CONTAINING THE METAPHYSICS OF INDIAN-HATING, ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF
ONE EVIDENTLY NOT SO PREPOSSESSED AS ROUSSEAU IN FAVOR OF SAVAGES.
"The judge always began in these words: 'The backwoodsman's hatred of
the Indian has been a topic for some remark. In the earlier times of the
frontier the passion was thought to be readily accounted for. But Indian
rapine having mostly ceased through regions where it once prevailed, the
philanthropist is surprised that Indian-hating has not in like degree
ceased with it. He wonders why the backwoodsman still regards the red
man in much the same spirit that a jury does a murderer, or a trapper a
wild cat--a creature, in whose behalf mercy were not wisdom; truce is
vain; he must be executed.
"'A curious point,' the judge would continue, 'which perhaps not
everybody, even upon explanation, may fully understand; while, in order
for any one to approach to an understanding, it is necessary for him to
learn, or if he already know, to bear in mind, what manner of man the
backwoodsman is; as for what manner of man the Indian is, many know,
either from history or experience.
"'The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful man. He is a man
strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive, he is what some might call
unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less
hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to
see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he
must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence
self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it
stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in
following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines
such sagacity as she has given him, as she destines it to the 'possum.
To these fellow-beings of the wilds their untutored sagacity is their
best dependence. If with either it prove faulty, if the 'possum's betray
it to the trap, or the backwoodsman's mislead him into ambuscade, there
are consequences to be undergone, but no self-blame. As with the
'possum, instincts prevail with the backwoodsman over precepts. Like the
'possum, the backwoodsman presents the spectacle of a creature dwelling
exclusively among the works of God, yet these, truth must confess, breed
little in him of a godly mind. Small bowing and scraping is his, further
than when with bent knee he points his rifle, or picks its flint. With
few companions, solitude by necessity his lengthened lot, he stands the
trial--no slight one, since, next to dying, solitude, rightly borne, is
perhaps of fortitude the most rigorous test. But not merely is the
backwoodsman content to be alone, but in no few cases is anxious to be
so. The sight of smoke ten miles off is provocation to one more remove
from man, one step deeper into nature. Is it that he feels that whatever
man may be, man is not the universe? that glory, beauty, kindness, are
not all engrossed by him? that as the presence of man frights birds
away, so, many bird-like thoughts? Be that how it will, the backwoodsman
is not without some fineness to his nature. Hairy Orson as he looks, it
may be with him as with the Shetland seal--beneath the bristles lurks
the fur.
"'Though held in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to
America what Alexander was to Asia--captain in the vanguard of
conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or
power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to
those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship.
Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in
Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, at the head of covered or mounted
legions, marched so through the elements, day after day. The tide of
emigration, let it roll as it will, never overwhelms the backwoodsman
into itself; he rides upon advance, as the Polynesian upon the comb of
the surf.
"'Thus, though he keep moving on through life, he maintains with respect
to nature much the same unaltered relation throughout; with her
creatures, too, including panthers and Indians. Hence, it is not
unlikely that, accurate as the theory of the Peace Congress may be with
respect to those two varieties of beings, among others, yet the
backwoodsman might be qualified to throw out some practical suggestions.
"'As the child born to a backwoodsman must in turn lead his father's
life--a life which, as related to humanity, is related mainly to
Indians--it is thought best not to mince matters, out of delicacy; but
to tell the boy pretty plainly what an Indian is, and what he must
expect from him. For however charitable it may be to view Indians as
members of the Society of Friends, yet to affirm them such to one
ignorant of Indians, whose lonely path lies a long way through their
lands, this, in the event, might prove not only injudicious but cruel.
At least something of this kind would seem the maxim upon which
backwoods' education is based. Accordingly, if in youth the backwoodsman
incline to knowledge, as is generally the case, he hears little from his
schoolmasters, the old chroniclers of the forest, but histories of
Indian lying, Indian theft, Indian double-dealing, Indian fraud and
perfidy, Indian want of conscience, Indian blood-thirstiness, Indian
diabolism--histories which, though of wild woods, are almost as full of
things unangelic as the Newgate Calendar or the Annals of Europe. In
these Indian narratives and traditions the lad is thoroughly grounded.
"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The instinct of antipathy
against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the sense of good and
bad, right and wrong. In one breath he learns that a brother is to be
loved, and an Indian to be hated.
"'Such are the facts,' the judge would say, 'upon which, if one seek to
moralize, he must do so with an eye to them. It is terrible that one
creature should so regard another, should make it conscience to abhor an
entire race. It is terrible; but is it surprising? Surprising, that one
should hate a race which he believes to be red from a cause akin to that
which makes some tribes of garden insects green? A race whose name is
upon the frontier a _memento mori_; painted to him in every evil light;
now a horse-thief like those in Moyamensing; now an assassin like a New
York rowdy; now a treaty-breaker like an Austrian; now a Palmer with
poisoned arrows; now a judicial murderer and Jeffries, after a fierce
farce of trial condemning his victim to bloody death; or a Jew with
hospitable speeches cozening some fainting stranger into ambuscade,
there to burk him, and account it a deed grateful to Manitou, his god.
