall into one of two categories: Games in which implements corresponding with dice are thrown at random to determine a number or numbers, the counts being kept by means of sticks, pebbles, etc., or upon an abacus or counting board or circuit; Games in which one or more of the players guess in which of two or more places an odd or particularly marked counter is concealed, success … Read more

Indian Flint

Indian Flint – Until recently the use of the term flint was restricted to nodular concretions found in chalk beds of Cretaceous age mainly in England, France, and other European countries, but recently obtained from Cretaceous strata in Arkansas and Texas. Although flint is classed as a variety of chalcedony, the name has been extended in popular usage to include various forms of chalcedonic minerals, as chert, hornstone, basanite, jasper, agate, and the like. The principal constituent of all these minerals is silica, and not withstanding their great dissimilarity the distinctions are due almost entirely to manner of formation and … Read more

Indian Fishing

Indian Fishing – At the first coming of the Europeans the waters of this continent were found teeming with food fish, the great abundance of which quickly attracted fleets of fishermen from all civilized parts of the Old World. The list of species living in American waters utilized by the Indians would fill a volume. The abundance or scarcity of this food on the Atlantic coast varied with the season. In spring the fish made their appearance in vast shoals in the spawning beds of the coast and in the bays and rivers. Capt. John Smith relates, in his History … Read more

Indian Fish Hooks

Indian Fish Hooks – Starting from the simple device of attaching the bait to the end of a line, the progressive order of fish hooks used by the Indians seems to be as follows: (a) The gorge hook, a spike of bone or wood, sharpened at both ends and fastened at its middle to a line, a device used also for catching birds; (b) a spike set obliquely in the end of a pliant shaft; (c) the plain hook; (d) the barbed hook; (e) the barbed hook combined with sinker and lure. This series does not exactly represent stages in … Read more

Indian Fire Making

Indian Fire Making – Two methods of making fire were in use among the American Indians at the time of the discovery. The first method, by flint-and-pyrites (the progenitor of flint-and-steel ) , was practised by the Eskimo and by the northern Athapascan and Algonquian tribes ranging across the continent from Stikine r. in Alaska to Newfoundland and around the entire Arctic coast, and also through out New England; as well as by the tribes of the N. Pacific coast. The inference is that this method of fire-making at one time was general in this area, but the observations on … Read more