CHATHAM.
At Chatham, in the Western District, and on board the steam-boat, between Chatham and Detroit. July 12, 13.
I can hardly imagine a more beautiful or more fortunate position for a new city than this of Chatham (you will find it on the map just upon that neck of land between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie). It is sufficiently inland to be safe, or easily secured against the sudden attacks of a foreign enemy; the river Thames is navigable from the mouth up to the town, a distance of sixteen miles, for all kinds of lake craft, including steamers and schooners of the largest class. Lake St. Clair, into which the Thames discharges itself, is between Lake Erie and Lake Huron; the banks are formed of extensive prairies of exhaustless fertility, where thousands of cattle might roam and feed at will. As a port and depôt for commerce, its position and capabilities can hardly be surpassed, while as an agricultural country it may be said literally to flow with milk and honey. A rich soil, abundant pasture, no rent, no taxes—what is wanting here but more intelligence and a better employment of capital to prevent the people from sinking into brutified laziness, and stimulate to something like mental activity and improvement? The profuse gifts of nature are here running to waste, while hundreds and thousands in the old country are trampling over each other in the eager, hungry conflict for daily food.
This land of Upper Canada is in truth the very paradise of hope. In spite of all I see and hear, which might well move to censure, to regret, to pity,—how much there is in which the trustful spirit may reasonably rejoice! It would be possible, looking at things under one aspect, to draw such a picture of the mistakes of the government, the corruption of its petty agents, the social backwardness and moral destitution of the people, as would shock you, and tempt you to regard Canada as a place of exile for convicts. On the other hand, I could, without deviating from the sober and literal truth, give you such vivid pictures of the beauty and fertility of this land of the west, of its glorious capabilities for agriculture and commerce, of the goodness and kindliness and resources of poor, much-abused human nature, as developed amid all the crushing influences of oppression, ignorance, and prejudice; and of the gratitude and self-complacency of those who have exchanged want, servitude, and hopeless toil at home, for plenty and independence and liberty here,—as would transport you in fancy into an earthly elysium. Thus, as I travel on, I am disgusted, or I am enchanted; I despair or I exult by turns; and these inconsistent and apparently contradictory emotions and impressions I set down as they arise, leaving you to reconcile them as well as you can, and make out the result for yourself.
TECUMSEH.
It is seldom that in this country the mind is ever carried backward by associations or recollections of any kind. Horace Walpole said of Italy, that it was "a land in which the memory saw more than the eye," and in Canada hope must play the part of memory. It is all the difference between seed-time and harvest. We are rich in anticipation, but poor in possession—more poor in memorials. Some vague and general traditions, of no interest whatever to the ignorant settlers, do indeed exist, of horrid conflicts between the Hurons and the Iroquois, all along these shores, in the time and before the time of the French dominion; of the enterprise and daring of the early fur traders; above all, of the unrequited labours and sacrifices of the missionaries, whether Jesuits, or Moravians, or Methodists, some of whom perished in tortures; others devoted themselves to the most horrible privations—each for what he believed to be the cause of truth, and for the diffusion of the light of salvation; none near to applaud the fortitude with which they died, or to gain hope and courage from their example. During the last war between Great Britain and the United States[15]—that war, in its commencement dishonourable to the Americans, in its conclusion shameful to the British, and in its progress disgraceful and demoralising to both;—that war, which began and was continued in the worst passions of our nature, cupidity and vengeance;—which brought no advantage to any one human being—not even the foolish noise and empty glory which wait oftentimes on human conflicts; a war scarce heard of in Europe, even by the mother country, who paid its cost in millions, and in the blood of some of her best subjects; a war obscure, fratricidal, and barbarous, which has left behind no effect but a mutual exasperation and distress along the frontiers of both nations, and a hatred which, like hatred between near kinsmen, is more bitter and irreconcilable than any hostility between the mercenary armies of rival nations; for here, not only the two governments quarrelled, but the people, their institutions, feelings, opinions, prejudices, local and personal interests, were brought into collision;—during this vile, profitless, and unnatural war, a battle was fought near Chatham, called by some the battle of the Thames, and by others the battle of the Moravian towns, in which the Americans, under General Harrison, beat General Proctor with considerable loss. But it is chiefly worthy of notice, as the last scene of the life of Técumseh, a Shawanee chief, of whom it is possible you may not have heard, but who is the historical hero of these wild regions. Some American writers call him the "Indian Napoleon;" both began their plans of policy and conquest about the same time, and both about the same time terminated their career, the one by captivity, the other by death. But the genius of the Indian warrior and his exploits were limited to a narrow field along the confines of civilisation, and their record is necessarily imperfect. It is clear that he had entertained the daring and really magnificent plan formerly embraced by Pontiac—that of uniting all the Indian tribes and nations in a league against the whites. That he became the ally of the British was not from friendship to us, but hatred to the Americans, whom it was his first object to repel from any further encroachments on the rights and territories of the Red men—in vain! These attempts of a noble and a fated race, to oppose, or even to delay for a time, the rolling westward of the great tide of civilisation, are like efforts to dam up the rapids of Niagara. The moral world has its laws, fixed as those of physical nature. The hunter must make way before the agriculturist, and the Indian must learn to take the bit between his teeth, and set his hand to the ploughshare, or perish. As yet I am inclined to think that the idea of the Indians becoming what we call a civilised people seems quite hopeless; those who entertain such benevolent anticipations should come here, and behold the effect which three centuries of contact with the whites have produced on the nature and habits of the Indian. The benevolent theorists in England should come and see with their own eyes that there is a bar to the civilisation of the Indians, and the increase or even preservation of their numbers, which no power can overleap. Their own principle, that "the Great Spirit did indeed create both the red man and the white man, but created them essentially different in nature and manners," is not, perhaps, far from the truth.
MISSIONARIES AMONG THE INDIANS.
Take, for instance, the following scene, as described with great naïveté by one of the Moravian missionaries. After a conference with some of the Delaware chief men, in which they were informed that these missionaries had come to teach them a better and purer religion, of which the one fundamental principle, leading to eternal salvation, was belief in the Redeemer, and atonement through his blood for the sins of all mankind—all which was contained in the book which he held in his hand,—"Wangoman, a great chief and medicine-man among them, rose to reply. He began by tracing two lines on the ground, and endeavoured to explain that there were two ways which led alike to God and to happiness, the way of the Red man, and the way of the White man, but the way of the Red man, he said, was the straighter and the shorter of the two."
The missionary here interposed, and represented that God himself had descended on earth to teach men the true way. Wangoman declared that "he had been intimately acquainted with God for many years, and had never heard that God became a man and shed his blood, and therefore the God of whom Brother Zeisberger preached could not be the true God, or he, Wangoman, would have been made acquainted with the circumstance."