To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.
Quebec, Sept. 10.
I find, my dear, that absence and amusement are the best remedies
for a beginning passion; I have passed a fortnight at the Indian
village of Lorette, where the novelty of the scene, and the enquiries I
have been led to make into their antient religion and manners, have
been of a thousand times more service to me than all the reflection in
the world would have been.
I will own to you that I staid too long at Montreal, or rather at
Major Melmoth's; to be six weeks in the same house with one of the
most amiable, most pleasing of women, was a trying situation to a heart
full of sensibility, and of a sensibility which has been hitherto,
from a variety of causes, a good deal restrained. I should have avoided
the danger from the first, had it appeared to me what it really was;
but I thought myself secure in the consideration of her engagements, a
defence however which I found grow weaker every day.
But to my savages: other nations talk of liberty, they possess it;
nothing can be more astonishing than to see a little village of about
thirty or forty families, the small remains of the Hurons, almost
exterminated by long and continual war with the Iroquoise, preserve
their independence in the midst of an European colony consisting of
seventy thousand inhabitants; yet the fact is true of the savages of
Lorette; they assert and they maintain that independence with a spirit
truly noble. One of our company having said something which an Indian
understood as a supposition that they had been _subjects_ of
France, his eyes struck fire, he stop'd him abruptly, contrary to
their respectful and sensible custom of never interrupting the person
who speaks, "You mistake, brother," said he; "we are subjects to no
prince; a savage is free all over the world." And he spoke only truth;
they are not only free as a people, but every individual is perfectly
so. Lord of himself, at once subject and master, a savage knows no
superior, a circumstance which has a striking effect on his behaviour;
unawed by rank or riches, distinctions unknown amongst his own nation,
he would enter as unconcerned, would possess all his powers as freely
in the palace of an oriental monarch, as in the cottage of the meanest
peasant: 'tis the species, 'tis man, 'tis his equal he respects,
without regarding the gaudy trappings, the accidental advantages, to
which polished nations pay homage.
I have taken some pains to develop their present, as well as past,
religious sentiments, because the Jesuit missionaries have boasted so
much of their conversion; and find they have rather engrafted a few of
the most plain and simple truths of Christianity on their ancient
superstitions, than exchanged one faith for another; they are baptized,
and even submit to what they themselves call the _yoke_ of
confession, and worship according to the outward forms of the Romish
church, the drapery of which cannot but strike minds unused to
splendor; but their belief is very little changed, except that the
women seem to pay great reverence to the Virgin, perhaps because
flattering to the sex. They anciently believed in one God, the ruler
and creator of the universe, whom they called _the Great Spirit_
and the _Master of Life_; in the sun as his image and representative;
in a multitude of inferior spirits and demons; and in a future
state of rewards and punishments, or, to use their own phrase,
in _a country of souls_. They reverenced the spirits of their
departed heroes, but it does not appear that they paid them any
religious adoration. Their morals were more pure, their manners more
simple, than those of polished nations, except in what regarded the
intercourse of the sexes: the young women before marriage were indulged
in great libertinism, hid however under the most reserved and decent
exterior. They held adultery in abhorrence, and with the more reason
as their marriages were dissolvable at pleasure. The missionaries are
said to have found no difficulty so great in gaining them to
Christianity, as that of persuading them to marry for life: they
regarded the Christian system of marriage as contrary to the laws of
nature and reason; and asserted that, as the _Great Spirit_ formed
us to be happy, it was opposing his will, to continue together when
otherwise.
The sex we have so unjustly excluded from power in Europe have a
great share in the Huron government; the chief is chose by the matrons
from amongst the nearest male relations, by the female line, of him he
is to succeed; and is generally an aunt's or sister's son; a custom
which, if we examine strictly into the principle on which it is
founded, seems a little to contradict what we are told of the extreme
chastity of the married ladies.
The power of the chief is extremely limited; he seems rather to
advise his people as a father than command them as a master: yet, as
his commands are always reasonable, and for the general good, no prince
in the world is so well obeyed. They have a supreme council of
ancients, into which every man enters of course at an age fixed, and
another of assistants to the chief on common occasions, the members of
which are like him elected by the matrons: I am pleased with this last
regulation, as women are, beyond all doubt, the best judges of the
merit of men; and I should be extremely pleased to see it adopted in
England: canvassing for elections would then be the most agreeable
thing in the world, and I am sure the ladies would give their votes on
much more generous principles than we do. In the true sense of the
word, _we_ are the savages, who so impolitely deprive you of the
common rights of citizenship, and leave you no power but that of which
we cannot deprive you, the resistless power of your charms. By the way,
I don't think you are obliged in conscience to obey laws you have had
no share in making; your plea would certainly be at least as good as
that of the Americans, about which we every day hear so much.
The Hurons have no positive laws; yet being a people not numerous,
with a strong sense of honor, and in that state of equality which gives
no food to the most tormenting passions of the human heart, and the
council of ancients having a power to punish atrocious crimes, which
power however they very seldom find occasion to use, they live together
in a tranquillity and order which appears to us surprizing.
In more numerous Indian nations, I am told, every village has its
chief and its councils, and is perfectly independent on the rest; but
on great occasions summon a general council, to which every village
sends deputies.
Their language is at once sublime and melodious; but, having much
fewer ideas, it is impossible it can be so copious as those of Europe:
the pronunciation of the men is guttural, but that of the women
extremely soft and pleasing; without understanding one word of the
language, the sound of it is very agreeable to me. Their style even in
speaking French is bold and metaphorical: and I am told is on important
occasions extremely sublime. Even in common conversation they speak in
figures, of which I have this moment an instance. A savage woman was
wounded lately in defending an English family from the drunken rage of
one of her nation. I asked her after her wound; "It is well," said she;
"my sisters at Quebec (meaning the English ladies) have been kind to
me; and piastres, you know, are very healing."
