Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great BritainCharlotte Elizabeth
Religion
Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great Britain
Charlotte Elizabeth
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Charlotte Elizabeth, 1790-1846
Nova Scotia is, I firmly believe, the most generally and devotedly loyal
of all our colonies: the attachment of its people to the mother-country
is beautiful, and their partisanship in all questions between us and the
States most zealous. The only fault I had to find with them was their
indifference towards the poor relics of the Indian race still dwelling
in the woods, who were to me objects of the liveliest interest even
before I had any feeling of Christian duty towards the heathen--or
towards such as those who are worse than heathen, being numbered among
the members of the Romish church, and utterly, wretchedly ignorant even
of such little truth as remains buried under the mass of antichristian
error, to make its darkness more visible. The Indians are wholly
despised; scarcely looked on as beings of the same race, by the
generality of the colonists. Where Christian principle prevails, they
become of course important in the highest degree; but I speak of what I
saw, when vital godliness was little known among them, and I can aver
that even Lord Dalhousie scarcely could succeed in stirring up a
momentary interest for the dispersed aborigines. That excellent nobleman
devoted himself very warmly to the work of attempting their
civilization; and told me that if a few would join him heartily and
zealously in the effort, he should succeed; but that, between,
lukewarmness on the one side and suspicion on the other, he found
himself completely baffled. It was not to be wondered at that the
Indians had a lurking dread of experiencing again the hardships, not to
say the treachery and cruelty, inflicted on their fathers. I enjoyed a
high place in the affection and confidence of those interesting people,
the origin of which may help to prove at how light an estimate the poor
creatures were generally rated by their white brethren. My claim on
their attachment consisted in nothing more than the performance of a
bounden duty in sheltering for a few weeks one of their number who had,
in a most unprovoked and cruel manner, been wounded by a party of our
soldiers and left to perish in the woods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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