Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
so perfectly Indianised, that many knew them no longer, and those whose more
advanced ages permitted them to recollect their fathers and mothers, absolutely
refused to follow them, and ran to their adopted parents for protection against the
eusions of love their unhappy real parents lavished on them! Incredible as this
may appear, I have heard it asserted in a thousand instances, among persons of
credit. In the village of———, where I purpose to go, there lived, about fteen
years ago, an Englishman and a Swede, whose history would appear moving, had
I time to relate it. They were grown to the age of men when they were taken; they
happily escaped the great punishment of war captives, and were obliged to marry
the Squaws who had saved their lives by adoption. By the force of habit, they
became at last thoroughly naturalised to this wild course of life. While I was there,
their friends sent them a considerable sum of money to ransom themselves with.
The Indians, their old masters, gave them their choice, and without requiring any
consideration, told them, that they had been long as free as themselves. They
chose to remain; and the reasons they gave me would greatly surprise you: the
most perfect freedom, the ease of living, the absence of those cares and corroding
solicitudes which so often prevail with us; the peculiar goodness of the soil they
cultivated, for they did not trust altogether to hunting; all these, and many more
motives, which I have forgot, made them prefer that life, of which we entertain
such dreadful opinions. It cannot be, therefore, so bad as we generally conceive it
to be; there must be in their social bond something singularly captivating, and far
superior to anything to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are
Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from
choice become Europeans! There must be something more congenial to our native
dispositions, than the ctitious society in which we live; or else why should
children, and even grown persons, become in a short time so invincibly attached
to it? There must be something very bewitching in their manners, something very
indelible and marked by the very hands of nature. For, take a young Indian lad,
give him the best education you possibly can, load him with your bounty, with
presents, nay with riches; yet he will secretly long for his native woods, which you
would imagine he must have long since forgot; and on the rst opportunity he can
possibly nd, you will see him voluntarily leave behind him all you have given
him, and return with inexpressible joy to lie on the mats of his fathers. Mr.——,
some years ago, received from a good old Indian, who died in his house, a young
lad, of nine years of age, his grandson. He kindly educated him with his children,
and bestowed on him the same care and attention in respect to the memory of his
venerable grandfather, who was a worthy man. He intended to give him a genteel
trade, but in the spring season when all the family went to the woods to make their
maple sugar, he suddenly disappeared; and it was not until seventeen months
after, that his benefactor heard he had reached the village of Bald Eagle, where he
still dwelt. Let us say what we will of them, of their inferior organs, of their want
of bread, etc., they are as stout and well made as the Europeans. Without temples,
without priests, without kings, and without laws, they are in many instances
Page | 423