But Now These Pleasing
Expectations Are Gone, We Must Abandon The Accumulated Industry Of
Nineteen Years, We Must Fly We Hardly Know Whither, Through The Most
Impervious Paths, And Become Members Of A New And Strange Community.
Oh, Virtue!
Is this all the reward thou hast to confer on thy
votaries?
Either thou art only a chimera, or thou art a timid
useless being; soon affrighted, when ambition, thy great adversary,
dictates, when war re-echoes the dreadful sounds, and poor helpless
individuals are mowed down by its cruel reapers like useless grass.
I have at all times generously relieved what few distressed people I
have met with; I have encouraged the industrious; my house has
always been opened to travellers; I have not lost a month in illness
since I have been a man; I have caused upwards of an hundred and
twenty families to remove hither. Many of them I have led by the
hand in the days of their first trial; distant as I am from any
places of worship or school of education, I have been the pastor of
my family, and the teacher of many of my neighbours. I have learnt
them as well as I could, the gratitude they owe to God, the father
of harvests; and their duties to man: I have been as useful a
subject; ever obedient to the laws, ever vigilant to see them
respected and observed. My wife hath faithfully followed the same
line within her province; no woman was ever a better economist, or
spun or wove better linen; yet we must perish, perish like wild
beasts, included within a ring of fire!
Yes, I will cheerfully embrace that resource, it is an holy
inspiration; by night and by day, it presents itself to my mind: I
have carefully revolved the scheme; I have considered in all its
future effects and tendencies, the new mode of living we must
pursue, without salt, without spices, without linen and with little
other clothing; the art of hunting, we must acquire, the new manners
we must adopt, the new language we must speak; the dangers attending
the education of my children we must endure. These changes may
appear more terrific at a distance perhaps than when grown familiar
by practice: what is it to us, whether we eat well made pastry, or
pounded alagriches; well roasted beef, or smoked venison; cabbages,
or squashes? Whether we wear neat home-spun or good beaver; whether
we sleep on feather-beds, or on bear-skins? The difference is not
worth attending to. The difficulty of the language, fear of some
great intoxication among the Indians; finally, the apprehension lest
my younger children should be caught by that singular charm, so
dangerous at their tender years; are the only considerations that
startle me. By what power does it come to pass, that children who
have been adopted when young among these people, can never be
prevailed on to readopt European manners? Many an anxious parent I
have seen last war, who at the return of the peace, went to the
Indian villages where they knew their children had been carried in
captivity; when to their inexpressible sorrow, they found them so
perfectly Indianised, that many knew them no longer, and those whose
more advanced ages permitted them to recollect their fathers and
mothers, absolutely refused to follow them, and ran to their adopted
parents for protection against the effusions of love their unhappy
real parents lavished on them! Incredible as this may appear, I have
heard it asserted in a thousand instances, among persons of credit.
In the village of - - - , where I purpose to go, there lived, about
fifteen years ago, an Englishman and a Swede, whose history would
appear moving, had I time to relate it. They were grown to the age
of men when they were taken; they happily escaped the great
punishment of war captives, and were obliged to marry the Squaws who
had saved their lives by adoption. By the force of habit, they
became at last thoroughly naturalised to this wild course of life.
While I was there, their friends sent them a considerable sum of
money to ransom themselves with. The Indians, their old masters,
gave them their choice, and without requiring any consideration,
told them, that they had been long as free as themselves. They chose
to remain; and the reasons they gave me would greatly surprise you:
the most perfect freedom, the ease of living, the absence of those
cares and corroding solicitudes which so often prevail with us; the
peculiar goodness of the soil they cultivated, for they did not
trust altogether to hunting; all these, and many more motives, which
I have forgot, made them prefer that life, of which we entertain
such dreadful opinions. It cannot be, therefore, so bad as we
generally conceive it to be; there must be in their social bond
something singularly captivating, and far superior to anything to be
boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we
have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice
become Europeans! There must be something more congenial to our
native dispositions, than the fictitious society in which we live;
or else why should children, and even grown persons, become in a
short time so invincibly attached to it? There must be something
very bewitching in their manners, something very indelible and
marked by the very hands of nature. For, take a young Indian lad,
give him the best education you possibly can, load him with your
bounty, with presents, nay with riches; yet he will secretly long
for his native woods, which you would imagine he must have long
since forgot; and on the first opportunity he can possibly find, you
will see him voluntarily leave behind him all you have given him,
and return with inexpressible joy to lie on the mats of his fathers.
Mr. - - , some years ago, received from a good old Indian, who died
in his house, a young lad, of nine years of age, his grandson.
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