Aboriginal America

Chapter 2. Face of the Country

The Map

The map on the adjoining page represents the portion of the North American continent which is at the present time occupied by the people of the United States. It will assist very much in reading intelligently the history of the country if we first obtain a clear and comprehensive view of the great and leading features of its geography.

These features are very marked and striking - more so, perhaps, than those of any other country on the globe. This will clearly appear by an inspection of the map, and by filling out, in imagination, the outline which the map presents, with the details which will be given in this description.

As you look upon the map imagine that you are in the air, looking down upon it as from a balloon, and take notice of what you see. On the east and on the west are the shores of two oceans, That on the east is the Atlantic. The Pacific is on the west.

The Lake Country.

Toward the north is an immense tract of nearly level land, covered with forests, but containing a vast number of depressions in the surface of the land, all of which are filled with water and form lakes, some large and others small. This land, though level, is high, so that there is a very considerable though gradual descent from the lakes to the ocean. The lakes are kept constantly full by the rains and by the melting of the snows, and the surplus waters flow off in one vast channel, northward and eastward to the sea.

One of the large lakes, though still much higher than the sea, is marked as a low lake, for it is two or three hundred feet below the level of the others, and the water flowing from the upper lakes into it, in descending from one level to the other, passes over a high precipice, thus producing an immense fall, which is the celebrated Niagara.

The surplus waters of all the large lakes flow off finally in a northeasterly direction, almost exactly parallel to the coast until they reach the sea. The river thus formed is now known as the St. Lawrence. Observe, that between the river and the coast there is a long and somewhat narrow strip of land, which will be spoken of more particularly under another head. All this region of the lakes is inhabited - during the summer season by immense numbers of beasts upon the land, of birds in the regions of the air, and of fishes in the water. In the winter it is buried deep in ice and snow. The birds at that season have all flown. The animals have retired to dens and holes, where some sleep, torpid, till the spring returns, and others burrowing beneath the frosty covering which clothes the ground, gain their livelihood there by digging for roots, or gnawing the bark of trees, or catching the fish that are still swimming in the imprisoned waters.

Fur-Bearing Animals

Almost all the land animals that inhabit these regions - being exposed for six months in the year to intense cold - are protected by a thick and warm coat of hair and fur. In the larger animals the hair is coarse, but thick and warm, though much less so than in the case of the smaller animals; for the smaller the body is that is exposed, the more perfect the protection that it requires, one large mass being more easily kept warm than a multitude of small ones.

The region of these lakes, and of the country north of it, which, for many hundreds of miles, maintains the same character, is one of the most extensive and most celebrated fur-bearing districts in the world. The shores of the lakes, and the banks of all the millions of little brooks and streams, are full of minks, otter, beavers, sables, and multitudes of other swimming and burrowing animals of that kind, whose fur is softer than silk and warmer than wool. When, therefore, you look upon the map and imagine that your eyes are surveying the real country, you must picture it to your mind as swarming with all this life, winter and summer.

In the summer these animals ramble about in the forests, or along the borders of the lakes and streams, amid a profusion of the most luxuriant and most beautiful flowers. Some climb the trees, and run along upon the branches in search of nuts for their winter stores. Some burrow in the ground, at the margin of the water, with the orifices of their dwelling convenient either for foraging upon the land, or for fishing and swimming in the ponds and streams.

The Indian Inhabitants

There is one thing more to be brought to mind in order to complete the picture, and that is, the presence of many wandering tribes of Indians roaming over the country. The smokes from their scattered wigwams rise among the trees both in summer and in winter. They build their habitations of the bark of trees. They hunt and trap the land animals, and snare the fish. They eat the flesh for food, and clothe themselves with the skins and furs. Each tribe preserves in a measure its own range, and yet sometimes they become involved in dreadful quarrels, in which the ordinary repose of the silent and solitary forests is broken by the frightful yells of a troop of maddened savages breaking at midnight into the encampment of their foes, or by the piercing cries of women and children whom they massacre in their fury.

Influence of the Moral Instincts

These scenes of war and devastation are, however, only incidental and occasional interruptions to the ordinarily peaceful flow with which the current of life here, as in all other countries and climes, flows on. The Creator has implanted in the human mind a natural sense of justice, a love of what is right in the dealings between man and man, and a disapproval of what is wrong, the influence of which, in all human communities, is ordinarily sufficient to preserve peace, even in the most rude and savage states of society. Thus, in picturing to our imaginations the scenes that were presented in this lake country, while in its aboriginal condition, we must conceive of the inhabitants as ordinarily employed in their various industrial pursuits of hunting and fishing, of fabricating implements and clothing, of building wigwams and making encampments, and of rearing their children. The scenes of violence and war that occurred to disturb the usual quite of their lives, through very serious in their results, were exceptional, and comparatively rare. It is very doubtful, indeed, whether they were more frequent, or more destructive, in proportion to the numbers affected by them, than the similar quarrels which have occurred among Christian and civilized nations, as shown by the history of Europe during the last five hundred years.

