Progress of civilization in Europe—Northern nations instructed in the
arts of life by those they had subdued.
POPULATION extending to the milder regions of Europe, brought
civilization along with it, so that it is only among the savages, (as we
call our ancestors) of the north, that we can trace the intermediate
state I have spoken of. Amongst them, one regular gradation seems to
have taken place; they were first hunters and then warriors. As they
advanced in their knowledge of the arts of life, and acquired a little
property, as much of pastoral pursuits as their rigorous climate would
allow, without the aid of regular agriculture, mingled with their
wandering habits. But, except in a few partial instances, from hunters
they became conquerors; the warlike habits acquired from that mode of
life, raising their minds above patient industry, and teaching them to
despise the softer arts that embellish society. In fine, their usual
process was to pass to civilization through the medium of conquest. The
poet says,
“With noble scorn the first fam’d Cato viewed,
Rome learning arts from Greece, which she subdued.”
The surly censor might have spared his scorn, for doubtless science, and
the arts of peace, were by far the most valuable acquisitions resulting
from their conquest of that polished and ingenious people. But when the
savage hunters of the north became too numerous to subsist on their deer
and fish, and too warlike to dread the conflict with troops more
regularly armed, they rushed down, like a cataract, on their enfeebled
and voluptuous neighbours; destroyed the monuments of art, and seemed,
for a time, to change the very face of nature. Yet dreadful as were the
devastations of this flood, let forth by divine vengeance to punish and
to renovate, it had its use in sweeping away the hoarded mass of
corruption, with which the dregs of mankind had polluted the earth. It
was an awful but a needful process, which, in some form or other, is
always renewed when human degeneracy has reached its ultimatum. The
destruction of these feeble beings, who, lost to every manly and
virtuous sentiment, crawl about the rich property which they have not
sense to use worthily, or spirit to defend manfully, may be compared to
the effort nature makes to rid herself of the noxious brood of wasps and
slugs, cherished by successive mild winters. A dreadful frost comes; man
suffers and complains; his subject animals suffer more, and all his
works are for a time suspended: but this salutary infliction purifies
the air, meliorates the soil, and destroys millions of lurking enemies,
who would otherwise have consumed the productions of the earth, and
deformed the face of nature. In these barbarous irruptions, the
monuments of art, statues, pictures, temples, and palaces, seem to be
most lamented. From age to age, the virtuosi of every country have
re-echoed to each other their feeble plaints over the lost works of art,
as if that had been the heaviest sorrow in the general wreck—and as if
the powers that produced them had ceased to exist. It is over the
defaced image of the divine author, and not merely the mutilated
resemblance of his creatures, that the wise and virtuous should lament!
We are told that in Rome there are as many statues as men: had all these
lamented statues been preserved, would the world be much wiser or
happier? A sufficient number remain as models to future statuaries, and
memorials of departed art and genius. Wealth, directed by taste and
liberality, may be much better employed in calling forth, by due
encouragement, that genius which doubtless exists among our
contemporaries, than in paying exorbitantly the vender of fragments.
“Mind, mind alone, bear witness, earth and Heav’n,
The living fountain in itself contains
Of beauteous and sublime.”
And what has ind achieved, that, in a favourable conjuncture, it may not
again aspire to? The lost arts are ever the theme of classical
lamentation; but the great and real evil was the loss of the virtues
which protected them; of courage, fortitude, honour, and patriotism: in
short, of the whole manly character. This must be allowed, after the
dreadful tempest of subversion was over, to have been in some degree
restored in the days of chivalry: and it is equally certain that the
victors learnt from the vanquished many of the arts that support life,
and all those which embellish it. When their manners were softened by
the aid of a mild and charitable religion, this blended people assumed
that undefined power, derived from superior valour and wisdom, which has
so far exalted Europe over all the regions of the earth. Thus, where a
bold and warlike people subdue a voluptuous and effeminate one, the
result is, in due time, an improvement of national character. In similar
climes and circumstances to those of the primeval nations in the other
hemisphere, the case has been very different. There, too, the hunter, by
the same gradation, became a warrior; but first allured by the
friendship which sought his protection; then repelled by the art that
coveted and encroached on his territories; and lastly by the avarice
which taught him new wants, and then took an undue advantage of them;
they neither wished for our superfluities, nor envied our mode of life;
nor did our encroachments much disturb them, as they receded into their
trackless coverts as we approached from the coast. But though they
scorned our refinements; and though our government, and all the
enlightened minds among us, dealt candidly and generously with all such
as were not set on by our enemies to injure us, the blight of European
vices, the mere consequence of private greediness and fraud, proved
fatal to our very friends. As I formerly observed, the nature of the
climate did not admit of the warriors passing through the medium of a
shepherd’s life to the toils of agriculture. The climate, though
extremely warm in summer, was so severe in winter, and that winter was
so long, that it required no little labour to secure the food for the
animals which were to be maintained; and no small expense, in that
country, to procure the implements necessary for the purposes of
agriculture. In other countries, when a poor man has not wherewithal to
begin farming, he serves another, and the reward of his toil enables him
to set up for himself. No such resource was open to the Indians, had
they even inclined to adopt our modes. No Indian ever served another, or
received assistance from any one except his own family. It is
inconceivable, too, what a different kind of exertion of strength it
requires to cultivate the ground, and to endure the fatigues of the
chace, long journeys, &c. To all that induces us to labour they were
indifferent. When a governor of New-York was describing to an Indian the
advantages that some one would derive from such and such possessions;
“Why,” said he, with evident surprise, “should any man desire to possess
more than he uses?” More appeared, to his untutored sense, an
incumbrance.
