French Pathfinders in North America | Page 8

deep interest was before the League for discussion, warriors
flocked by hundreds from all sides to the great council-fire in the
Onondaga nation. The town swarmed with visitors. Every lodge was
crowded to its utmost capacity; temporary habitations rose, and fresh
camp-fires blazed on every side, and even the unbounded Indian
hospitality was strained to provide for the throng of guests. Thus, hour
after hour, and day after day, the issue was debated in the presence of
hundreds, some squatting, some lying at full length, all absolutely silent
except when expressing approval by grunts.
The discussion was conducted in a manner that would seem to us
exceedingly tedious. Each speaker, before advancing his views,
carefully rehearsed all the points made by his predecessors. This
method had the advantage of making even the dullest mind familiar
with the various aspects of the subject, and it resulted in a so thorough
sifting of it that when a conclusion was reached, it was felt to be the
general sense of the meeting.
From this account it will be evident that public {33} speaking played a
large part in Indian life. This fact will help us to account for the
remarkable degree of eloquence sometimes displayed. If we should
think of the Indian as an untutored savage, bursting at times into
impassioned oratory, under the influence of powerful emotions, we
should miss the truth very widely. The fact is, there was a class of
professional speakers, who had trained themselves by carefully
listening to the ablest debaters among their people, and had stored their

memories with a large number of stock phrases and of images taken
from nature. These metaphors, which give to Indian oratory its peculiar
character, were not, therefore, spontaneous productions of the
imagination, but formed a common stock used by all speakers as freely
as orators in civilized society are wont to quote great authors and poets.
Among a people who devoted so much time to public discussion, a
forcible speaker wielded great influence. One of the sources of the
power over the natives of La Salle, the great French explorer, lay in the
fact that he had thoroughly mastered their method of oratory and could
harangue an audience in their own tongue like one of their best
speakers.
The subject of the chiefship is a very {34} interesting one. As has
already been explained, a son did not inherit anything from his father.
Therefore nobody was entitled to be a chief because his father had been
one. Chiefs were elected wholly on the ground of personal qualities.
Individual merit was the only thing that counted. Moreover, the chiefs
were not the only men who could originate a movement. Any warrior
might put on his war-paint and feathers and sing his war-song. As
many as were willing might join him, and the party file away on the
war-path without a single chief. If such a voluntary leader showed
prowess and skill, he was sure to be some day elected a chief.
It is very interesting to reflect that just this free state of things existed
thousands of years ago among our own ancestors in Europe. At that
time there were no kings claiming a "divine right" to govern their
fellow men. The chiefs were those whose courage, strength, and skill in
war made them to be chosen "rulers of men," to use old Homer's phrase.
If their sons did not possess these qualities, they remained among the
common herd. But there came a time when, here and there, some
mighty warrior gained so much wealth in cattle and in slaves taken in
battle, that {35} he was able to bribe some of his people and to frighten
others into consenting that his son should be chief after him. If the son
was strong enough to hold the office through his own life and to hand it
to his son, the idea soon became fixed that the chiefship belonged in
that particular family.

This was the beginning of kingship. But our aborigines had not
developed any such absurd notion as that there are particular families to
which God has given the privilege of lording it over their fellow men.
They were still in the free stage of choosing their chiefs from among
the men who served them best. We may say with confidence that there
was not an emperor, or a king, or anything more than an elective chief
in the whole of North America.
Not only had nobody the title and office of a king among the Indians;
nobody had anything like kingly authority. Rulership was not vested in
any one man, but in the council of chiefs. This feature, of course, was
very democratic. And there was another that went much further in the
same direction: almost all property was held in