The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon

by Washington Irving

  TRAITS OF INDIAN CHARACTER.

  "I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, andhe gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothedhim not."--Speech of au Indian Chief.

  THERE is something in the character and habits of the North Americansavage, taken in connection with the scenery over which he is accustomedto range, its vast lakes, boundless forests, majestic rivers, andtrackless plains, that is, to my mind, wonderfully striking and sublime.He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert.His nature is stern, simple, and enduring, fitted to grapple withdifficulties and to support privations. There seems but little soil inhis heart for the support of the kindly virtues; and yet, if we wouldbut take the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicismand habitual taciturnity which lock up his character from casualobservation, we should find him linked to his fellow-man of civilizedlife by more of those sympathies and affections than are usuallyascribed to him.

  It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America in theearly periods of colonization to be doubly wronged by the white men.They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenaryand frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traducedby bigoted and interested writers. The colonists often treated them likebeasts of the forest, and the author has endeavored to justify himin his outrages. The former found it easier to exterminate than tocivilize; the latter to vilify than to discriminate. The appellations ofsavage and pagan were deemed sufficient to sanction the hostilitiesof both; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted anddefamed, not because they were guilty, but because they were ignorant.

  The rights of the savage have seldom been properly appreciated orrespected by the white man. In peace he has too often been the dupe ofartful traffic; in war he has been regarded as a ferocious animal whoselife or death was a question of mere precaution and convenience. Manis cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he issheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from himwhen he feels the sting of the reptile and is conscious of the power todestroy.

  The same prejudices, which were indulged thus early, exist in commoncirculation at the present day. Certain learned societies have, it istrue, with laudable diligence, endeavored to investigate and recordthe real characters and manners of the Indian tribes; the Americangovernment, too, has wisely and humanely exerted itself to inculcatea friendly and forbearing spirit towards them and to protect them fromfraud and injustice.* The current opinion of the Indian character,however, is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes which infestthe frontiers and hang on the skirts of the settlements. These are toocommonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by thevices of society, without being benefited by its civilization. Thatproud independence which formed the main pillar of savage virtue hasbeen shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Theirspirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and theirnative courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power oftheir enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one ofthose withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a wholeregion of fertility. It has enervated their strength, multiplied theirdiseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vicesof artificial life. It has given them a thousand superfluous wants,whilst it has diminished their means of mere existence. It has drivenbefore it the animals of the chase, who fly from the sound of the axeand the smoke of the settlement and seek refuge in the depths of remoterforests and yet untrodden wilds. Thus do we too often find the Indianson our frontiers to be the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerfultribes, who have lingered in the vicinity of the settlements and sunkinto precarious and vagabond existence. Poverty, repining and hopelesspoverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes theirspirits and blights every free and noble quality of their natures. Theybecome drunken, indolent, feeble, thievish, and pusillanimous. Theyloiter like vagrants about the settlements, among spacious dwellingsreplete with elaborate comforts, which only render them sensible ofthe comparative wretchedness of their own condition. Luxury spreads itsample board before their eyes, but they are excluded from the banquet.Plenty revels over the fields, but they are starving in the midst of itsabundance; the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden, but theyfeel as reptiles that infest it.

  * The American Government has been indefatigable in its exertions to ameliorate the situation of the Indians, and to introduce among them the arts of civilization and civil and religious knowledge. To protect them from the frauds of the white traders no purchase of land from them by individuals is permitted, nor is any person allowed to receive lands from them as a present without the express sanction of government. These precautions are strictly enforced.

  How different was their state while yet the undisputed lords of thesoil! Their wants were few and the means of gratification within theirreach. They saw every one round them sharing the same lot, enduring thesame hardships, feeding on the same aliments, arrayed in the same rudegarments. No roof then rose but was open to the homeless stranger; nosmoke curled among the trees but he was welcome to sit down by its fireand join the hunter in his repast. "For," says an old historian of NewEngland, "their life is so void of care, and they are so loving also,that they make use of those things they enjoy as common goods, and aretherein so compassionate that rather than one should starve throughwant, they would starve all; thus they pass their time merrily, notregarding our pomp, but are better content with their own, which somemen esteem so meanly of." Such were the Indians whilst in the prideand energy of their primitive natures: they resembled those wild plantswhich thrive best in the shades of the forest, but shrink from the handof cultivation and perish beneath the influence of the sun.

