[243] "Whatever may be the estimate of the Indian character in other respects, it is with me an undoubting conviction, that they are by nature a shrewd and intelligent race of men, in no wise, as regards combination of thought or quickness of apprehension, inferior to uneducated white men. This inference I deduce from having instructed Indian children.[244] I draw it from having seen the men and women in all situations calculated to try and call forth their capacities. When they examine any of our inventions, steamboats, steam-mills, and cotton factories, for instance; when they contemplate any of our institutions in operation, by some quick analysis or process of reasoning, they seem immediately to comprehend the principle or the object. No spectacle affords them more delight than a large and orderly school. They scorn instinctively to comprehend, at least they explained to me that they felt, the advantages which this order of things gave our children over theirs."—Flint's Ten Years in the Valley of the Mississippi, 1831.
Mr. Flint, an experienced and intelligent observer, takes so dark a view of the moral character of the Red Indian that his favorable opinion of their mental faculties may be looked upon as probably accurate, though differing strongly from that more generally held. On the other side of the question, among the early writers may be cited M. Bouguer, Voyage au Pérou, p. 102; Voyage d'Ulloa, tom. i., p. 335-337. "They seem to live in a perpetual infancy," is the striking expression of De la Condamine, Voyage de la Riv. Amazon, p. 52, 53. Chauvelon, Voyage à la Martinique, p. 44, 50. P. Venegas, Hist. de la Californie.
[244] All those who have expressed an opinion on the subject seem to agree that children of most native races are fully, or more than a match, for those of Europeans, in aptitude for intellectual acquirement. Indeed, it appears to be a singular law of Nature, that there is less precocity in the European race than almost any other. In those races in which we seem to have reason for believing that the intellectual organization is lower, perception is quicker, and maturity earlier.—Merivale On Colonization, vol. ii., p. 197.
[245] "Thus, on the whole, it may be said that the virtues of the savages are reducible to intrepid courage in danger, unshaken firmness amid tortures, contempt of pain and death, and patience under all the anxieties and distresses of life. No doubt these are useful qualities, but they are all confined to the individual, all selfish, and without any benefit to the society. Farther, they are proofs of a life truly wretched, and a social state so depraved or null, that a man, neither finding nor hoping any succor or assistance from it, is obliged to wrap himself up in despair, and endeavor to harden himself against the strokes of fate. Still it may be urged that these men, in their leisure hours, laugh, sing, play, and live without care for the past as well as for the future. Will you then deny that they are happier than we? Man is such a pitiable and variable creature, and habits have such a potent sway over him, that in the most disastrous situations he always finds some posture that gives him ease, something that consoles him, and, by comparison with past suffering, appears to him well-being and happiness; but if to laugh, sing, or play constitute bliss, it must likewise be granted that soldiers are perfectly happy beings, since there are no men more careless or more gay in dangers or on the eve of battle. It must be granted, too, that during the Revolution, in the most fatal of our jails, the Conciergerie, the prisoners were very happy, since they were, in general, more careless and gay than their keepers, or than those who only feared the same fate. The anxieties of those who were at large were as numerous as the enjoyments they wished to preserve; they who were in the other prisons felt but one, that of preserving their lives. In the Conciergerie, where a man was condemned in expectation or in reality, he had no longer any care; on the contrary, every moment of life was an acquisition, the gain of a good that was considered as lost. Such is nearly the situation of a soldier in war, and such is really that of the savage throughout the whole course of his life. If this be happiness, wretched indeed must be the country where it is an object of envy. In pursuing my investigation, I do not find that I am led to more advantageous ideas of the liberty of the savage; on the contrary, I sees in him only the slave of his wants, and of the freaks of a sterile and parsimonious nature. Food he has not at hand; rest is not at his command; he must run, weary himself, endure hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all the inclemency of the elements and seasons; and as the ignorance in which he was born and bred gives him or leaves him a multitude of false and irrational ideas and superstitious prejudices, he is likewise the slave of a number of errors and passions, from which civilized man is exempted by the science and knowledge of every kind that an improved state of society has produced."—Volney's Travels in the United States, p. 467.
"Their impassible fortitude and endurance of suffering are, after all, in my mind, the result of a greater degree of physical insensibility. It has been told me, and I believe it, that in amputation and other surgical operations, their nerves do not shrink, do not show the same tendency to spasm with those of the whites. When the savage, to explain his insensibility to cold, called upon the white man to recollect how little his own face was affected by it, in consequence of its constant exposure, he added, 'My body is all face.'[246] This increasing insensibility, transmitted from generation to generation, finally becomes inwrought with the whole web of animal nature, and the body of the savage seems to have little more sensibility than the hoofs of horses."—Flint's Ten Years in the Valley of the Mississippi. See, also, Ulloa's Notic. Amer., p. 313.
Charlevoix quotes a passage from Cicero to the effect that "l'habitude au travail donne de la facilité à supporter la douleur."—2 Tusc., 25.
[246] Delicacy of skin is observed to be in proportion to civilization among nations, in proportion to degrees of refinement among individuals.—Sharon Turner.
[247] Conical stones, wrapped up in 100 goat skins, were the idols preserved in the temple of the Natchez. Many authors assert that the Amazons and many Eastern people had nothing in their temples but these pyramidal stones, which represented to them the Divinity.... "Peut-être aussi vouloient ils (les fondateurs des Pyramides) figurer en même tems la Divinité, et ce qui leur restoit d'idées du mystère de la Sainte Trinité, dans les trois faces de ces pyramides. Du moins est ce ainsi qu'aux Indes un Brame paroissoit concevoir les choses et s'expliquer d'après les anciennes. 'Il faut,' disoit il, 'se réprésenter Dieu et ses trois noms différents qui répondent à ces trois principaux attributs, à peu près sous l'idée de ces Pyramides triangulaires qu'on voit élevées devant la poste de quelques temples."—Lettre du Père Bouchet à M. Huet, Evêque d'Avranches. Three logs are always employed to keep up the fire in the Natchez temple.—Lafitau, vol. i., p. 167.
Extract from a dialogue between John Wesley and the Chickasaw Indians:
"Wesley. Do you believe there is One above who is over all things?