American fiction -- 19th century; Historical fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction
“It is always good to have children, Peter; especially when the children
themselves are good.”
“Good for pale-face, maybe--no good for Injin. Pale-face glad when
pappoose born--red-skin sorry.”
“I hope this is not so. Why should an Injin be sorry to see the laugh of
his little son?”
“Laugh when he little--p'raps so; he little, and don't know what happen.
But Injin don't laugh any more when he grow up. Game gone; land gone;
corn-field gone. No more room for Injin--pale-face want all. Pale-face
young man laugh--red-skin young man cry. Dat how it is.”
“Oh! I hope not, Peter! I should be sorry to think it was so. The red
man has as good a right--nay, he has a BETTER right to this country than
we whites; and God forbid that he should not always have his full share
of the land!”
Margery probably owed her life to that honest, natural burst of feeling,
which was uttered with a warmth and sincerity that could leave no doubt
that the sentiment expressed came from the heart. Thus singularly are we
constructed! A minute before, and no exemption was made in the mind of
Peter, in behalf of this girl, in the plan he had formed for cutting off
the whites; on the contrary, he had often be-thought him of the number
of young pale-faces that might be, as it were, strangled in their
cradles, by including the bee-hunter and his intended squaw in the
contemplated sacrifice. All this was changed, as in the twinkling of an
eye, by Margery's honest and fervent expression of her sense of right,
on the great subject that occupied all of Peter's thoughts. These sudden
impulses in the direction of love for our species, the second of the
high lessons left by the Redeemer to his disciples, are so many proofs
of the creation of man in the image of his maker. They exert their power
often when least expected, and are ever stamped by the same indelible
impression of their divine origin. Without these occasional glimpses at
those qualities which are so apt to lie dormant, we might indeed despair
of the destinies of our race. We are, however, in safe and merciful
hands; and all the wonderful events that are at this moment developing
themselves around us, are no other than the steps taken by Providence
in the progress it is steadily making toward the great and glorious end!
Some of the agencies will be corrupt; others deluded; and no one of them
all, perhaps, will pursue with unerring wisdom the precise path that
ought to be taken; but even the crimes, errors, and delusions, will
be made instrumental in achieving that which was designed before the
foundations of this world were laid!
“Does my daughter wish this?” returned Peter, when Margery had thus
frankly and sincerely given vent to her feelings. “Can a pale-face squaw
wish to leave an Injin any of his hunting-grounds?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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