________________________________________________
_
Traits of Indian Character
"I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan's cabin
hungry, and he gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and
naked, and he clothed him not."--Speech of au Indian Chief.
THERE is something in the character and habits of the North
American savage, taken in connection with the scenery over which
he is accustomed to range, its vast lakes, boundless forests,
majestic rivers, and trackless plains, that is, to my mind,
wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the
wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern,
simple, and enduring, fitted to grapple with difficulties and to
support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for
the support of the kindly virtues; and yet, if we would but take
the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicism and habitual
taciturnity which lock up his character from casual observation,
we should find him linked to his fellow-man of civilized life by
more of those sympathies and affections than are usually ascribed
to him.
It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America in
the early periods of colonization to be doubly wronged by the
white men. They have been dispossessed of their hereditary
possessions by mercenary and frequently wanton warfare, and their
characters have been traduced by bigoted and interested writers.
The colonists often treated them like beasts of the forest, and
the author has endeavored to justify him in his outrages. The
former found it easier to exterminate than to civilize; the
latter to vilify than to discriminate. The appellations of savage
and pagan were deemed sufficient to sanction the hostilities of
both; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted
and defamed, not because they were guilty, but because they were
ignorant.
The rights of the savage have seldom been properly appreciated or
respected by the white man. In peace he has too often been the
dupe of artful traffic; in war he has been regarded as a
ferocious animal whose life or death was a question of mere
precaution and convenience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when
his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and
little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting
of the reptile and is conscious of the power to destroy.
The same prejudices, which were indulged thus early, exist in
common circulation at the present day. Certain learned societies
have, it is true, with laudable diligence, endeavored to
investigate and record the real characters and manners of the
Indian tribes; the American government, too, has wisely and
humanely exerted itself to inculcate a friendly and forbearing
spirit towards them and to protect them from fraud and
injustice.* The current opinion of the Indian character, however,
is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes which infest
the frontiers and hang on the skirts of the settlements. These
are too commonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and
enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its
civilization. That proud independence which formed the main
pillar of savage virtue has been shaken down, and the whole moral
fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are humiliated and debased by
a sense of inferiority, and their native courage cowed and
daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened
neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those
withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whole
region of fertility. It has enervated their strength, multiplied
their diseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity
the low vices of artificial life. It has given them a thousand
superfluous wants, whilst it has diminished their means of mere
existence. It has driven before it the animals of the chase, who
fly from the sound of the axe and the smoke of the settlement and
seek refuge in the depths of remoter forests and yet untrodden
wilds. Thus do we too often find the Indians on our frontiers to
be the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes, who have
lingered in the vicinity of the settlements and sunk into
precarious and vagabond existence. Poverty, repining and hopeless
poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes
their spirits and blights every free and noble quality of their
natures. They become drunken, indolent, feeble, thievish, and
pusillanimous. They loiter like vagrants about the settlements,
among spacious dwellings replete with elaborate comforts, which
only render them sensible of the comparative wretchedness of
their own condition. Luxury spreads its ample board before their
eyes, but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over
the fields, but they are starving in the midst of its abundance;
the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden, but they feel
as reptiles that infest it.
* The American Government has been indefatigable in its exertions
to ameliorate the situation of the Indians, and to introduce
among them the arts of civilization and civil and religious
knowledge. To protect them from the frauds of the white traders
no purchase of land from them by individuals is permitted, nor is
any person allowed to receive lands from them as a present
without the express sanction of government. These precautions are
strictly enforced.
How different was their state while yet the undisputed lords of
the soil! Their wants were few and the means of gratification
within their reach. They saw every one round them sharing the
same lot, enduring the same hardships, feeding on the same
aliments, arrayed in the same rude garments. No roof then rose
but was open to the homeless stranger; no smoke curled among the
trees but he was welcome to sit down by its fire and join the
hunter in his repast. "For," says an old historian of New
England, "their life is so void of care, and they are so loving
also, that they make use of those things they enjoy as common
goods, and are therein so compassionate that rather than one
should starve through want, they would starve all; thus they pass
their time merrily, not regarding our pomp, but are better
content with their own, which some men esteem so meanly of." Such
were the Indians whilst in the pride and energy of their
primitive natures: they resembled those wild plants which thrive
best in the shades of the forest, but shrink from the hand of
cultivation and perish beneath the influence of the sun.
In discussing the savage character writers have been too prone to
indulge in vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration, instead
of the candid temper of true philosophy. They have not
sufficiently considered the peculiar circumstances in which the
Indians have been placed, and the peculiar principles under which
they have been educated. No being acts more rigidly from rule
than the Indian. His whole conduct is regulated according to some
general maxims early implanted in his mind. The moral laws that
govern him are, to be sure, but few; but then he conforms to them
all; the white man abounds in laws of religion, morals, and
manners, but how many does he violate!
