Dying Lion
The country over which these people ranged occupies a surface that may be roughly described as five or six times as large as all England. They had the unbounded command of all the natural resources of that country; and yet their entire numbers did not equal the population of a moderately sized English county. It may be fairly said that each Indian required a thousand acres for his maintenance. The supplies of food were so scanty—a scantiness which would at once have ceased to exist had there been any cultivation—that if a large number of these Indians assembled together to co-operate in their hunting expeditions, they were very soon dispersed by the urgent desire of satisfying hunger. Tanner says, "We all went to hunt beavers in concert. In hunts of this kind the proceeds are sometimes equally divided; but in this instance every man retained what he had killed. In three days I collected as many skins as I could carry. But in these distant and hasty hunts little meat could be brought in; and the whole band was soon suffering with hunger. Many of the hunters, and I among others, for want of food became extremely weak, and unable to hunt far from home." What an approach is this to the case of the lower animals; and how forcibly it reminds us of the passage in Job (c. iv., v. 11), "The fierce lion perisheth for lack of prey."[9] In another place he says, "I began to be dissatisfied at remaining with large bands of Indians, as was usual for them, after having remained a short time in a place, to suffer from hunger." These sufferings were not, in many cases, of short duration, or of trifling intensity. Tanner describes one instance of famine in the following words:—"The Indians gathered around, one after another, until we became a considerable band, and then we began to suffer from hunger. The weather was very severe, and our suffering increased. A young woman was the first to die of hunger. Soon after this, a young man, her brother, was taken with that kind of delirium or madness which precedes death in such as die of starvation. In this condition he had left the lodge of his debilitated and desponding parents; and when, at a late hour in the evening, I returned from my hunt, they could not tell what had become of him. I left the camp about the middle of the night, and, following his track, I found him at some distance, lying dead in the snow."
This worst species of suffering equally existed at particular periods, whether food was sought for by large or by small parties, by bands or by individuals. Tanner was travelling with the family of the woman who had adopted him. He says, "We had now a short season of plenty; but soon became hungry again. It often happened that for two or three days we had nothing to eat; then a rabbit or two, or a bird, would afford us a prospect of protracting the sufferings of hunger a few days longer." Again he says, "Having subsisted for some time almost entirely on the inner bark of trees, and particularly of a climbing vine found there, our strength was much reduced."
The misery which is thus so strikingly described proceeded from the circumstance that the labour of the Indians did not take a profitable direction; and that this waste of labour (for unprofitable applications of labour are the greatest of all wastes) arose from the one fact, that in certain particulars these Indians laboured without appropriation. They depended upon the chance productions of nature, without compelling her to produce; and they did not compel her to produce, because there was no appropriation of the soil, the most efficient natural instrument of production. If the Indians had directed the productive powers of the earth to the growth of corn, instead of to the growth of foxes' skins, they would have become rich. But they could not have reached this point without appropriation of the soil. They had learnt the necessity of appropriating the products of the soil, when they had bestowed labour upon obtaining them; but the last step towards productiveness was not taken. The Indians therefore were poor; the European settlers who had taken this last step were rich.
The imperfect appropriation which existed amongst the Indians, preventing, as it did, the accumulation of capital, prevented the application of that skill and knowledge which is preserved and accumulated by the Division of employment. Tanner describes a poor fellow who was wounded in the arm by the accidental discharge of a gun. As there was little surgical skill amongst the community, because no one could devote himself to the business of surgery, the Indian, as the only chance of saving his life, resolved to cut off his own arm; "and taking two knives, the edge of one of which he had hacked into a sort of saw, he with his right hand and arm cut off his left, and threw it from him as far as he could." The labour which an individual must go through when the state of society is so rude that there is scarcely any division of employment, and consequently scarcely any exchanges, is exhibited in many passages of Tanner's narrative. We select one. "I had no pukkavi, or mats for a lodge, and therefore had to build one of poles and long grass. I dressed more skins, made my own mocassins and leggings, and those for my children; cut wood and cooked for myself and family, made my snow-shoes, &c. &c. All the attention and labour I had to bestow about home sometimes kept me from hunting, and I was occasionally distressed for want of provisions. I busied myself about my lodge in the night-time. When it was sufficiently light I would bring wood, and attend to other things without; at other times I was repairing my snow-shoes, or my own or my children's clothes. For nearly all the winter I slept but a very small part of the night."
