In the first place, to women, in every well regulated society, should be
committed the management of the families and the business connected with
the household concerns, and they should be qualified to exercise a
salutary influence within their appropriate sphere.
Secondly, as mothers they are responsible for the nursing and rearing of
their children and for the proper sustenance of them in early life. They
are also responsible for the habits of their children, including
cleanliness and general propriety of behavior.
A sensible, judicious mother can greatly control her children in these
matters; she can make them modest or impertinent, ingenuous or deceitful,
fearful or intrepid. The germ of all these traits of character exist in
childhood, and a mother can repress or strengthen them.
Thirdly, a mother is responsible for the principles her children may
entertain in early life, and it is for her to say whether they shall be
imbued with sentiments of honesty, industry and morality, or with those
of a contrary character--fraud, idleness and dishonesty.
She is, to a very considerable extent responsible for the temper and
disposition of her children. Constitutionally he may be irritable or
revengeful, but she may correct or repress these passions and in their
places instil better feelings.
Lastly, and above all, she is responsible for the religious education of
her children. The beginning of wisdom is a reverence for our creator, and
obedience to his requirings; and this is within the power of every good
mother to inculcate and cherish in the hearts of her children; at the
same time it is the most important duty she owes them, and their
usefulness and character throughout life may depend upon her correct and
faithful discharge of it.
If these be the appropriate duties and obligations of a mother, will it
not be vain to expect that the Indian warrior will be qualified for that
station, or that they will be in a condition to give a proper education
to their children, or train them up in habits or principles that will
render them intelligent and good citizens, whilst they themselves are
left in ignorance, and while, instead of devoting their time and
attention to his discharge of these high moral duties, they are held in a
state of servile degradation and compelled to perform all the menial
drudgeries of life?
Women are created by Providence equal to men in everything except mere
physical strength. Generally, they have much more discretion, and
certainly are far more virtuous. They were designed to exercise a
conservative influence in society and should be placed in a position
which would enable them to fulfill this-most important office; for
history confirms the deeply interesting fact, that no people ever yet
were elevated to the rank of civilization, while their females were held
in a servile condition, and we are also admonished by experience, that no
community can be virtuous and happy, which is not chastened by the
controlling example of female delicacy and refinement.
These views are submitted to the consideration of the Tuscaroras, in the
hope that they will receive their serious attention, and lead to the
adoption of an improved and proper division of the employments, both of
the men and women of the nation; especially to the extension of more care
towards the suitable education of their females, and the consequent
elevation of the Tuscarora women to their appropriate station and
dignity, as the wives and rational companions of intelligent and educated
husbands.
In my communications, I have not felt it my duty to call your attention
to any particular forms or observances in relation to your religious
obligations. I believe that God is a spirit, and true worship to Him can
only be performed in spirit and in truth. I also believe that however
diversified the human family may be in regard to the circumstances in
which they may be placed, all stand equally before their creator, as
objects of His care and personal regard; in His great mercy He visits us
with remorse and sadness, when we have wilfully done what we know to be
wrong, and which, if persisted in, might lead us to destruction; and it
is He who fills our hearts with peace and consolation when we do that
which we believe to be right. His goodness is not limited to any people
or place nor, is that adoration which is due to Him confined within
temples built with human hands, or restricted to any particular form; He
is everywhere present and in every place; the incense of a pious, devoted
heart, may acceptably be offered to Him in the rude homes of the red man.
The plants of the earth are not more directly under the influences of the
natural light and warmth by which they are nourished, than is the
immortal soul or spirit of man under the immediate care and sustaining
support of the divine presence, which is always near and round about us;
for it is in Him we live, and move, and have our existence.
Deeply impressed with the certainty of these truths, and fully believing
He will never fail to lead in the paths of safety and peace, those who
sincerely look to Him for instruction and faithfully follow His counsel,
I recommend you, with myself, carefully to attend to His manifestations
of light and truth upon our minds, which will never deceive nor mslead,
but, if obeyed, wisely conduct us through the dangers of this life, and
finally will prepare us for a happy admission into the realms of eternal
rest.
Osteological Remains.
