A Singular Appearance Of
Peace And Concord Are The First Characteristics Which Strike You In
The Villages Of These People.
Nothing can be more pleasing, nothing
surprises an European so much as the silence and harmony which
prevails among them, and in each family; except when disturbed by
that accursed spirit given them by the wood rangers in exchange for
their furs.
If my children learn nothing of geometrical rules, the
use of the compass, or of the Latin tongue, they will learn and
practise sobriety, for rum can no longer be sent to these people;
they will learn that modesty and diffidence for which the young
Indians are so remarkable; they will consider labour as the most
essential qualification; hunting as the second. They will prepare
themselves in the prosecution of our small rural schemes, carried on
for the benefit of our little community, to extend them further when
each shall receive his inheritance. Their tender minds will cease to
be agitated by perpetual alarms; to be made cowards by continual
terrors: if they acquire in the village of - -, such an awkwardness
of deportment and appearance as would render them ridiculous in our
gay capitals, they will imbibe, I hope, a confirmed taste for that
simplicity, which so well becomes the cultivators of the land. If I
cannot teach them any of those professions which sometimes embellish
and support our society, I will show them how to hew wood, how to
construct their own ploughs; and with a few tools how to supply
themselves with every necessary implement, both in the house and in
the field. If they are hereafter obliged to confess, that they
belong to no one particular church, I shall have the consolation of
teaching them that great, that primary worship which is the
foundation of all others. If they do not fear God according to the
tenets of any one seminary, they shall learn to worship him upon the
broad scale of nature. The Supreme Being does not reside in peculiar
churches or communities; he is equally the great Manitou of the
woods and of the plains; and even in the gloom, the obscurity of
those very woods, his justice may be as well understood and felt as
in the most sumptuous temples. Each worship with us, hath, you know,
its peculiar political tendency; there it has none but to inspire
gratitude and truth: their tender minds shall receive no other idea
of the Supreme Being, than that of the father of all men, who
requires nothing more of us than what tends to make each other
happy. We shall say with them, Soungwaneha, esa caurounkyawga,
nughwonshauza neattewek, nesalanga. - Our father, be thy will done in
earth as it is in great heaven.
Perhaps my imagination gilds too strongly this distant prospect; yet
it appears founded on so few, and simple principles, that there is
not the same probability of adverse incidents as in more complex
schemes. These vague rambling contemplations which I here faithfully
retrace, carry me sometimes to a great distance; I am lost in the
anticipation of the various circumstances attending this proposed
metamorphosis!
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