A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians

by J. B. Mackenzie

He is very hospitable; and (herein nobly conserving his traditions) it is in no wise uncommon for him to resign the best of the rude comforts he has, in the way of accommodation, to some belated one, and content himself with the scantest of those scant comforts, impressing, at the same time, with his native delicacy, the notion, that he courts, rather than shrinks from, the almost penitential regime. Though one would naturally think, that the scorn of material comforts, suggested here, and which many others of his acts evince, would scarcely breed indolence in the Indian, yet this is with him an almost unconquerable weakness. It is, indeed, so ingrained within him, as to resist any attempt, on his own part, to excise it from his economy; and as to defy extirpating or uprooting process sought to be enforced by another. The Indian is, in truth, a supremely indolent being, and testifying to an utter abandonment of himself to the power of indolence over him, has often been known, when recourse solely to the chase was permitted him for the filling of his larder, to delay his steps to the forest, until the gnawing pangs of hunger should drive him there, as offering him the only plan for their appeasing.

When I have said that the Indian is hospitable, I have said that he is kind and considerate, for these are involved with the other. He has much of native delicacy and politeness; and though, from deep-seated prepossession, he denies the woman equal footing with himself; and, though through misconception of woman's true purpose and mission in the world, or through failing to apprehend that higher, greater, more palpable helpfulness she brings to man (all these, because self-dictated, self-enforced) he commits to her much of the drudgery, and imposes upon her many of the heavy burdens, of life, the Indian is not wholly devoid of chivalric instinct.

He is usually reticent in his manner with strangers, (but this is readily explained by his imperfect command of English, and his reluctance to expose his deficiency) though voluble to the last degree when he falls in with his own people.

The Indian has been lauded and hymned by Longfellow and others as the hunter par excellence; but, to apply this to his present condition, and look there for its truth, would be idle. The incitements to indulge his taste for hunting are now so few, and of such slight potency, and the opportunities for giving it play so narrowed down, and so rare, that the pursuit of the chase has become well-nigh obsolete, and something to him redolent only, as it were, with the breath of the past. As the Indian is at present circumstanced and environed, he can beat up little or no game, and his poverty frequently putting out of his reach the procuring of the needful sporting gear, where he does follow hunting, it is pursued with much-weakened ardor, and often bootless issue. He is moved now to its pursuit, solely with the hope of realizing a paltry gain from the sale of the few prizes he may secure.

Though his reputation as a hunter has so mournfully declined, the Indian is yet skilled in tracking rabbits, in the winter season, the youth, particularly, finding this a pleasant diversion. I trust I do not invoke the hasty ire of the sportsman if, in guilelessness of soul, I call this hunting. This very circumscribing of the occasions, and inefficacy of the motive powers, for engaging in hunting, will tend, it is hoped, to correct the indolent habits that the Indian nurses, and the inveteracy of which I have just dwelt upon, and emphasized; for it will not, I think, be denied that his former full-hearted pursuit of the chase (in submission, largely though it was, to imperious calls of nature), is responsible, mainly, for the inherence of this unpleasing trait. Though, of course, hunting in its very nature, enforces a certain activity, it is an activity, so far as any beneficent impressing of the character is concerned, void of wholesomeness, and barren of solid, lasting results; and, viewed in this way, an activity really akin to indolence. With the craving for hunting subdued, the Indian may take up, with less distraction, and devote himself, to good advantage, to his farming, and to industrial callings.

Want of energy and of steadiness of purpose are with the Indian conspicuous weaknesses, and their bearing upon his farming operations may be briefly noticed. He will not devote himself to his work in the fields with that full-intentioned mind to put in an honest day's toil, that the white man brings to his work, often being beguiled, by some outside pleasure or amusement, into permitting his day's work to sustain a break, which he laments afterwards in a melancholy refrain, of farming operations behind, and domestic matters unhinged, generally. Though the white has endeavored (and I the more gladly bear my witness to these attempts at the redemption of the Indian from some of his weaknesses, since the white has been so freely charged with ministering to his appetite for drink, and to the evil side of his nature generally) to infuse these qualities of energy and resolution into the Indian, my observation has not yet discerned them in him. Though irresolute himself, the Indian will not tolerate, but is sufficiently warm in his disapprobation, of any unmanly surrender to weakness or vacillation on the part of whites set in authority over him.

He imbibes freely (I fear the notion of a certain physiological process is embraced by some minds, and that these words will be taken as curtly enunciating the Indian's besetting weakness; but pray be not too eager to dissever them from what is yet to come, as I protest that I am not now wishing to revert to this sad failing). He imbibes freely—the current fashions of the hour amongst whites. If raffling, for instance, be held in honour as a method for expediting the sale of personal effects, the Indian will adapt the practice to the disposal of every conceivable chattel that he desires to get off his hands.

HIS PRONENESS TO DRINK.

The Indian Law, it is well known, puts a restraint, not only upon the purchase of liquor by the Indian, but upon its sale to him by the liquor-seller, or its supply, indeed, in any way, by any one. It forbids, as well, the introducing or harboring of it, in any shape, under any plea, on the Reserve. The law, in this respect, frequently proves a dead letter, since, where the Indian has not the assurance and hardihood to boldly demand the liquor from the hotel-keeper, or where the latter, imbued with a wholesome fear of the penalty for contravening the law, refrains from giving it, the agency of degraded whites is readily secured by the Indian, and, with their connivance, the unlawful object compassed. Of course the white abettor in these cases risks trifling, if any, publicity in the matter, and is inspired with the less fear of detection. There are some few hotel-keepers who, though they more than suspect the purpose to which the liquor these whites are demanding is to be applied, permit rapacity to overpower righteous compunction or scruple, and lend themselves, likewise, though indirectly, to the law's infraction. Happily, the penalty is now so heavy ($300) that the evil is, I think, being got under control.

The effect of drink on the Indian is: to dethrone his; reason; cloud, even narcotize, his reasoning faculties; annul his self-control; confine and fetter all the gentler, enkindle and set ablaze, all the baser, emotions; of his nature, inciting him to acts lustful and bestial; and, with direful transforming power, to make the man the fiend, to leave him, in short, the mere sport of demoniac passion. It may be thought that this is an overdrawn picture, and that, even if it were true, which I aver that it is, to have withheld a part of its terribleness would be the wiser course. I wish, however, in exposing all its frightful features, to secure the pointing of a moral to all who lend themselves to the draughting of such a picture, or, in any way, hold in favor the draughts which lead to its draughting. Let not the Indian, then, resent this picturing of him in such unpleasing and repugnant light, but let him rather apply and use the lesson it is sought to teach, that it may turn to his enduring advantage. Let him overmaster the enslaving passion; let him foreswear the tempting indulgence; let him recoil from the envenomed cup, which savors of the hellish breath and the ensnaring craft of the Evil One, ever seeking to draw chains of Satanic forging about him. The Indian will plead utter obliviousness of the fracas, following some drunken bout, and during the progress of which the death-stroke has been dealt to some unhappy brother. He will disavow all recollection of the apparently systematic doing to death, when drunk, under circumstances of the most revolting atrocity, of an unfortunate wife.