I accordingly went into the house with him; when the Chiefs immediately rose, and gave me a seat among them.
All the Indians in the house were smoking their pipes when I came in; and the stranger was sitting opposite the Chiefs, in a seat, or rather a platform, by himself. The time appeared to me very long, as I was anxious to hear the news; being much interested in the event, as the Indians had been deliberating, whether or not they would permit me to continue surveying, or send me out of the country: and, what surprised me, was, that no one—contrary to their usual custom—asked him for the news; and I was at a loss to account for their conduct. Eventually, the Indian himself—after prefacing the business, with telling them, he had no doubt,—as they knew he had been to the West—they would be gratified in hearing his news. But no one appeared to signify his assent or negative. The Indian then gave an account of an affair between a convoy of Americans—who were carrying reinforcements and provisions to one of our frontier posts—and the Indians; and they had killed the commanding officer and a number of our men: and, after he had related all he had to say, no one asked for any particulars of the action, or for any corroborating circumstance; as I had formerly observed, they were particularly polite to strangers and visiters, and were very cautious to say or do any thing to hurt their feelings, and, soon after, the chiefs and other Indians began to leave the house.
I left the house with the Doctor; and, as soon as we had passed the door, I expressed my surprise to him, at the manner they treated the man who brought the news, as it was so different from any treatment I had before seen, when visited by strangers; and that I would thank him to inform me of the cause of it:—when he, without any hesitation, and with considerable emphasis, answered, “He once told a lie”—and continued: “What that man said, may be so true; may be so not. We always listen to what a newsman has to say,—even when we know him to be a liar. But, whether we believe him or not, it is not our custom to let him know; or to say any thing on the subject: for, if we had asked him any questions about the fight, it would have been a great gratification to him; as he would have concluded some of the company did believe him: which is a thing we do not indulge any person in, who has been guilty of telling a lie.” He concluded, by saying, “He all one as dead.”
PETER OTSAQUETTE, THE ONEIDAN
Peter Otsaquette was the son of a man of consideration among the Oneida Indians of New York. At the close of the Revolutionary war, he was noticed by the Marquis de La Fayette, who, to a noble zeal for liberty, united the most philanthropic feelings. Viewing, therefore, this young savage with peculiar interest, and anticipating the happy results to be derived from his moral regeneration, he took him, though scarcely twelve years old, to France. Peter arrived at that period when Louis XVI. and Maria Antoinette were in the zenith of their glory. There he was taught the accomplishments of a gentleman;—music, drawing, and fencing, were made familiar to him, and he danced with a grace that a Vestris could not but admire. At about eighteen, his separation from a country in which he had spent his time so agreeably and so profitably, became necessary. Laden with favours from the Marquis, and the miniatures of those friends he had left behind. Peter departed for America—inflated, perhaps, with the idea, that the deep ignorance of his nation, with that of the Indians of the whole continent, might be dispelled by his efforts, and he become the proud instrument of the civilization of thousands.
Prosecuting his route to the land of his parents, he came to the city of Albany; not the uncivilized savage, not with any of those marks which bespoke a birth in the forest, or years spent in toiling the wilds of a desert, but possessing a fine commanding figure, an expressive countenance, an intelligent eye, with a face scarcely indicative of the race from which he was descended. He presented, at this period, an interesting spectacle: a child of the wilderness was beheld about to proceed to the home of his forefathers, having received the brilliant advantages of a cultivated mind, and on his way to impart to the nation that owned him, the benefits which civilization had given him. It was an opportunity for the philosopher to contemplate, and to reflect on the future good this young Indian might be the means of producing.
Shortly after his arrival in Albany—where he visited the first families—he took advantage of Governor Clinton’s journey to Fort Stanwix (where a treaty was to be held with the Indians,) to return to his tribe. On the route, Otsaquette amused the company (among whom were the French Minister, Count De Moustiers, and several gentlemen of respectability) by his powers on various instruments of music. At Fort Stanwix, he found himself again with the companions of his early days, who saw and recognised him. His friends and relations had not forgotten him, and he was welcomed to his home and to his blanket.
But that which occurred soon after his reception, led him to a too fearful anticipation of an unsuccessful project; for the Oneidas, as if they could not acknowledge Otsaquette, attired in the dress with which he appeared before them,—a mark which did not disclose his nation,—and, thinking that he had assumed it, as if ashamed of his own native costume, the garb of his ancestors, they tore it from him with a savage avidity, and a fiend-like ferociousness, daubed on the paint to which he had been so long unused, and clothed him with the uncouth habiliments held sacred by his tribe. Their fiery ferocity, in the performance of the act, showed but too well the bold stand they were about to take against the innovations they supposed Otsaquette was to be the agent for affecting against their immemorial manners and customs, and which, from the venerable antiquity of their structure, it would be nothing short of sacrilege to destroy.
Thus the reformed savage was taken back again to his native barbarity, and—as if to cap the climax of degradation to a mind just susceptible of its own powers—was married to a squaw!