Peter Otsaquette was the son of a man of consideration among the Oneida
Indians of New York. At the close of the Revolutionary war, he was
noticed by the Marquis de La Fayette, who, to a noble zeal for liberty,
united the most philanthropic feelings. Viewing, therefore, this young
savage with peculiar interest, and anticipating the happy results to be
derived from his moral regeneration, he took him, though scarcely twelve
years old, to France. Peter arrived at that period when Louis XVI. and
Maria Antoinette were in the zenith of their glory. There he was taught
the accomplishments of a gentleman;—music, drawing, and fencing, were
made familiar to him, and he danced with a grace that a Vestris could not
but admire. At about eighteen, his separation from a country in which
he had spent his time so agreeably and so profitably, became necessary.
Laden with favours from the Marquis, and the miniatures of those friends
he had left behind. Peter departed for America—inflated, perhaps, with
the idea, that the deep ignorance of his nation, with that of the Indians
of the whole continent, might be dispelled by his efforts, and he become
the proud instrument of the civilization of thousands.
Prosecuting his route to the land of his parents, he came to the city
of Albany; not the uncivilized savage, not with any of those marks
which bespoke a birth in the forest, or years spent in toiling the wilds
of a desert, but possessing a fine commanding figure, an expressive
countenance, an intelligent eye, with a face scarcely indicative of
the race from which he was descended. He presented, at this period, an
interesting spectacle: a child of the wilderness was beheld about to
proceed to the home of his forefathers, having received the brilliant
advantages of a cultivated mind, and on his way to impart to the nation
that owned him, the benefits which civilization had given him. It was an
opportunity for the philosopher to contemplate, and to reflect on the
future good this young Indian might be the means of producing.
Shortly after his arrival in Albany—where he visited the first
families—he took advantage of Governor Clinton’s journey to Fort Stanwix
(where a treaty was to be held with the Indians,) to return to his tribe.
On the route, Otsaquette amused the company (among whom were the French
Minister, Count De Moustiers, and several gentlemen of respectability)
by his powers on various instruments of music. At Fort Stanwix, he
found himself again with the companions of his early days, who saw and
recognised him. His friends and relations had not forgotten him, and he
was welcomed to his home and to his blanket.
But that which occurred soon after his reception, led him to a too
fearful anticipation of an unsuccessful project; for the Oneidas, as if
they could not acknowledge Otsaquette, attired in the dress with which
he appeared before them,—a mark which did not disclose his nation,—and,
thinking that he had assumed it, as if ashamed of his own native costume,
the garb of his ancestors, they tore it from him with a savage avidity,
and a fiend-like ferociousness, daubed on the paint to which he had
been so long unused, and clothed him with the uncouth habiliments held
sacred by his tribe. Their fiery ferocity, in the performance of the act,
showed but too well the bold stand they were about to take against the
innovations they supposed Otsaquette was to be the agent for affecting
against their immemorial manners and customs, and which, from the
venerable antiquity of their structure, it would be nothing short of
sacrilege to destroy.
Thus the reformed savage was taken back again to his native barbarity,
and—as if to cap the climax of degradation to a mind just susceptible of
its own powers—was _married to a squaw_!
From that day, Otsaquette was no longer the accomplished Indian, from
whom every wish of philanthropy was expected to be realized. He was no
longer the instrument by whose power the emancipation of his countrymen
from the thraldom of ignorance and superstition, was to be effected. From
that day, he was again an inmate with the forest; was once more buried
in his original obscurity, and his nation only viewed him as _an equal_.
Even a liberal grant from the State, failed of securing to him that
superior consideration among them which his civilization had procured
for him with the rest of mankind. The commanding preeminence acquired
from instruction, from which it was expected ambition would have sprung
up, and acted as a double stimulant, from either the natural inferiority
of the savage mind, or the predetermination of his countrymen—became of
no effect, and, in a little time, was wholly annihilated. Otsaquette
was lost! His moral perdition began from the hour he left Fort Stanwix.
Three short months had hardly transpired, when Intemperance had marked
him as her own, and soon hurried him to the grave. And, as if the very
transition had deadened all the finer feelings of his nature, the picture
given him by the Marquis—the very portrait of his affectionate friend and
benefactor himself—he parted with!
Extraordinary and unnatural as the conduct of this educated savage may
appear, the anecdote is not of a kind altogether unique; which proves,
that little or nothing is to be expected from conferring a literary
education upon those children of the forest:—An Indian, named George
White-Eyes, was taken, while a boy, to the college at Princeton, where he
received a classical education. On returning to his nation, he made some
little stay in Philadelphia. He was amiable in his manners, and of modest
demeanour, without exhibiting any trait of the savage whatever; but, no
sooner had he rejoined his friends and former companions, in the land
of his nativity, than he dropped the garb and manners of civilization,
and resumed those of the savage, and, drinking deep of their intoxicating
cup, soon put a period to his existence.
Many other instances might be adduced, to show how ineffectual have
been the attempts to plant civilization on savage habits, by means of
_literary_ education—“Can the leopard change his spots?”
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