Aboriginal America Page 4

  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.

  Chapter 3. Remarkable Plants

  Distinction of Indigenous and Exotic

  A plant that grows originally in any locality as a native of it is said to be indigenous to that locality. Those which have been brought to it by man, either by accident or design, are exotic. Thus the orange tree that grows in a pot or a tub in a lady's parlor in any northern part of America is an exotic; so is the wheat that grows in the farmer's fields - both plants having been brought to that locality by man. But the Indian corn, or maize, as it is more properly called is indigenous, that plant being, so far as is known, a native of the country.

  Of the numerous plants found growing in America at the time it was discovered by Europeans, some very strongly resembled plants of the same class growing in the old world, though different in species from them. There were others, however, that possessed characteristics almost wholly new, and some of them soon began to attract great attention. Among these may be named the cotton plant, rice, the tobacco plant, the potato, and maize.

  The Cotton Plant

  Man is the only animal needing clothing that is not furnished with it by nature, but he is provided instead with the faculty of clothing himself, and one of the most striking of the marks of design, and of the adaptation of a want to a supply, which we find everywhere around us, consists in the provision which is made for furnishing him with materials for this work.

  In all the cold regions of the earth there are the skins of beasts at hand in great abundance, covered with warm wool and fur, ready for his use. In all the warm regions are the cotton plants.

  Many Species

  There are a great many different species of cotton plants in the world, each great tropical district producing its own kind. These different species are very unlike in many respects, and cannot be changed into one another by the influence of climate or soil, or by different modes of cultivation. They all agree, however, in this, that when the seed is ripe the capsule bursts open, and presents a white fleecy tuft to view, inviting the naked savage, as it were, to come and spin and weave himself a garment with it.

  The Savage and the Cotton

  Savages have in all ages and in every clime shown themselves ready to accept the invitation, and in Egypt and India, and in many tropical islands of the sea, cotton has been spun and woven from periods long antecedent to any records of history.

  America, too, it was found, very soon after it was discovered, had its cotton plants, and cloth made from the little fleeces which they bore was worn by the natives in all the tropical regions. Specimens of the cloth have been found in some ancient tombs in South America, showing that it has been in use here from a very ancient period. In the colder regions the plant did not grow. Here the natives were compelled to content themselves with the skins of beasts, and with such fabrics as they could make from the fibrous bark of trees.

  The name of the genus that comprises all the species of cotton plants is gossypium. Some of the species which were found in America proved to be superior to any others previously known. There is one species, in particular, which was found in some of the West India Islands, and was brought to the United States in 1786, and is now cultivated on the low and level islands lying along the southern coast, that we described in the last chapter, and which is far more valuable than any other found upon the globe. Its superiority consists in the fineness and softness and length of the fibre. It will not grow anywhere and retain its qualities except on, low rich land along the sea shore, and it thrives best upon the islands above referred to. It is called on that account sea island cotton.

  The fibres of cotton, seen under a powerful microscope, appear like long ribbons, perfectly smooth and continuous from beginning to end. They are transparent, too, though the reflection of the light from so many countless millions of them when they lie together gives the whole mass a white appearance, just as a mist or fog appears white while the sun shines upon it, although it consists of millions of drops of perfectly pellucid water.

  Cotton Intended for the Clothing of Men

  It is not known that the tuft of cotton is of any advantage to the seed which it envelopes, or that it fulfills any other useful purpose in the economy of the plant. It would seem that it was expressly intended for the clothing of man, just at the fruits and the grains which other plants produce were intended for his food. There is this difference in the two cases, however, namely, that while the fruits and grains have a useful purpose to accomplish in respect to the plants which produce them, as well as being available for the purposes of man, the little fleece which envelopes the seed of the cotton plant seems, so far as we know, not be necessary to the plant at all, thus leaving us to infer that nature produces it with very special, if not exclusive, reference to the wants of man.

  The birds in the countries where it grows make great use of it too to give a soft and downy lining to their nests.

  Rice,

  Several species of rice were found indigenous to America. Rice is the most productive food-bearing plant, for the use both of men and animals, that is known. It grows wild in the water in low and swampy lands along the borders of the rivers in tropical countries. Countless millions of birds gather over all the region where it grows in the season of its ripening, and multitudes of other animals, such as gain access to the ground when the water subsides, live upon it.

  The Indians used to gather it by sailing in through the midst of it in their canoes, where bending down the heads of the rice, they would beat off the grains into the boat by means of a sort of threshing stick made for the purpose.

  Maize

  The most important and valuable plant, however, for the American Indians, especially for those who lived beyond the limits of the rice

  Gathering the Wild Rice

  country, was the maize, or Indian corn. A great many of the tribes cultivated this plant in fields which they cleared for this purpose, by digging around the roots of trees and burning them off. Such fields were very numerous in the northern parts of the country when it was first discovered by white men., Indeed, this plant seems to have been their chief reliance for vegetable food. they considered it as the special gift of the great Spirit, and it figures very conspicuously in all their traditionary legends in respect to the creation of the world, and the early history of the human race.

  An Indian Tradition

  One of these legends is as follows: -

  The first men who were created, says the tradition, proved to be bad men, and the great Spirit, finding them to be incorrigible, destroyed them all by drowning them in a great lake.

  This story of the destruction of the first race of men by water is supposed to by some to have originated in
a tradition of the general deluge described in the Sacred Scriptures.

  After having thus destroyed one generation, the Great Spirit created another man, and finding, after he had lived alone for some time, that his condition was too solitary, he made him a sister. The brother and sister lived together quite happily for a while, when at last one morning the brother said that he had had a dream.

  Five young men he saw in his dream, he said, coming one after another to see his sister, desiring her in marriage. She rejected the first four and accepted the fifth. This was a token, he thought, that if such young men should come she was to refuse the four first and accept the last. His sister said that she would do so.

  In a short time the young men began to come. The first was named Tobacco. This was, however, before any such plant as tobacco was known. The young lady refused his suit, and he immediately fell backward and died. Note: We use here the English names of the plants referred to. Of course in the original legend the Indian names are given.

  Next came a young man named Bean. He, too, was refused, and fell back and died like the other.

  The next one was named Pumpkin, and the next Melon. Thy both met with the same fate as their predecessors. All fell backward when they found themselves rejected, and died. Finally the fifth young man came. His name was Maize. The girl smiled upon him, and gave him her hand. They were married, and from them proceeded all the subsequent generations of the human family.

  From the ground where the bodies of the others lay buried there sprang up the several plants bearing these persons' names, the tobacco, the pumpkin, the melon, and the bean.

  The narration of this legend here answers the double purpose of showing how important a place in the estimation of the Indians the maize plant occupied as an article of food for them, and also of giving an example of the traditionary tales which have come down from former generations in respect to the origin of the human family.