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
In the life of Red Jacket, or Sagoyewata, we have a different order of
Indian intellect brought to view. He was an orator and a diplomatist,
and was at no period of his life noted for his skill as a warrior. Nay,
there are indubitable proofs that his personal courage could not always
be "screwed up to the sticking point." But in native intellect, he was
even superior to Brant. He was, indeed, the Brant of the council, and
often came down upon his opponents with bursts of eloquence, trains of
argument, or rhapsodies of thought, which were irresistible. And of him,
it may be symbolically said, that his tongue was his tomahawk, and the
grandiloquent vocabulary of the Seneca language, his war-club. Nor has
any native chieftain wielded the weapon to more purpose, or with a
longer continued effect than the great Seneca orator. The specimens of
his eloquence which have appeared in our newspapers for forty years or
more, are still fresh in the memory, and it was due and meet that these
should be collected and preserved in a permanent shape, together with
such particulars of his life and career as could be obtained. This task
has been performed by Col. Stone, in a manner which leaves nothing more
to be attempted on the subject. Much zeal and industry have been evinced
in eliciting facts from every quarter where it was probable information
could be had. And he has brought together a body of contemporaneous
proofs and reminiscences, touching this chief, which a few years would
have put beyond the power of recovery, and which a position less
prominent than he occupied as a public journalist, might have rendered
it difficult for another to collect. We need only refer to the names of
Gen. P.B. Porter, Rev. J. Breckenridge, Mr. Parish, and Mr. Hosmer, to
show the character of this part of his materials.
Other chiefs of the native stock, have produced occasional pieces of
eloquence, or admired oratory, but Red-Jacket is the only prominent
individual who has devoted his whole career to it. That he did, indeed,
excel, producing effects which no reported speech of his ever equalled
or did justice to, there are still many living to attest. In the
question of land sales, which arose between the white and red races,
there were frequent occasions to bring him out. And these, in the end,
assumed a complicated shape, from either the vague nature, or ill
understood conditions of prior grants. In all these discussions, he
preserved a unity and consistency in the set of opinions he had adopted.
He was opposed to further sales, to removal, to civilization, and to the
introduction of Christianity among his people. What Brant had done in
_politics_, Red-Jacket repeated in _morals_. Both took the wrong side,
and both failed. But it is to be said of the Seneca orator, that he did
not live to see the final defeat of that course of policy which he had
so long and so ably advocated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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