History of Westchester County, New York, Volume 1. Frederic Shonnard
was neither capable of spiritual exaltation nor characteristically subject to superstitious awe and fear. Idolatrous practices he had none. Among all the objects of Indian handiwork that have come down to us— at least such as belong to this section of the country, — including the remains of pre-European peoples, there are none that are suggestive of worship. He appears to have had no fanatic ceremonials except those of the "medicine man," which were extemporized functions for immediate physical ends rather than regularly ordained formularies expressive of a real system of abstractions. He was a pare physical barbarian. His conceptions of principles of right and wrong, of social obligations, and of good and bad conduct, wore limited to experience and customs having no other relations than to physical well-being. Thus there was neither sensibility nor grossness in his character, and thus he stood solitary and aloof from the rest of mankind. All sensitive and imaginative races, like those of Mexico, South America, the West Indies, and the Orient, easily commingle with European conquerors; and the same is true of strictly gross peoples, like the heathenish native tribes of Africa. Sensibility and grossness, like genius and insanity, are, indeed, closely allied; where either quality is present it affords the fundamentals of social communion for cultivated man, but where both are lacking no possible basis for association exists. In these and like reflections may perhaps be found the true key to the character of the Indian.
As we have indicated, the religion of the Westchester and kindred Indians did not rise to the dignity of a defined institution. By the term, the Indian religion, we understand only a set of elementary beliefs, unaccompanied by an establishment of any kind. The Great Spirit of the Indians of this locality was called Cantantowit, who was good, all-wise, and all-powerful, and to whose happy hunting grounds they hoped to go after death, although their beliefs also comprehended the idea of exclusion from those realms of such Indians as were regarded by him with displeasure. The Spirit of Evil they called Hobbaniocko. The home of Cantantowit they located in the southwest, whence came the fair winds; and they accordingly interred their dead in a sitting position with their faces looking in that direction and their valuable possessions, including food for the soul's journey, beside them. The customs and ceremonials attending decease and sepulture are thus described by Ruttenber:
When death occurred the next of kin closed the eyes of the deceased. The men made no noise over the dead, but the women made frantic demonstrations of grief, striking their breasts, tearing their faces, and calling loudly the name of the deceased day and night. Their loudest lamentations were on the death of their sons and husbands. On such occasions they cut off their hair and bound it on the grave in the presence of all their relatives, painted their faces pitch black, and in a deerskin jerkin mourned the dead a full year In burying their dead the body was placed in a sitting posture, and beside it were placed a pot, kettle, platter, spoon, and money and provisions for use in the other world. Wood was then placed around the body, and the whole covered with earth and stones, outside of which palisades were erected, fastened in such a manner that the tomb resembled a little house. To these tombs great respect was paid, and to violate them was deemed an unpardonable provocation.
To review the separate aspects of their social life and economy, including their domestic arrangements, their arts and manufactures, their agriculture, their trade relations with one another, and the like Incidental details, would require much more space than can be given in these pages. For such more minute particulars the reader is referred to the various formal works on the North American Indian. It will suffice to present some of the more prominent outlines.
Their houses, says Ruttenber, were, for the most part, built after one plan, differing only in length. They were formed by long, slender hickory saplings set in the ground, in a straight line of two rows, as far asunder as they intended the width to be, and the rows continuing as far as they intended the length to be. The poles were then bent toward each other in the form of an arch and secured together, giving the appearance of a garden arbor. Split poles were then lathed up the sides and the roof, and over this was bark, lapped on the ends and edges, which was kept in its place by withes to the lathings. A hole was left in the roof for smoke to escape, and a single door of entrance was provided. Barely exceeding twenty feet in width, these houses were sometimes a hundred and eighty yards long. " In those places," says Van der Donck, "they crowd a surprising number of persons, and it is surprising to see them out in open day." From sixteen to eighteen families occupied one house, according to its size.
Of the manufacture of metals they had no knowledge. All their weapons, implements, and utensils were fashioned from stone, wood, shells, bone, and other animal substances, and clay. Their most noteworthy manufactured relics are probably their specimens of pottery. Mr. Alexander C. Chenoweth draws some interesting deductions as to the processes of pottery manufacture prevalent in early times from his examinations of specimens that he has unearthed. He says:
They could fashion earthen jars with tasteful decorations, manufacture cloth, and twist fibers into cords. They had several methods of molding their pottery. One was to make a mold of basket work and press the clay inside. In baking, the basket work was burned off, leaving its imprint to be plainly seen on the outside of the jar. Other forms show that a coarse cloth or a net was used for the same purpose. Another method of molding, sometimes employed, was to twist clay in long rolls and lay it spirally to form a vessel or jar, the folds being pressed together. This kind of vessel breaks easily along the spiral folds, as the method does not insure a good union between the layers. The vessels range in size from a few inches in circumference to four feet, the depth being in proportion to the diameter. The study of the decoration and method employed reveal the implements used for that purpose. The imprint of a finger nail is clearly defined on some of the rudest as a decoration. Others show the imprint of a coarse netting or cloth, while the edge of an escallop shell or clam shell was often used. Pointed sticks, wedge-shaped sticks, and straws were also common implements for decorating with. These people twisted fibers, from which they made cloth.
Their numerous weapons, implements, and utensils of stone — including mortars and pestles, axes, hatchets, adzes, gouges, chisels, cutting tools, skinning tools, perforators, arrow and spear heads, scrapers, mauls, hammer-stones, sinkers, pendants, pierced tablets, polishers, pipes, and ceremonial stones — of all of which specimens have been found in Westchester County, were very well wrought, and, considering the extreme difficulties attending their fabrication on account of the entire absence of metal tools, bear high testimony to the perseverance and ingenuity of the Indians as artificers. They had great art in dressing skins, using smooth, wedge-shaped stones to rub and work the pelts into a pliable shape. They produced fire by rapidly turning a wooden stick, fitted in a small cavity of another piece of wood, between their hands until ignition was effected. When they wished to make one of their more durable canoes they had first to fell a suitable tree, a task which, on account of the insufficiency of their tools, required much labor and time. Being unable to cut down a tree with their stone axes, they resorted to fire, burning the tree around its trunk and removing the charred portion with their stone implements. This was continued until the tree fell. Then they marked the length to be given to the canoe, and resumed at the proper place the process of burning and removing.
Their agriculture was exceedingly primitive. They raised only one principal crop — maize, or Indian com. Quite extensive fields of this were grown. In addition, they planted the sieva bean, the pumpkin, and tobacco. For cultivating their fields they used only a hoe made of a clam shell or the shoulder blade of a deer. They had no domestic animals to assist them in their agricultural labors and provide them with manure for the refreshment of their exhausted lands and with food products— no horses, sheep, swine, oxen, or poultry; and even their dogs were mere miserable mongrels. It is said that they used fish for fertilizing the soil, but this use must have been on an extremely limited scale.
The extent and character of the trade relations between the Indians of the same tribe and those of different tribes can only be inferred from known facts which render it unquestionable that such relations existed For instance, tobacco, which was in universal use among the aborigines of North America, had to be obtained by exchange m all localities unadapted by climate and soil to its growth. The copper ornaments remarked by Hudson on the persons of the Indians whom he met in New York Bay must have been wrought out of metal obtained by barter or capture from