Memoirs of an American Lady: With Sketches of Manners and Scenery in America, as They Existed Previous to the Revolution — John Shaqi
Memoirs of an American Lady: With Sketches of Manners and Scenery in America, as They Existed Previous to the RevolutionGrant, Anne MacVicar
History
Memoirs of an American Lady: With Sketches of Manners and Scenery in America, as They Existed Previous to the Revolution
Grant, Anne MacVicar
Indians of North America; New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Schuyler, Catalina, 1701-1778 or 1779
effect on her mind, it might be the means of awakening pride or vanity
in the female part of his family. He returned, however, in triumph,
having completely succeeded in his mission. The kings, as they were
called in England, came back in full health, deeply impressed with
esteem and attachment for a country which to them appeared the centre of
arts, intelligence, and wisdom; where they were treated with kindness
and respect; and neither made the objects of perpetual exhibition, nor
hurried about to be continually distracted with a succession of
splendid, and to them incomprehensible sights, the quick shifting of
which rather tends to harass minds which have enough of native strength
to reflect on what they see, without knowledge sufficient to comprehend
it. It is to this childish and injudicious mode of treating those
uncivilized beings, this mode of rather extorting from them a tribute to
our vanity, than taking the necessary pains to inform and improve them,
that the ill success of all such experiments since have been owing.
Instead of endeavouring to conciliate them by genuine kindness, and by
gradually and gently unfolding to them simple and useful truths, our
manner of treating them seems calculated to dazzle, oppress, and degrade
them with a display of our superior luxuries and refinements; which, by
the elevated and self-denying Mohawk, would be regarded as unmanly and
frivolous objects, and which the voluptuous and low-minded Otaheitean
would so far relish, that the privation would seem intolerable, when he
returned to his hogs and his cocoas. Except such as have been previously
inoculated, (a precaution which voyagers have rarely had the prudence or
humanity to take,) there is scarcely an instance of savages brought to
Europe that have not died of the small-pox; induced either by the
infection to which they are exposed from the indiscriminate crowds drawn
about them, or the alteration in their blood, which unusual diet,
liquors, close air, and heated rooms, must necessarily produce.
The presents made to these adventurous warriors were judiciously adapted
to their taste and customs. They consisted of showy habits, of which all
these people are very fond, and arms made purposely in the form of those
used in their own country. It was the fortune of the writer of these
memoirs, more than thirty years after, to see that great warrior and
faithful ally of the British crown the redoubted King Hendrick, then
sovereign of the Five Nations, splendidly arrayed in a suit of light
blue, made in an antique mode, and trimmed with broad silver lace; which
was probably an heirloom in the family, presented to his father by his
good ally and sister, the female king of England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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