stem of
government. Some tribes had their special orators among the chiefs.
Though a general {124} war was dependent on the action of the council,
yet any number of warriors might go on the warpath at any time against
the enemies of the tribe. They had no written records, but their
memories were aided in council or otherwise by reeds or sticks and rude
pictures; strings of wampum--cleverly manufactured from shells--served
as annals, which the skilled men of a tribe could decipher and explain.
The wampum belts performed an important part in the declaration of war
or peace, and the pipe was equally effective in the deliberations of
council and in the profession of amity. Murder might be expiated by
presents to the family or relatives of the dead, and crime was rarely
followed by death except there was a question of other nations, who
would not be content unless the blood of their kinsman was washed away
by blood. Charity and hospitality were among the virtues of the Indian
race, especially among the Iroquois, and while there was food in a
village no one need starve. The purity of love was unknown to a savage
nature, chiefly animated by animal passion. Prisoners were treated
with great ferocity, but the Iroquois exceeded all nations in the
ingenuity of torture. Stoicism and endurance, even heroic, were
characteristics of Indians generally, when in the hands of their
enemies, and the cruellest insult that a warrior could receive was to
be called a woman. Sometimes prisoners were spared and adopted into
the tribe, and among most nations the wife or mother or sister of a
dead chief might demand that he be replaced by a prisoner to whom they
may have taken a fancy. After torture parts {125} of the bodies of the
victim would be eaten as a sort of mystic ceremony, but this custom was
peculiar to the Hurons and Iroquois only. In their warlike expeditions
they had no special discipline, and might be successfully met on the
open field or under the protection of fortified works. Their favourite
system was a surprise or furious onslaught. A siege soon exhausted
their patience and resources. They were as treacherous as they were
brave. In the shades of the forest, whose intricacies and secrets they
understood so well, they were most to be feared. Behind every tree
might lurk a warrior, when once a party was known to be on the warpath.
To steal stealthily at night through the mazes of the woods, tomahawk
their sleeping fo