The Great Central Valley

South of the lake country, and occupying a very large portion of the whole interior of the continent, is a broad though shallow valley, bounded both on the east and on the west by ranges of mountains. The extent of the valley is marked on the map, not only by the mountains which bound it on the east and on the west, but also by the ramifications of the great river which drains, it. These ramifications are seen spreading in every direction, like the branches of a mighty tree, and terminating in the south in one great trunk, through which the united volume of waters is poured out into the great gulf which is seen delineated there. This is the great river Mississippi, with its thousand tributaries. If is were the real scene, instead of a mere map that we were looking upon, we should see all the branches of this immense system glistening in the sun between banks loaded with luxuriant forests, and adorned with fruits and flowers of every conceivable character and form.

The Soil of the Great Valley

The soil of the whole valley, which, however, is so broad and so shallow that, seen as we have imagined from above, it would have more the appearance of an extended plain than of a valley, is extremely fertile. It is what is called an alluvial formation; that is, a very large portion of the territory has been covered with deposits from the rivers themselves, left after overflows and inundations. These deposits have accumulated, in the course of ages, to a great depth, and they form an exceedingly rich and fertile soil. The rivers twist and turn this way and that in meandering through these plains; and when swollen by rain or by the melting snows, they undermine the banks, and bring down great masses of earth, and great numbers of immense trees into the water. The earth thus washed in is carried down by the flood, and after being mingled with a great variety of animal and vegetable remains, is distributed over widely extended districts below, when the water has overflowed the banks, and thus adds, throughout all the country so covered, a new layer of fertility to the soil.

Formation of Islands in the River

The trees float on, too, upon the current. Some drag by the roots and get lodged along the banks or upon shoals, in the bed of the stream. In this latter case they intercept others coming down, and so create an obstruction, around which sand and sediment collect, until an island is formed. When this new formation becomes consolidated, it turns the current of the steam, and perhaps in the end is the means of deflecting the river into a new channel.

There is another way by which islands are formed. The river wearing continually upon its banks, and making immense convolutions in its course, sometimes cuts through a narrow neck, where previously it flowed around in a great circuit. A new channel is thus made for a part of the water, while the rest flows on round the circuit in the old course. By this means an island is formed, which may, perhaps, continue for centuries to divide the stream.

Swamps

At length, perhaps in the case of such an island, the old channel becomes choked up and closed at the opening, having previously become half filled with the floating trunks of trees, and all manner of brush and rubbish. Henceforward it remains a stagnant pool, a mile perhaps wide, and fifty miles long, filled with aquatic plants of every kind, and with decaying and half sunken trunks of trees, all covered and adorned, where they emerge into the atmosphere, with rich mosses, green and brown, and with graceful ferns, which hang drooping like tufts of feathers along the bands, or clinging, wherever they can get a foothold, to the trunks of the decaying trees.

The lagoons and morasses formed in this manner, in ancient times, became the peaceful and happy abode of vast numbers of animals adapted to such a habitation. Alligators, lizards, serpents, and reptiles of all kinds, crawled along the banks or slept in the sun upon the logs that line the shore; while long-legged birds waded in the water fishing for their food among the sedges, and flocks of ducks and other wild fowl, some of them resplendent in plumage, and adorned with the most gorgeous hues or orange, crimson, blue and gold, lay floating on the surface, or flew in flocks hither and thither through the air. The lagoons and morasses were inhabited by these animals in millions.

the Old Forsaken Channels

In other parts of this great valley swamps and morasses were formed in another way. The river, when it overflowed its banks, carried over with it, upon the land, immense quantities of sand, gravel, and driftwood, and other such substances, whether floating upon the water or suspended in it. These substances would, of course, be caught and retained, or, if heavier than the water, would subside in greater quantities near the bank than further inland; that is, the largest and heaviest would become lodged, while the water itself, carrying with it the finer sediment, would flow further into the interior. Thus the land would become built up, so to speak, faster near the river than further inland, and consequently would rise higher; and the water which was carried over into the plains beyond could not flow back into the river again. Instead of this, it would find its way into every

Forsaken Channels

low and sunken tract, which would, of course, in this way become half submerged, and long before the water could be evaporated by the sun a new supply would come in from another inundation.

