Anecdotes of the American Indians, illustrating their eccentricities of character
History
Anecdotes of the American Indians, illustrating their eccentricities of character
Indians of North America -- Anecdotes
Prosecuting his route to the land of his parents, he came to the
city of Albany; not the uncivilized savage, not with any of those
marks which bespoke a birth in the forest, or years spent in toiling
the wilds of a desert, but possessing a fine commanding figure, an
expressive countenance, an intelligent eye, with a face scarcely
indicative of the race from which he was descended. He presented, at
this period, an interesting spectacle: a child of the wilderness was
beheld about to proceed to the home of his forefathers, having received
the brilliant advantages of a cultivated mind, and on his way to impart
to the nation that owned him, the benefits which civilization had given
him. It was an opportunity for the philosopher to contemplate, and to
reflect on the future good this young Indian might be the means of
producing.
Shortly after his arrival in Albany—where he visited the first
families—he took advantage of Governor Clinton’s journey to Fort
Stanwix (where a treaty was to be held with the Indians,) to return
to his tribe. On the route, Otsaquette amused the company (among whom
were the French Minister, Count De Moustiers, and several gentlemen of
respectability) by his powers on various instruments of music. At Fort
Stanwix, he found himself again with the companions of his early days,
who saw and recognised him. His friends and relations had not forgotten
him, and he was welcomed to his home and to his blanket.
But that which occurred soon after his reception, led him to a too
fearful anticipation of an unsuccessful project; for the Oneidas,
as if they could not acknowledge Otsaquette, attired in the dress
with which he appeared before them,—a mark which did not disclose his
nation,—and, thinking that he had assumed it, as if ashamed of his
own native costume, the garb of his ancestors, they tore it from him
with a savage avidity, and a fiend-like ferociousness, daubed on the
paint to which he had been so long unused, and clothed him with the
uncouth habiliments held sacred by his tribe. Their fiery ferocity, in
the performance of the act, showed but too well the bold stand they
were about to take against the innovations they supposed Otsaquette
was to be the agent for affecting against their immemorial manners and
customs, and which, from the venerable antiquity of their structure, it
would be nothing short of sacrilege to destroy.
Thus the reformed savage was taken back again to his native barbarity,
and—as if to cap the climax of degradation to a mind just susceptible
of its own powers—was _married to a squaw_!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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