  In discussing the savage character writers have been too prone toindulge in vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration, instead of thecandid temper of true philosophy. They have not sufficiently consideredthe peculiar circumstances in which the Indians have been placed, andthe peculiar principles under which they have been educated. No beingacts more rigidly from rule than the Indian. His whole conduct isregulated according to some general maxims early implanted in his mind.The moral laws that govern him are, to be sure, but few; but then heconforms to them all; the white man abounds in laws of religion, morals,and manners, but how many does he violate!

  A frequent ground of accusation against the Indians is their disregardof treaties, and the treachery and wantonness with which, in time ofapparent peace, they will suddenly fly to hostilities. The intercourseof the white men with the Indians, however, is too apt to be cold,distrustful, oppressive, and insulting. They seldom treat them with thatconfidence and frankness which are indispensable to real friendship, noris sufficient caution observed not to offend against those feelings ofpride or superstition which often prompt the Indian to hostilityquicker than mere considerations of interest. The solitary savage feelssilently, but acutely. His sensibilities are not diffused over so widea surface as those of the white man, but they run in steadier and deeperchannels. His pride, his affections, his superstitions, are alldirected towards fewer objects, but the wounds inflicted on them areproportionably severe, and furnish motives of hostility which we cannotsufficiently appreciate. Where a community is also limited in number,and forms one great patriarchal family, as in an Indian tribe, theinjury of an individual is the injury of the whole, and the sentimentof vengeance is almost instantaneously diffused. One council-fire issufficient for the discussion and arrangement of a plan of hostilities.Here all the fighting-men and sages assemble. Eloquence and superstitioncombine to inflame the minds of the warriors. The orator awakenstheir martial ardor, and they are wrought up to a kind of religiousdesperation by the visions of the prophet and the dreamer.

  An instance of one of those sudden exasperations, arising from a motivepeculiar to the Indian character, is extant in an old record of theearly settlement of Massach
usetts. The planters of Plymouth had defacedthe monuments of the dead at Passonagessit, and had plundered the graveof the Sachem's mother of some skins with which it had been decorated.The Indians are remarkable for the reverence which they entertain forthe sepulchres of their kindred. Tribes that have passed generationsexiled from the abodes of their ancestors, when by chance they havebeen travelling in the vicinity, have been known to turn aside from thehighway, and, guided by wonderfully accurate tradition, have crossed thecountry for miles to some tumulus, buried perhaps in woods, where thebones of their tribe were anciently deposited, and there have passedhours in silent meditation. Influenced by this sublime and holy feeling,the Sachem whose mother's tomb had been violated gathered his mentogether, and addressed them in the following beautifully simpleand pathetic harangue--a curious specimen of Indian eloquence and anaffecting instance of filial piety in a savage:

  "When last the glorious light of all the sky was underneath this globeand birds grew silent, I began to settle, as my custom is, to takerepose. Before mine eyes were fast closed methought I saw a vision, atwhich my spirit was much troubled; and trembling at that doleful sight,a spirit cried aloud, 'Behold, my son, whom I have cherished, see thebreasts that gave thee suck, the hands that lapped thee warm and fedthee oft. Canst thou forget to take revenge of those wild peoplewho have defaced my monument in a despiteful manner, disdaining ourantiquities and honorable customs? See, now, the Sachem's grave lieslike the common people, defaced by an ignoble race. Thy mother dothcomplain and implores thy aid against this thievish people who havenewly intruded on our land. If this be suffered, I shall not rest quietin my everlasting habitation.' This said, the spirit vanished, and I,all in a sweat, not able scarce to speak, began to get some strengthand recollect my spirits that were fled, and determined to demand yourcounsel and assistance."

  I have adduced this anecdote at some length, as it tends to show howthese sudden acts of hostility, which have been attributed to capriceand perfidy, may often arise from deep and generous motives, whichour inattention to Indian character and customs prevents our properlyappreciating.

  Another ground of violent outcry against the Indians is their barbarityto the vanquished. This had its origin partly in policy and partly insuperstition. The tribes, though sometimes called nations, were neverso formidable in their numbers but that the loss of several warriorswas sensibly felt; this was particularly the case when they had beenfrequently engaged in warfare; and many an instance occurs in Indianhistory where a tribe that had long been formidable to its neighborshas been broken up and driven away by the capture and massacre of itsprincipal fighting-men. There was a strong temptation, therefore, to thevictor to be merciless, not so much to gratify any cruel revenge, asto provide for future security. The Indians had also the superstitiousbelief, frequent among barbarous nations and prevalent also among theancients, that the manes of their friends who had fallen in battle weresoothed by the blood of the captives. The prisoners, however, who arenot thus sacrificed are adopted into their families in the place of theslain, and are treated with the confidence and affection of relativesand friends; nay, so hospitable and tender is their entertainment thatwhen the alternative is offered them they will often prefer to remainwith their adopted brethren rather than return to the home and thefriends of their youth.

