Part 3

In speaking of this bloody contest, one who is most eminent among the fathers, says: "Nor could they cease praying unto the Lord against Philip, until they had prayed the bullet through his heart." "Two and twenty Indian captives were slain, and brought down to hell in one day." "A bullet took him in the head, and sent his cursed soul in a moment amongst the devils and blasphemers in hell forever."

Masasoit, the father of Philip, was the true friend to the English, and when he was about to die, took his two sons, Alexander and Philip, and fondly commended them to the kindness of the new settlers, praying them the same peace and good will might be between them, that had existed between him and his white friends. Upon mere suspicion only a short time afterwards, the elder, who succeeded his father as ruler, among his people, was hunted in his forest home, and dragged before the court, the nature and object of which he could not understand. But the indignity which was offered him, and the treachery of those who insulted him, so chafed his proud spirit that a fever was the consequence, of which he died. And that is not all. The son and wife of Philip were sold into slavery, (as were also about eight hundred persons of the Tuscaroras, and also many others of the Indians that were taken captive during the Colonial wars.) "Yes," says a distinguished orator, (Everett,) "they were sold into slavery, West Indian slavery. An Indian princess and her child, sold from the cold breezes of Mount Hope, from a wild freedom of New England forest, to drop under the lash, beneath the blazing sun of the tropics."

Bitter as death, aye, bitter as hell! Is there anything--I do not think in the range of humanity--is there any animal that would not struggle against this? Nor is this indeed all. A kinswoman of theirs, a Princess in her own right, Wetamore Pocasset, was pursued and harrassed till she fell exhausted in the wilderness, and died of cold and starvation. There she was found by men professing to be shocked at Indian barbarity, her head severed from her body, and carried bleeding upon a pole to be exposed in the public highways of the country, ruled by men who have been honored as saints and martyrs.

"Let me die among my kindred," "Bury me with my fathers," is the prayer of every Indian's heart; and the most delicate and reverential kindness in the treatment of the bodies of the dead, was considered a religious duty. There was nothing in all their customs that indicated a barbarism so gross and revolting as these acts, which are recorded by New England historians without a censure, while the Indian's protests in his grief at seeing his kindred dishonored and his religion reviled, are stigmatized as savage and fiendish.

If all, or even a few who ministered among them in holy things, had been like Eliot, who is called "the Apostle to the Indians," and deserved to be ranked with the Apostle of old, or Kirkland, who is endeared to the memory of every Iroquois who heard his name, it could not have become a proverb or a truth that civilization and christianity wasted them away.

They were, not by one, but many, unscrupulously called "dogs, wolves, bloodhounds, demons, devils incarnate, hellhounds, fiends, monsters, beasts," always considering them inferior beings, and scarcely allowing them to be human, yet one, who was at that time a captive among them, represents them as "kind and loving and generous;" and concerning this same monster--Philip--records nothing that should have condemned him in the eyes of those who believed in wars aggressive and defensive, and awarded honors to heroes and martyrs and conquerors.

By the Governor of Jamestown a hand was severed from the arm of a peaceful, unoffending Indian, that he might be sent back a terror to his people; and through the magnanimity of a daughter and king of that same people, that colony was saved from destruction. It was through their love and trust alone that Powhatan and Pocahontas lost their forest dominions.

Hospitality was one of the Indians' distinguishing virtues, and there was no such thing among them as individual starvation or want. As long as there was a cup of soup, it was divided. If a friend or a stranger made a call he was welcome to all their wigwams would furnish, and to offer him food was not merely a custom, for it was a breach of politeness for him to refuse to eat however full he might be.

Because their system not being like the white people's, it does not follow that it was not a system. You might have looked into the wigwam or lodge and thought everything in confusion, while to the occupants, there was a place for everything, and everything in its place: each had a couch which answered for bed by night and seat by day. The ceremonies at their festivals were as regular as in the churches, their rules of war as well defined as those of christian nations, and in their games and athletic sports there was a code of honor which it was disgraceful to violate: their marriage vows were as well understood, and courtesy as formally practiced at their dances.

