Peter Otsaquette was the son of a man of consideration among the Oneida
Indians of New York. At the close of the Revolutionary war, he was
noticed by the Marquis de La Fayette, who, to a noble zeal for liberty,
united the most philanthropic feelings. Viewing, therefore, this young
savage with peculiar interest, and anticipating the happy results to
be derived from his moral regeneration, he took him, though scarcely
twelve years old, to France. Peter arrived at that period when Louis
XVI. and Maria Antoinette were in the zenith of their glory. There he
was taught the accomplishments of a gentleman;—music, drawing, and
fencing, were made familiar to him, and he danced with a grace that
a Vestris could not but admire. At about eighteen, his separation
from a country in which he had spent his time so agreeably and so
profitably, became necessary. Laden with favours from the Marquis, and
the miniatures of those friends he had left behind, Peter departed for
America—inflated, perhaps, with the idea, that the deep ignorance of
his nation, with that of the Indians of the whole continent, might be
dispelled by his efforts, and he become the proud instrument of the
civilization of thousands.
Prosecuting his route to the land of his parents, he came to the
city of Albany; not the uncivilized savage, not with any of those
marks which bespoke a birth in the forest, or years spent in toiling
the wilds of a desert, but possessing a fine commanding figure, an
expressive countenance, an intelligent eye, with a face scarcely
indicative of the race from which he was descended. He presented, at
this period, an interesting spectacle: a child of the wilderness was
beheld about to proceed to the home of his forefathers, having received
the brilliant advantages of a cultivated mind, and on his way to impart
to the nation that owned him, the benefits which civilization had given
him. It was an opportunity for the philosopher to contemplate, and to
reflect on the future good this young Indian might be the means of
producing.
Shortly after his arrival in Albany—where he visited the first
families—he took advantage of Governor Clinton’s journey to Fort
Stanwix (where a treaty was to be held with the Indians,) to return
to his tribe. On the route, Otsaquette amused the company (among whom
were the French Minister, Count De Moustiers, and several gentlemen of
respectability) by his powers on various instruments of music. At Fort
Stanwix, he found himself again with the companions of his early days,
who saw and recognised him. His friends and relations had not forgotten
him, and he was welcomed to his home and to his blanket.
But that which occurred soon after his reception, led him to a too
fearful anticipation of an unsuccessful project; for the Oneidas,
as if they could not acknowledge Otsaquette, attired in the dress
with which he appeared before them,—a mark which did not disclose his
nation,—and, thinking that he had assumed it, as if ashamed of his
own native costume, the garb of his ancestors, they tore it from him
with a savage avidity, and a fiend-like ferociousness, daubed on the
paint to which he had been so long unused, and clothed him with the
uncouth habiliments held sacred by his tribe. Their fiery ferocity, in
the performance of the act, showed but too well the bold stand they
were about to take against the innovations they supposed Otsaquette
was to be the agent for affecting against their immemorial manners and
customs, and which, from the venerable antiquity of their structure, it
would be nothing short of sacrilege to destroy.
Thus the reformed savage was taken back again to his native barbarity,
and—as if to cap the climax of degradation to a mind just susceptible
of its own powers—was _married to a squaw_!
From that day, Otsaquette was no longer the accomplished Indian, from
whom every wish of philanthropy was expected to be realized. He was no
longer the instrument by whose power the emancipation of his countrymen
from the thraldom of ignorance and superstition, was to be effected.
From that day, he was again an inmate with the forest; was once more
buried in his original obscurity, and his nation only viewed him as _an
equal_. Even a liberal grant from the State, failed of securing to
him that superior consideration among them which his civilization had
procured for him with the rest of mankind. The commanding preeminence
acquired from instruction, from which it was expected ambition would
have sprung up, and acted as a double stimulant, from either the
natural inferiority of the savage mind, or the predetermination of
his countrymen—became of no effect, and, in a little time, was wholly
annihilated. Otsaquette was lost! His moral perdition began from the
hour he left Fort Stanwix. Three short months had hardly transpired,
when Intemperance had marked him as her own, and soon hurried him to
the grave. And, as if the very transition had deadened all the finer
feelings of his nature, the picture given him by the Marquis—the very
portrait of his affectionate friend and benefactor himself—he parted
with!
Extraordinary and unnatural as the conduct of this educated savage may
appear, the anecdote is not of a kind altogether unique; which proves,
that little or nothing is to be expected from conferring a literary
education upon those children of the forest:—An Indian, named George
White-Eyes, was taken, while a boy, to the college at Princeton, where
he received a classical education. On returning to his nation, he made
some little stay in Philadelphia. He was amiable in his manners, and of
modest demeanour, without exhibiting any trait of the savage whatever;
but, no sooner had he rejoined his friends and former companions, in
the land of his nativity, than he dropped the garb and manners of
civilization, and resumed those of the savage, and, drinking deep of
their intoxicating cup, soon put a period to his existence.
Many other instances might be adduced, to show how ineffectual have
been the attempts to plant civilization on savage habits, by means of
_literary_ education—“Can the leopard change his spots?”
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