The sportsman and the skill of the surgeon,
did not equally excite them to meditate on the labours of the builder
and the ploughman, I can only answer that what we see in its remote cause
is always more feebly felt than that which presents to our immediate grasp
both its origin and effect.
Their leading good and bad qualities I shall concisely touch upon.
Of their intrepidity no doubt can exist. Their levity, their fickleness,
their passionate extravagance of character, cannot be defended.
They are indeed sudden and quick in quarrel; but if their resentment
be easily roused, their thirst of revenge is not implacable. Their honesty,
when tempted by novelty, is not unimpeachable, but in their own society
there is good reason to believe that few breaches of it occur.
It were well if similar praise could be given to their veracity: but truth
they neither prize nor practice. When they wish to deceive they scruple not
to utter the grossest and most hardened lies.* Their attachment and gratitude
to those among us whom they have professed to love have always remained
inviolable, unless effaced by resentment, from sudden provocation: then,
like all other Indians, the impulse of the moment is alone regarded by them.
[*This may serve to account for the contradictions of many of their
accounts to us.]
Some of their manufactures display ingenuity, when the rude tools with which
they work, and their celerity of execution are considered.