Tanner was thus obliged to do everything for himself, and consequently to work at very great disadvantage, because the principle of exchange was so imperfectly acted upon by the people amongst whom he lived. This principle of exchange was imperfectly acted upon, because the principle of appropriation was imperfectly acted upon. The occupation of all, and of each, was to hunt game, to prepare skins, to sell them to the traders, to make sugar from the juice of maple-trees, to build huts, and to sew the skins which they dressed and the blankets which they bought into rude coverings for their bodies. Every one of them did all of these things for himself, and of course he did them very imperfectly. The people were not divided into hunters, and furriers, and dealers, and sugar-makers, and builders, and tailors. Every man was his own hunter, furrier, dealer, sugar-maker, builder, and tailor; and consequently, every man, like Tanner, was so occupied by many things, that want of food and want of rest were ordinary sufferings. He describes a man who was so borne down and oppressed by these manifold wants, that, in utter despair of being able to surmount them, he would lie still till he was at the point of starvation, replying to those who tried to rouse him to kill game, that he was too poor and sick to set about it. By describing himself as poor, he meant to say that he was destitute of all the necessaries and comforts whose possession would encourage him to add to the store. He had little capital. The skill which he possessed of hunting game gave him a certain command over the spontaneous productions of the forest; but, as his power of hunting depended upon chance supplies of game, his labour necessarily took so irregular a direction, and was therefore so unproductive, that he never accumulated sufficient for his support in times of sickness, or for his comfortable support at any time. He became, therefore, despairing; and had that perfect apathy, that indifference to the future, which is the most pitiable evidence of extreme wretchedness. This man felt his powerless situation more keenly than his companions; but with all savage tribes there is a want of steady and persevering exertion, proceeding from the same cause. Severe labour is succeeded by long fits of idleness, because their labour takes a chance direction. This is a universal case. Habits of idleness, of irregularity, of ferocity, are the characteristics of all those who maintain existence by the pursuit of the unappropriated productions of nature; while constant application, orderly arrangement of time, and civility to others, result from systematic industry. The savage and the poacher are equally the slaves of violent impulses—equally disgusted at the prospect of patient application. When the support of life depends upon chance supplies, the reckless spirit of a gambler is sure to take possession of the whole man; and the misery which results from these chance supplies produces either dejection or ferocity. The author of this book used to observe the habits of a class of such persons, who frequent the Thames at Eton; and he thus described them in verses of his boyhood:—
What boat is this which creeps so lazily Up the still stream? How quietly falls the drip Of the slow paddle! Now it shoots along, As if that lone man fear'd us. Well I ken His rough and dangerous trade. He knows each hole Where the quick-sighted eel delights to swim When clouds obscure the moon; and there he lays His traps and gins, and then he sleeps awhile; But rouses up before the prying dawn Betrays his course; and out he cautiously glides To try his doubtful luck. Perchance he finds Stores that may buy him bread; but oft'ner still His toil is fruitless, and deject he comes Home to his emberless hearth, and sits him down, Idle and starving through the busy day.
Mungo Park describes the wretched condition of the inhabitants of countries in Africa where small particles of gold are found in the rivers. Their lives were spent in hunting for the gold to exchange for useful commodities, instead of raising the commodities themselves; and they were consequently poor and miserable, listless and unsteady. Their fitful industry had too much of chance mixed up with it to afford a certain and general profit. The accounts which of late years we have received from the gold-diggings of California and Australia exhibit the same suffering from the same cause. The natives of Cape de la Hogue, in Normandy, were the most wretched and ferocious people in all France, because they depended principally for support on the wrecks that were frequent on their coasts. When there were no tempests, they made an easy transition from the character of wreckers to that of robbers. A benefactor of his species taught these unhappy people to collect a marine plant to make potash. They immediately became profitable labourers and exchangers; they obtained a property in the general intelligence of civilized life; the capital of society raised them from misery to wealth, from being destroyers to being producers.