[Illustration: 9247]
ETER OTSAQUETTE was the son of a man of consideration among the Oneida
Indians of New York. At the close of the Revolution, he was noticed by
the Marquis de Lafayette, 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 profitably, became necessary. Laden with
favors 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 spent in toiling the wilds of
a desert, but possessing a fine commanding figure, an expressive
countenance, and 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 Otsego was no longer the accomplished Indian, from whom
every wish of philanthrophy 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 an inmate of 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 pre-eminence 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 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 uneducated 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 the rude 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, where he was introduced to some
genteel families. He was amiable in his manners, and of modest demeanor,
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 manner of civilization, and
resumed those of the savage, and drinking deep of the 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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