Lay-Brothers—Catalina—Detached Indians.
Before I quit this attempt to delineate the number of which this
community was composed, I must mention a class of aged persons, who,
united by the same recollections, pursuits, and topics, associated very
much with each other, and very little with a world which they seemed to
have renounced. They might be styled lay-brothers, and were usually
widowers, or persons who, in consequence of some early disappointment,
had remained unmarried. These were not devotees, who had, as was
formerly often the case in Catholic countries, run from the extreme of
licentiousness to that of bigotry. They were generally persons who were
never marked as being irreligious or immoral—and just as little
distinguished for peculiar strictness or devotional fervour. These good
men lived in the house of some relation, where they had their own
apartments to themselves, and only occasionally mixed with the family.
The people of the town lived to a great age; ninety was frequently
attained, and I have seen different individuals of both sexes, who had
reached a hundred. These ancients seemed to place all their delight in
pious books and devotional exercises, particularly in singing psalms,
which they would do in their own apartments for hours together. They
came out and in like ghosts, and were treated in the same manner, for
they never spoke unless when addressed, and seemed very careless of the
things of this world, like people who had got above it. Yet they were
much together, and seemed to enjoy each other’s conversation.
Retrospection on the scenes of early life, anticipations of that
futurity, so closely veiled from our sight, and discussions regarding
different passages of holy writ, seemed their favourite themes. They
were mild and benevolent, but abstracted, and unlike other people, their
happiness, for happy I am convinced they were, was of a nature peculiar
to themselves, not obvious to others. Others there were not deficient in
their attention to religious duties, who, living in the bosom of their
families, took an active and cheerful concern to the last, in all that
amused or interested them; and I never understood that the lay-brothers,
as I have chosen to call them, blamed them for so doing. One of the
first Christian virtues, charity, in the most obvious and common sense
of the word, had little scope. Here a beggar was unheard of. People,
such as I have described in the _bush_, or going there, were no more
considered as objects of pity, than we consider an apprentice as such,
for having to serve his time before he sets up for himself. In such
cases, the wealthier, because older settlers, frequently gave a heifer
or colt each, to a new beginner, who set about clearing land in their
vicinity. Orphans were never neglected; and from their early marriages,
and the casualties their manner of life subjected them to, these were
not unfrequent. You never entered a house without meeting children;
maidens, bachelors, and childless married people, all adopted orphans,
and all treated them as if they were their own.
Having given a sketch, that appears to my recollection, (aided by
subsequent conversations with my fellow-travellers,) a faithful one of
the country and its inhabitants, it is time to return to the history of
the mind of Miss Schuyler, for by no other circumstances than
prematurity of intellect, and superior culture, were her earliest years
distinguished. Her father, dying early, left her very much to the
tuition of his brother. Her uncle’s frontier situation, made him a kind
of barrier to the settlement; while the powerful influence that his
knowledge of nature and of character, his sound judgment and unstained
integrity, had obtained over both parties, made him the bond by which
the aborigines were united with the colonists. Thus, little leisure was
left him for domestic enjoyments or literary pursuits, for both of which
his mind was peculiarly adapted. Of the leisure time he could command,
however, he made the best use, and soon distinguished Catalina as the
one amongst his family to whom nature had been most liberal; he was at
the pains to cultivate her taste for reading, which soon discovered
itself, by procuring for her the best authors in history, divinity, and
belles lettres; in this latter branch, her reading was not very
extensive, but then the few books of this kind that she possessed, were
very well chosen, and she was early and intimately familiar with them.
What I remember of her, assisted by comparisons since made with others,
has led me to think that extensive reading, superficial and
indiscriminate—such as the very easy access to books among us
encourages, is not at an early period of life, favourable to solid
thinking, true taste, or fixed principle. Whatever she knew, she knew to
the bottom; and the reflections which were thus suggested to her strong,
discerning mind, were digested by means of easy and instructive
conversation. Colonel Schuyler had many relations in New-York—and the
governor and other ruling characters there, carefully cultivated the
acquaintance of a person, so well qualified to instruct and inform them
on certain points as he was. Having considerable dealings in the fur
trade, too, he went every winter to the capital for a short time, to
adjust his commercial concerns, and often took his favourite niece along
with him, who, being of an uncommonly quick growth and tall stature,
soon attracted attention by her personal graces, as well as by the
charms of her conversation. I have been told, and should conclude from a
picture I have seen drawn when she was fifteen, that she was in her
youth very handsome. Of this, few traces remained when I knew her;
excessive corpulence having then overloaded her majestic person, and
entirely changed the aspect of a countenance, once eminently graceful.
