rules. It is reckoned uncivil in travelling strangers, to enter a
village abruptly, without giving notice of their approach. Therefore,
as soon as they arrive within hearing, they stop and hollow,
remaining there till invited to enter. Two old men usually come
out to them, and lead them in. There is in every village a vacant
dwelling, called the strangers' house. Here they are placed, while
the old men go round from hut to hut, acquainting the inhabitants,
that strangers are arrived, who are probably hungry and weary;
and every one sends them what he can spare of victuals, and skins
to repose on. When the strangers are refreshed, pipes and tobacco
are brought; and then, but not before, conversation begins, with
enquiries who they are, whither bound, what news, &c. and it usually
ends with offers of service, if the strangers have occasion for
guides, or any necessaries for continuing their journey; and nothing
is exacted for the entertainment.
The same hospitality, esteemed among them as a principal virtue,
is practised by private persons; of which _Conrad Weiser_, our
interpreter, gave me the following instance. He had been naturalized
among the Six Nations, and spoke well the Mohuck language. In going
through the Indian country, to carry a message from our governor to
the council at Onondaga, he called at the habitation of Canassetego,
an old acquaintance, who embraced him, spread furs for him to sit
on, and placed before him some boiled beans and venison, and mixed
some rum and water for his drink. When he was well refreshed, and
had lit his pipe, Canassetego began to converse with him: asked how
he had fared the many years since they had seen each other, whence
he then came, what occasioned the journey, &c. Conrad answered all
his questions; and when the discourse began to flag, the Indian,
to continue it, said, "Conrad, you have lived long among the white
people, and know something of their customs; I have been sometimes
at Albany, and have observed, that once in seven days they shut up
their shops, and assemble all in the great house; tell me what it
is for? What do they do there?" "They meet there," says Conrad, "to
hear and learn _good things_." "I do not doubt," says the Indian,
"that they tell you so; they have told me the same: but I doubt the
truth of what they say, and I will tell you my reasons. I went lately
to Albany to sell my skins and buy blankets, knives, powder, rum,
&c. You know I used generally to deal with Hans Hanson; but I was a
little inclined this time to try some other merchants. However, I
called first upon Hans, and asked him what he would give for beaver.
He said he could not give more than four shillings a pound: but,
says he, I cannot talk on business now; this is the day when we meet
together to learn _good things_, and I am going to the meeting. So
I thought to myself, since I cannot do any business to-day, I may
as well go to the meeting too, and I went with him. There stood up
a man in black, and began to talk to the people very angrily. I did
not understand what he said; but perceiving that he looked much at
me, and at Hanson, I imagined he was angry at seeing me there; so
I went out, sat down near the house, struck fire, and lit my pipe,
waiting till the meeting should break up. I thought too, that the
man had mentioned something of beaver, and I suspected it might be
the subject of their meeting. So when they came out I accosted my
merchant. Well, Hans, says I, I hope you have agreed to give more
than four shillings a pound? No, says he, I cannot give so much, I
cannot give more than three shillings and sixpence. I then spoke
to several other dealers, but they all sung the same song, three
and sixpence, three and sixpence. This made it clear to me that my
suspicion was right; and that whatever they pretended of meeting to
learn _good things_, the real purpose was to consult how to cheat
Indians in the price of beaver. Consider but a little, Conrad, and
you must be of my opinion. If they met so often to learn _good
things_, they would certainly have learned some before this time.
But they are still ignorant. You know our practice. If a white man,
in travelling through our country, enters one of our cabins, we all
treat him as I do you; we dry him if he is wet, we warm him if he is
cold, and give him meat and drink, that he may allay his thirst and
hunger; and we spread soft furs for him to rest and sleep on: we
demand nothing in return[159]. But if I go into a white man's house
at Albany, and ask for victuals and drink, they say, Where is your
money? and if I have none, they say, Get out you Indian dog. You see
they have not yet learned those little _good things_, that we need
no meetings to be instructed in, because our mothers taught them
to us when we were children; and therefore it is impossible their
meetings should be, as they say, for any such purpose, or have any
such effect; they are only to contrive _the cheating of Indians in
the price of beaver_."
FOOTNOTES:
[158] This paper and the two next in order were published in separate
pamphlets in this country, in the year 1784, and afterwards, in 1787,
formed part of a small collection of our author's papers, printed for
Dilly. It is from this collection we extract them. _Editor._
[159] It is remarkable, that in all ages and countries, hospitality
has been allowed as the virtue of those, whom the civilized were
pleased to call Barbarians. The Greeks celebrated the Scythians for
it, the Saracens possessed it eminently; and it is to this day the
reigning virtue of the wild Arabs. St. Paul too, in the relation
of his voyage and shipwreck, on the island of Melita, says, "The
barbarous people shewed us no little kindness; for they kindled a
fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and
because of the cold."