  The cruelty of the Indians towards their prisoners has been heightenedsince the colonization of the whites. What was formerly a compliancewith policy and superstition has been exasperated into a gratificationof vengeance. They cannot but be sensible that the white men are theusurpers of their ancient dominion, the cause of their degradation, andthe gradual destroyers of their race. They go forth to battle smartingwith injuries and indignities which they have individually suffered, andthey are driven to madness and despair by the wide-spreading desolationand the overwhelming ruin of European warfare. The whites have toofrequently set them an example of violence by burning their villagesand laying waste their slender means of subsistence, and yet they wonderthat savages do not show moderation and magnanimity towards those whohave left them nothing but mere existence and wretchedness.

  We stigmatize the Indians, also, as cowardly and treacherous, becausethey use stratagem in warfare in preference to open force; but in thisthey are fully justified by their rude code of honor. They are earlytaught that stratagem is praiseworthy; the bravest warrior thinks itno disgrace to lurk in silence, and take every advantage of his foe: hetriumphs in the superior craft and sagacity by which he has been enabledto surprise and destroy an enemy. Indeed, man is naturally more prone tosubtilty than open valor, owing to his physical weakness in comparisonwith other animals. They are endowed with natural weapons of defence,with horns, with tusks, with hoofs, and talons; but man has to dependon his superior sagacity. In all his encounters with these, his properenemies, he resorts to stratagem; and when he perversely turns hishostility against his fellow-man, he at first continues the same subtlemode of warfare.

  The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy withthe least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected bystratagem. That chivalrous courage which induces us to despise thesuggestions of prudence and to rush in the face of certain danger is theoffspring of society and produced by education. It is honorable,because it is in fact the triumph of lofty sentiment over an instinctiverepugnance to pain, and over those yearnings after personal ease andsecurity which society has condemned as ignoble. It is kept alive bypride and the fear of shame; and thus the dread of real evil is overcomeby the superior dread of an evil which exists but in the imagination. Ithas been cherished and stimulated also by various means. It has beenthe theme of spirit-stirring song and chivalrous story. The poet andminstrel have delighted to shed round it the splendors of fiction, andeven the historian has forgotten the sober gravity of narration andbroken forth into enthusiasm and rhapsody in its praise. Triumphs andgorgeous pageants have been its reward: monuments, on which art hasexhausted its skill and opulence its treasures, have been erectedto perpetuate a nation's gratitude and admiration. Thus artificiallyexcited, courage has risen to an extraordinary and factitious degreeof heroism, and, arrayed in all the glorious "pomp and circumstance ofwar," this turbulent quality has even been able to eclipse many of thosequiet but invaluable virtues which silently ennoble the human characterand swell the tide of human happiness.

  But if courage intrinsically consists in the defiance of danger andpain, the life of the Indian is a continual exhibition of it. He livesin a state of perpetual hostility and risk. Peril and adventureare congenial to his nature, or rather seem necessary to arouse hisfaculties and to give an interest to his existence. Surrounded byhostile tribes, whose mode of warfare is by ambush and surprisal, he isalways prepared for fight and lives with his weapons in his hands. Asthe ship careers in fearful singleness through the solitudes of ocean,as the bird mingles among clouds and storms, and wings its way, amere speck, across the pathless fields of air, so the Indian holds hiscourse, silent, solitary, but undaunted, through the boundless bosom ofthe wilderness. His expeditions may vie in distance and danger withthe pilgrimage of the devotee or the crusade of the knight-errant. Hetraverses vast forests exposed to the hazards of lonely sickness, oflurking enemies, and pining famine. Stormy lakes, those great inlandseas, are no obstacles to his wanderings: in his light canoe of bark hesports like a feather on their waves, and darts with the swiftness ofan arrow down the roaring rapids of the rivers. His very subsistenceis snatched from the midst of toil and peril. He gains his food by thehardships and dangers of the chase: he wraps himself in the spoils ofthe bear, the panther, and the buffalo, and sleeps among the thunders ofthe cataract.

  No hero of ancient or modern days can surpass the Indian in his loftycontempt of death and the fortitude with which he sustains his cruelestaffliction. Indeed, we here behold him rising superior to the white manin consequence of his peculiar education. The latter rushes to gloriousdeath at the cannon's mouth; the former calmly contemplates itsapproach, and triump
hantly endures it amidst the varied torments ofsurrounding foes and the protracted agonies of fire. He even takesa pride in taunting his persecutors and provoking their ingenuity oftorture; and as the devouring flames prey on his very vitals and theflesh shrinks from the sinews, he raises his last song of triumph,breathing the defiance of an unconquered heart and invoking the spiritsof his fathers to witness that he dies without a groan.

