When any public benefit was to be obtained, or any public danger to be averted, their mutual efforts were all bent to one end; and no one knew what it was to withhold his utmost aid, nor indeed could, in that stage of society, have any motive for doing so. Hence, no mind being contracted by selfish cares, the community were but as one large family, who enjoyed or suffered together. We are accustomed to talk, in parrot phrase, of indolent savages; and, to be sure, in warm climates, and where the state of man is truly savage, that is to say, unsocial, void of virtue, and void of comforts, he is certainly an indolent being: but that individual, in a cold climate, who has tasted the sweets of social life—who knows the wants that arise from it—who provides for his children in their helpless state—and where taste and ingenuity are so much improved, that his person is not only clothed with warm and seemly apparel, but decorated with numerous and not inelegant ornaments, which from the scarcity and simplicity of his tools, he has no ready or easy mode of producing. When he has not only found out all these wants, which he has no means of supplying but by his individual strength, dexterity, and ingenuity, industry must be added, ere they can be all regularly gratified. Very active and industrious, in fact, the Indians were in their original state; and when we take it into consideration, that beside all these occupations, together with their long journeys, wars, and constant huntings and fishing, their leisure was occupied not only by athletic but studious games, at which they played for days together with unheard-of eagerness and perseverance; it will appear they had very little of that lounging time, for which we are so apt to give them credit. Or if a chief, occasionally after fatigue, of which we can form no adequate idea, lay silent in the shade, those frisking Frenchmen, who have given us most details concerning them, were too restless themselves to subdue their skipping spirits to the recollection, that a Mohawk had no study or arm-chair wherein to muse and cogitate; and that his schemes of patriotism, his plans of war, and his eloquent speeches, were all like the meditations of Jacques, formed “under the greenwood tree.” Neither could any man lounge on his sofa, while half a dozen others were employed in shearing the sheep, preparing the wool, weaving and making his coat, or in planting the flax for his future linen, and flaying the ox for his future shoes; were he to do all this himself, he would have little leisure for study or repose. And all this and more the Indian did, under other names and forms; so that idleness, with its gloomy followers, ennui and suicide, were unknown among this truly active people; yet that there is a higher state of society cannot be denied; nor can it be denied that the intermediate state is a painful and enfeebling one.
Man, in a state of nature, is taught by his more civilized brethren a thousand new wants before he learns to supply one. Thence barter takes place; which, in the first stage of progression, is universally fatal to the liberty, the spirit, and the comforts of an uncivilized people.
In the east, where the cradle of our infant nature was appointed, the clime was genial, its productions abundant, and its winters only sufficient to consume the surplus, and give a welcome variety to the seasons. There man was either a shepherd or a hunter, as his disposition led—and that, perhaps, in the same family. The meek spirit of Jacob delighted in tending his father’s flocks; while the more daring and adventurous Esau traced the wilds of Mount Seir, in pursuit both of the fiercer animals who waged war upon the fold, and the more timorous, who administered to the luxury of the table.
The progress of civilization was here gradual and gentle; and the elegant arts seem to have gone hand in hand with the useful ones. For we read of bracelets and ear-rings sent as tokens of love, and images highly valued and coveted, while even agriculture seemed in its infancy.
CHAP. XXIV.
Progress of civilization in Europe—Northern nations instructed in the
arts of life by those they had subdued.
Population extending to the milder regions of Europe, brought civilization along with it, so that it is only among the savages, (as we call our ancestors) of the north, that we can trace the intermediate state I have spoken of. Amongst them, one regular gradation seems to have taken place; they were first hunters and then warriors. As they advanced in their knowledge of the arts of life, and acquired a little property, as much of pastoral pursuits as their rigorous climate would allow, without the aid of regular agriculture, mingled with their wandering habits. But, except in a few partial instances, from hunters they became conquerors; the warlike habits acquired from that mode of life, raising their minds above patient industry, and teaching them to despise the softer arts that embellish society. In fine, their usual process was to pass to civilization through the medium of conquest. The poet says,
“With noble scorn the first fam’d Cato viewed,