_The internal State of America; being a true Description of the
Interest and Policy of that vast Continent._
There is a tradition, that, in the planting of New-England, the
first settlers met with many difficulties and hardships; as is
generally the case when a civilized people attempt establishing
themselves in a wilderness country. Being piously disposed, they
sought relief from Heaven, by laying their wants and distresses
before the Lord, in frequent set days of fasting and prayer. Constant
meditation and discourse on these subjects kept their minds gloomy
and discontented; and, like the children of Israel, there were many
disposed to return to that Egypt, which persecution had induced
them to abandon. At length, when it was proposed in the assembly to
proclaim another fast, a farmer of plain sense rose, and remarked,
that the inconveniences they suffered, and concerning which they had
so often wearied heaven with their complaints, were not so great
as they might have expected, and were diminishing every day as the
colony strengthened; that the earth began to reward their labour, and
to furnish liberally for their subsistence; that the seas and rivers
were found full of fish, the air sweet, the climate healthy; and,
above all, that they were there in the full enjoyment of liberty,
civil and religious: he therefore thought, that reflecting and
conversing on these subjects would be more comfortable, as tending
more to make them contented with their situation; and that it would
be more becoming the gratitude they owed to the Divine Being, if,
instead of a fast, they should proclaim a thanksgiving. His advice
was taken; and from that day to this they have, in every year,
observed circumstances of public felicity sufficient to furnish
employment for a thanksgiving day; which is therefore constantly
ordered and religiously observed.
I see in the public newspapers of different states frequent
complaints of _hard times, deadness of trade, scarcity of money,
&c. &c._ It is not my intention to assert or maintain, that these
complaints are entirely without foundation. There can be no country
or nation existing, in which there will not be some people so
circumstanced, as to find it hard to gain a livelihood; people who
are not in the way of any profitable trade, and with whom money is
scarce, because they have nothing to give in exchange for it; and
it is always in the power of a small number to make a great clamour.
But let us take a cool view of the general state of our affairs, and
perhaps the prospect will appear less gloomy than has been imagined.
The great business of the continent is agriculture. For one artisan,
or merchant, I suppose, we have at least one hundred farmers, by
far the greatest part cultivators of their own fertile lands,
from whence many of them draw not only food necessary for their
subsistence, but the materials of their clothing, so as to need very
few foreign supplies; while they have a surplus of productions to
dispose of, whereby wealth is gradually accumulated. Such has been
the goodness of Divine Providence to these regions, and so favourable
the climate, that, since the three or four years of hardship in the
first settlement of our fathers here, a famine or scarcity has never
been heard of amongst us; on the contrary, though some years may have
been more, and others less plentiful, there has always been provision
enough for ourselves, and a quantity to spare for exportation. And
although the crops of last year were generally good, never was
the farmer better paid for the part he can spare commerce, as the
published price currents abundantly testify. The lands he possesses
are also continually rising in value with the increase of population;
and, on the whole, he is enabled to give such good wages to those who
work for him, that all who are acquainted with the old world must
agree, that in no part of it are the labouring poor so generally
well fed, well clothed, well lodged, and well paid, as in the United
States of America.
If we enter the cities, we find, that, since the revolution, the
owners of houses and lots of ground have had their interest vastly
augmented in value; rents have risen to an astonishing height, and
thence encouragement to increase building, which gives employment
to an abundance of workmen, as does also the increased luxury and
splendour of living of the inhabitants, thus made richer. These
workmen all demand and obtain much higher wages than any other part
of the world would afford them, and are paid in ready money. This
rank of people therefore do not, or ought not, to complain of hard
times; and they make a very considerable part of the city inhabitants.
At the distance I live from our American fisheries, I cannot speak
of them with any degree of certainty; but I have not heard, that the
labour of the valuable race of men employed in them is worse paid,
or that they meet with less success, than before the revolution. The
whale-men indeed have been deprived of one market for their oil;
but another, I hear, is opening for them, which it is hoped may be
equally advantageous; and the demand is constantly increasing for
their spermaceti candles, which therefore bear a much higher price
than formerly.
