VINDICATION OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS FROM THE CHARGE OF BEING SAVAGES.
Since the world have agreed in attaching a severe and savage character
to the American Aborigines in war; and as I may yet have repeated
occasions to develop and describe somewhat of these features in
the progress of this story; it is due to that people, that some
explanations should be made, and that they should realize the benefit
of all the apology of the circumstances in history, which have
contributed to form that character. Otherwise they may be robbed
of a portion of that sympathy, the full scope of which they have a
right to claim. It is no more than fair--it is due to say, that they
are not so bad, as these acts of cruelty would seem to indicate. Nay
more: they are generally kind--they are often heroically generous.
Their domestic character is tranquil and affectionate; and their
hospitality is bounded only by their slender means of affording comfort
to the stranger. Their fidelity and devotion, when once their faith
is pledged, is unrivalled--it is romantic. They are not less true and
persevering and heroic in their friendships, than terrible in war.
Such is the universal testimony of all, who have ever known them. So
kind and amiable are they at home, and in peace, that they invariably
secure the tenderest regard of those, who have had opportunity to
witness these developments of their character. But for their extreme
deprivation of the common comforts of civilized communities, it
were almost a temptation to those, who have experienced the selfish
friendships and the hollow courtesies of a more refined condition of
society, to go and take up their abode among them. And the well known
fact, that the _savage_, as he is called, can never be contented to
live away from home, whatever munificent and dazzling offers are made
to him--demonstrates most incontrovertibly, that there are charms
in the state of society among the American Aborigines, which have
their foundation and their secret in the amiable susceptibilities and
kind offices of our nature. Habit has its moral power, indeed. But
this cannot be the mere force of habit. The indulgence of the bad
passions can never make man happy. They will fly from the storm,
as soon as they have an opportunity. But the Indian of America will
never be contented beyond the bosom of his own tribe--much less in
a civilized community. Plant him there, and he is vacant--his eye
wanders unsatisfied. Treat him with all possible kindness, and he still
remembers with undying regret the kindness of his home. Tempt him by
the most attractive offers--and he will turn from them, and say--“Let
me go home.”
I say, then, that there is a moral secret of an amiable character,
that has created these attachments. It is not the roughnesses of life,
that have thus won and chained under these unyielding and indissoluble
bonds the domestic affections of the Indian; but it was the long and
habitual experience of inartificial kindness--a kindness, of which he
could not find even a type in the new condition, to which he had been
transferred; and therefore he sighed for his home.
How, then, shall we account for the cruelties of the American
Aborigines, as attributed to them in the records of their warfare?--How
can these amazing contrarieties of character be reconciled?--For myself
I do not think the task insurmountable. Nay--it is easy. In the first
place, there have been, as always occurs in such narratives, egregious
exaggerations. Imagination always invests the horrible with greater
horrors, than what legitimately belong to it. But with all the prunings
of exact history, it must be confessed, that Indian warfare in America,
is horrible enough. And I here undertake the task of explanation--and
I will add, of some show of apology.
The American Indian, in his wild condition, it must be understood, is,
in intellectual and moral culture, a _barbarian_. He is an improvident,
uncultivated child of nature--prompted to action only by his present
necessities. Yet he is a man. He loves comfort and happiness, as much
as he can get by the least possible pains; and while undisturbed by
the menaces of foes, his greatest happiness consists in loving and
being loved. In all his domestic relations, therefore, he is kind. And
in accordance with the same disposition, he is hospitable. Whatever
of good, and of the best, that is reckoned such among themselves,
belongs to his guest. There is nothing in his power, which he will
not surrender. And all this while his native energies lie dormant. He
delights in a lazy, indolent existence. When roused by hunger, he will
pursue the chase with wakeful vigilance and intense exertion. And when
he returns with his game, he satiates his appetite, and lies down
to sleep, not caring for the necessities of to-morrow, or the coming
week. His wife and daughters cultivate the corn, and gather the wild
rice; while himself and sons, after intervals of repose, provide their
slender larder with venison, and fish, and fowl.