In no place did female excellence of any kind more amply receive its due
tribute of applause and admiration than here, for various reasons;
first, cultivation and refinement were rare. Then, as it was not the
common routine that women should necessarily have such and such
accomplishments, pains were only taken on minds strong enough to bear
improvement, without becoming conceited or pedantic; and lastly, as the
spur of emulation was not invidiously applied, those who acquired a
superior degree of knowledge, considered themselves as very fortunate in
having a new source of enjoyment opened to them. But never having been
made to understand that the chief motive of excelling was to dazzle or
outshine others, they no more thought of despising their less fortunate
companions, than of assuming pre-eminence for discovering a wild
plum-tree or bee-hive in the woods, though, as in the former case, they
would have regarded such a discovery as a benefit and a pleasure; their
acquisitions, therefore, were never shaded by affectation. The women
were all natives of the country, and few had more than a domestic
education; but men, who possessed the advantages of early culture and
usage of the world, daily arrived on the continent from different parts
of Europe; so that if we may be indulged in the inelegant liberty of
talking commercially of female elegance, the supply was not equal to the
demand. It may be easily supposed that Miss Schuyler met with due
attention; who, even at this early age, was respected for the strength
of her character, and the dignity and composure of her manners. Her
mother, whom she delighted to recollect, was mild, pious, and amiable;
her acknowledged worth was chastened by the utmost diffidence. Yet,
accustomed to exercise a certain power over the minds of the natives,
she had great influence in restraining their irregularities and swaying
their opinions. From her knowledge of their language, and habit of
conversing with them, some detached Indian families resided for a while
in summer in the vicinity of houses occupied by the more wealthy and
benevolent inhabitants. They generally built a slight wigwam under
shelter of the orchard fence, on the shadiest side; and never were
neighbours more harmless, peaceable, and obliging—I might truly add
industrious, for in one way or other they were constantly occupied. The
women and their children employed themselves in many ingenious
handicrafts, which, since the introduction of European arts and
manufactures, have greatly declined. Baking trays, wooden dishes, ladles
and spoons, shovels and rakes, brooms of a peculiar manufacture, made by
splitting a birch block into slender but tough filaments; baskets of all
kinds and sizes, made of similar filaments, enriched with the most
beautiful colours, which they alone knew how to extract from vegetable
substances, and incorporate with the wood. They made also of the
birch-bark, (which is here so strong and tenacious, that cradles and
canoes are made of it,) many receptacles for holding fruit and other
things, curiously adorned with embroidery—not inelegant, done with the
sinews of deer, and leggins and moomesans, a very comfortable and highly
ornamental substitute for shoes and stockings, then universally used in
winter among the men of our own people. They had also a beautiful
manufacture of deer skin, softened to the consistence of the finest
Chamois leather, and embroidered with beads of wampum, formed like
bugles; these, with great art and industry, they formed out of shells,
which had the appearance of fine, white porcelain, veined with purple.
This embroidery showed both skill and taste, and was among themselves
highly valued. They had belts, large embroidered garters, and many other
ornaments, formed, first of deer sinews, divided to the size of coarse
thread, and afterwards, when they obtained worsted thread from us, of
that material, formed in a manner which I could never comprehend. It was
neither knitted nor wrought in the manner of net, nor yet woven—but the
texture was formed more like an officer’s sash than any thing I can
compare it to. While the women and children were thus employed, the men
sometimes assisted them in the more laborious part of their business,
but oftener occupied themselves in fishing on the rivers, and drying or
preserving, by means of smoke, in sheds erected for the purpose,
sturgeon and large eels, which they caught in great quantities, and of
an extraordinary size, for winter provision.
Boys on the verge of manhood, and ambitious to be admitted into the
hunting parties of the ensuing winter, exercised themselves in trying to
improve their skill in archery, by shooting birds, squirrels, and
raccoons. These petty huntings helped to support the little colony in
the neighbourhood, which, however, derived its principal subsistence
from an exchange of their manufactures with the neighbouring family, for
milk, bread, and other articles of food.
The summer residence of these ingenious artisans promoted a great
intimacy between the females of the vicinity and the Indian women, whose
sagacity and comprehension of mind were beyond belief.
It is a singular circumstance, that though they saw the negroes in every
respectable family not only treated with humanity, but cherished with
parental kindness, they always regarded them with contempt and dislike,
as an inferior race, and would have no communication with them. It was
necessary then that all conversations should be held, and all business
transacted with these females, by the mistress of the family. In the
infancy of the settlement, the Indian language was familiar to the more
intelligent inhabitants, who found it very useful, and were, no doubt,
pleased with its nervous and emphatic idiom, and its lofty and sonorous
cadence. It was, indeed, a noble and copious language, when one
considers that it served as the vehicle of thought to a people, whose
ideas and sphere of action we should consider as so very confined.
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