The Confidence-Man: His MasqueradeMelville, Herman
General
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
Melville, Herman
Mississippi River -- Fiction; Satire; Steamboats -- Fiction; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction
"In further explanation of that deep abhorrence with which the
backwoodsman regards the savage, the judge used to think it might
perhaps a little help, to consider what kind of stimulus to it is
furnished in those forest histories and traditions before spoken of. In
which behalf, he would tell the story of the little colony of Wrights
and Weavers, originally seven cousins from Virginia, who, after
successive removals with their families, at last established themselves
near the southern frontier of the Bloody Ground, Kentucky: 'They were
strong, brave men; but, unlike many of the pioneers in those days,
theirs was no love of conflict for conflict's sake. Step by step they
had been lured to their lonely resting-place by the ever-beckoning
seductions of a fertile and virgin land, with a singular exemption,
during the march, from Indian molestation. But clearings made and houses
built, the bright shield was soon to turn its other side. After repeated
persecutions and eventual hostilities, forced on them by a dwindled
tribe in their neighborhood--persecutions resulting in loss of crops and
cattle; hostilities in which they lost two of their number, illy to be
spared, besides others getting painful wounds--the five remaining
cousins made, with some serious concessions, a kind of treaty with
Mocmohoc, the chief--being to this induced by the harryings of the
enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were further prompted, indeed,
first incited, by the suddenly changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though
hitherto deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet now put
on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to bury the hatchet, smoke
the pipe, and be friends forever; not friends in the mere sense of
renouncing enmity, but in the sense of kindliness, active and familiar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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