Note 439 — Chapter XXVII · 1764. BOUQUET FORCES THE DELAWARES AND SHAWANOES TO SUE FOR PEACE.

An Indian council, on solemn occasions, is always opened with preliminary forms, sufficiently wearisome and tedious, but made indispensable by immemorial custom; for this people are as much bound by their conventional usages as the most artificial children of civilization. The forms are varied to some extent, according to the imagination and taste of the speaker; but in all essential respects they are closely similar, throughout the tribes of Algonquin and Iroquois lineage. They run somewhat as follows, each sentence being pronounced with great solemnity, and confirmed by the delivery of a wampum belt: Brothers, with this belt I open your ears that you may hear—I remove grief and sorrow from your hearts—I draw from your feet the thorns which have pierced them as you journeyed thither—I clean the seats of the council-house, that you may sit at ease—I wash your head and body, that your spirits may be refreshed—I condole with you on the loss of the friends who have died since we last met—I wipe out any blood which may have been spilt between us. This ceremony, which, by the delivery of so many belts of wampum, entailed no small expense, was never used except on the most important occasions; and at the councils with Colonel Bouquet the angry warriors seem wholly to have dispensed with it.

An Indian orator is provided with a stock of metaphors, which he always makes use of for the expression of certain ideas. Thus, to make war is to raise the hatchet; to make peace is to take hold of the chain of friendship; to deliberate is to kindle the council-fire; to cover the bones of the dead is to make reparation and gain forgiveness for the act of killing them. A state of war and disaster is typified by a black cloud; a state of peace, by bright sunshine, or by an open path between the two nations.

The orator seldom speaks without careful premeditation of what he is about to say; and his memory is refreshed by the belts of wampum, which he delivers after every clause in his harangue, as a pledge of the sincerity and truth of his words. These belts are carefully preserved by the bearers, as a substitute for written records; a use for which they are the better adapted, as they are often worked with hieroglyphics expressing the meaning they are designed to preserve. Thus, at a treaty of peace, the principal belt often bears the figures of an Indian and a white man holding a chain between them.

For the nature and uses of wampum, see note, ante, p. 141, note.

Though a good memory is an essential qualification of an Indian orator, it would be unjust not to observe that striking outbursts of spontaneous eloquence have sometimes proceeded from their lips.