Distinguishing characteristics of the New-York colonists, to what
owing—Huguenots
and Palatines, their character.
BUT to return to the superior moral and military character of the
New-York populace; it was, in the first place, owing to a well-regulated
piety, less concerned about forms than essentials; next, to an influx of
other than the original settlers, which tended to render the general
system of opinion more liberal and tolerant. The French protestants,
driven from their native land by intolerant bigotry, had lived at home,
excluded alike from public employments and fashionable society. Deprived
of so many resources that were open to their fellow-subjects, and forced
to seek comfort in piety and concord, for many privations, self-command
and frugality had been, in a manner, forced upon them—consequently they
were not so vain or so volatile as to disgust their new associates;
while their cheerful tempers, accommodating manners, and patience under
adversity, were very prepossessing.
These additional inhabitants, being such as had suffered real and
extreme hardships for conscience-sake, from absolute tyranny and the
most cruel intolerance, rejoiced in the free exercise of a pure and
rational religion, and in the protection of mild and equitable laws, as
the first of human blessings, which privation had so far taught them to
value, that they thought no exertion too great to preserve them. I
should have formerly mentioned, that, besides the French refugees
already spoken of, during the earliest period of the establishment of
the British sovereignty in this part of the continent, a great number of
the protestants, whom the fury of war, and persecution on religious
accounts, had driven from the Palatinate, during the successful and
desolating period of the wars carried on against that unhappy country by
Lewis the Fourteenth, took refuge here. The subdued and contented
spirit, the simple and primitive manners, and frugal, industrious habits
of these genuine sufferers for conscience-sake, made them an acquisition
to any society which received them, and a most suitable infusion among
the inhabitants of this province, who, devoted to the pursuits of
agriculture and the Indian trade, which encouraged a wild, romantic
spirit of adventure, little relished those mechanical employments, or
that petty yet necessary traffic in shops, &c., to which part of every
regulated society must needs devote their attention. These civic toils
were left to those patient and industrious exiles; while the friendly
intercourse with the original natives, had strongly tinctured the first
colonists with many of their habits and modes of thinking. Like them,
they delighted in hunting; that image of war, which so generally, where
it is the prevalent amusement, forms the body to athletic force and
patient endurance, and the mind to daring intrepidity. It was not alone
the timorous deer or feeble hare that were the objects of their pursuit;
nor could they, in such an impenetrable country, attempt to rival the
fox in speed or subtlety. When they kept their “few sheep in the
wilderness,” the she-bear, jealous of her young, and the wolf, furious
for prey, were to be encountered for their protection. From these
allies, too, many who lived much among them, had learnt that fearless
adherence to truth, which exalts the mind to the noblest kind of
resolution. The dangers they were exposed to, of meeting wandering
individuals, or parties of hostile Indians, while traversing the woods
in their sporting or commercial adventures, and the necessity that
sometimes occurred of defending their families by their own personal
prowess, from the stolen irruptions of detached parties of those usually
called the French Indians, had also given their minds a warlike bent;
and as the boy was not uncommonly trusted at nine or ten years of age,
with a light fowling-piece, which he soon learned to use with great
dexterity, few countries could produce such dexterous marksmen, or
persons so well qualified for conquering those natural obstacles of
thick woods and swamps, which would at once baffle the most determined
European. It was not only that they were strong of limb, swift of foot,
and excellent marksmen—the hatchet was as familiar to them as the
musket; and an amateur, who had never cut wood but for his diversion,
could hew down a tree with a celerity that would astonish and abash a
professed wood-cutter in this country; in short, when means or arguments
could be used powerful enough to collect a people so uncontrolled and so
uncontrollable, and when headed by a leader whom they loved and trusted,
so much as they did Colonel Schuyler, a well-armed body of New-York
provincials had nothing to dread but an ague or an ambuscade, to both of
which they were much exposed on the banks of the lakes, and amidst the
swampy forests, through which they had to penetrate in pursuit of an
enemy, of whom they might say with the Grecian hero, that “they wanted
but daylight to conquer him.” This first essay in arms of those
provincials, under the auspices of their brave and generous leader,
succeeded beyond their hopes: this is all I can recollect of it. Of its
destination, I only know that it was directed against some of those
establishments which the French began to make within the British
boundaries. The expedition only terminated with the season. The
provincials brought home Canadian prisoners, who were kept on their
parole in the houses of the three brothers, and became afterwards their
friends; and the Five Nations brought home Indian prisoners, most of
whom they adopted, and scalps enough to strike awe into the adverse
nations, who were for a year or two afterwards pretty quiet.
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