The nature of the Indian is in all respects like the nature of any other nation; placed in the same circumstances, he exhibits the same passions and vices. But in his forest home there was not the same temptation to great crimes, or what is termed the lesser ones, that of slander, scandal, and gossip, as exists among civilized nations.

They knew nothing of the desire of gain, and therefore were not made selfish by the love of hoarding; and there was no temptation to steal, where they had everything in common, and their reverence for truth and fidelity to promises, may well put all the nations of christendom to shame.

I have written in somewhat of the spirit which will characterize a History, by an Indian, yet it does not deserve to be called Indian partiality, but only justice and the spirit of humanity; or, if I may be allowed to say it, the spirit with which any christian should be able to consider the character and deeds of his foe. I would not detract from the virtues of your forefathers. They were at that time unrivalled, but bigotry and superstition of the dark ages still lingered among them, and their own perils blinded them to the wickedness and cruelty of the means they took for defence.

Four, and perhaps two centuries hence, I doubt not, some of your dogmas will seem unchristian, as the Indians seem to you, and I truly hope, ere then, all wars will seem as barbarous, and the fantastic dress of the soldiers as ridiculous, as you have been in the habit of representing the wars and the wild drapery of the Indians of the forest.

How long were the Saxon and Celt in becoming a civilized and Christian people? How long since the helmet, the coat of mail, and the battle axe, were laid aside?

To make himself more terrific, the Briton of the days of Henry II drew the skin of a wild beast over his armor with the head and ears standing upright, and mounted his war-horse to go forth crying, "To arms! Death to the invader!" The paint and the Eagle plume of the Indian warrior were scarcely a more barbarous invention, nor his war-cry more terrible.

It is not just to compare the Indian of the fifteenth, with the christian of the fifteenth century. But compare them with the barbarian of Britain, of Russia, of Lapland, and Tartary, and represent them as truly as these nations have been represented, and they will not suffer by the comparison.

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CAPTIVE'S LIFE AMONG INDIANS.

ILLUSTRATED BY THE LIFE OF THE "WHITE WOMAN."

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To be taken captive by the Indians, was, among the early colonists, considered the most terrible of all calamities, and it was indeed a fearful thing to become the victim of their revenge. But those who were enduring the actual sufferings of captivity, or suffering still more from terror of uncertain evils, thought little of the provocation given by the white people. The innocent suffered for the guilty, and however persevering--I suppose the efforts of the government to be just--in its infancy, in a wild unknown country it was impossible to control unprincipled marauders. Some atrocious act was first committed by white men, which drove the Indian to retaliation, and thinking pale faces were all alike, he did not wait till the real offender fell into his hands.

When the white men first came, the Indian looked upon them as superior beings. They were ready to worship Columbus and his little party, and all others along the coast, until their simple trust was outraged beyond endurance, they welcomed the strangers, gave them food when they were hungry, and sheltered them when they were cold. It was not till their encroachments became alarming, that the Indians asserted their rights, and if in all cases they had been as justly and kindly dealt with as by the Quakers of Pennsylvania, there would not have been so dark a record of sins, wrongs and tortures. If none but men of principle had made treaties with them, and all whose duty it was to observe them, had kept their faith, revenge had not come out so prominently in Indian character.

But it was not in obedience to national policy that those who were taken in battle, were put to the torture, burned, and flayed. The Six Nations had never found it necessary to build prisons, and dig dungeons for their own people. If any man committed murder, they sometimes decided that he should die, and sometimes bade him flee far away where none who knew him could look upon his face. But crimes were so rare that they had no criminal code, and when they overcame their enemies, they either adopted them and treated them as brethren, or put them immediately to death.

White people have often put Indians to death, and oftener put them in dungeons to waste and starve, but it was not part of their practice to adopt them and call them brethren. Had they sometimes done this, or sent them freely back to their friends unharmed, they might have conciliated where they were only made more desperate.

