And now, said Uncle Juvinell, I see you are all agog, slate and pencil
in hand, ready to jot down any question that may chance to pop into
your busy young brains, to be asked and answered, for our further
enlightenment, at the end of our evening lesson. So, without more ado,
we will begin.
But, before trudging on further in our delightful journey, we must
pause a moment, and turning square round, with our faces towards the
long-ago years of the past, take a bird's-eye view of the early
history of our country, that we may know exactly where we are when we
come to find ourselves in the outskirts of that long and bloody
struggle between the two great nations of England and France, commonly
called the Seven Years' War, and sometimes the Old French War. Now,
although this would not be as entertaining to your lively fancies as
an Arabian tale or an Indian legend, yet you will by and by see very
plainly that we could not have skipped it, without losing the sense of
a great deal that follows; for it was during this war that our
Washington first experienced the trials and hardships of a soldier's
life, and displayed that courage, prudence, and ability, which in the
end proved the salvation and glory of his native country.
In the first place, you must know, my dear children, that this
beautiful land of ours, where now dwell the freest and happiest people
the blessed sun ever shone upon, was, only a few hundred years ago,
all a vast unbroken wilderness; a place where no one but savage
Indians found a home, whose chief amusement was to fight and kill and
scalp each other; and whose chief occupation was to hunt wild beasts
and birds, upon whose flesh they fed, and with whose hairy skins and
horns and claws and feathers they clothed and decked themselves. Where
in the leafy summer-time may now be heard the merry plough-boy
whistling "Yankee Doodle" over the waving corn, the wild Indian once
wrestled with the surly bear, or met his ancient enemy in deadly
fight. Nibbling sheep and grazing cattle now range the grassy hills
and valleys where he was wont to give chase to the timid deer, or lie
in wait for the monstrous buffalo. Huge steamers ply up and down our
mighty rivers where he once paddled his little canoe. Splendid cities
have risen, as if at the rubbing of Aladdin's enchanted lamp, where in
the depths of the forest he once kindled the great council-fire, and
met the neighboring tribes in the Big Talk. The very schoolhouse,
where you little folks are now tripping so lightly along the flowery
path of knowledge, may perhaps stand on the selfsame shady slope,
where, of a long summer evening, he would sit at the door of his
bark-built wigwam, smoking his long pipe, and watching his naked red
children with a more fatherly smile than you can well imagine in one
so fierce, as with many a hoop and yelp they played at "hide-and-seek"
among the gray old trees and pawpaw thickets. On yonder hill-top,
where we at this moment can see the windows of the house of God
shining and glancing in the moonlight, he may have stood, with his
face to the rising or setting sun, in mute worship before the Great
Spirit.
But the stronger and wiser white man came; and, at his terrible
approach, the red man, with all his wild remembrances, passed away,
like an echo in the woods, or the shadow of an April cloud over the
hills and valleys; and the place that once knew him shall know him no
more for ever.
And yet it might have been far otherwise with him and with us, had not
a certain Christopher Columbus chanced to light upon this Western
World of ours, as he came hap-hazard across the wide Atlantic, where
ship had never sailed before, in quest of a shorter passage to Asia.
By this great discovery, it was proved to the entire satisfaction of
all who are in the least interested in the matter, that this earth
upon which we live, instead of being long and flat, with sides and
ends and corners like a great rough slab, was round, and hollow
inside, like an India-rubber ball, and went rolling through empty
space, round and round the sun, year after year, continually.
Of this bold and skilful sailor, the most renowned that ever lived, I
should like to tell you many things; but, as we set out to give our
chief attention to the story of Washington, we must deny ourselves
this pleasure until the holidays of some merry Christmas yet to come,
when your Uncle Juvinell, if he still keeps his memory fresh and
green, will relate to you many wonderful things in the life of this
great voyager, Columbus.
Up to this time, all the nations of Christendom had for ages upon ages
been sunk in a lazy doze of ignorance and superstition. But, when
tidings of the great discovery reached their drowsy ears, they were
roused in a marvellous manner; and many of the richest and most
powerful forthwith determined to secure, each to itself, a portion of
the new-found region, by planting colonies; or, in other words, by
making settlements therein.
For this purpose, they sent out fleets of ships across the Atlantic to
these distant shores, laden with multitudes of men, who brought with
them all manner of tools and implements wherewith to clear away the
forests, till the soil, and build forts and cities, and arms to defend
themselves against the attacks of the war-like savages. Thus, for
example, Spain colonized Mexico; France, Canada; and England, that
strip of the North-American continent, lying between the Alleghany
Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, now known as the eastern coast of
the United States.
At first, the new-comers were received and treated with much kindness
and hospitality by the natives: but it was not long before they
discovered that they were likely to be robbed of their homes and
hunting-grounds; when rage and jealousy took possession of their
hearts, and from that time forward they never let slip an opportunity
of doing all the mischief in their power to the hated intruders. Then
began that long train of bloody wars between the two races, which have
never ceased except with defeat or ruin of the weaker red man, and
bringing him nearer and nearer to the day when he must either forsake
his savage life, or cease to have an existence altogether.
