“In this indirect manner is instruction on all subjects given to the young people. They are to learn the arts of hunting, trapping, and making war, by listening to the aged when conversing together on those subjects; each in his turn relating how he acted; and opportunities are afforded to them for that purpose. By this mode of instructing youth, their respect for the aged is kept alive, and it is increased by the reflection that the same respect will be paid to them at a future day, when young persons will be attentive to what they shall relate.
“This method of conveying instruction is, I believe, common to most Indian nations; it is so, at least, amongst all those that I have become acquainted with, and lays the foundation for that voluntary submission to their chiefs, for which they are so remarkable. Thus has been maintained for ages, without convulsions and without civil discords, this traditional government, of which the world perhaps does not offer another example; a government in which there are no positive laws, but only long established habits and customs; no code of jurisprudence, but the experience of former times; no magistrates, but advisers, to whom the people nevertheless pay a willing and implicit obedience; in which age confers rank, wisdom gives power, and moral goodness secures a title to universal respect. All this seems to be effected by the simple means of an excellent mode of education, by which a strong attachment to ancient customs, respect for age, and the love of virtue are indelibly impressed upon the minds of youth, so that these impressions acquire strength as time pursues its course, and as they pass through successive generations.”
What can afford stronger proof of the Socialist’s doctrine, that the character of man results from the peculiar mode of training to which he may be subjected, than the forgoing statements of the missionary Heckewelder? Robert Owen and his disciples assert that man is the creature of circumstances; that the quality of his character corresponds to the quality of the associations under the influence of which he has been trained. And in the statements of a minister of the Gospel, we find ample proof of the truth of these assertions. O! that men were wise enough to perceive the benefits that would result from the proper application of a principle, the truth of which is thus warranted by the condition, character, and training of the Aborigines of America!
Further particulars respecting the Cruelty of the Indians, their Hospitality, their sense of Justice, and the mode in which the Whites have acted towards them.
A great deal has been said respecting the cruelty of the North-American Indians. That they are in some instances cruel, may be admitted; but this need not be wondered at, when we consider the atrocities which the whites have perpetrated upon them. “Cruelty and eager desire for revenge” says Buchanan, “are the chief, if not the only deformities of their nature; and these are scarcely ever manifested, except in their open hostilities, the causes of which are precisely similar to those which actuate civilized nations. Then indeed their ferocity breaks out with almost demoniacal fury; their captives are generally doomed to death; but it is not until they have undergone the most exquisite tortures, the most ingenious, unutterable and protracted agony, that the final blow is given. These atrocious practices are not however peculiar to our unlettered Indians. The metal boot and wedge; the thumb screw; the rack; the gradual burnings of Smithfield; the religious butchery of the bloody Piedmontese who rolled Mother with Infant down the rocks; the dismemberment by horses; Luke’s iron crown; Damien’s bed of steel;” and the kiss of the virgin; “sufficiently attest the claims of enlightened man to distinction in the art of torture.”[72]
Governor Clinton in his discourse to the New York Society, says that “the five nations, notwithstanding their horrible cruelty, are in one respect, entitled to singular commendation for the exercise of humanity; those enemies they spared in battle they made free; whereas, with all other barbarous nations slavery was the commutation of death. But it becomes not us, if we value the character of our forefathers; it becomes not the civilized nations of Europe who have had American possessions, to inveigh against the merciless conduct of the savage. His appetite for blood was sharpened and whetted by European instigation and his cupidity was enlisted on the side of cruelty by every temptation.”[73]
On the cruelty of the Indians, and the provocation they have received from the Whites, Mr. Heckewelder in his 44th chapter, has the following observations—
“The Indians are cruel to their enemies!—In some cases they are, but perhaps not more so than white men have sometimes shown themselves. There have been instances of white men flaying or taking off the skins of Indians who had fallen into their hands, then tanning those skins or cutting them up in pieces, making them up into razor-straps, and exporting them for sale, as was done at or near Pittsburg sometime during the revolutionary war. Those things are abominations in the eyes of the Indians, who indeed, when strongly excited, inflict torments on their prisoners and put them to death by cruel tortures, but never are guilty of acts of barbarity in cold blood. Neither do the Delawares and some other Indian nations, ever on any account disturb the ashes of the dead.