caught in any such mean actions again.
The Indians were as prompt to praise and reward what they thought fine
in him, as to rebuke what they deemed unworthy; and the second winter
that they spent in Northern Ohio, they gave him a gun again for the
courage and endurance he twice showed when he had lost his way from
camp. Once when he was caught in a heavy storm of snow; he passed the
night in the hollow of a tree, which he made snug by blocking it up with
brush and pieces of wood, and by chopping the rotten inside of the trunk
with his hatchet until he had a soft, warm bed. Another time, when he
was looking at his beaver traps he was overtaken by the dark, and kept
himself from freezing by dancing and shouting till daylight. His Indian
friends honored him for his wise behavior, and as they had now beaver
skins enough, they carried them to the French post at Detroit, where
they bought a gun for him. They bought for themselves a keg of brandy,
and they paid Smith the compliment, when he refused to drink, of making
him one of the guards set over the drinkers to keep them from killing
one another. He helped bring them safely through their debauch, but
nothing could prevent their spending all they had got for their beaver
skins in more and more brandy. Then they went back sick and sorry to the
woods again.
The family Smith was taken into was honored for its uncommon virtue and
wisdom. His two brothers, Tontileaugo and Tecaughretanego were men of
great sense, with good heads and good hearts. They treated Smith with
the greatest love and patience, and took him to task with affectionate
mildness when he transgressed the laws of taste or feeling. The Indians
all despised the white settlers, whom they thought stupid and cowardly,
and they expected to drive them beyond the sea. They despised them for
their impiety, and Tecaughretanego once said to Smith, “As you have
lived with the white people, you have not had the same advantage of
knowing that the Great Being above feeds his people and gives them their
meat in due season, as we Indians have, who are wonderfully supplied,
and that so frequently that it is evidently the hand of the Great
Owaneeyo that doeth this; whereas the white people have commonly large
flocks of tame cattle, that they can kill when they please, and also
their barns and cribs filled with grain, and therefore have not the same
opportunity of seeing and knowing that they are supported by the ruler
of Heaven and Earth.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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