But their humble and unenviable condition is yet liable to be annoyed
by foes; and so defenceless are they, that surprise is fatal. If they
suspect hostilities, from another tribe, or are made aware of such
design, they know well, that the annihilation of their enemies is their
only security;--and that their own extirpation will be as assiduously
sought for. And thus, by the necessities of their condition, vigilance
and vengeance become their watchword. The indolent savage starts
up from his long repose, convokes a council of war, and lights
the fires of grave and solemn deliberation; and the purpose being
publicly resolved, either in self-defence, or for the avengement of
supposed injury, the war-dance is immediately arranged, as the form of
enlistment for the enterprise. The reasons of the war are announced to
the assembled tribe, with all the peculiar powers of Indian oratory,
and by the most impassioned appeals to the excited feelings of the
untutored savage;--and their enemies are publicly and solemnly devoted
to death and vengeance. The pride of their nation, their wives and
little ones, their cabins, their hunting and fishing grounds, their
territories claimed by the prescriptive right of possession, the
graves and spirits of their fathers--their own lives, dear to all, and
now menaced by impending war;--every fact and circumstance, that is
precious in present possession, or dear to hope;--all, that belongs to
life, and all that is mysterious and awful in religion--are invoked,
and brought in with all the power of their wild poetry and savage
rhetoric, to shake off the lethargies of peace, and kindle the passions
for war. The softer feelings are quenched, and the tender ties of life
absolved. The tomahawk is thrown upon the ground, as a gauntlet--and
the dissonant sounds of their martial instruments, “grating harsh
thunder,” mingled with the deep and hoarse murmur of the solemn chaunt
of the war-song, raised by an awful choir of ventriloquists--and every
now and then suddenly broken by the sharp and piercing explosion of
the fiendly war-whoop;--all dancing and jumping, in utmost disorder,
around the fire, naked, painted, and feathered, with tomahawk in hand,
each of hideous aspect, and together making a hideous group;--these
all, and numerous other characteristic concomitants of the scene,
constitute the challenge, which is made upon the assembled warriors, to
take up the gauntlet, and thus pledge themselves to the destruction of
their enemies. Nothing can exceed the effect of these solemnities on
the passions of the Indian. His former tranquil spirit is thoroughly
exorcised, and he is suddenly transformed into a fanatic and a madman.
Anticipating well the doom, that awaits him, if he falls into the
hand of his enemies, he works up all his passions to a fearlessness
of death, and to a contempt of every imaginable cruelty. He turns his
back, and steels his heart to all domestic endearments. He fasts--he
lacerates his own flesh, and accustoms himself to the patient and
unflinching endurance of pain and agony, by the inflictions of his own
hand. And when the Indian is thus prepared for war, no torment, however
ingeniously devised, however cruelly inflicted, can cause a single
muscle of his frame to quiver. All his feelings and passions are too
stout to be subdued by such inventions. He arms himself alike to endure
them, and to inflict them. Such are the necessities, and such is the
custom of Indian warfare. It knows no mercy. He becomes a war-stricken
and blood-thirsty maniac, from the moment of his enlistment, till he
falls by the hand of his foe, or returns victorious to his home. He
is elevated above the atmosphere, and thrown beyond the circumference
of all ordinary human sympathies. For the time, he is not a man--he
is more than a man. He has been excited to a condition of mental
intoxication--of spiritual inebriety--and maintains it. The state of
his passions is a mere artificial product. It is not the nature of
man--it is not the nature of the Indian--but the effect of an adopted,
a cherished, an inflexible principle, which, if not necessary, he at
least imagines to be so. And woe be to him--woe to the man, or the
woman, or the child, that bears the mark of his enemies, and falls in
his power. He has taken a solemn religious sacrament, that absolves
him from tenderness, that makes tenderness a crime, if it be shown to
a foe. In war the American Indian is indeed a _barbarian_. What else
could be expected from his untutored condition--from his uncultivated
nature? Cunning, and stratagem, and cruelty are to him a necessary
policy--because such is the policy of his enemies. They know not--they
cannot be expected to know the refinements of civilized warfare. And
it is at least a question, whether the more magnanimous onset and
the softer clemency of a conqueror, among civilized nations, are to
wash away the crime, by which, in his march to the attainment of his
laurels, he has desolated human happiness and life on the largest
scale;--while the savage blow, which affords no time to anticipate
calamity, and leaves no widow or fatherless child to weep a long and
tedious way to the grave, is alone to be damned in human opinion.