"In the town of Cambria, six miles west of Lockport, a Mr. Hammon, who
was employed with his boy in hoeing corn, in 1824, observed some bones of
a child, exhumed. No farther thought was bestowed upon the subject for a
time, for the plain of the Ridge was supposed to have been the site of an
Indian village, and this was supposed to be the remains of some child who
had been recently buried there. Eli Bruce, hearing of the circumstance,
proposed to Mr. H. that they should repair to the spot, with suitable
instruments, and endeavor to find some relics. The soil was a light loam,
which would be dry and preserve bones for centuries without decay. A
search enabled them to come to a pit but a slight distance from the
surface. The top of the pit was covered with small slabs of the Medina
sandstone, and was twenty-four feet square, four and a half feet deep,
planes agreeing with the four cardinal points. It was filled with human
bones of both sexes and ages. They dug down at one extremity and found
the same layers to extend to the bottom, which was the dry loam, and from
their calculations, they deduced that at least four thousand souls had
perished in one great massacre. In one skull two flint arrow-heads were
found, and many had the appearance of having been fractured and cleft
open by a sudden blow. They were piled in regular layers, but with no
regard to size or sex. Pieces of pottery were picked up in the pit, and
had also been plowed up in the field adjacent. Traces of a log council
house were plainly discernable. For, in an oblong square, the soil was
poor, as if it had been cultivated, till the whites broke it up, and
where the logs of the house had decayed, was a strip of rich mould. A
maple tree, over the pit, being cut down, two hundred and fifty
concentric circles were counted, making the mound to be A. D. 1574.
It has been supposed by the villagers that the bones were deposited there
before the discovery of America, but the finding of some metal tools with
a French stamp, placed the date within our period. One hundred and fifty
persons a day visited this spot the first season, and carried off
portions of the bones. They are now nearly all gone and the pit plowed
over. Will any antiquarian inform us, if possible, why these bones were
placed here? To what tribe do they belong? When did such a massacre
occur?"
The above is taken from the writings of Mr. Schoolscraft. On account of
the questions above, I propose to give a tradition, (which the Tuscaroras
have preserved,) to give the antiquarians and critics a question to
solve. Was the great massacre above made in the circumstance of the
tradition below, to wit: There was a settlement or Indian nation where
appeared several white men under the cloak of missionaries, (the reason I
use the term cloak is by the way it terminated), and preached to them the
gospel of Jesus Christ, and the great love evinced by the Father in
sending his only son to suffer and die on the cross to redeem the red
children of nature, as well as the pale faces, from their degradation,
shame and woe, to that of endless felicity beyond the shores of time. And
that they wished to erect a house of worship in their midst, in which
they might do their oblation to the Great Spirit, and that if they
embraced the gospel they would have annuities from the government, to all
of which the simple people of the forest made their assent. They
immediately went to work, dug for the cellar, and erected the building on
abutments of wood, and alleged that they would finish the cellar
afterwards. When the chapel was finished the Indians began to worship in
it. Now the time of the annuity arrived. The Indians were told to all
congregate and into the church, men, women and children, and all those
who refused to enter, should be omitted in the distribution of the
annuity. Consequently the building was entered by them and filled jammed
full. But there were two suspecting Indians who kept a proper distance
away, ambushed, to see the result. After it was thought all had entered,
there was a company of soldiers with guns and burning faggots, surrounded
the building and set it on fire on all sides, after they had fastened the
door. In this condition they all perished within the flames. I will not
make any attempt to give a sketch or in any way write in words the
horrors and heart-rendings cries and moans of the dying children of
nature in the flames, through a disguise of sheep's clothing, but will
leave it to the conjecture of the reader.
After the flames had subsided, these two Indians repaired to the doomed
spot, and found a heap of bones hob-nob, and they observed that some of
the skulls and bones of the different parts of the body were fractured
and broke open, supposed to have been done by, the falling timbers of the
burning house. It is said, "in one skull, two flint arrow-heads were
found." How easy for the artifice of the white men that accomplished the
massacre in the manner they did, to have sunk these two flint arrows into
one of those skulls, to leave the conjecture in after times to have been
done by an Indian war.
Mr. C. P. Turner, with an honorable age of 72 years, in 1878. told me
that he visited the deposit of these bones, the next day after they were
uncovered, saw the skull with the two flint arrows in it, and saw the
great deposit of bones in this mound, and also said the pile was in hap-
hazard, and not "in regular layers," as stated above. He also saw bones
which indicated being those of a child about 20 inches in height.
The Tuscaroras who preserve this tradition are located in the vicinity in
which this mound of bones were found. All historians are very cautious to
leave out or omit from the pages of their history, any circumstance in
the nature of the above tradition.