The result is, that throughout the whole extent of the valley, especially in the southern and lower portions of it, great tracts of land have become half submerged, and continue permanently in that condition, and thus, though teeming with animal and vegetable life, are wholly unfit, in their present state, for the abode of man.

The Mouth of the Mississippi

The mouth of the river, as might be expected from the prevailing character which it bears throughout its course, presents a very extraordinary spectacle. The torrents that come down in the great floods bring with them vast numbers of trees and immense quantities of brush and drift wood, and also of sand and mud held in suspension by the water, all of which are swept out in every direction around the mouth of the river and deposited there. In this way, in process of time, a delta, or projection of the land has been formed, which is so large as to be plainly perceptible upon the map. This land rises scarcely above the level of the sea, and the water of the river makes its way through it in every direction, in many different and devious channels. The whole tract is, in fact, an entangled mass of trees and brushwood, matted together and gone to decay, and covered with mud and slime; and so unfit for the habitation of man that when, on the coming of the Europeans, a landing-place was required on the bank of the river; it was found necessary to ascend more than one hundred miles before a site suitable for a town could be found. And even at that spot the surface of the river is now often higher than the streets of the town which has been build there, and in digging a foot or two anywhere in the soil we come to the water.

The Prairies

In the northern part of this great fertile basin, watered by the Mississippi and its branches, there is a vast extent of country void of forests, or nearly void of them, there being no wood upon it except narrow belts of trees growing along the margins of the rivers. This country consists of boundless plains of grass land, called prairies. The soil is very fertile, and the grass grows high; and when from any small elevation the traveler takes a survey of the scene, looking out, as he may, to an unobstructed horizon on every side, and seeing the grass waving in the wind throughout the whole expanse around him, he might well imagine himself in the midst of an ocean - only that the billows that roll over it are green instead of blue. These plains, in aboriginal times, furnished food for buffaloes, elks, antelopes, and other animals that feed on herbage, the whole mass moving continually to and fro over the vast expanse as the season changed, or as the state of the pasturage invited them to new fields.

The Northern Atlantic Slope

The most important part of the whole territory represented on the map, in a historical point of view, is the Atlantic slope, as it is called - that is, the portion of the country between the mountains bordering the valley of the Mississippi, on the east, and the sea. You will see by the map that this is a long and narrow strip of land. It is divided naturally into two portions. The stormy cape which is seen projecting into the sea about midway of the coast marks this division. To the northward of this there is a tract of land lying between the sea on the one hand, and the river which carries off the surplus water of the great lakes on the other. This is the northern part of the Atlantic slope, and it was the scene of many of the most interesting events connected with the history of the country.

The country in this district is mountainous or hilly in every part. In former times it was covered with forests, except where the Indians had cleared small patches of ground, by burning down the trees, to make fields for the cultivation of maize. This tract of land was exactly adapted by nature for producing the grasses and other herbaceous plants, which form the food of the sheep, the horse, the ox, and other such grazing animals - the most useful of all to man. But no such animals were produced in this region. It would be impossible, indeed, that they should live here, in a state of nature, on account of the fact that, though in summer everything is favorable for the production of their food, in the winter, which season here lasts from four to six months in the year, the whole country is buried under the snow, and, of course, all such animals, if any there were, would perish.

Such animals are now, however, raised in great numbers in all this region. Indeed, they are the great staple of production. They feed themselves during the summer season from the grass that grows upon the hill-sides and upon the mountain slopes; while such as grows on the more smooth and level lands below is husbanded for them by the farmer, by being cut, and dried, and stored in barns, and so fed out to them under shelter during the winter season, when the fields and hill-sides are all alike buried under four or five feet under the snow.

Native Animals

Thus, in its native state, there were no animals in this region except such as could provide themselves with food, or live without it during the protracted winters. The moose, with his long legs to wade through the snow, and his long neck and head to reach up to the branches of the trees and underwood, could live by browsing upon the buds and the tender bark which grows upon them. The squirrels and other such smaller animals were endowed with instincts which led them to lay up food for the winter in hollow logs or holes in the ground. The bears went into a torpid sleep in which they remained insensible and without food for months at a time, and the minks and other burrowing creatures of that kind continued their operations under the ice and snow all winter long, feeding on roots or on fish; and whatever might be the severity of the cold above, finding it always warm and comfortable for them below.

