American fiction -- 19th century; Historical fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction
We have no disposition to exaggerate the character of those whom it is
the fashion to term the American yeomen, though why such an appellation
should be applied to any in a state of society to which legal
distinctions are unknown, is what we could never understand. There are
no more of esquires and yeomen in this country than there are of knights
and nobles, though the quiet manner in which the transition from the old
to the new state of things has been made, has not rendered the public
mind very sensible to the changes. But, recurring to the class, which is
a positive thing and consequently ought to have a name of some sort or
other, we do not belong to those that can sound its praises without some
large reservations on the score of both principles and manners. Least of
all, are we disposed to set up these yeomen as a privileged class,
like certain of the titular statesmen of the country, and fall down and
worship a calf--not a golden one by the way--of our own setting up.
We can see citizens in these yeomen, but not princes, who are to be
especially favored by laws made to take from others to bestow on them.
But making allowances for human infirmities, the American freeholder
belongs to a class that may justly hold up its head among the tillers
of the earth. He improves daily, under the influence of beneficent
laws, and if he don't get spoiled, of which there is some danger, in the
eagerness of factions to secure his favor, and through that favor his
VOTE--if he escape this danger, he will ere long make a reasonably near
approach to that being, which the tongue of the flatterer would long
since have persuaded him he had already more than got to be.
To one accustomed to be treated kindly, as was the case with Margery,
the Chippewa's theory for the management of squaws contained much to
excite her mirth, as well as her resentment, as she now made apparent by
her remarks.
“You do not deserve to HAVE a wife, Pigeonswing,” she cried,
half-laughing, yet evidently alive to the feelings of her sex--“can have
no gratitude for a wife's tenderness and care. I wonder that a Chippewa
girl can be found to have you?”
“Don't want him,” coolly returned the Indian, making his preparations
to light his pipe--“got Winnebagoe squaw, already; good 'nough for
me. Shoot her t'other husband and take his scalp--den she come into my
wigwam.”
“The wretch!” exclaimed Margery.
But this was a word the savage did not understand, and he continued to
puff at the newly lighted tobacco, with all of a smoker's zeal. When the
fire was secured, he found time to continue the subject.
“Yes, dat good war-path--got rifle; got wife; got TWO scalp! Don't do so
well, ebbery day.”
“And that woman hoes your corn, and cooks your venison?” demanded the
bee-hunter.
“Sartain--capital good to hoe--no good to cook--make deer meat too dry.
Want to be made to mind business. Bye'm by teach him. No l'arn all at
once, like pale-face pappoose in school.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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