Native American

Indian Currency – Before the arrival of Europeans intertribal trade had resulted almost everywhere in America in the adoption of certain standards of value of which the most important were shell beads and skins. The shell currency of the Atlantic coast consisted of small white and black or purplish beads cut from the valves of quahog and other shells and familiarly known as wampum, q. v. These were very convenient, as they could be strung together in quantities and carried any distance for purposes of trade, in this respect having a decided advantage over skins. In exchange two white beads … Read more

Indian Ethics and Morals. It is difficult for a person knowing only one code of morals or manners to appreciate the customs of another who has been reared in the knowledge of a different code; hence it has been common for such a one to conclude that the other has no manners or no morals. Every community has rules adapted to its mode of life and surroundings, and such rules may be found more rigorously observed and demanding greater self-denial among savages than among civilized men. Notwithstanding the differences which necessarily exist between savage and civilized ethics, the two systems … Read more

The natural phenomena that surrounded the aborigines of North America, stimulating and conditioning their life and activities, contrasted greatly with those of the European-Asiatic continent. The differences in the two environments do not lie alone in physical geography and in plant and animal life, but are largely meteorologic the sun operating on air, land, and water, producing variations in temperature and water supply, and as a result entirely new vegetal and animal forms. The planets and stars also affected cultural development, since lore and mythology were based on them. Within the American continent N. of Mexico there were ethnic; environments … Read more

The first English visitors to the coast of Virginia-Carolina were well received by the Indians, whom the early chroniclers, as Hariot, for example, describe as peaceful and amiable people. So, too, were in the beginning the natives of the New England coast, but in 1605 Capt. Weymouth forcibly carried off five Indians, and he soon had many imitators. The good character ascribed by Pastor Cushman in 1620 to the Indians of Plymouth colony was forgotten when theological zeal saw in the aborigines of the New World “the accursed seed of Canaan,” which it was the duty of good Christians to … Read more

The translation of the Scriptures into the Algonquian language of the Massachuset, made by John Eliot (1604-90), the Apostle to the Indians, was the first Bible printed in America by the English authorities. The first edition of the whole Bible was published at Cambridge, Mass., in 1663,the New Testament having appeared two years before. The books of Genesis and Matthew seem to have been printed in 1655 and a portion of the Psalms in 1658, by which time the translation of the whole Bible was completed. Eliot was the author of other works in the language of the Massachuset, and … Read more

Elephant Mound – A noted effigy mound, 4 m. s. of Wyalusing, Grant co., Wis., first brought to public notice in 1872 through a pencil sketch and brief description by Jared Warner (Smithson. Rep.1872, 1873). From its massive form and an apparent prolongation of the nose, sup posed to be a part of the original mound, giving the tumulus a slight resemblance to an elephant, the name Elephant Mound was applied to it. Although frequently mentioned and illustrated, the figures are copies of Warner s sketch, no reexamination having been made until Nov., 1884, when the Bureau of American Ethnology … Read more

The Indians of North America had their own systems of education, through which the young were instructed in their coming labors and obligations, embracing not only the whole round of economic pursuits hunting, fishing, handicraft, agriculture, and household work but speech, fine art, customs, etiquette, social obligations, and tribal lore. By unconscious absorption and by constant inculcation the boy and girl became the accomplished man and woman. Motives of pride or shame, the stimulus of flattery or disparagement, wrought constantly upon the child, male or female, who was the charge, not of the parents and grandparents alone but of the … Read more