Smith tells us that a few days after Tecaughretanego made his prayer and
offered up his tobacco, rain came and raised the Olentangy high enough
to let them pass safely into the Scioto. He does not say whether he
thought this was the effect of the old Indian’s piety, but he always
speaks reverently of Tecaughretanego’s religion. He is careful to
impress the reader again and again with the importance of the Indian
family he had been taken into, and with the wisdom as well as the
goodness of Tecaughretanego, who held some such place among the Ottawas,
he says, as Socrates held among the Athenians. He was against the
Indians’ taking part in the war between the French and English; he
believed they ought to leave these to fight out their own quarrels;
and in all the affairs of his people, he favored justice, truth, and
honesty. The Indians, indeed, never stole from one another, but they
thought it quite right to rob even their French allies; and it will help
us to a real understanding of their principles, if we remember that the
good and wise Tecaughretanego is never shown as rebuking the cruelty
and treachery of the war parties in their attacks on the English
settlements. The Indian’s virtues are always for his own tribe; outside
of it, all the crimes are virtues, and it is right to lie, to cheat,
to steal, to kill; as it was with our own ancestors when they lived as
tribes.
Smith was always treated like one of themselves by his Indian brothers,
and he had a deep affection for them. Once, in a time of famine, when
Tecaughretanego lay helpless in his cabin, suffering patiently with
the rheumatism which crippled him, Smith hunted two whole days without
killing any game, and then came home faint with hunger and fatigue.
Tecaughretanego bade his little son bring him a broth which the boy had
made with some wildcat bones left by the buzzards near the camp, and
when Smith had eaten he rebuked him for his despair, and charged him
never again to doubt that God would care for him, because God always
cared for those children of his who trusted in him, as the Indians did,
while the white men trusted in themselves. The next day Smith went out
again, but the noise made by the snow crust breaking under his feet
frightened the deer he saw, and he could not get a shot at them.
Suddenly, he felt that he could bear his captivity no longer, and he
resolved to try and make his way back to Pennsylvania. The Indians might
kill him, long before he could reach home; but if he staid, he must die
of hunger. He hurried ten or twelve miles eastward, when he came upon
fresh buffalo tracks, and soon caught sight of the buffalo. He shot one
of them, but he could not stop to cook the meat, and he ate it almost
raw. Then the thought of the old man and little child whom he had left
starving in the cabin behind him became too much for him. He remembered
what Tecaughretanego had said of God’s care for those who trusted in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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