Newcastle-on-Tyne was the next place where we stopped, and when I arrived there I found Mr. Melody and his friends very comfortably lodged, and all in excellent spirits. The Indians, he told me, had been exceedingly buoyant in spirits from the moment they left York, and the old Doctor sang the whole way, even though he had been defeated in his design of riding outside on the railway train, as he had been in the habit of doing on the omnibus in London. I told them I had remained a little behind them in York to enjoy a few hours more of the society of an excellent and kind lady of the Society of Friends,[29] whom they would recollect to have seen in the exhibition room when they had finished their last night’s exhibition, who came forward and shook hands in the most affectionate manner, and left gold in their hands as she bade them good bye, and commended them to the care of the Great Spirit.
I told them that this good lady had only returned from the country on the last evening of their exhibiting in York, and was exceedingly disappointed that she could not have the pleasure of their society at her house. I then sat down and amused them an hour with a beautiful manuscript book, by her own hand, which she had presented to me, containing the portraits of seven Seneca chiefs and braves, who were in England twenty-five years before, and whom she entertained for three weeks in her own house. This interesting work contains also some twenty pages of poetry glowing with piety, and written in a chaste and beautiful style; and an hundred or more pages in prose, giving a full description of the party, their modes, and a history of their success, as they travelled through the kingdom. This was a subject of much pleasure to them, but at the same time increased their regret that they had not seen more of this kind lady before they left the town of York.
Their first inquiries after their arrival in Newcastle were whether they would meet any of the “good people” in that town, and whether that was a place where they had prisons and a gallows like those in London and in York. I answered that they would no doubt find many of the Friends there, for I knew several very kind families who would call upon them, and also that the good lady who gave me the book in York had written letters to several of the Friends in Newcastle to call on them; and that, as to the jails, &c., I believed they were much the same.
In a sort of council which we held there, as we were in the Indian habit of convening one whenever we were leaving an old lodging or taking possession of a new one, it was very gravely and diffidently suggested by the Doctor, as the desire of the whole party, that they presumed Chippehola[30] had money enough left in London (in case they should fail in this section of the country to make enough to pay their debts) to keep them clear from being taken up and treated like white men who can’t pay what they owe. I approved this judicious suggestion, and assured them they might feel quite easy as long as they were in the kingdom. I told them I was quite sure they had a good and faithful friend in Mr. Melody, and, if anything happened to him, they would be sure to find me ready to take care of them, and that, if we were both to die, they would find all the English people around them their friends. This seemed to satisfy and to cheer them up, and our few days in Newcastle thus commenced very pleasantly. From their first night’s exhibition they all returned to their lodgings with peculiar satisfaction that they had observed a greater number of Friends in the crowd than they had seen in any place before, and many of these had remained until everybody else had gone away, to shake hands and converse with them. They found roast beef and beef-steaks and chickabobboo also, the same as in other places, and altogether there was enough around them here to produce cheerful faces.
I need not describe again to the reader the nature and excitement of the dances, &c., in their exhibitions, which were nightly repeated here as they had been in London; but incidents and results growing out of these amusements were now becoming exceedingly interesting, and as will be found in the sequel of much importance, I trust, to those poor people and their descendants. Very many of the Society of Friends were nightly attending their exhibitions, not so much for the purpose of witnessing or encouraging their war-dances and customs, as for an opportunity of forming an acquaintance with them, with a view to render them in some way an essential good. With this object a letter was addressed to me by Mrs. Anna Richardson (with whom I had formerly corresponded on the subject of the Indians), proposing that a number of the Friends should be allowed to hold a conversation with them in their apartments, on some morning, for the purpose of learning the true state of their minds relative to the subjects of religion and education, and to propose some efforts that might result to their advantage, and that of their nation. Mr. Melody and myself embraced this kind proposal at once, and the Indians all seemed delighted with it when it was made known to them. The morning was appointed, and this kind and truly charitable lady came with fifteen or twenty of her friends, and the Indians listened with patience and apparent pleasure to the Christian advice that was given them by several, and cheerfully answered to the interrogatories which were put to them.
