Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 2 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian CollectionCatlin, George
History
Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 2 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian Collection
Catlin, George
England -- Description and travel; France -- Description and travel; Indians of North America
The Indians and myself were kindly received in Birmingham, for which,
no doubt, they, like myself, will long feel grateful. The work which I
had published had been extensively read there, and was an introduction
of the most pleasing kind to me, and the novelty and wildness of the
manners of the Indians enough to ensure them much attention.
In their exhibition room, which was nightly well attended, we observed
many of the Society of Friends, whom we could always easily distinguish
by their dress, and also more easily by the kind interest they
expressed and exhibited, whenever opportunity occurred, for the welfare
of those poor people. The Indians, with their native shrewdness and
sagacity, at once discovered from their appearance and manner that
they were a different class of people from any they had seen, and were
full of inquiries about them. I told them that these were of the same
society as their kind friend Dr. Hodgkin, whom they so often saw in
London, who is at the head of the _Aborigines Protection Society_, who
was the first person in England to invite them to his table, and whom
the reader will recollect they called _Ichon-na Wap-pa_(the straight
coat); that they were the followers of the great William Penn, whom I
believed they had heard something about. They instantly pronounced the
name of "Penn, Penn," around the room, convincing me, as nearly every
tribe I ever visited in the remotest wildernesses in America had done,
that they had heard, and attached the greatest reverence to, the name
of Penn.
These inquiries commenced in their private room one evening after the
exhibition had closed, and they had had an interview in the exhibition
room with several ladies and gentlemen of that society, and had
received from them some very valuable presents. They all agreed that
there was something in their manners and in their mode of shaking
hands with them that was more kind and friendly than anything they had
met amongst other people; and this I could see had made a sensible
impression upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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