Man

This northeastern region had its human inhabitants, too, notwithstanding the depth of the snow which covered it, and the intensity of the cold which prevailed during so large a part of the year. These inhabitants easily provided themselves with food during the summer season, partly by hunting and fishing, and partly by cultivating the ground in such spots as they had been able to clear of trees. They had a double resource in winter, too. In the first place there were the stores of provisions which, like the squirrels, they had laid up in the season of abundance, and then, even in the winter, the supplies which nature afforded them were not wholly cut off. For, although all above the surface of the earth, both of land and water, formed one lifeless and desolate expanse of frost and ice and snow, and was enveloped in an atmosphere so intensely cold that no active vegetable or animal life could endure exposure to it, still beneath this surface, both upon the land and upon the water, there was a protected stratum teeming with life in every form, and there were a thousand ways which their savage ingenuity devised of penetrating to this stratum, and drawing from it at least a portion of their needed supplies. All this, however, will be more fully explained in a subsequent chapter.

The Southern Atlantic Slope

To the south of the stormy cape represented on the amp, and between the mountains and the sea, is the southern Atlantic slope, of nearly the same size and form as its northern counterpart, but extremely dissimilar in character. It consists mainly of level plains, covered, in a great measure, with forests of pine; and across these plains innumerable rivers flow from the mountains to the sea, through valleys of the most extraordinary richness and beauty. In this country the grasses do not grow,, but their place is filled by tropical plants. The two chief plants that have been cultivated here are rice and cotton.

Character of the Coast

One very curious and extremely important result of the difference of the conformation of the land in the northern and southern portion of the Atlantic slope, is a great difference in the accessibility of the coast in the two sections. Where a district of country is mountainous and rocky, the shores are usually bold, and the indentations in the land are filled with deep water. The rivers, too, in flowing through such a country, are bounded generally by steep and permanent banks, which yield but little sand or soil, to be borne away by the current of the stream. The rivers are consequently more likely to be deep, and their mouths to be comparatively unobstructed.

On the contrary, where a coast is low and sandy, it is undermined and washed away by the waves, and shoals and sandbars and low islands are formed all along the line of it. The rivers, too, in flowing through such a country, undermine and wear away the banks, and bring down great quantities of sand and gravel to fill the beds of the rivers, and choke up the entrances at their mouths.

These causes operate powerfully in the two portions of the eastern coast of this country. The shores in the northern portion are bold and permanent, and almost every considerable indentation in them forms a deep and safe harbor for shipping. In the southern portion, on the other hand, the coast is lined with shoals and sandy islands; and although there are numerous inlets and bays between and among them, they are almost all shallow, and the approaches to them are choked up with continually shifting sands.

It is so with the rivers. The Hudson river has one-third greater depth of water at its mouth than the Mississippi, although the Mississippi reckons twice as many thousands of miles as the Hudson hundreds, in its length, and discharges, doubtless, into the sea, judging from the area which it drains - more than a hundred times the quantity of water.

From these causes the northern coast is much more accessible to ships coming from sea than the southern, and to this advantage, doubtless, and to the facilities for commerce resulting from it, it is owing, in some considerable degree, that so many early settlements were made on the shores of the northeastern slope, and that the section of country lying contiguous to them has made such rapid advances in wealth and population.

The Western Slope

If we pass now across the country to the western slope, we see a range of mountains running parallel with the coast at a comparatively short distance from the sea. This chain of mountains was named by the Spaniards who first explored the country the Sierra Nevada, which means snowy chain. The strip of land which lies between these mountains and the sea is too narrow to produce any considerable rivers. One, however, is seen crossing the chain of mountains, flowing through a gap or gorge, left, it would almost seem, on purpose to allow a passage. The mouth of this river forms a deep and spacious harbor, the only one of importance upon the coast. It is this harbor that has given rise to the city of San Francisco.

The Great Salt Desert

There remains one more district, and that a most remarkable one, to be described. It is the great desert which lies between the Snowy Chain and the range of mountains which bounds the Mississippi on the west. The desert character of this tract arises, it would seem, from the scarcity of rain, and from the sandy and porous character of the soil, which causes all the water that falls upon it to be absorbed so suddenly that it cannot serve the purposes of vegetation. Streams rise in the mountains around it, and some of them, by the confluence of tributaries, become quite large rivers in going down into the valley. But in flowing over the great sandy waste which here receives them, the water is rapidly absorbed. The streams grow smaller and smaller as they go on, and finally disappear. In the spring of the year, when the snows melt, or in times of great rains, these rivers are swollen so as to extend in length a hundred miles or more, but even at such times they finally dwindle away and disappear.

Some of the rivers, however, before they disappear, reach great hollows or depressions in the land, which depressions, of course, they fill, and thus are formed lakes. The smaller of these lakes, in summer, dry up and disappear, leaving only salt incrustations upon the ground; others being larger, are permanent. There is one, the Great Salt lake, which is some hundreds of miles in extent. The water from these permanent lakes is, of course, all the time infiltrating into the sand below, and evaporating into the air above, but before the whole quantity is exhausted, the rains upon the mountains send down a fresh supply, and thus the vast reservoir is never wholly emptied.

