But Francis Parkman in his Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, notes a corresponding unwillingness on the part of the Indians to separate from their own kindred and people:—
The body cared for, he next addressed himself to the soul. “This life is short and very miserable. It matters little whether we live or die.” The patient remained silent, or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after enlarging for a time in broken Huron on the brevity and nothingness of mortal weal or woe, passed next to the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, which he set forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the listener had consciousness enough to comprehend anything; but with respect to the advantages of the French paradise he was slow of conviction. “I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone,” was a common reply. “Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen,” said another; “but I wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me nothing to eat when I get there.” Often the patient was stolidly silent; sometimes he was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again nature triumphed over grace. “Which will you choose,” demanded the priest of a dying woman, “heaven or hell?” “Hell, if my children are there, as you say,” returned the mother. “Do they hunt in heaven, or make war, or go to feasts?” asked an anxious inquirer. “Oh, no!” replied the father. “Then,” returned the querist, “I will not go. It is not good to be lazy.” But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the regions of the blest. Nor when the dying Indian had been induced at last to express a desire for Paradise was it an easy matter to bring him to a due contrition for his sins; for he would deny with indignation that he had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand, touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. “Why did you baptize that Iroquois?” asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the prisoner recently tortured; “he will get to heaven before us, and, when he sees us coming, he will drive us out.”
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF.
Herodotus tells us (Book III. 118) that after the conspirator Intaphernes and his family had been imprisoned and held for execution by order of Darius, the wife of the condemned man constantly presented herself before the royal palace exhibiting every demonstration of grief. As she regularly continued this conduct, her frequent appearance at length excited the compassion of Darius, who thus addressed her by a messenger: “Woman, King Darius offers you the liberty of any individual of your family whom you may most desire to preserve.” After some deliberation with herself she made this reply: “If the king will grant me the life of any one of my family, I choose my brother in preference to the rest.” Her determination greatly astonished the king; he sent to her therefore a second message to this effect: “The king desires to know why you have thought proper to pass over your children and your husband, and to preserve your brother, who is certainly a more remote connection than your children, and cannot be so dear to you as your husband.” She answered: “O king! if it please the deity, I may have another husband; and if I be deprived of these I may have other children; but as my parents are both dead, it is certain that I can have no other brother.” The answer appeared to Darius very judicious; indeed he was so well pleased with it that he not only gave the woman the life of her brother, but also pardoned her eldest son.
A passage in the Antigone of Sophocles embodies the same singular sentiment. Creon forbade the rites of sepulture to Polynices, after the duel with his brother Eteocles, in which they were mutually slain, and decreed immediate death to any one who should dare to bury him. Antigone, their sister, was detected in the act of burial, and was condemned to be buried alive for her pious care. In her dangerous situation she goes on to say:—
And thus, my Polynices, for my care
Of thee, I am rewarded, and the good
Alone shall praise me; for a husband dead,
Nor, had I been a mother, for my children
Would I have dared to violate the laws—