When families are bereaved, they sought to be revenged on those who had bereaved them, and when warriors returned from battle, the prisoners were given up to the friends of the afflicted. With them alone it remained to decide the fate of those who fell into their hands. If they chose, they adopt them in place of the husbands, or brothers, who were slain; and if they so decided they were put to death, and in any way they decreed. If the manner in which their friend had been killed was aggravating and greatly enraged them, they were very likely to decide upon torture, and inflicted it in a manner to produce the greatest suffering. But in such cases, they sometimes showed great magnanimity, and "returned good for evil."

Children were often adopted, and by a solemn ceremony received into a particular tribe, and evermore treated as one of their own people. You have been in the habit of listening to heart-rending stories of cruelties to captives, but captives who were adopted were never cruelly treated. Those who were immediately put to death experienced great suffering for a few hours, and those who were preserved were subjected to hardships which seemed to them unspeakable, but they were such as are necessarily incident to Indian life. They left no written chronicles to tell to all future generations the wrongs and tortures to which they were subjected, but one who sits with them by their firesides, may have his blood frozen with horror at the recitals of civilized barbarity.

And there was one species of wrong of which no captive woman of any nation had to complain when she was thrown upon the tender mercies of Indian warriors. Not among all the dark and terrible records which their enemies have delighted to magnify, is there a single instance of the outrage of that delicacy which a pure minded woman cherishes at the expense of life, and sacrifices not to any species of mere animal suffering. Of what other nation can it thus be written, that their soldiers were not more terrible at the firesides of their enemies than on the battle-field, with all the fierce engines of war at their command. To whatever motive it is to be ascribed, let this at least stand out on the pages of Indian history as an ever enduring monument to their honor.

A little book which professes to have been written for the sole purpose of recording and perpetuating Indian atrocities, and dwells upon them with infinite delight, alludes to this redeeming trait in Indian character, but attempts to ascribe it to the influence of superstition, as it were necessary to find some evil or deteriorating motive for everything noble, or pleasing in Indian character. Their treatment of captives from among Indian nations were the same. And I know not that there has been any satisfactory solution of a characteristic which has been found among only one other civilized christian or barbarous nation. A wanderer among the Indian tribes once asked an Indian why they thus honored their women, and he said "The Great Spirit taught, and would punish us if we did not." Among the Germans I believed there existed the same respect for woman, till they became civilized. They may have been some superstitious fears mingled with a strong governing and controlling principle, but it is not on this account the less marvelous that whole nations, consisting of millions, should have been so trained, religiously or domestically, that degree of beauty or fascination placed under their care, though hundreds of miles in the solitudes of the wilderness, should have tempted them from the strictest honor and the most delicate kindness. MARY JANISON was eighty years a resident among the Senecas, and in the early part of the time the forests had few clearings, and the comforts and the vices of white men prevailed but little among them. She was born on the ocean, with the billowy sea for her cradle, and the tempest for her lullaby. Her parents emigrated from England to this country in 1742, and settled in the unfortunate vale of Wyoming, where date her first remembrances, which were all the woes that fell upon her family, the wail of the sorrow-stricken and breaking of heart-strings. The last meal they took together was a breakfast, after which the father and eldest three sons went into the field, and Mary with the other little children was playing not far from the house. They were suddenly startled by a shriek, and knew it must be from their mother. On running in they saw her in the hands of two Indians, who were holding her fast. A little boy ran to call his father, and found him also bound by another of the party, and his eldest brother lying dead upon the earth; the other two fled to Virginia, where they had an uncle, as Mary afterward learned, and those who remained were made captives and hurried into the woods. All day they were obliged to march in single file over the rough, cold soil. Night found them in the heart of the wilderness, surrounded by their strange captors, and all the horrors of Indian life or Indian death staring them in the face. They had no hope of mercy, whether permitted to live or condemned to die. The mother said to Mary, "My daughter, you, I think will be permitted to live, but they will deprive you of your father and mother, and perhaps of your brothers and sisters, so that you will be alone. But endeavor in all things to please the Indians, and they will be more kind to you. Do not forget your own language, and never fail to repeat your catechism and the Lord's prayer every morning and evening while you live." This she promised to do, and having kissed her child, the mother was removed from her sight.