The Demon Trapper of Umbagog: A Thrilling Tale of the Maine ForestsThompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
General
The Demon Trapper of Umbagog: A Thrilling Tale of the Maine Forests
Thompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction; Maine -- Fiction; Trappers -- Fiction
“Did try,” replied Tomah, with an evident effort to elevate his
language, and meet the question candidly. “When I came home from the
school, people all say, Now you go and live like white folks, in
village, and study to be doctor, make money, be great man. So went;
study one year; try hard to like; but no use. Uneasy all the time;
could not keep down the Indian in me; he always rising up, more every
day, all the time drawing me away to the woods,--pull, pull, pull. I
fight against him; put him down little some time; but he soon up again,
stronger than ever. Found could not make myself over again; must be as
first made; so gave up; left study for the woods; and said, Now let
Indian be Indian as long as he like.”
Satisfied, or rather silenced, by Tomah’s reasons, Avis turned the
conversation by asking him to relate to her how he caught and tamed
his moose. She found him completely at home in this and other of his
adventures in the forest, which he was thus encouraged to relate,
and in which he often became a graphic and interesting narrator, and
displayed the keen observation of the objects of nature, together with
the other peculiar qualities of his race, to so much advantage that she
soon relinquished her favorite idea of ever finding a philosopher in an
educated Indian.
In presenting the above picture, drawn from one of the many living
prototypes that have fallen within our personal observation, or come
within our knowledge derived from reliable sources, we had no wish
to disparage the praiseworthy acts and motives of those spirited and
patriotic men who, like Moore, in establishing his well-known charity
school, in connection with Dartmouth college, may have, in times
past, founded and endowed schools for the education of the natives
of the forest; nor would we dampen the faith and hopes of those
philanthropists who still believe in the redemption of that dwindling
race by the aids of science and civilization; but we confess our
inability to perceive any general results, flowing from the attempts
of that character, at all adequate to the pains and outlay bestowed
on the experiment. And we think we cannot be alone in this opinion.
We believe that those results, when gathered up so that all their
meagreness could be seen, have sadly disappointed public expectations;
that this ones favorite object and theory, of elevating and benefiting
the red man by taking him from his native woods and immuring him in the
school-room, has been, in the great majority of the cases, a futile
one; and that whole system, indeed, can now be regarded as but little
less than a magnificent failure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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