I have already observed how much happier they considered their manner of
living than ours; yet their intercourse with us daily diminished their
independence, their happiness, and even their numbers. In the New World,
this fatality has never failed to follow the introduction of European
settlers; who, instead of civilizing and improving, slowly consume and
waste—where they do not, like the Spaniards, absolutely destroy and
exterminate the natives. The very nature of even our most friendly mode
of dealing with them, was pernicious to their moral welfare; which,
though too late, they well understood, and could as well explain.
Untutored man, in beginning to depart from that life of exigences, in
which the superior acuteness of his senses, his fleetness and dexterity
in the chace, are his chief dependence, loses so much of all this before
he can become accustomed to, or qualified for our mode of procuring food
by patient labour, that nothing can be conceived more enfeebled and
forlorn, than the state of the few detached families remaining of
vanished tribes, who, having lost their energy, and even the wish to
live in their own manner, were slowly and reluctantly beginning to adopt
ours. It was like that suspension of life which takes place in the
chrysalis of insects, while in their progress towards a new state of
being. Alas! the indolence with which we reproach them, was merely the
consequence of their commercial intercourse with us; and the fatal
passion for strong liquors which resulted from it. As the fabled
enchanter, by waving his magic wand, chains up at once the faculties of
his opponents, and renders strength and courage useless; the most
wretched and sordid trader, possessed of this master-key to the
appetites and passions of these hard-fated people, could disarm those he
dealt with of all their resources, and render them dependent—nay,
dependent on those they scorned and hated. The process was simple:
first, the power of sending, by mimic thunder, an unseen death to a
distant foe, which filled the softer inhabitants of the southern regions
with so much terror, was here merely an object of desire and emulation;
and so eagerly did they adopt the use of fire-arms, that they soon
became less expert in using their own missile weapons. They could still
throw the tomahawk with such an unerring aim, that, though it went
circling through the air towards its object, it never failed to reach
it. But the arrows, on which they had formerly so much depended, were
now considered merely as the weapons of boys, and only directed against
birds.
Thus was one strong link forged in the chain of dependence; next, liquor
became a necessary, and its fatal effects who can detail? But to make it
still clearer, I have mentioned the passion for dress, in which all the
pride and vanity of this people was centered. In former days, this had
the best effect, in being a stimulus to industry. The provision
requisite for making a splendid appearance at the winter meetings, for
hunting and the national congress, occupied the leisure hours of the
whole summer. The beaver skins of the last year’s hunting were to be
accurately dressed, and sewed together, to form that mantle which was so
much valued, and as necessary to their consequence as the pelisse of
sables is to that of an Eastern bashaw. A deer skin, or that of a bear
or beaver, had their stated price. The boldest and most expert hunter,
had most of these commodities to spare, and was therefore most
splendidly arrayed. If he had a rival, it was in him whose dexterous
ingenuity in fabricating the materials of which his own dress was
composed, enabled him to vie with the hero of the chase.
Thus superior elegance in dress was not, as with us, the distinction of
the luxurious and effeminate, but the privilege and reward of superior
courage and industry; and became an object worthy of competition. Thus
employed, and thus adorned, the sachem or his friends found little time
to indulge the stupid indolence we have been accustomed to impute to
them.
Another arduous task remains uncalculated. Before they became dependent
on us for the means of destruction, much time was consumed in forming
their weapons; in the construction of which no less patience and
ingenuity were exercised than in that of their ornaments; and those,
too, were highly embellished, and made with great labour out of flints,
pebbles, and shells. But all this system of employment was soon
overturned by their late acquaintance with the insidious arts of Europe,
to the use of whose manufactures they were insensibly drawn in, first by
their passion for fire-arms, and finally, by their fatal appetite for
liquor. To make this more clear, I shall insert a dialogue, such as, if
not literally, at least in substance, might pass betwixt an Indian
warrior and a trader.
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