A frequent ground of accusation against the Indians is their
disregard of treaties, and the treachery and wantonness with
which, in time of apparent peace, they will suddenly fly to
hostilities. The intercourse of the white men with the Indians,
however, is too apt to be cold, distrustful, oppressive, and
insulting. They seldom treat them with that confidence and
frankness which are indispensable to real friendship, nor is
sufficient caution observed not to offend against those feelings
of pride or superstition which often prompt the Indian to
hostility quicker than mere considerations of interest. The
solitary savage feels silently, but acutely. His sensibilities
are not diffused over so wide a surface as those of the white
man, but they run in steadier and deeper channels. His pride, his
affections, his superstitions, are all directed towards fewer
objects, but the wounds inflicted on them are proportionably
severe, and furnish motives of hostility which we cannot
sufficiently appreciate. Where a community is also limited in
number, and forms one great patriarchal family, as in an Indian
tribe, the injury of an individual is the injury of the whole,
and the sentiment of vengeance is almost instantaneously
diffused. One council-fire is sufficient for the discussion and
arrangement of a plan of hostilities. Here all the fighting-men
and sages assemble. Eloquence and superstition combine to inflame
the minds of the warriors. The orator awakens their martial
ardor, and they are wrought up to a kind of religious desperation
by the visions of the prophet and the dreamer.
An instance of one of those sudden exasperations, arising from a
motive peculiar to the Indian character, is extant in an old
record of the early settlement of Massachusetts. The planters of
Plymouth had defaced the monuments of the dead at Passonagessit,
and had plundered the grave of the Sachem's mother of some skins
with which it had been decorated. The Indians are remarkable for
the reverence which they entertain for the sepulchres of their
kindred. Tribes that have passed generations exiled from the
abodes of their ancestors, when by chance they have been
travelling in the vicinity, have been known to turn aside from
the highway, and, guided by wonderfully accurate tradition, have
crossed the country for miles to some tumulus, buried perhaps in
woods, where the bones of their tribe were anciently deposited,
and there have passed hours in silent meditation. Influenced by
this sublime and holy feeling, the Sachem whose mother's tomb had
been violated gathered his men together, and addressed them in
the following beautifully simple and pathetic harangue--a curious
specimen of Indian eloquence and an affecting instance of filial
piety in a savage:
"When last the glorious light of all the sky was underneath this
globe and birds grew silent, I began to settle, as my custom is,
to take repose. Before mine eyes were fast closed methought I saw
a vision, at which my spirit was much troubled; and trembling at
that doleful sight, a spirit cried aloud, 'Behold, my son, whom I
have cherished, see the breasts that gave thee suck, the hands
that lapped thee warm and fed thee oft. Canst thou forget to take
revenge of those wild people who have defaced my monument in a
despiteful manner, disdaining our antiquities and honorable
customs? See, now, the Sachem's grave lies like the common
people, defaced by an ignoble race. Thy mother doth complain and
implores thy aid against this thievish people who have newly
intruded on our land. If this be suffered, I shall not rest quiet
in my everlasting habitation.' This said, the spirit vanished,
and I, all in a sweat, not able scarce to speak, began to get
some strength and recollect my spirits that were fled, and
determined to demand your counsel and assistance."
I have adduced this anecdote at some length, as it tends to show
how these sudden acts of hostility, which have been attributed to
caprice and perfidy, may often arise from deep and generous
motives, which our inattention to Indian character and customs
prevents our properly appreciating.
Another ground of violent outcry against the Indians is their
barbarity to the vanquished. This had its origin partly in policy
and partly in superstition. The tribes, though sometimes called
nations, were never so formidable in their numbers but that the
loss of several warriors was sensibly felt; this was particularly
the case when they had been frequently engaged in warfare; and
many an instance occurs in Indian history where a tribe that had
long been formidable to its neighbors has been broken up and
driven away by the capture and massacre of its principal
fighting-men. There was a strong temptation, therefore, to the
victor to be merciless, not so much to gratify any cruel revenge,
as to provide for future security. The Indians had also the
superstitious belief, frequent among barbarous nations and
prevalent also among the ancients, that the manes of their
friends who had fallen in battle were soothed by the blood of the
captives. The prisoners, however, who are not thus sacrificed are
adopted into their families in the place of the slain, and are
treated with the confidence and affection of relatives and
friends; nay, so hospitable and tender is their entertainment
that when the alternative is offered them they will often prefer
to remain with their adopted brethren rather than return to the
home and the friends of their youth.