They have no idea of letters, no alphabet, nor is their language
reducible to rules: 'tis by painting they preserve the memory of the
only events which interest them, or that they think worth recording,
the conquests gained over their enemies in war.
When I speak of their paintings, I should not omit that, though
extremely rude, they have a strong resemblance to the Chinese, a
circumstance which struck me the more, as it is not the stile of
nature. Their dances also, the most lively pantomimes I ever saw,
and especially the dance of peace, exhibit variety of attitudes
resembling the figures on Chinese fans; nor have their features and
complexion less likeness to the pictures we see of the Tartars, as
their wandering manner of life, before they became christians, was
the same.
If I thought it necessary to suppose they were not natives of the
country, and that America was peopled later than the other quarters of
the world, I should imagine them the descendants of Tartars; as nothing
can be more easy than their passage from Asia, from which America is
probably not divided; or, if it is, by a very narrow channel. But I
leave this to those who are better informed, being a subject on which I
honestly confess my ignorance.
I have already observed, that they retain most of their antient
superstitions. I should particularize their belief in dreams, of which
folly even repeated disappointments cannot cure them: they have also an
unlimited faith in their _powawers_, or conjurers, of whom there
is one in every Indian village, who is at once physician, orator, and
divine, and who is consulted as an oracle on every occasion. As I
happened to smile at the recital a savage was making of a prophetic
dream, from which he assured us of the death of an English officer whom
I knew to be alive, "You Europeans," said he, "are the most
unreasonable people in the world; you laugh at our belief in dreams,
and yet expect us to believe things a thousand times more incredible."
Their general character is difficult to describe; made up of
contrary and even contradictory qualities, they are indolent, tranquil,
quiet, humane in peace; active, restless, cruel, ferocious in war:
courteous, attentive, hospitable, and even polite, when kindly treated;
haughty, stern, vindictive, when they are not; and their resentment is
the more to be dreaded, as they hold it a point of honor to dissemble
their sense of an injury till they find an opportunity to revenge it.
They are patient of cold and heat, of hunger and thirst, even beyond
all belief when necessity requires, passing whole days, and often
three or four days together, without food, in the woods, when on the
watch for an enemy, or even on their hunting parties; yet indulging
themselves in their feasts even to the most brutal degree of
intemperance. They despise death, and suffer the most excruciating
tortures not only without a groan, but with an air of triumph; singing
their death song, deriding their tormentors, and threatening them with
the vengeance of their surviving friends: yet hold it honorable to fly
before an enemy that appears the least superior in number or force.
Deprived by their extreme ignorance, and that indolence which
nothing but their ardor for war can surmount, of all the
conveniencies, as well as elegant refinements of polished life;
strangers to the softer passions, love being with them on the same
footing as amongst their fellow-tenants of the woods, their lives
appear to me rather tranquil than happy: they have fewer cares, but
they have also much fewer enjoyments, than fall to our share. I am
told, however, that, though insensible to love, they are not without
affections; are extremely awake to friendship, and passionately fond of
their children.
They are of a copper color, which is rendered more unpleasing by a
quantity of coarse red on their cheeks; but the children, when born,
are of a pale silver white; perhaps their indelicate custom of
greasing their bodies, and their being so much exposed to the air and
sun even from infancy, may cause that total change of complexion, which
I know not how otherwise to account for: their hair is black and
shining, the women's very long, parted at the top, and combed back,
tied behind, and often twisted with a thong of leather, which they
think very ornamental: the dress of both sexes is a close jacket,
reaching to their knees, with spatterdashes, all of coarse blue cloth,
shoes of deer-skin, embroidered with porcupine quills, and sometimes
with silver spangles; and a blanket thrown across their shoulders, and
fastened before with a kind of bodkin, with necklaces, and other
ornaments of beads or shells.
They are in general tall, well made, and agile to the last degree;
have a lively imagination, a strong memory; and, as far as their
interests are concerned, are very dextrous politicians.
Their address is cold and reserved; but their treatment of
strangers, and the unhappy, infinitely kind and hospitable. A very
worthy priest, with whom I am acquainted at Quebec, was some years
since shipwrecked in December on the island of Anticosti: after a
variety of distresses, not difficult to be imagined on an island
without inhabitants, during the severity of a winter even colder than
that of Canada; he, with the small remains of his companions who
survived such complicated distress, early in the spring, reached the
main land in their boat, and wandered to a cabbin of savages; the
ancient of which, having heard his story, bid him enter, and liberally
supplied their wants: "Approach, brother," said he; "the unhappy have
a right to our assistance; we are men, and cannot but feel for the
distresses which happen to men;" a sentiment which has a strong
resemblance to a celebrated one in a Greek tragedy.
You will not expect more from me on this subject, as my residence
here has been short, and I can only be said to catch a few marking
features flying. I am unable to give you a picture at full length.
Nothing astonishes me so much as to find their manners so little
changed by their intercourse with the Europeans; they seem to have
learnt nothing of us but excess in drinking.
The situation of the village is very fine, on an eminence, gently
rising to a thick wood at some distance, a beautiful little serpentine
river in front, on which are a bridge, a mill, and a small cascade, at
such a distance as to be very pleasing objects from their houses; and a
cultivated country, intermixed with little woods lying between them and
Quebec, from which they are distant only nine very short miles.
What a letter have I written! I shall quit my post of historian to
your friend Miss Fermor; the ladies love writing much better than we
do; and I should perhaps be only just, if I said they write better.
Adieu!
Ed. Rivers.