"And also much valuable knowledge?" rejoined Avis, interrogatively.
"Valuable enough to some folks, suppose," replied the other, with the air of one speaking on a subject in which he felt no particular interest. "Lawyers make money; preachers get good pay for talking what they learn in books; so doctors."
"But surely," persisted the former, who, though disappointed in his replies, yet still expected to see, if she could draw him out, the naturally shrewd mind of the native made brilliant by the light of science, "surely you consider an education a good thing for all, giving those who receive it a great advantage over those who do not?"
"Yes, education good thing," responded Tomah, his stolid countenance beginning to lighten up at the idea which now struck him as involving the chief if not the sole benefit of his scientific acquirements; "yes, education good, very good, sometime. Instance: I go to Boston with my moose next winter; show him for pay, one, two days; then reckon up money—add; then reckon up expenses—subtract; tell how much I make. Make much, stay; make little, go to other place. Yes, education good thing."
"But I should think you might do better with your education than you could by following the usual employments of your kind of people," resumed the other, still unwilling to see the subject of her scrutiny fall so much below her preconception of an educated Indian. "You say, lawyers, preachers, and doctors make money from the superiority which their education has given them; now, why don't you profit by your education, and go into a profession like one of theirs, and obtain by it the same wealth and position which you see them enjoying?"
"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 once favorite object and theory, of elevating and benefiting the red man by taking him from his native woods and immuring him in the schoolroom, 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.
There have been, it is true, some brilliant exceptions to the application of our remarks, such as may be found in the pious and comparatively learned Samson Occom, the noted Indian preacher of the times of the Pilgrims; in the eloquent Ojibway chief of our own times, and a few others; as well as in the person we have already introduced into this work, the intelligent and beautiful Fluella. But only as exceptions to the general rule, we fear, can we fairly regard them,—for, where there is one Occom, there are probably ten Tomahs.
Education, or so much of it as he has the patience and ability to acquire, seems often to unsettle and confuse the mind of the red man; for, while his old notions and traditions are disturbed or swept away by it, he fails of grasping and digesting the new ones which science and civilization present to his mind; and he falters and gropes, like an owl in the too strong light of the unaccustomed sun. In his natural condition, he can at least realize the happy picture which the poet has drawn of him: