Gaut Gurley; Or, the Trappers of Umbagog: A Tale of Border LifeThompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
General
Gaut Gurley; Or, the Trappers of Umbagog: A Tale of Border Life
Thompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction; Maine -- Fiction; Trappers -- Fiction
"Did try," replied Tomah, with an evident effort to elevate his language,
and meet the question candidly. "When I came home from the school, people
all say, Now you go and live like white folks, in village, and study to be
doctor, make money, be great man. So went; study one year; try hard to
like; but no use. Uneasy all the time; could not keep down the Indian in
me; he always rising up, more every day, all the time drawing me away to
the woods,--pull, pull, pull. I fight against him; put him down little some
time; but he soon up again, stronger than ever. Found could not make myself
over again; must be as first made; so gave up; left study for the woods;
and said, Now let Indian be Indian as long as he like."
Satisfied, or rather silenced, by Tomah's reasons, Avis turned the
conversation by asking him to relate to her how he caught and tamed his
moose. She found him completely at home in this and other of his adventures
in the forest, which he was thus encouraged to relate, and in which he
often became a graphic and interesting narrator, and displayed the keen
observation of the objects of nature, together with the other peculiar
qualities of his race, to so much advantage that she soon relinquished her
favorite idea of ever finding a philosopher in an educated Indian.
In presenting the above picture, drawn from one of the many living
prototypes that have fallen within our personal observation, or come within
our knowledge derived from reliable sources, we had no wish to disparage
the praiseworthy acts and motives of those spirited and patriotic men who,
like Moore, in establishing his well-known charity school, in connection
with Dartmouth college, may have, in times past, founded and endowed
schools for the education of the natives of the forest; nor would we dampen
the faith and hopes of those philanthropists who still believe in the
redemption of that dwindling race by the aids of science and civilization;
but we confess our inability to perceive any general results, flowing from
the attempts of that character, at all adequate to the pains and outlay
bestowed on the experiment. And we think we cannot be alone in this
opinion. We believe that those results, when gathered up so that all their
meagreness could be seen, have sadly disappointed public expectations; that
this once favorite object and theory, of elevating and benefiting the red
man by taking him from his native woods and immuring him in the schoolroom,
has been, in the great majority of the cases, a futile one; and that whole
system, indeed, can now be regarded as but little less than a magnificent
failure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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