The immediate appeal and thanks to the “Great Spirit, who had sent these kind people to them,” by the War-chief in his reply, seemed to impress upon the minds of all present the conviction of a high and noble sentiment of religion in the breasts of these people, which required but the light of the Christian revelation. His replies as to the benefits of education were much as he had made them on several occasions before, that, “as for themselves, they were too far advanced in life to think of being benefited by it, but that their children might learn to read and write, and that they should be glad to have them taught to do so.” Here seemed to dawn a gleam of hope, which that pious lady, in her conversation and subsequent correspondence with me, often alluded to, as the most favourable omen for the desire which the Friends had of rendering them some lasting benefit. Mr. Melody on this occasion produced a little book printed in the Ioway language, in the missionary school already in existence in the tribe, and also letters which he had just received from the Rev. Mr. Irvin, then conducting the school, giving an encouraging account of it, and hoping that the Indians and himself might return safe, and with means to assist in the noble enterprise. This information was gratifying in the extreme, and all seemed to think that there was a chance of enlightening these benighted people. The heart of this Christian woman reached to the American wilderness in a letter that she directed to this reverend gentleman, believing that there, where were the wives and children of the chiefs and warriors who were travelling, was the place for the efforts of the Society of Friends to be beneficially applied; and thus, I believe, formed the chain from which I feel confident the most fortunate results will flow.[31]
Several subsequent interviews were held with the Indians by these kind people, who took them to their houses and schools, and bestowed upon them many tangible proofs of their attachment to them, and anxiety for their welfare. The Indians left Newcastle and these suddenly made friends with great reluctance, and we paid a visit of a couple of days to Sunderland. Here they found also many of the “good people” attending their exhibitions, and received several warm and friendly invitations to their houses. Amongst these kind attentions there was one which they never will forget: they were invited to breakfast at the table of Mr. T. Richardson, in his lovely mansion, with his kind family and some friends, and after the breakfast was over all were invited into his beautiful garden, where a spade was ready, and a small tree prepared for each one to plant and attach his name to. This ceremony amused them very much, and, when they had all done, there was one left for Chippehola, who took the spade and completed the interesting ceremony. This had been kindly designed for their amusement, and for the pleasing recollections of his family, by this good man; and with all it went off cheerfully, except with the Doctor, who refused for some time, but was at length induced to take the spade and plant his tree. I observed from the moment that he had done it that he was contemplative, and evidently apprehensive that some bad luck was to come from it—that there was medicine in it, and he was alarmed. He was silent during the rest of the interview, and after they had returned to their rooms he still remained so for some time, when he explained to me that “he feared some one would be sick—some one of those trees would die, and he would much rather they had not been planted.” He said “it would be necessary to make a great feast the next day,” which I told him would be difficult, as we were to leave at an early hour. This puzzled him very much, as it was so late that, “if they were to try to give it that night, there would not be time for the ducks to be well cooked.” They all laughed at him for his superstition, and he got the charm off as well as he could by throwing some tobacco, as a sacrifice, into the fire.
We travelled the next day to North Shields, and the gloom that was still evidently hanging over the old man’s brow was darkened by the increased illness of the Roman Nose, who had been for some weeks slightly ailing, but on that day was attacked for the first time with some fever. The Doctor’s alarm was such that he stayed constantly by him, and did not accompany his friend Jim and one or two others with Daniel to the coalpit. This, from the repeated representations of Daniel and their old friend Bobasheela, was one of the greatest curiosities in the kingdom, and they were not disappointed in it. In this enterprise I did not accompany them, but from their representations ascertained that they descended more than two thousand feet and then travelled half a mile or so under the sea—that there were fifty horses and mules at that depth under the ground, that never will come up, drawing cars loaded with coal on railways, and six or seven hundred men, women, and children, as black as negroes, and many of these who seldom come up, but sleep there at nights. This scene shocked them even more than the sights they had seen in York, for they seemed to think that the debtors’ cells in a prison would be far preferable to the slavery they there saw, of “hundreds of women and children drawing out, as they said, from some narrow places where the horses could not go, little carriages loaded with coal; where the women had to go on their hands and knees through the mud and water, and almost entirely naked, drawing their loads by a strap that was buckled around their waists; their knees and their legs and their feet, which were all naked, were bleeding with cuts from the stones, and their hands also; they drew these loads in the dark, and they had only a little candle to see the way.” This surprising scene, which took them hours to describe to their companions, became more surprising when Daniel told them of “the vast number of such mines in various parts of the kingdom, and of the fact that many people in some parts have been born in those mines, and gone to school in them, and spent their lives, without ever knowing how the daylight looked.”
Daniel reminded them of the hundreds of mines he had pointed out to them while travelling by the railroads, and that they were all under ground, like what they had seen. Here was rich subject for Jim, for another entry in his book, of the statistics of England; and Daniel, always ready, turned to the page in his own note-book, and soon got for Jim’s memorandum the sum total of coalpits and mines in the kingdom, and the hundreds of thousands of human civilized beings who were imprisoned in them.
It happened, on the second day that we were stopping in North Shields, much to the amusement of the Indians, that there was a sailors’ dinner prepared for an hundred or more in the large hall of the hotel where we were lodging; and, from the rooms which the Indians occupied, there was an opportunity of looking through a small window down into their hall, and upon the merry and noisy group around the table. This was a rich treat for the Indians; and, commencing in an amusing and funny manner, it became every moment more and more so, and, finally (when they began to dance and sing and smash the glasses, and at length the tables, and from that to “set-to’s,” “fisticuffs,” and “knockdowns,” by the dozens, and, at last, to a general mélée, a row, and a fight in the street) one of the most decidedly exciting and spirited scenes they had witnessed in the country.