The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
humanity, is less readily made, from the fact, yet generally remembered,
that he had received a Christian education; that he was, while a mere
boy, received into the best society, acquired the English language, and
had been instructed, first at a New England academy, and afterwards at
one of its most practically efficient colleges. Posterity holds the
Mohawk chief responsible to have carried the precepts thus obtained into
the forest, and to have diffused their blessings among those who had
perhaps his bravery, without his talents or his knowledge. Those who
fought against him were ill qualified, we confess, to be his judges. He
had not only espoused the wrong cause, wrong because it was adverse to
the progress of national freedom and those very principles his people
contended for; but he battled for it with a master's hand, and made the
force of his energy felt, as the author has more fully indicated than
was before known, from the banks of the Mohawk and the Niagara, to the
Ohio, the Miami, and the Wabash. Yet, if there was error in the extent
to which he failed to carry the precepts of civilization and
Christianity, it was meet it should be pointed out, although it will
also be admitted, the public have a right to look for the strongest of
these proofs of a kind and benevolent feeling towards his open enemies,
out of the range of his domestic circle. His family had carried the
incipient principles of civilization, which he gave them, too high--they
had exhibited to the next age, a too prominent example of cultivation
and refinement in every sense--not to feel deeply the obloquy cast upon
his name, by the poetic spirit of the times; and not to wish that one
who had, in verity, so many high and noble qualities, both in the
council and the field, should also be without a spot on his humanity. We
deem the feeling as honorable to all who have the blood of the chieftain
in their veins as it is praiseworthy in his biographer. We cannot,
however, consent to forget, that historical truth is very severe in its
requisitions, and is not to be put off, by friend or foe, with hearsay
testimony, or plausible surmises.
Brant cannot, like Xicotencal, be accused of having joined the invaders
of his country, who were recklessly resolved upon its subjugation; but
he overlooked the fact, that both the _invader_ and the _invaded_ in the
long and bloody border warfare of the revolution, were, in all that
constitutes character, the same people. They were of the same blood and
lineage, spoke the same language, had the same laws and customs, and the
same literature and religion, and he failed to see that the only real
point of difference between them was, who should wield the sceptre.
Whichever party gained the day in such a contest, letters and
Christianity must triumph, and as the inevitable result, barbarism must
decline, and the power of the Indian nation fall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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