United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Anecdotes
It is a pleasant and comfortable thought, that we have no such classic
folly as is here indicated, to lay to the charge of our Revolutionary
fathers. Both in their acts, and in the drapery of those acts, they
were true to their several and simple selves, and thus left nothing
behind them for a fastidious taste to sneer at. But it must be
considered that our Revolution did not, like that of France, go so deep
as to disturb the common-sense of the country.
General Schuyler writes a letter, under date of February 22, 1780,
relating not to military affairs, from which the prejudices of his
countrymen had almost disconnected him, but to the Salt Springs of
Onondaga. The expression is peculiarly direct, and the hand that of a
man of business, free and flowing. The uncertainty, the vague, hearsay
evidence respecting these springs, then gushing into dim daylight
beneath the shadow of a remote wilderness, is such as might now be
quoted in reference to the quality of the water that supplies the
fountains of the Nile. The following sentence shows us an Indian woman
and her son, practising their simple process in the manufacture of salt,
at a fire of wind-strewn boughs, the flame of which gleams duskily
through the arches of the forest: "From a variety of information, I find
the smallest quantity made by a squaw, with the assistance of one boy,
with a kettle of about ten gallons' capacity, is half a bushel per day;
the greatest with the same kettle, about two bushels." It is
particularly interesting to find out anything as to the embryo, yet
stationary arts of life among the red people, their manufactures, their
agriculture, their domestic labors. It is partly the lack of this
knowledge--the possession of which would establish a ground of sympathy
on the part of civilized men--that makes the Indian race so shadow-like
and unreal to our conception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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