And can it be expected of the Indian, when he makes war upon the
white man--or rather, when the white man has _provoked_ him to war,
that he will conform to the usages of civilized nations? How can he
do it? If he fights, he must fight in his own way. In his creed,
surprise is his lawful advantage, and extirpation his necessity. And
under the same artificial and unnatural excitement, and with the same
determination, and from the same coverts of the forest and the night,
from which he pounces upon the foe of his own race, he springs also
upon the unexpecting village of the white man, wraps it suddenly
in flames, and if it be possible, leaves not a soul to tell the
story of their calamity. Although we cannot love this part of their
character--although we are shocked at the story of such warfare--yet
may we find a reason for it, in the habits and circumstances of these
wild children of nature--a reason, which, if it does not approach to
an apology, may yet leave them possessed of elements of character,
which, in their tranquil moments are worthy of our esteem and our
confidence.
It remains yet to be told, that the American Aborigines have scarcely
ever waged a wanton war upon the European colonists--and perhaps it
ought to be said--_never_. They received European settlers originally
with open arms--they generously parted with their lands, piece by
piece, for the most trifling considerations--and always manifested
a friendly disposition, so long as no just occasion of suspicion
and hostility was afforded. They regarded the white man as a
superior being--as indeed he was. They reverenced him; and they were
never easily provoked to enter into strife. That the rapid growth
and gradual encroachments of the European colonists were natural
occasions of jealousy, may easily be imagined. The Aborigines saw
themselves deprived of one territory after another, their hunting
grounds destroyed, their fishing privileges monopolised, and their
means of subsistence in consequence gradually failing. They retired
into the wilderness--and still the white men trode upon their heels.
Occasionally private quarrels awakened resentment, and sowed the seeds
of public contest. And is it a matter of wonder,--that the Indian
was provoked? that he began to assert his rights, and meditate their
recovery? The whole history of Indian warfare in America proves, that
not only in their ignorance, but in nature, and in reason, it was to be
expected. And no less was it to be expected, that they would conduct
their wars in their own way. They have done many cruelties, and those
cruelties have been made an apology for taking possession of their
inheritance. After all that has been said of their savage nature,
they are uniformly found a meek, and patient, and long-suffering
race. I do conscientiously consider it a libel on their character to
call them _savages_;--and my only reason for conforming to this usage
occasionally, is simply because it is usage;--for the same reason that
we call them American Aborigines.
It is moreover to be observed, that the character of all the Indian
tribes, within the jurisdiction of the States _proper_, has long since
been greatly modified by their intercourse and intimacies with the
whites--in some respects for the better, in others for the worse.
So far as they have caught the vices of the whites, and acquired
the use of ardent spirits, it has been worse, and even ruinous for
them. But despairing of success in war against these intruders on
the graves of their fathers, all those tribes, which have been more
or less encircled and hemmed in by the white settlements, have not
only lost their original wildness, and intrepidity of character,
but such, as have not become debased by intemperance, have been
greatly softened;--and not a few of them exhibit the most exemplary
specimens of civilized manners--and some are even highly cultivated
and refined. They have men and chiefs, who have been well educated
at the colleges and universities of the United States, who would do
honour to any society, and who are capable of executing with great
ability a consistent and dignified current of political diplomacy with
the general Government, in defence of their own rights. Specimens
of this character will be abundantly developed in the course of our
narrative. They are no longer objects of dread--and may fairly assert
their claims to admission within the pale of civilized communities.
We of course speak of those, who have been surrounded and impaled
by civilization itself. There are tribes, who are yet wild--some in
the North-West Territory, on the east of the Mississippi;--and many
nations of this description, scattered over the vast regions between
the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean. But all the tribes within the
boundaries of the organized States--especially the older States--are
more or less civilized. They are an unoffending, tractable, and docile
people. And the efforts of the benevolent for their intellectual and
moral cultivation, as well as for their improvement in the useful arts
of life, have been abundantly rewarded--as we shall have occasion to
notice.