Now, this may appear very unjust and wrong to my little friends; and,
to some extent, it really was: but, in those days, might made right;
or, in other words, the strong ruled the weak. And yet we are bound to
believe that all this, in the long-run, has worked, and is still
working, to the greatest good of the greatest number: for, had it been
otherwise, all this beautiful land, now the home of a Christian and
happy people, would have remained the dismal wilderness we have
described it; answering no good end, as far as concerns the spread of
truth and knowledge, and the cultivation of those useful arts which
make a nation prosperous in peace, and strong in war.
Notwithstanding their troubles with the Indians, the hardships and
privations to which the first settlers of a wild country are always
exposed, and the shameful neglect with which they were treated by the
mother-countries, the French and English colonies went on growing and
thriving in a way that was wonderful to behold. At the end of a
hundred and fifty years, or thereabouts, they had so grown in strength
and increased in numbers, and had so widened their boundaries, that at
last the continent, vast as it is, seemed too narrow to hold them
both; and they began throwing up their elbows for more room, in a
manner that would have been thought quite uncivil in a private
individual at a dinner table or in a stage-coach.
Whereupon there arose a hot dispute between the kings of France and
England as to whom belonged all that immense region stretching from
the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in the one direction; and, in the
other, from the Ohio to the Great Lakes of the North.
The French claimed it by the right of discovery: by which they meant,
that a certain Father Marquette had, nearly a hundred years before,
discovered the Mississippi during his wanderings as a missionary
among the Indians of the Far West. They pretended, that, as this pious
man had paddled a little canoe up and down this splendid river a few
hundred miles, his royal master, the King of France, was thereby
entitled to all the lands watered by it, and the ten thousand streams
that empty into it.
The English, on the other hand, claimed it by the right of purchase;
having, as they said, bought it at a fair price of the Six Nations, a
powerful league or union of several Indian tribes inhabiting the
region round about the great lake's Erie and Ontario. What right the
Six Nations had to it, is impossible to say. They claimed it, however,
by the doubtful right of conquest; there being a tradition among them,
that their ancestors, many generations before, had overrun the
country, and subdued its inhabitants.
Now, the poor Indians who occupied the land in question were very
indignant indeed when they heard that they and theirs had been sold to
the white strangers by their red enemies, the Six Nations, whom they
regarded as a flock of meddlesome crows, that were always dipping
their ravenous bills into matters that did not in the least concern
them; and their simple heads were sorely perplexed and puzzled, that
two great kings, dwelling in far-distant countries, thousands of miles
away beyond the mighty ocean, should, in the midst of uncounted
riches, fall to wrangling with each other over a bit of wilderness
land that neither of them had ever set eyes or foot on, and to which
they had no more right than the Grand Caliph of Bagdad, or that
terrible Tartar, Kublah Khan.
"Of all this land," said they, "there is not the black of a man's
thumb-nail that the Six Nations can call their own. It is ours. More
than a thousand moons before the pale-face came over the Big Water in
his white-winged canoes, the Great Spirit gave it to our forefathers;
and they handed it down, to be our inheritance as long as the old
hills tell of their green graves. In its streams have we fished, in
its woods have we hunted, in its sunny places have we built our
wigwams, and in its dark and secret places have we fought and scalped
and burnt our sworn enemies, without let or hinderance, time out of
mind. Now, if the English claim all on this side of the Ohio, and the
French claim all on this side of the Big Lakes, then what they claim
is one and the same country,--the country whereon we dwell. Surely our
white brothers must be dreaming. It is our hearts' desire, that our
brothers, the English, keep on their side of the Ohio, and till the
ground, and grow rich in corn; also that our brothers, the French,
keep on their side of the lakes, and hunt in the woods, and grow rich
in skins and furs. But you must both quit pressing upon us, lest our
ribs be squeezed in and our breath be squeezed out, and we cease to
have a place among men. We hold you both at arm's-length; and whoever
pays good heed to the words we have spoken, by him will we stand, and
with him make common cause against the other."
But to these just complaints of the poor Indian the French and English
gave no more heed than if they who uttered them were so many
whip-poor-wills crying in the woods. So they fell to wrangling in a
more unreasonable manner than ever. Finally, to mend the matter (that
is to say, make things worse), the French, coming up the Mississippi
from the South, and down from the Great Lakes of the North, began
erecting a chain of forts upon the disputed territory, to overawe the
inhabitants thereof, and force the English to keep within the
Alleghanies and the Atlantic. As a matter of course, the English
regarded this as an insult to their dignity, and resolved to chastise
the French for their impudence. And this it was that brought about
that long and bloody struggle, the Old French War.
Thus, my dear children, do great and wise nations, professing to
follow the humane teachings of the man-loving, God-fearing Jesus,
often show no more truth and justice and honesty in their dealings
with one another than if they were as ignorant of the Ten Commandments
as the most benighted heathens, to whom even the name of Moses was
never spoken. Yet, from your looks, I see that you are wondering
within yourselves what all this rigmarole about England, France, the
Six Nations, and disputed territories, can have to do with George
Washington. Had you held a tight rein on your impatience a little
while longer, you would have found out all about it, without the
inconvenience of wondering; and hereafter, my little folks, rest
assured that your Uncle Juvinell never ventures upon any thing without
having all his eyes and wits about him, and that what he may tell you
shall always prove instructive, although it may now and then--with no
fault of his, however--seem to you somewhat dry and tedious.
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