The cruelty of the Indians towards their prisoners has been
heightened since the colonization of the whites. What was
formerly a compliance with policy and superstition has been
exasperated into a gratification of vengeance. They cannot but be
sensible that the white men are the usurpers of their ancient
dominion, the cause of their degradation, and the gradual
destroyers of their race. They go forth to battle smarting with
injuries and indignities which they have individually suffered,
and they are driven to madness and despair by the wide-spreading
desolation and the overwhelming ruin of European warfare. The
whites have too frequently set them an example of violence by
burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of
subsistence, and yet they wonder that savages do not show
moderation and magnanimity towards those who have left them
nothing but mere existence and wretchedness.
We stigmatize the Indians, also, as cowardly and treacherous,
because they use stratagem in warfare in preference to open
force; but in this they are fully justified by their rude code of
honor. They are early taught that stratagem is praiseworthy; the
bravest warrior thinks it no disgrace to lurk in silence, and
take every advantage of his foe: he triumphs in the superior
craft and sagacity by which he has been enabled to surprise and
destroy an enemy. Indeed, man is naturally more prone to subtilty
than open valor, owing to his physical weakness in comparison
with other animals. They are endowed with natural weapons of
defence, with horns, with tusks, with hoofs, and talons; but man
has to depend on his superior sagacity. In all his encounters
with these, his proper enemies, he resorts to stratagem; and when
he perversely turns his hostility against his fellow-man, he at
first continues the same subtle mode of warfare.
The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy
with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be
effected by stratagem. That chivalrous courage which induces us
to despise the suggestions of prudence and to rush in the face of
certain danger is the offspring of society and produced by
education. It is honorable, because it is in fact the triumph of
lofty sentiment over an instinctive repugnance to pain, and over
those yearnings after personal ease and security which society
has condemned as ignoble. It is kept alive by pride and the fear
of shame; and thus the dread of real evil is overcome by the
superior dread of an evil which exists but in the imagination. It
has been cherished and stimulated also by various means. It has
been the theme of spirit-stirring song and chivalrous story. The
poet and minstrel have delighted to shed round it the splendors
of fiction, and even the historian has forgotten the sober
gravity of narration and broken forth into enthusiasm and
rhapsody in its praise. Triumphs and gorgeous pageants have been
its reward: monuments, on which art has exhausted its skill and
opulence its treasures, have been erected to perpetuate a
nation's gratitude and admiration. Thus artificially excited,
courage has risen to an extraordinary and factitious degree of
heroism, and, arrayed in all the glorious "pomp and circumstance
of war," this turbulent quality has even been able to eclipse
many of those quiet but invaluable virtues which silently ennoble
the human character and swell the tide of human happiness.
But if courage intrinsically consists in the defiance of danger
and pain, the life of the Indian is a continual exhibition of it.
He lives in a state of perpetual hostility and risk. Peril and
adventure are congenial to his nature, or rather seem necessary
to arouse his faculties and to give an interest to his existence.
Surrounded by hostile tribes, whose mode of warfare is by ambush
and surprisal, he is always prepared for fight and lives with his
weapons in his hands. As the ship careers in fearful singleness
through the solitudes of ocean, as the bird mingles among clouds
and storms, and wings its way, a mere speck, across the pathless
fields of air, so the Indian holds his course, silent, solitary,
but undaunted, through the boundless bosom of the wilderness. His
expeditions may vie in distance and danger with the pilgrimage of
the devotee or the crusade of the knight-errant. He traverses
vast forests exposed to the hazards of lonely sickness, of
lurking enemies, and pining famine. Stormy lakes, those great
inland seas, are no obstacles to his wanderings: in his light
canoe of bark he sports like a feather on their waves, and darts
with the swiftness of an arrow down the roaring rapids of the
rivers. His very subsistence is snatched from the midst of toil
and peril. He gains his food by the hardships and dangers of the
chase: he wraps himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther,
and the buffalo, and sleeps among the thunders of the cataract.
No hero of ancient or modern days can surpass the Indian in his
lofty contempt of death and the fortitude with which he sustains
his cruelest affliction. Indeed, we here behold him rising
superior to the white man in consequence of his peculiar
education. The latter rushes to glorious death at the cannon's
mouth; the former calmly contemplates its approach, and
triumphantly endures it amidst the varied torments of surrounding
foes and the protracted agonies of fire. He even takes a pride in
taunting his persecutors and provoking their ingenuity of
torture; and as the devouring flames prey on his very vitals and
the flesh shrinks from the sinews, he raises his last song of
triumph, breathing the defiance of an unconquered heart and
invoking the spirits of his fathers to witness that he dies
without a groan.
