Among the distinguished visitors to my rooms about this time were their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Coburg, and Prince Ernest, the father and brother of Prince Albert, at that time on a visit to the Queen and the Prince. They were accompanied by Mr. Murray, who took great pains to explain the collection to the Duke, who took me by the hand when he left the room, and told me I deserved the friendship of all countries for what I had done, and pronounced it “a noble collection.” His second visit was made to it a few days after, when he was also accompanied by Mr. Murray, and remained in the rooms until it was quite dark.
His Royal Highness the Duc de Brabant, the infant son of the King of the Belgians, on a visit to the Queen, was also brought in by Mr. Murray. He was an intelligent lad, nine or ten years of age, and was pleased with a miniature Indian pipe which I presented to him, and also a small pair of Indian mocassins suitable for his age.
His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, though in feeble health, paid my collection his first visit. It was his wish, from the state that he was in, to meet me alone “in an Indian Council,” as he called it. My first interview with him lasted for an hour or more, when he told me that if his strength would have permitted it, he could have been amused the whole day. To this fine old venerable man my highest admiration clung: he expressed the deepest sympathy for the Indians, and seemed to have formed a more general and correct idea of them and their condition than any person I had met in the kingdom. When he left my rooms he took me by both hands and thanked me for the rich treat I had afforded him, and assured me that for the benefits I was rendering to society, and the justice I was doing to the poor Indians, I should be sure to meet my reward in the world to come, and that he hoped I would also be recompensed in this.
The Duke of Sussex was a great amateur of pipes and good smoking, and took much interest in the hundreds of different designs and shapes of the carved pipes in my exhibition. He was curious to know what the Indians smoked, and I showed him their tobacco, a quantity of which I had brought with me. The Indians prepare it from the inner bark of the red willow, and when dried and ready for smoking, call it “k’nick-k’neck.” I prepared and lit a pipe of it for His Royal Highness to smoke, with which he took a seat under the middle of the Indian wigwam, where our conversation was held at the moment; and as he drew the delicious fumes through the long and garnished stem which passed between his knees, with its polished bowl, carved in the red pipe stone, resting on the floor, he presented for a few moments the finished personification of beatitude and enjoyment. He pronounced the flavour delicious, wanting only a little more strength, which he thought the addition of tobacco would give it.
I told him that the Indians were always in the habit of mingling tobacco with it when they could afford to buy it: “Good fellows (said he), they know what is good—their tastes are as good as ours are.” After he had finished his pipe, and we were moving towards the front door, the moment before taking leave of me as I have mentioned above, he asked me if I ever knew John Hunter, who wrote a work on the Indians of America, to which I replied in the affirmative. He seemed much pleased in learning this fact, and said to me, “You see what a feeble wreck I am at present; my strength is gone, and I must leave you; but you will take your breakfast with me at Kensington Palace to-morrow morning: I am all alone. I am too ill to see the world; they cannot find the way to me: but I will see you, and take great pleasure in your society. Your name will be made known to the servants at the back entrance to the palace.”
The next morning, at the hour named, found me at the door of the palace, where my name was recognised, and I at once was ushered into the apartment of the Duke, where I found him in his arm-chair, wrapped in his morning gown of white flannel, and his head covered with a cap of black velvet richly embroidered with gold. He rose and took me by the hand in the most cordial manner, and instantly led me to another part of the room, in front of a portrait hanging on the wall.—“There,” said he, “do you know that face?” “Very well,” said I; “that is the portrait of John Hunter; it is an admirable likeness, and looks to me like a picture by one of our American artists. If I had met it anywhere else but in this country I should have said it was by Harding, one of our most valued portrait painters.” “Well,” said he, “you know that portrait too, do you?” “Very well—that is his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex.” “Well,” said the Duke, “now I will tell you, they were both painted by Mr. Harding. Harding is a great favourite of mine, and a very clever artist.”
I at this moment presented to the Duke the Indian pipe, through which he had smoked the day before, and also an Indian tobacco-pouch, filled with the k’nick-k’neck (or Indian tobacco) with which he had been so much pleased.
He thanked me for the present, which he assured me delighted him very much; and, after showing me a great variety of curious and most ingenious pipes from various countries, we took our seats alone at the breakfast table. In the course of our conversation, which ran upon pipes—upon Indians and Indian countries, his Royal Highness said he had reasons for asking me if I had known Hunter, and should feel most happy if he found in me a person who had been acquainted with his history. He said he had known Hunter familiarly while he was in London, and had entertained him in his palace, and thought a great deal of him. He had thought his life a most extraordinary one, well entitling him to the attentions that were paid to him here—that he had been entertained and amused by his narrations of Indian life, and that he had made him several presents, amongst which was a very valuable watch, and had had his portrait painted, which he highly valued. He said he had learned, with deep regret, since Hunter had left here, that a learned French gentleman in Philadelphia, M. Duponceau, and some others, had held him up to the public, through the journals, as an impostor, and his narrations as fabulous. “This to me,” said the Duke, “you can easily see, has been a subject of much pain (as I took more pains to introduce him and his works in this country than any one else), and it explains to you the cause of my anxiety to learn something more of his true history.”
I replied to his Royal Highness that I had been equally pained by hearing such reports in circulation in my own country, and that my acquaintance with Hunter had not been familiar enough to enable me wholly to refute them, I stated that I had been introduced to Mr. Hunter in New Orleans, where he was well known to many, and that I had met him in two or three other parts of the United States, and since reading his work I had visited many of the Indian villages, in which he lived, and had conversed with chiefs and others named in his work, who spoke familiarly of him. I felt assured, therefore, that he had spent the Indian life that he describes in his work; and yet that he might have had the indiscretion to have made some misrepresentations attributed to him, I was not able positively to deny. His work, as far as it treats on the manners and customs of the American Indians, and which could not have been written or dictated by any other than a person who had lived that familiar life with them, is decidedly the most descriptive and best work yet published on their every-day domestic habits and superstitions; and, of itself, goes a great way, in my opinion, to establish the fact that his early life was identified with that of the Indians.
I stated that I believed his character had been cruelly and unjustly libelled, and that I had the peculiar satisfaction of believing that I had justly defended it, and given the merited rebuke at the fountain of all his misfortunes, which I described as follows:—