These are facts which bring the reader’s mind, as well as that of the author, to inquire what were the objects of these parties in England—how they came here—and what their success, as well as what will be the results that will probably flow from them. Each of these speculations has undoubtedly been projected by the white men who brought the Indians over, having conceived a plan of employing and taking to Europe such parties, who would be great curiosities in a foreign country, and by their exhibitions enabled to realise a great deal of money.
These parties, in each case, have been employed, and induced to come on condition of a certain sum of money to be paid them per month, or so much per year, to be given them on their return to their own country, with the additional advantage of having all their expenses borne, and themselves entitled to all the numerous presents they would receive during their travels.
As I have been with each of these parties the greater part of the time while they were making their exhibitions, I feel quite sure that this last condition of their engagements has been strictly kept with them, and that by it the Indians profited to a considerable amount from the kind and charitable hands of people whom they were amusing. But how far they have been benefited by the other conditions of their engagements, after they have returned to their homes, I am unable to tell.
As for their reception by the public generally where they have travelled, and their conduct whilst amongst and dealing with the world, it gives me great pleasure, as a living witness, to tender to that public my grateful acknowledgments for the kindness and friendship with which they received those unsophisticated people; and in justice to the Indians, as well as for the satisfaction of those who knew them, to acknowledge the perfect propriety of their conduct and dignity of deportment whilst they were abroad.
There were of the three parties thirty-five in all, and I am proud, for the character of the abused race which I am yet advocating, that, for the year and a half that I was daily and hourly in familiarity with them in Europe, I never discovered either of them intoxicated, or in a passion with one another, or with the world. They met the people, and all the wondrous and unaccountable works which their eyes were daily opened to in the enlightened world, with an evenness of temper and apparent ease and familiarity which surprised all who saw them.
Their conduct was uniformly decent and respectful, and through their whole tour, whilst abroad, they furnished a striking corroboration of two of the leading traits of their national character, which I have advanced in my former work, of their strict adherance to promises they make, and of their never-ending garrulity and anecdote when, in their little fireside circles, they are out of the embarrassing gaze of the enlightened world, who are wiser than themselves.
For these nightly gossips, which generally took place in their private apartments after the labours of the day were done and the pipe was lit, the excitements of the day, and the droll and marvellous things they had seen in their exhibition-room and in the streets of London and Paris, afforded them the endless themes; and of these little sittings I was almost an inseparable member, as will have been seen by many anecdotes entered in the pages which the reader has already passed over.
It will be pleasing therefore to the reader, at least to those who felt an interest in those poor people, to learn, that, though they might have been objects of concern and pity whilst making a show of themselves in this country, they were, nevertheless, happy, and in the height of amusements, philosophically enjoying life as they went along; and to those who know me, and feel any anxiety for my welfare, that, although I was aiding them in a mode of living to which I was always opposed, I was happy in their society, and also in the belief that I was rendering them an essential service, although my labours were much less successful as regarded my own pecuniary interest.
One of the leading inducements for Indians to enter into such enterprises, and the one which gains the consent of their friends and relations around them, and more particularly is advanced to the world as the plausible motive for taking Indians abroad, is that of enlightening them—of opening their eyes to the length and breadth of civilization, and all the inventions and improvements of enlightened society. These three parties (having met their old friend and advocate abroad, who has introduced them to the highest society of the world—has led them into three palaces, and from those down through every grade of society, and into almost every institution and factory of the continent—whose eyes and whose ears have been opened to most of the information and improvements of this enlightened age, and who have gone back to relate and to apply, in their own country, the knowledge they have gained) will furnish the best argument on record, for or against the propriety of bringing American Indians abroad, as the means of enlightening them and making them suitable teachers of civilization when they go back to the wilderness. And though the pages of this book cannot sum up the results of these visits, which can only be looked up ultimately in the respective tribes to which they have returned, yet a few words more upon the materials with which they have returned, and the author’s opinion (in his familiar knowledge of the Indians’ mode of reasoning) of their probable results, may not be obtrusive, as a sort of recapitulation of scenes and estimates, with their tendencies, made in the foregoing pages.
It is natural, or at least habitual, to suppose that, for the ignorant to learn is always to improve; and that what a savage people can learn amongst civilized society must be for their benefit. But in this view of the case, which would generally be correct, there arises a very fair question how far, for the benefit of the unenlightened parts of the world, it is judicious to acquaint them at a glance, with the whole glare of the lights and shades of civilized life, by opening the eyes of such parties to so many virtues and so many luxuries and refinements so far beyond the possibility of their acquiring, and at the same time to so many vices, to so much poverty and beggary not known in their simple modes of life, to teach to their people and to descant on when they get home; themselves as well as those whom they are teaching, despairing of ever attaining to what they have seen to admire and covet, and unwilling to descend to the degrading vices and poverty which they have seen mixed up in the mysterious and money-making medley of civilization.