  Notwithstanding the obloquy with which the early historians haveovershadowed the characters of the unfortunate natives, some brightgleams occasionally break through which throw a degree of melancholylustre on their memories. Facts are occasionally to be met with in therude annals of the eastern provinces which, though recorded with thecoloring of prejudice and bigotry, yet speak for themselves, and willbe dwelt on with applause and sympathy when prejudice shall have passedaway.

  In one of the homely narratives of the Indian wars in New England thereis a touching account of the desolation carried into the tribe ofthe Pequod Indians. Humanity shrinks from the cold-blooded detail ofindiscriminate butchery. In one place we read of the surprisal of anIndian fort in the night, when the wigwams were wrapped in flames andthe miserable inhabitants shot down and slain in attempting to escape,"all being despatched and ended in the course of an hour." After aseries of similar transactions "our soldiers," as the historianpiously observes, "being resolved by God's assistance to make a finaldestruction of them," the unhappy savages being hunted from their homesand fortresses and pursued with fire and sword, a scanty but gallantband, the sad remnant of the Pequod warriors, with their wives andchildren took refuge in a swamp.

  Burning with indignation and rendered sullen by despair, with heartsbursting with grief at the destruction of their tribe, and spiritsgalled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat, they refused toask their lives at the hands of an insulting foe, and preferred death tosubmission.

  As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat, so asto render escape impracticable. Thus situated, their enemy "plied themwith shot all the time, by which means many were killed and buried inthe mire." In the darkness and fog that preceded the dawn of day somefew broke through the besiegers and escaped into the woods; "the restwere left to the conquerors, of which many were killed in the swamp,like sullen dogs who would rather, in their self-willedness and madness,sit still and be shot through or cut to pieces" than implore for mercy.When the day broke upon this handful of forlorn but dauntless spirits,the soldiers, we are told, entering the swamp, "saw several heaps ofthem sitting close together, upon whom they discharged their pieces,laden with ten or twelve pistol bullets at a time, putting the muzzlesof the pieces under the boughs, within a few yards of them; so as,besides those that were found dead, many more were killed and sunk intothe mire, and never were minded more by friend or foe."

  Can any one read this plain unvarnished tale without admiring the sternresolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed tonerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above theinstinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste the cityof Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated withstern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffereddeath without resistance or even supplication. Such conduct was in themapplauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indian it wasreviled as obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show andcircumstance! How different is virtue clothed in purple and enthronedin state, from virtue naked and destitute and perishing obscurely in awilderness!

  But I forbear to dwell on these gloomy pictures. The eastern tribes havelong since disappeared; the forests that sheltered them have been laidlow, and scarce any traces remain of them in the thickly-settled Statesof New England, excepting here and there the Indian name of a villageor a stream. And such must, sooner or later, be the fate of those othertribes which skirt the frontiers, and have occasionally been inveigledfrom their forests to mingle in the wars of white men. In a littlewhile, and they will go the way that their brethren have gone before.The few hordes which still linger about the shores of Huron and Superiorand the tributary streams of the Mississippi will share the fate ofthose tribes that once spread over Massachusetts and Connecticut andlorded it along the proud banks of the Hudson, of that gigantic racesaid to have existed on the borders of the Susquehanna, and of thosevarious nations that flourished about the Potomac and the Rappahannockand that peopled the forests of the vast valley of Shenandoah. They willvanish like a vapor from the face of the earth; their very history willbe lost in forgetfulness; and "the places that now know them will knowthem no more forever." Or if, perchance, some dubious memorial of themshould survive, it may be in the romantic dreams of the poet, to peoplein imagination his glades and groves, like the fauns and satyrs andsylvan deities of antiquity. But should he venture upon the dark storyof their wrongs and wretchedness, should he tell how they were invaded,corrupted, despoiled, driven from their native abodes and the sepulchresof their fathers, hunted like wild beasts about the earth, and sent downwith violence and butchery to the grave, posterity will either turn withhorror and incredulity from the tale or blush with indignation at theinhumanity of their forefathers. "We are driven back," said an oldwarrior, "until we can retreat no farther--our hatchets are broken, ourbows are snapped, our fires are nearly extinguished; a little longer andthe white man will cease to persecute us, for we shall cease to exist!"