The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Philosophy
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
When Pocahontas died, the last link was broken between the Indian and
the settler. Unprovoked wars of extermination were begun to dispossess
these children of Nature of the very breasts of their mother, which had
sustained them so long and so peacefully. For a century the Indian's
name for Virginian was "Longknife." The very missionaries robbed him
with one hand whilst baptizing him with the other. One story concerning
the missionaries strikes us as sufficiently characteristic of the wit
of the Indian and the temper of the period to be preserved. There was a
branch of the Catawbas on the Potomac, in which river are to be found
the best shad in the world. The missionaries who settled among
this tribe taught them that it would be a good investment in their
soul-assurance to catch large quantities of the shad for them, the
missionaries. The Indians earnestly set themselves to the work; their
reverend teachers taking the fish and sending them off secretly to
various settlements in Virginia and Maryland, and making thereby
large sums of money. The Indians worked on for several months without
receiving any compensation, and the missionaries were getting richer and
richer,--when by some means the red men discovered the trick, and routed
the holy men from their neighborhood. Many years afterward the Catholics
made an effort to establish a mission with this same tribe. The
priest who first addressed them took as his text, "Ho, every one that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters,"--and went on in figurative style to
describe the waters of life. When the sermon was ended, the Indians held
a council to consider what they had just heard, and finally sent three
of their number to the missionaries, who said, "White men, you speak in
fine words of the waters of life; but before we decide on what we have
heard, we wish to know _whether any shad swim in those waters_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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