Notwithstanding the obloquy with which the early historians have
overshadowed the characters of the unfortunate natives, some
bright gleams occasionally break through which throw a degree of
melancholy lustre on their memories. Facts are occasionally to be
met with in the rude annals of the eastern provinces which,
though recorded with the coloring of prejudice and bigotry, yet
speak for themselves, and will be dwelt on with applause and
sympathy when prejudice shall have passed away.
In one of the homely narratives of the Indian wars in New England
there is a touching account of the desolation carried into the
tribe of the Pequod Indians. Humanity shrinks from the
cold-blooded detail of indiscriminate butchery. In one place we
read of the surprisal of an Indian fort in the night, when the
wigwams were wrapped in flames and the miserable inhabitants shot
down and slain in attempting to escape, "all being despatched and
ended in the course of an hour." After a series of similar
transactions "our soldiers," as the historian piously observes,
"being resolved by God's assistance to make a final destruction
of them," the unhappy savages being hunted from their homes and
fortresses and pursued with fire and sword, a scanty but gallant
band, the sad remnant of the Pequod warriors, with their wives
and children took refuge in a swamp.
Burning with indignation and rendered sullen by despair, with
hearts bursting with grief at the destruction of their tribe, and
spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat,
they refused to ask their lives at the hands of an insulting foe,
and preferred death to submission.
As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal
retreat, so as to render escape impracticable. Thus situated,
their enemy "plied them with shot all the time, by which means
many were killed and buried in the mire." In the darkness and fog
that preceded the dawn of day some few broke through the
besiegers and escaped into the woods; "the rest were left to the
conquerors, of which many were killed in the swamp, like sullen
dogs who would rather, in their self-willedness and madness, sit
still and be shot through or cut to pieces" than implore for
mercy. When the day broke upon this handful of forlorn but
dauntless spirits, the soldiers, we are told, entering the swamp,
"saw several heaps of them sitting close together, upon whom they
discharged their pieces, laden with ten or twelve pistol bullets
at a time, putting the muzzles of the pieces under the boughs,
within a few yards of them; so as, besides those that were found
dead, many more were killed and sunk into the mire, and never
were minded more by friend or foe."
Can any one read this plain unvarnished tale without admiring the
stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit
that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and
to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature?
When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the
senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern
tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered
death without resistance or even supplication. Such conduct was
in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indian
it was reviled as obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the
dupes of show and circumstance! How different is virtue clothed
in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue naked and destitute
and perishing obscurely in a wilderness!
But I forbear to dwell on these gloomy pictures. The eastern
tribes have long since disappeared; the forests that sheltered
them have been laid low, and scarce any traces remain of them in
the thickly-settled States of New England, excepting here and
there the Indian name of a village or a stream. And such must,
sooner or later, be the fate of those other tribes which skirt
the frontiers, and have occasionally been inveigled from their
forests to mingle in the wars of white men. In a little while,
and they will go the way that their brethren have gone before.
The few hordes which still linger about the shores of Huron and
Superior and the tributary streams of the Mississippi will share
the fate of those tribes that once spread over Massachusetts and
Connecticut and lorded it along the proud banks of the Hudson, of
that gigantic race said to have existed on the borders of the
Susquehanna, and of those various nations that flourished about
the Potomac and the Rappahannock and that peopled the forests of
the vast valley of Shenandoah. They will vanish like a vapor from
the face of the earth; their very history will be lost in
forgetfulness; and "the places that now know them will know them
no more forever." Or if, perchance, some dubious memorial of them
should survive, it may be in the romantic dreams of the poet, to
people in imagination his glades and groves, like the fauns and
satyrs and sylvan deities of antiquity. But should he venture
upon the dark story of their wrongs and wretchedness, should he
tell how they were invaded, corrupted, despoiled, driven from
their native abodes and the sepulchres of their fathers, hunted
like wild beasts about the earth, and sent down with violence and
butchery to the grave, posterity will either turn with horror and
incredulity from the tale or blush with indignation at the
inhumanity of their forefathers. "We are driven back," said an
old warrior, "until we can retreat no farther--our hatchets are
broken, our bows are snapped, our fires are nearly extinguished;
a little longer and the white man will cease to persecute us, for
we shall cease to exist!"
Washington Irving's short story: Traits of Indian Character
_
Read next: Philip of Pokanoket
Read previous: Statford-on-Avon
Table of content of Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your reviewYour review will be placed after the table of content of this book
