History of Western Maryland. J. Thomas Scharf
silver. They call it all wampum. The justice they have is pecuniary; in case of any wrong or evil fact, be it murder itself, they atone by feasts and presents of their wampum, which is proportioned to the offense or person injured, or of the sex they are of; for in case they kill a woman, they pay double, and the reason they render is that she can raise children, which men cannot do. It is rare that they fall out if sober, and if drunk forgive it, saying it was the drink and not the man that abused them."
Their mode of warfare was altogether of the guerrilla sort, consisting chiefly of surprises and ambuscades, in which they displayed great skill and cunning. Such a thing as a pitched battle between two armies in the open field was contrary to all their notions of good strategy. When a hostile expedition had been determined on by the chief and leading warriors in council, it was made known to the tribe, who celebrated the occasion by a solemn dance, in which the warriors, bedizened in paint and feathers, stated their past or projective exploits, and imitated in expressive pantomime the shooting, tomahawking, and scalping of their foes. On the appointed day they set out in one or more parties, moving, as they approached their destination, with extreme wariness to prevent discovery, marching often by night in single file, slipping from shadow to shadow, or gliding through the forest so stealthily that hardly a twig snapped or leaf rustled under the tread of a moccasined foot, until at a given signal they burst upon the village with terrific war-whoops. Those of their foes who survived after the rage of slaughter was glutted they made prisoners, and reserved for death by the most cruel tortures their ingenuity could devise; in inventing and enduring which the Iroquois — who, indeed, have the credit of introducing the custom seem to have surpassed all others. Instances are recorded of the tortures of distinguished warriors lasting for days, a sort of contest arising between the power of cruelty to inflict and that of fortitude to endure. In the intervals of torment the victim would sometimes smoke his pipe and talk on indifferent matters with his tormentors; while amid his suffering he sang his own exploits, or derided the unskillfulness of his torturers, and taught them devices for inflicting more exquisite pain. Women were sometimes tortured, but usually they were tomahawked or shot, unless the captors wanted women, in which case they were adopted into the tribe. One of the most noted species of ornament, which answered all the purposes of a circulating medium among the Eastern Indians, was wampum. This consisted of small circular bits of sea-shell, smoothly ground and polished, with a hole drilled through the center of each, by which it might be strung or attached ornamentally to the belt or other parts of the dress. The " quahog," or round clam, furnished the principal material for this coin, the variegated purple portions of the shell being much the most valuable. The great labor in preparing it was the boring, which was effected by a sharp flint.'
"The wompompeague," says Gookin, " is made principally by the Block Islanders and Long Island Indians. Upon the sandy flats and shores of those coasts the wilk shells are found. With this wompompeague they pay tribute, redeem captives, satisfy for murders and other wrongs, purchase peace with their potent neighbors, as occasion requires; in a word, it answers all occasions with them, as gold and silver doth with us."
To effect a clearing and secure a crop with such rude implements of stone as they possessed appears to us almost an impracticable undertaking; but we are assured by early writers that they obtained as large a yield from a given quantity of ground as can be produced by the assistance of all modern conveniences and contrivances.
Two dishes greatly in vogue among the Indians, says Brownell, have maintained their popularity among their European successors. Green corn, the ripening of which was celebrated by a national dance, is sought as eagerly as when it supplied a grateful refreshment to the red men, emaciated, as Smith describes them, by their spring diet of fish and roots. A preparation denominated " succotash," consisting of maize boiled with beans and flavored with fat bear's meat or fish, still remains a favorite dish.
It is a singular fact that the use of milk should have been entirely unknown before the advent of the whites, although there were various animals in the country from which it might have been procured. This fact has been adduced as a strong argument against the hypothesis that immigrants from the nomadic tribes of Tartary have mingled with the red race in comparatively modern times.
A favorite article of diet was a cake made of maize beaten as fine as the means at command would permit, mixed with water, and baked upon a flat stone, previously heated in the fire. These cakes, it is said, were called " Shawnee cakes," the name, in the course of a few years, being corrupted into the " Johnnycake" so well known in the South and other sections of the country at the present day.
"The lands in the vicinity of Cumberland,'' says Lowdermilk, " are rich in Indian relics, and an interesting collection of stone pipes, tomahawks, rings, tablets, quoits, etc., has been made by F. M. Offutt. These were taken from graves which were opened by various persons. Along the banks of the Potomac the curious may still find these graves, and the writer has himself assisted in the exploration of a number of them. The custom of the Indians was to lay their dead upon the surface of the earth, and to deposit beside them their bows, arrows, tomahawks, and food in jars or crocks of pottery made of clay mixed with finely crushed flint, and burned. The friends then deposited such articles as they chose, and the bodies were afterwards covered with stones, which were laid on to the height of about two feet. Usually the stones used were bowlders from the bed of the river. It is probable that the graves thus constructed were those of parties who were on the war-path, or traveling from one place to another, as usually not more than two or three graves are found together. This is rendered more probable from the fact that few such graves are found in the vicinity of their towns. At Brady's Mills a number of skeletons were unearthed some years ago by workmen who were excavating the ground for the production of a distillery built there by Samuel Brady. These were, beyond doubt, the remains of Indians, and were buried in a sitting posture some depth below the surface. This was doubtless the burial-ground of the Indian village which lay between that place and Cresaptown. On the farm of Mr. Christopher Kelly, fourteen miles below Cumberland, one of these stone-piles was opened recently, and a beautiful serpentine pipe of green tinted stone, besides rings, etc., taken therefrom. In that neighborhood, and on the opposite side of the river, are several other graves of a similar character, while in the valley of the South Branch they have been discovered in great numbers, and hundreds of relics taken from them have found their way to the Smithsonian Institute. The articles thus recovered were all of stone or bone, the latter being used freely as ornaments."
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