The Deposits of Salt

There is one very curious phenomenon which occurs throughout this region, and that is the tendency to deposit salt, which the waters indicate. The great lake, as its name denotes, is salt, and saline incrustations are found upon the ground in various places where lakes and pools have dried away. It is found to be a general law, though perhaps not universal, that wherever lakes exist that are fed by rivers or other streams flowing over the surface of the ground - and not by springs - and which have no outlet to the sea, they are salt. There may be exceptions, but this is the general law.

For a long time the cause of this phenomenon was enveloped in great mystery, but this mystery has at length been solved. It is found that the earth contains, and continually produces saline substances in the soil. The rain falling upon a district of country dissolves a portion of these substances, and they are borne away by the water into brooks and streams. The quantity is too small to affect the taste of the water while it is in this condition, and so we call the water fresh, and it continues fresh until it reaches the sea.

If, however, it never reaches the sea, but like the water that comes down from the mountain sides into the great American desert it spreads itself out into lakes and pools, and there evaporates, the salt then becomes concentrated so as to manifest itself very decidedly to the taste, and to the other senses. For in the process of evaporation it is the water only that is taken up into the air. The saline particles which it contained are all left behind. Thus the saline element accumulates. Every fresh rain brings down an exceedingly small, it is true, but still an additional supply; and as nothing is taken away, the quantity, after the lapse of ages, becomes very great. The Dead Sea, which is isolated in this manner, and has been for thousands of years receiving a small continual supply from the saline substances which the Jordan and its branches have washed from the soil, has become more salt than the ocean.

The Diggers

The great desert valley which lies thus between the Rocky Mountains and the Snowy Chain of the Pacific, is not wholly desert and uninhabited. There are regions on the mountain sides and in the valleys in which a scanty vegetation thrives, and where reptiles and other animals of a humble order are produced. There are even tribes of Indians low and degraded enough to be fitted to these gloomy and desolate abodes. They are called Diggers, from the fact that they obtain their subsistence by digging into the ground for roots and for snails and reptiles of every kind.

Climate of the Country

For nearly six months of the year, throughout the whole breadth of the continent from east to west, the polar cold, following the sun as he withdraws during that season of the year beyond the equator to the south, comes down from the Arctic regions, and envelopes all the northern half of the country in ice and snow, and then, during the remaining six months, the returning sun brings back warmth, and with it spreads verdure and beauty again over the whole.

During the winter season, all along the northern frontier, the snow in the forests lies often for months at a time four and five feet deep, while the ice is at least half that thickness upon the rivers and ponds. The intensity of the cold of course rapidly diminishes in advancing to the southward, and along the southern frontier it is very seldom that either snow or ice is seen.

It is a singular circumstance that the difference of the temperature at the different seasons of the year is very much greater on this continent than on the other. There is about twice as great a difference between the average heat of summer and winter in Quebec as at Paris, it being here much warmer in the one season and much colder in the other. In Scotland the summers are not warm enough to ripen grapes or Indian corn, and yet in the winters the sheep can feed in their pastures almost without interruption during the whole year. In the corresponding region on this side of the Atlantic, while the rays of the summer sun are sufficiently concentrated and continuous to ripen the grapes and the corn, the winter's cold is so intense that, for six long months, the sheep and cattle have no access to the pasturage at all, the whole surface of the ground having become solid as a rock, and being also buried many feet under the snow.

Recapitulation

Look now once more upon the map and take a general survey of the country which it represents, by way of fixing the great leading features of it upon your mind. There is the lake country at the north, covered with forests, and the summit level occupied by four great inland seas, which pour their waters down over the precipice of Niagara into the lowermost lake, and thence flow off in a northeasterly direction into the ocean. South of this is the great Mississippi Valley, occupying almost the whole interior of the country, and displaying a vast net-work of rivers which, collecting the waters of the whole region, brings them all together into the center of the valley and carries them through one immense channel southward into the sea. By the side of this valley to the westward is a great dry and barren basin, bordered by mountains on every side, and with no rivers except such as are formed by streams coming down from the mountains after rains, or from the melting of the snows, and are soon absorbed by the thirsty sands. These two great basins occupy the center of the continent.

To the westward of them is the narrow strip which forms the Pacific slope, between the mountains and the sea, and to the eastward of them is the Atlantic slope, level and plain in the southern part, but mountainous and rugged toward the north.

These are the great leading features of the country, which it is necessary to keep distinctly in mind in studying its history.