There remain the merchants and shopkeepers. Of these, though
they make but a small part of the whole nation, the number is
considerable, too great indeed for the business they are employed
in; for the consumption of goods in every country has its limits;
the faculties of the people, that is, their ability to buy and pay,
being equal only to a certain quantity of merchandize. If merchants
calculate amiss on this proportion, and import too much, they will
of course find the sale dull for the overplus, and some of them will
say, that trade languishes. They should, and doubtless will, grow
wiser by experience, and import less. If too many artificers in
town, and farmers from the country, flattering themselves with the
idea of leading easier lives, turn shopkeepers, the whole natural
quantity of that business divided among them all may afford too small
a share for each, and occasion complaints, that trading is dead;
these may also suppose, that it is owing to scarcity of money, while,
in fact, it is not so much from the fewness of buyers, as from the
excessive number of sellers, that the mischief arises; and, if every
shopkeeping farmer and mechanic would return to the use of his plough
and working tools, there would remain of widows, and other women,
shopkeepers sufficient for the business, which might then afford them
a comfortable maintenance.
Whoever has travelled through the various parts of Europe, and
observed how small is the proportion of people in affluence or easy
circumstances there, compared with those in poverty and misery;
the few rich and haughty landlords, the multitude of poor, abject,
rack-rented, tythe-paying tenants, and half-paid and half-starved
ragged labourers; and views here the happy mediocrity, that so
generally prevails throughout these states, where the cultivator
works for himself, and supports his family in decent plenty, will,
methinks, see abundant reason to bless Divine Providence for the
evident and great difference in our favour, and be convinced, that no
nation known to us enjoys a greater share of human felicity.
It is true, that in some of the states there are parties and
discords; but let us look back, and ask if we were ever without them?
Such will exist wherever there is liberty; and perhaps they help
to preserve it. By the collision of different sentiments, sparks of
truth are struck out, and political light is obtained. The different
factions, which at present divide us, aim all at the public good: the
differences are only about the various modes of promoting it. Things,
actions, measures, and objects of all kinds, present themselves to
the minds of men in such a variety of lights, that it is not possible
we should all think alike at the same time on every subject, when
hardly the same man retains at all times the same ideas of it.
Parties are therefore the common lot of humanity; and ours are by
no means more mischievous or less beneficial than those of other
countries, nations, and ages, enjoying in the same degree the great
blessing of political liberty.
Some indeed among us are not so much grieved for the present state
of our affairs, as apprehensive for the future. The growth of luxury
alarms them, and they think we are from that alone in the high road
to ruin. They observe, that no revenue is sufficient without economy,
and that the most plentiful income of a whole people from the natural
productions of their country may be dissipated in vain and needless
expences, and poverty be introduced in the place of affluence. This
may be possible. It however rarely happens: for there seems to be in
every nation a greater proportion of industry and frugality, which
tend to enrich, than of idleness and prodigality, which occasion
poverty; so that upon the whole there is a continual accumulation.
Reflect what Spain, Gaul, Germany, and Britain were in the time of
the Romans, inhabited by people little richer than our savages, and
consider the wealth they at present possess, in numerous well-built
cities, improved farms, rich moveables, magazines stocked with
valuable manufactures, to say nothing of plate jewels, and coined
money; and all this, notwithstanding their bad, wasteful, plundering
governments, and their mad destructive wars; and yet luxury and
extravagant living has never suffered much restraint in those
countries. Then consider the great proportion of industrious frugal
farmers inhabiting the interior parts of these American states,
and of whom the body of our nation consists, and judge whether it
is possible, that the luxury of our sea-ports can be sufficient to
ruin such a country.--If the importation of foreign luxuries could
ruin a people, we should probably have been ruined long ago; for the
British nation claimed a right, and practised it, of importing among
us not only the superfluities of their own production, but those of
every nation under heaven; we bought and consumed them, and yet we
flourished and grew rich. At present our independent governments may
do what we could not then do, discourage by heavy duties, or prevent
by heavy prohibitions, such importations, and thereby grow richer;
if, indeed, which may admit of dispute, the desire of adorning
ourselves with fine clothes, possessing fine furniture, with elegant
houses, &c. is not, by strongly inciting to labour and industry,
the occasion of producing a greater value, than is consumed in the
gratification of that desire.
The agriculture and fisheries of the United States are the great
sources of our increasing wealth. He that puts a seed into the earth
is recompensed, perhaps, by receiving forty out of it; and he who
draws a fish out of our water, draws up a piece of silver.
Let us (and there is no doubt but we shall) be attentive to these,
and then the power of rivals, with all their restraining and
prohibiting acts, cannot much hurt us. We are sons of the earth
and seas, and, like Antæus in the fable, if, in wrestling with a
Hercules, we now and then receive a fall, the touch of our parents
will communicate to us fresh strength and vigour to renew the contest.
