It is seldom that in this country the mind is ever carried backward by
associations or recollections of any kind. Horace Walpole said of Italy,
that it was "a land in which the memory saw more than the eye," and in
Canada hope must play the part of memory. It is all the difference
between seed-time and harvest. We are rich in anticipation, but poor in
possession--more poor in memorials. Some vague and general traditions,
of no interest whatever to the ignorant settlers, do indeed exist, of
horrid conflicts between the Hurons and the Iroquois, all along these
shores, in the time and before the time of the French dominion; of the
enterprise and daring of the early fur traders; above all, of the
unrequited labours and sacrifices of the missionaries, whether Jesuits,
or Moravians, or Methodists, some of whom perished in tortures; others
devoted themselves to the most horrible privations--each for what he
believed to be the cause of truth, and for the diffusion of the light of
salvation; none near to applaud the fortitude with which they died, or
to gain hope and courage from their example. During the last war between
Great Britain and the United States[15]--that war, in its commencement
dishonourable to the Americans, in its conclusion shameful to the
British, and in its progress disgraceful and demoralising to both;--that
war, which began and was continued in the worst passions of our nature,
cupidity and vengeance;--which brought no advantage to any one human
being--not even the foolish noise and empty glory which wait oftentimes
on human conflicts; a war scarce heard of in Europe, even by the mother
country, who paid its cost in millions, and in the blood of some of her
best subjects; a war obscure, fratricidal, and barbarous, which has left
behind no effect but a mutual exasperation and distress along the
frontiers of both nations, and a hatred which, like hatred between near
kinsmen, is more bitter and irreconcilable than any hostility between
the mercenary armies of rival nations; for here, not only the two
governments quarrelled, but the people, their institutions, feelings,
opinions, prejudices, local and personal interests, were brought into
collision;--during this vile, profitless, and unnatural war, a battle
was fought near Chatham, called by some the battle of the Thames, and by
others the battle of the Moravian towns, in which the Americans, under
General Harrison, beat General Proctor with considerable loss. But it is
chiefly worthy of notice, as the last scene of the life of Tecumseh, a
Shawanee chief, of whom it is possible you may not have heard, but who
is the historical hero of these wild regions. Some American writers call
him the "Indian Napoleon;" both began their plans of policy and conquest
about the same time, and both about the same time terminated their
career, the one by captivity, the other by death. But the genius of the
Indian warrior and his exploits were limited to a narrow field along the
confines of civilisation, and their record is necessarily imperfect. It
is clear that he had entertained the daring and really magnificent plan
formerly embraced by Pontiac--that of uniting all the Indian tribes and
nations in a league against the whites. That he became the ally of the
British was not from friendship to us, but hatred to the Americans, whom
it was his first object to repel from any further encroachments on the
rights and territories of the Red men--in vain! These attempts of a
noble and a fated race, to oppose, or even to delay for a time, the
rolling westward of the great tide of civilisation, are like efforts to
dam up the rapids of Niagara. The moral world has its laws, fixed as
those of physical nature. The hunter must make way before the
agriculturist, and the Indian must learn to take the bit between his
teeth, and set his hand to the ploughshare, or _perish_. As yet I am
inclined to think that the idea of the Indians becoming what _we_ call
a civilised people seems quite hopeless; those who entertain such
benevolent anticipations should come here, and behold the effect which
three centuries of contact with the whites have produced on the nature
and habits of the Indian. The benevolent theorists in England should
come and see with their own eyes that there is a bar to the civilisation
of the Indians, and the increase or even preservation of their numbers,
which no power can overleap. Their own principle, that "the Great Spirit
did indeed create both the red man and the white man, but created them
essentially different in nature and manners," is not, perhaps, far from
the truth.
[Footnote 15: The war of 1812.]