"'Still, all this is less advanced as truths of the Indians than as
examples of the backwoodsman's impression of them--in which the
charitable may think he does them some injustice. Certain it is, the
Indians themselves think so; quite unanimously, too. The Indians, in
deed, protest against the backwoodsman's view of them; and some think
that one cause of their returning his antipathy so sincerely as they do,
is their moral indignation at being so libeled by him, as they really
believe and say. But whether, on this or any point, the Indians should
be permitted to testify for themselves, to the exclusion of other
testimony, is a question that may be left to the Supreme Court. At any
rate, it has been observed that when an Indian becomes a genuine
proselyte to Christianity (such cases, however, not being very many;
though, indeed, entire tribes are sometimes nominally brought to the
true light,) he will not in that case conceal his enlightened
conviction, that his race's portion by nature is total depravity; and,
in that way, as much as admits that the backwoodsman's worst idea of it
is not very far from true; while, on the other hand, those red men who
are the greatest sticklers for the theory of Indian virtue, and Indian
loving-kindness, are sometimes the arrantest horse-thieves and
tomahawkers among them. So, at least, avers the backwoodsman. And
though, knowing the Indian nature, as he thinks he does, he fancies he
is not ignorant that an Indian may in some points deceive himself almost
as effectually as in bush-tactics he can another, yet his theory and his
practice as above contrasted seem to involve an inconsistency so
extreme, that the backwoodsman only accounts for it on the supposition
that when a tomahawking red-man advances the notion of the benignity of
the red race, it is but part and parcel with that subtle strategy which
he finds so useful in war, in hunting, and the general conduct of life.'
"In further explanation of that deep abhorrence with which the
backwoodsman regards the savage, the judge used to think it might
perhaps a little help, to consider what kind of stimulus to it is
furnished in those forest histories and traditions before spoken of. In
which behalf, he would tell the story of the little colony of Wrights
and Weavers, originally seven cousins from Virginia, who, after
successive removals with their families, at last established themselves
near the southern frontier of the Bloody Ground, Kentucky: 'They were
strong, brave men; but, unlike many of the pioneers in those days,
theirs was no love of conflict for conflict's sake. Step by step they
had been lured to their lonely resting-place by the ever-beckoning
seductions of a fertile and virgin land, with a singular exemption,
during the march, from Indian molestation. But clearings made and houses
built, the bright shield was soon to turn its other side. After repeated
persecutions and eventual hostilities, forced on them by a dwindled
tribe in their neighborhood--persecutions resulting in loss of crops and
cattle; hostilities in which they lost two of their number, illy to be
spared, besides others getting painful wounds--the five remaining
cousins made, with some serious concessions, a kind of treaty with
Mocmohoc, the chief--being to this induced by the harryings of the
enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were further prompted, indeed,
first incited, by the suddenly changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though
hitherto deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet now put
on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to bury the hatchet, smoke
the pipe, and be friends forever; not friends in the mere sense of
renouncing enmity, but in the sense of kindliness, active and familiar.
"'But what the chief now seemed, did not wholly blind them to what the
chief had been; so that, though in no small degree influenced by his
change of bearing, they still distrusted him enough to covenant with
him, among other articles on their side, that though friendly visits
should be exchanged between the wigwams and the cabins, yet the five
cousins should never, on any account, be expected to enter the chief's
lodge together. The intention was, though they reserved it, that if
ever, under the guise of amity, the chief should mean them mischief, and
effect it, it should be but partially; so that some of the five might
survive, not only for their families' sake, but also for retribution's.
Nevertheless, Mocmohoc did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing
carriage win their confidence, that he brought them all together to a
feast of bear's meat, and there, by stratagem, ended them. Years after,
over their calcined bones and those of all their families, the chief,
reproached for his treachery by a proud hunter whom he had made captive,
jeered out, "Treachery? pale face! 'Twas they who broke their covenant
first, in coming all together; they that broke it first, in trusting
Mocmohoc."'
"At this point the judge would pause, and lifting his hand, and rolling
his eyes, exclaim in a solemn enough voice, 'Circling wiles and bloody
lusts. The acuteness and genius of the chief but make him the more
atrocious.'
"After another pause, he would begin an imaginary kind of dialogue
between a backwoodsman and a questioner:
"'But are all Indians like Mocmohoc?--Not all have proved such; but in
the least harmful may lie his germ. There is an Indian nature. "Indian
blood is in me," is the half-breed's threat.--But are not some Indians
kind?--Yes, but kind Indians are mostly lazy, and reputed simple--at
all events, are seldom chiefs; chiefs among the red men being taken from
the active, and those accounted wise. Hence, with small promotion, kind
Indians have but proportionate influence. And kind Indians may be forced
to do unkind biddings. So "beware the Indian, kind or unkind," said
Daniel Boone, who lost his sons by them.--But, have all you backwoodsmen
been some way victimized by Indians?--No.--Well, and in certain cases
may not at least some few of you be favored by them?--Yes, but scarce
one among us so self-important, or so selfish-minded, as to hold his
personal exemption from Indian outrage such a set-off against the
contrary experience of so many others, as that he must needs, in a
general way, think well of Indians; or, if he do, an arrow in his flank
might suggest a pertinent doubt.