_Information to those who would remove to America._
Many persons in Europe having directly or by letters, expressed to
the writer of this, who is well acquainted with North-America, their
desire of transporting and establishing themselves in that country;
but who appear to him to have formed, through ignorance, mistaken
ideas and expectations of what is to be obtained there; he thinks it
may be useful, and prevent inconvenient, expensive, and fruitless
removals and voyages of improper persons, if he gives some clearer
and truer notions of that part of the world, than appear to have
hitherto prevailed.
He finds it is imagined by numbers, that the inhabitants of North
America are rich, capable of rewarding, and disposed to reward, all
sorts of ingenuity; that they are at the same time ignorant of all
the sciences, and consequently, that strangers, possessing talents in
the belles-lettres, fine arts, &c. must be highly esteemed, and so
well paid, as to become easily rich themselves; that there are also
abundance of profitable offices to be disposed of, which the natives
are not qualified to fill; and that, having few persons of family
among them, strangers of birth must be greatly respected, and of
course easily obtain the best of those offices, which will make all
their fortunes: that the governments too, to encourage emigrations
from Europe, not only pay the expence of personal transportation,
but give lands gratis to strangers, with negroes to work for them,
utensils of husbandry, and stocks of cattle. These are all wild
imaginations; and those who go to America with expectations founded
upon them will surely find themselves disappointed.
The truth is, that though there are in that country few people so
miserable as the poor of Europe, there are also very few that in
Europe would be called rich; it is rather a general happy mediocrity
that prevails. There are few great proprietors of the soil, and
few tenants; most people cultivate their own lands, or follow some
handicraft or merchandise; very few rich enough to live idly upon
their rents or incomes, or to pay the high prices given in Europe
for painting, statues, architecture, and the other works of art,
that are more curious than useful. Hence the natural geniuses, that
have arisen in America with such talents, have uniformly quitted
that country for Europe, where they can be more suitably rewarded.
It is true, that letters and mathematical knowledge are in esteem
there, but they are at the same time more common than is apprehended;
there being already existing nine colleges or universities, viz.
four in New England, and one in each of the provinces of New York,
New Jersey, Pensylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all furnished with
learned professors; besides a number of smaller academies: these
educate many of their youth in the languages, and those sciences
that qualify men for the professions of divinity, law, or physic.
Strangers indeed are by no means excluded from exercising those
professions; and the quick increase of inhabitants every where gives
them a chance of employ, which they have in common with the natives.
Of civil offices, or employments, there are few; no superfluous ones,
as in Europe; and it is a rule established in some of the states,
that no office should be so profitable as to make it desirable.
The thirty-sixth article of the constitution of Pensylvania runs
expressly in these words: "As every freeman, to preserve his
independence (if he has not a sufficient estate) ought to have some
profession, calling, trade, or farm, whereby he may honestly subsist,
there can be no necessity for, nor use in, establishing offices of
profit; the usual effects of which are dependence and servility,
unbecoming freemen, in the possessors and expectants; faction,
contention, corruption, and disorder among the people. Wherefore,
whenever an office, through increase of fees or otherwise, becomes so
profitable, as to occasion many to apply for it, the profits ought to
be lessened by the legislature."
These ideas prevailing more or less in all the United States, it
cannot be worth any man's while, who has a means of living at home,
to expatriate himself, in hopes of obtaining a profitable civil
office in America; and as to military offices, they are at an end
with the war, the armies being disbanded. Much less is it adviseable
for a person to go thither, who has no other quality to recommend
him but his birth. In Europe it has indeed its value; but it is a
commodity that cannot be carried to a worse market than to that of
America, where people do not enquire concerning a stranger, _What is
he?_ but _What can he do?_ If he has any useful art, he is welcome;
and if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be respected by all
that know him; but a mere man of quality, who on that account wants
to live upon the public by some office or salary, will be despised
and disregarded. The husbandman is in honour there, and even the
mechanic, because their employments are useful. The people have a
saying, that God Almighty is himself a mechanic, the greatest in
the universe; and he is respected and admired more for the variety,
ingenuity, and utility of his handiworks, than for the antiquity of
his family. They are pleased with the observation of a negro, and
frequently mention it, that Boccarora (meaning the white man) make de
black man workee, make de horse workee, make de ox workee, make ebery
ting workee; only de hog. He de hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he
walk about, he go to sleep when he please, he libb like a gentleman.
According to these opinions of the Americans, one of them would think
himself more obliged to a genealogist, who could prove for him that
his ancestors and relations for ten generations had been ploughmen,
smiths, carpenters, turners, weavers, tanners, or even shoemakers,
and consequently that they were useful members of society; than if he
could only prove that they were gentlemen, doing nothing of value,
but living idly on the labour of others, mere _fruges consumere
nati_[160], and otherwise _good for nothing_, till by their death
their estates, like the carcase of the negro's gentleman-hog, come to
be _cut up_.