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
On my return from London I had joined the Indians at Leeds, where they
had been exhibiting for some days, and found them just ready to start
for York. I was their companion by the railway, therefore, to that
ancient and venerable city; and made a note or two on an occurrence
of an amusing nature which happened on the way. When we were within a
few miles of the town the Indians were suddenly excited and startled
by the appearance of a party of fox-hunters, forty or fifty in number,
following their pack in full cry, having just crossed the track ahead
of the train.
This was a subject entirely new to them and unthought of by the
Indians; and, knowing that English soldiers all wore red coats, they
were alarmed, their first impression being that we had brought them on
to hostile ground, and that this was a "war-party" in pursuit of their
enemy. They were relieved and excessively amused when I told them it
was merely a fox-hunt, and that the gentlemen they saw riding were
mostly noblemen and men of great influence and wealth. They watched
them intensely until they were out of sight, and made many amusing
remarks about them after we had arrived at York. I told them they
rode without guns, and the first one in at the death pulled off the
tail of the fox and rode into town with it under his hatband. Their
laughter was excessive at the idea of "such gentlemen hunting in open
fields, and with a whip instead of a gun; and that great chiefs, as I
had pronounced them, should be risking their lives, and the limbs of
their fine horses, for a poor fox, the flesh of which, even if it were
good to eat, was not wanted by such rich people, who had meat enough
at home; and the skin of which could not be worth so much trouble,
especially when, as everybody knows, it is good for nothing when the
tail is pulled off."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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