A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians

by J. B. Mackenzie

Though the proximate result of drink is with the Indian more alarming than with the white, the ultimate evils and sorrows wrought by continued excess in drink are, of course, identical in both cases: moral sensibilities blunted; manhood degraded; mind wrecked; worldly substance dissipated; health shattered; strength sapped; every mendacious and tortuous bent of one's nature stimulated, and given free scope.

HIS HUMOR.

In its very nature this essay will partake largely of the element of historical preciseness, and if it do not, I have so far failed to gain my end. I have wished to introduce matter of a kind calculated to relieve this, and to insure the escape of the essay from the charge of a well-sustained dryness.

Of the humorous instinct of the Indian, as indulged toward his fellow-Indian, I cannot speak with confidence; of the malign operation upon myself of the same instinct, I can speak with somewhat more exactness, and with somewhat saddening recollections. The cases, indeed, where I have been exposed to the play of his humor exhibit him in so superlatively complacent an aspect, and myself in so painfully inglorious a one, that I refrain, nay shrink, from rehearsing the discomposing circumstances. I should be pleased if I could call to mind any instance which would convey some notion of the Indian's aptness in this line, and yet not involve myself, but I cannot. I would say, in a general way, that the Indian is a plausible being, and one needs to be wary with him, and not too loth to suspect him of meditating some dire practical joke, which shall issue in the utter confusion and discomfiture of its victim, whilst its author shall appropriate the main comfort and jubilation. Though the Indian, perhaps, does not conceive these in the determinedly hostile spirit with which the Mohometan who seeks to compass the Christian's undoing is credited, there is yet such striking accord in the two cases, so far as exultant approval of the issue is concerned, that I am disposed to look upon his creed in this respect as a modified Mahometanism. I could relate many instances, affecting myself, where trustfulness has incurred payment in this coin, but, having no desire to stimulate the Indian's existing proneness to practical joking, I stay my hand at further mention of the peculiarity.

HIS INTELLECTUAL GIFTS.

The Indian has little hope of occupying a sphere, where the discipline and cultivation of the mind shall be essential to the proper balancing and developing of its powers, and shall render it equal to the collision with other keen intellects. It would, therefore, be equally idle and unprofitable to attempt to measure his mental capabilities, until we shall have experience of his intellectuality, with proper stimulating and inciting influences in play, or under circumstances, conducing, generally, to mental strength and vigor, to note; and which we may employ as a reliable basis for judgment; and it would be manifestly unfair to argue weak mental calibre, or to presage small mental capacity in the Indian, from his present deplorable state of inertness, a condition which has been sadly impressed and confirmed by repressive legislation, and of which that legislation, by practically denying him occupation of improving fields of thought, and, indeed, scope for any enlarged mental activity, seeks to decree the melancholy perpetuity.

In some of the few cases where supervenient aid has enabled him to qualify for, and embrace, a profession, I have perceived a tendency to subordinate its practice to the demands of some less exacting calling, which has rendered nugatory any efficient mastery of the profession. Memory is, undoubtedly, the Indian's strong point, and I can myself testify to exhibitions of it, truly phenomenal. The interpreter will placidly proceed to translate a long string of sentences, just fallen from a speaker's lips, to engraft which upon our memory would be a performance most trying and difficult; and to have their repetition. even with a proximate adherence to the sense and the expressions used, imposed upon us, in the peremptory fashion in which it is sprung upon the interpreter, would carry the wildest dismay to our mind. Those understanding the Indian tongue have frequently assured me that the Indian, when interpreting, reproduces with minuteness, if he be granted, of course, a certain latitude for differences of idiom, the speaker's thought and expressions. It is said by one of his own writers that the Indian is much more prone to follow the evil than the moral practices of the white; and there can be no doubt, I think, that, if habitually thrown with a corrupt community, or one where a low order of morality should obtain, the acquisition of higher knowledge would tend to make him better skilled in planning works of iniquity, than to give him higher and purer tastes. Actual experience of the Indian, in one or two cases, where there has been a more than common accession to his mental accomplishments, rather gives color to the notion of the misdirection of those accomplishments (even without the baneful white influence) that has been hinted at.

I should think the Indian would, probably, even with proper discipline to bear, lack powers of concentration, with the kindred faculty of being able to direct the mind to the achieving or subserving of some one grand purpose or aim, and would, likely, be deficient in other allied ways, by which a gifted and powerful mind will be asserted; and would imagine, on the whole, that there is slight ground for thinking him capable, under the most favourable circumstances, of imperilling the eminence of the white in respect of intellectual power and attainments.

HIS PASTIMES.

Lacrosse, it is well-known, is the Indian's national game. The agile form with which nature has gifted him, and which I have mentioned already as one of his physical characteristics, brings an essential pre-requisite for success or eminence to a game, where the laggard is at heavy discount.