Travels In The United States Of America; Commencing In The Year 1793, And Ending In 1797. With The Author's Journals Of His Two Voyages Across The Atlantic By William Priest
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We Will Consider
Them Here, On The Same Stage With The Whites.
And where the facts are not
apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed, it will be right to make
allowances for the difference of condition, of conversation, and of the
sphere in which they move.
Many millions of them have been brought to, and
born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to
their own homes, and their own society; yet many have been so situate,
that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their
masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that
circumstance have always been associated with the whites; some have been
liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and
sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before
their eyes samples of the best work from abroad. The Indians with no
advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes, not
destitute of merit and design. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or
a country, so as to prove the existence of a germe in their minds, which
only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most
sublime oratory, such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their
imagination glowing and elevated; but never yet could I find a black, that
had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration[Footnote: "Sleep
hab no massa," was the answer of a sleepy negro, who was told that his
massa called him.
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