Before the colonists settled America it was inhabited by many tribes of the people we call American Indians. They were called Indians because the first discoverers believed America to be a part of India. The American Indians typically had dark eyes and straight hair.

In what is now the United States the clothing of the American Indians was mostly made of deer skin. A whole deer skin was thrown about the shoulders, a strip of the same material was hung about the loins, and the leggings worn in winter were also of deer skin. Some of the Southern Indians wore mantles woven from the fiber of a plant which now grows in gardens under the name of "Spanish bayonet," but which in that day was called "silk-grass." The women wore deer skin aprons. Women of the Northern tribes wore mantles of beaver skins. Shoes, or moccasins, were of deer skin, sometimes embroidered with porcupine-quills or shell beads.

The American Indian warriors were fond of staining their faces in stripes, spots, and splashes of red, yellow, and blue. Some of the Virginia Indians wore bears' or hawks' claws, and even living snakes, dangling from their ears; and sometimes, also, the American Indian warrior would wear the dried hand of his dead enemy in the same way. The use of such adornment was to make the American Indians seem as fierce and terrible as possible. Both men and women decorated themselves with beads, which they made from sea-shells. These were called "wampum," and were worn in strings, or wrought into belts, necklaces, and bracelets. Wampum was also used among them as money, and as presents in making treaties between the tribes.

American Indian houses, or wigwams, were mere tents of bark or of mats, supported by poles. Among the American Indians of the Western prairies, skins of animals were used to cover the American Indian houses. American Indian wigwams were not divided into rooms. The inmates slept on the ground, or sometimes on raised platforms. The fire was built in the middle of the wigwam, and the smoke found its way out through an opening at the top. In some tribes, long arbor-like houses were built of bark. In these there were fires at regular intervals. Two families lived by each fire.

The American Indians had very little furniture. There were a few mats and skins for bedding. Some tribes had for household use wooden vessels, which they made by burning and scraping out blocks of wood, little by little, with no other tools than shells or sharp stones. These American Indians cooked their food by putting water into their wooden kettles and then throwing in heated stones. When the stones had made the water hot, they put in it whatever they wished to cook. Other tribes knew how to make pots of earthenware; and yet others cut them out of soapstone. Vessels of pottery and soapstone could be set over the fire. Often fish and meat were broiled on sticks laid across above the fire; green corn was roasted under the ashes, as were also squashes, and various roots. Indian corn, put into a mortar and pounded into meal, was mixed with water and baked in the ashes, or boiled in a pot. Sometimes the meal was parched and carried in a little bag, to be eaten on a journey. A few tribes near to salt springs had salt, the rest used leaves of several sorts for seasoning.

For tilling the ground, the American Indians made hoes by attaching to a wooden stick to either a piece of deer's horn, an animal shoulder-blade bone, a turtle shell, a bit of wood, or or a flat stone. They raised Indian corn, beans, squashes, and tobacco. They prepared the ground by girdling the trees so as to kill them; sometimes they burned the trees down. Some tribes made axes for cutting small trees; these were made of stone. The handle of the stone axe was formed by tying a stuck to it, or by twisting a green withe about it. Sometimes the American Indians would split open a growing young tree and put the axe into the cleft; when the tree had grown fast around the axe he would cut it down and shorten it to the proper length for a handle. The American Indians had no iron. For knives they had pieces of bone, sharp stones, and shells.

The American Indian procured fire by twirling the end of a stick against another piece of wood. To give this twirling stick a quick motion, he wrapped a bowstring about it, and then drew the bow swiftly to and fro. The most remarkable product of American Indian skill was the canoe; this was made in some tribes by burning out a log, little by little, and scraping the charred parts with shells, until the "dugout" canoe was sufficiently deep and rightly shaped. Many canoes made in this way, without any other tools than shells and sharp stones, would carry from twenty to forty men. The Northern tribes constructed a more beautiful canoe, of white-birch bark, stretched on slender wooden ribs, and sewed together with roots and fibers. Such canoes were made water-tight by the use of gums.

Among the American Indians, the hardest work fell to the women. Hunting, gambling, and making war, were the occupations of the men. The male American Indian was from childhood trained in defense and hunting. Game and fish, with such fruits, nuts, and roots as grew wild in the woods and swamps, were the principal dependence of the American Indians for food. As they suffered much from hunger and misery, the population of the country was always thin.

Moreover, the continual wars waged between the various tribes, in which women and children as well as men were slain, kept the native American Indians from increasing in numbers. Large tracts of country were left uninhabited, because tribes at war dared not live near to one another, for fear of surprise. In all the country east of the Mississippi River there were but a few hundred thousand people; hardly more than there are in one of our smallest States, and not enough, if they had all been brought together, to make a large city.



THE SETTLERS CHANGE INDIAN LIFE

The coming of the settlers made great changes in the American Indian life. The furs and skins, which the American Indians did not value except for necessary clothing, were articles of luxury and ornament of great value in Europe. Many a hungry American Indian was clothed in furs that a European prince would have prized. The American Indian exchanged their beautiful beaver coats for bright-colored blankets, though the furs were worth to the settler the price of many blankets. The glass beads and tiny bells of the colonists, such as the people of old time hung about the necks of the hawks with which they hunted birds, were greatly prized by American Indians. Jews-harps were also much liked by the American Indian people, and were sometimes used in paying them for land. The American Indian who possessed a copper kettle was considered a rich man in his tribe. The iron hatchets of the trader drove out the stone axes, and knives were eagerly bought, but guns were more sought after than anything else; and, though there were many laws against selling firearms to the American Indians, there were always men who were glad to break the law and enrich themselves. The passion of many American Indians for intoxicating drinks was so great that evil men among the traders were often able to strip them of all their goods by selling them strong liquors. The settlers generally bought the land they occupied from the American Indians. As land was not worth much, the price paid was trifling. Manhattan Island, on which New York now stands, was sold to the Dutch, by the American Indians, for about twenty-four dollars. The land -sales made trouble, for the lines were not well defined, and were often matters of dispute. The American Indians did not understand business, and they sometimes had to be paid over and over again for a piece of land.