“Brother:—Farewell.”
“A terrible and bitter satire!” and though entirely unjust as far as true religion is concerned, it is quite unanswerable to a heathen mind, and is a stumbling-block in the way of many in enlightened communities.
It was pagan white people who poisoned the mind of the great Chief, and prejudiced him against the missionaries and their religion. He thought them the enemies of his people; and those whose interest it was to deceive him, so thoroughly blinded and bewildered him, that he came very near being the destroyer, rather than the saviour, of the little remnant of his race. They, knowing that the missionaries were the true friends of the Indian, and understood their own evil machinations, wished to banish them from the lands. A law was passed that no white people should settle upon the Reservations, to which the Indians had been removed, and which had been secured to them by law and treaty; and though it was no part of the design that missionaries and teachers should be excluded, the companies who wished to obtain the lands and drive the Indians beyond the Mississippi, took advantage of the law, and urged the pagan Chiefs to insist upon their departure. In order to obey the strict letter of the law, they were obliged to go. As soon as the law could be revised, they returned again; and there are few now, among Chiefs or people, who do not recognize [[172]]them as their best friends, and acknowledge their influence to be for their true interest, temporal as well as spiritual; and they are fast becoming so enlightened by the Gospel and by universal education, through their untiring zeal, as to be in no future danger from designing and unprincipled speculators.
Before he died, Red Jacket began to discriminate truly between his friends and foes, and to understand the disinterested friendship of the missionaries.
He had always great confidence in the Quakers; owing, we presume, to the fact that no land-shark ever belonged to this sect. In their early intercourse with the Indians, they were, fortunately, more judicious in the measures they took towards advancing them in all the arts of cultivated life. As the great Chief once said: “They give us ploughs, and show us how to use them; they counsel us in our troubles, and instruct us how to make ourselves comfortable; they do us great good—we are satisfied with what they do.”
Witchcraft was punishable with death by the laws of the Six Nations, and it often happened that persons were accused of exercising the powers of sorcery upon individuals, when sickness could be accounted for in no other way, and their arts produced no effect in healing. A case of this kind was the occasion of one of Red Jacket’s most sarcastic speeches.
A woman was accused of causing the death of an Indian, whose lingering illness they could not understand, and by their laws condemned to die. He who was appointed to be her executioner, faltered in the hour of trial, and another, who was more bold, stepped forward and drew the knife across her throat. The Indians were not subject to the laws of the United States as far as their own internal affairs were concerned, and had the [[173]]right to administer justice as they pleased; but some of their neighbors, being shocked at these summary proceedings, arrested the murderer and put him in prison. A trial was had, and every effort made to procure the condemnation, and of course the hanging, of the accused, whose name was Tommy Jemmy; but the Indians insisted that the woman had been as judicially condemned and executed as Tommy Jemmy would be if he was given up to them, and if it was murder in the one case, it would be murder in the other.
Red Jacket, seeing that their belief in witches was the theme of ridicule, answered in these words:
“What! do you denounce us as fools and bigots, because we still believe what you yourselves believed only two centuries ago? Your black-coats thundered this doctrine from the pulpit; your judges pronounced it from the bench, and sanctioned it with the formalities of law, and you would now punish our unfortunate brother for adhering to the faith of his fathers and of yours! Go to Salem! Look at the records of your own government, and you will find that hundreds have been executed for the very crime which has called forth the sentence of condemnation against this woman, and drawn down upon her the arm of vengeance. What have our brothers done more than the rulers of your people have done? And what crime has this man committed, by executing in a summary way the laws of his country and the command of the Great Spirit?”
It is said his looks were far more terrible than his words; and his eye, when aroused by indignation, was fearful in its blaze. He gained his cause, and the prisoner was liberated. [[174]]