"'In short,' according to the judge, 'if we at all credit the
backwoodsman, his feeling against Indians, to be taken aright, must be
considered as being not so much on his own account as on others', or
jointly on both accounts. True it is, scarce a family he knows but some
member of it, or connection, has been by Indians maimed or scalped. What
avails, then, that some one Indian, or some two or three, treat a
backwoodsman friendly-like? He fears me, he thinks. Take my rifle from
me, give him motive, and what will come? Or if not so, how know I what
involuntary preparations may be going on in him for things as unbeknown
in present time to him as me--a sort of chemical preparation in the
soul for malice, as chemical preparation in the body for malady.'
"Not that the backwoodsman ever used those words, you see, but the judge
found him expression for his meaning. And this point he would conclude
with saying, that, 'what is called a "friendly Indian" is a very rare
sort of creature; and well it was so, for no ruthlessness exceeds that
of a "friendly Indian" turned enemy. A coward friend, he makes a valiant
foe.
"'But, thus far the passion in question has been viewed in a general way
as that of a community. When to his due share of this the backwoodsman
adds his private passion, we have then the stock out of which is formed,
if formed at all, the Indian-hater _par excellence_.'
"The Indian-hater _par excellence_ the judge defined to be one 'who,
having with his mother's milk drank in small love for red men, in youth
or early manhood, ere the sensibilities become osseous, receives at
their hand some signal outrage, or, which in effect is much the same,
some of his kin have, or some friend. Now, nature all around him by her
solitudes wooing or bidding him muse upon this matter, he accordingly
does so, till the thought develops such attraction, that much as
straggling vapors troop from all sides to a storm-cloud, so straggling
thoughts of other outrages troop to the nucleus thought, assimilate with
it, and swell it. At last, taking counsel with the elements, he comes to
his resolution. An intenser Hannibal, he makes a vow, the hate of which
is a vortex from whose suction scarce the remotest chip of the guilty
race may reasonably feel secure. Next, he declares himself and settles
his temporal affairs. With the solemnity of a Spaniard turned monk, he
takes leave of his kin; or rather, these leave-takings have something of
the still more impressive finality of death-bed adieus. Last, he commits
himself to the forest primeval; there, so long as life shall be his, to
act upon a calm, cloistered scheme of strategical, implacable, and
lonesome vengeance. Ever on the noiseless trail; cool, collected,
patient; less seen than felt; snuffing, smelling--a Leather-stocking
Nemesis. In the settlements he will not be seen again; in eyes of old
companions tears may start at some chance thing that speaks of him; but
they never look for him, nor call; they know he will not come. Suns and
seasons fleet; the tiger-lily blows and falls; babes are born and leap
in their mothers' arms; but, the Indian-hater is good as gone to his
long home, and "Terror" is his epitaph.'
"Here the judge, not unaffected, would pause again, but presently
resume: 'How evident that in strict speech there can be no biography of
an Indian-hater _par excellence_, any more than one of a sword-fish, or
other deep-sea denizen; or, which is still less imaginable, one of a
dead man. The career of the Indian-hater _par excellence_ has the
impenetrability of the fate of a lost steamer. Doubtless, events,
terrible ones, have happened, must have happened; but the powers that be
in nature have taken order that they shall never become news.
"'But, luckily for the curious, there is a species of diluted
Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely as his brain. Soft
enticements of domestic life too, often draw him from the ascetic trail;
a monk who apostatizes to the world at times. Like a mariner, too,
though much abroad, he may have a wife and family in some green harbor
which he does not forget. It is with him as with the Papist converts in
Senegal; fasting and mortification prove hard to bear.'
"The judge, with his usual judgment, always thought that the intense
solitude to which the Indian-hater consigns himself, has, by its
overawing influence, no little to do with relaxing his vow. He would
relate instances where, after some months' lonely scoutings, the
Indian-hater is suddenly seized with a sort of calenture; hurries openly
towards the first smoke, though he knows it is an Indian's, announces
himself as a lost hunter, gives the savage his rifle, throws himself
upon his charity, embraces him with much affection, imploring the
privilege of living a while in his sweet companionship. What is too
often the sequel of so distempered a procedure may be best known by
those who best know the Indian. Upon the whole, the judge, by two and
thirty good and sufficient reasons, would maintain that there was no
known vocation whose consistent following calls for such
self-containings as that of the Indian-hater _par excellence_. In the
highest view, he considered such a soul one peeping out but once an age.
"For the diluted Indian-hater, although the vacations he permits himself
impair the keeping of the character, yet, it should not be overlooked
that this is the man who, by his very infirmity, enables us to form
surmises, however inadequate, of what Indian-hating in its perfection
is."
"One moment," gently interrupted the cosmopolitan here, "and let me
refill my calumet."
Which being done, the other proceeded:--