The life of Red Jacket is the least important portion of this subject, affording little more than a narrative of treaties for the sale of lands, with an occasional glimpse at the polity of the Six Nations, and the Senecas in particular. The period is not one calculated to display the powers which the early history and origin of the Six Nations might call forth. Industry and research are nearly all that is required. Both of these qualities Colonel Stone has evinced. There is little that is positively new in the book, but many doubtful questions have been settled, and a clearer insight given into the Indian character and customs than we had been led to expect. As an instance of the latter, we notice the fact mentioned of the women and war-chiefs in the Canandaigua council, who took the business of the treaty out of the sachems’ hands, asserting that the latter had no right to refuse the sale of lands, against the opinion of the women and braves. We are also made more fully acquainted, in this volume, with the subjection, in general, of the military to the civil power among the Indians. Perhaps the style is objectionable in one or two particulars, and there are too many speeches given “in extenso;” while events of little importance sometimes occupy as much space as those of greater moment, and tend to give an occasional prolixity to the work, which would be well worth the author’s revision when a second edition comes to be demanded. The anecdotes which intersperse the volume are highly characteristic. On the whole, in collecting and arranging so many undigested facts, and in preserving from oblivion the oral traditions of the actors in the scenes he relates, Colonel Stone has shown a commendable industry. But his work is only begun. The mere record of a chieftain’s life, however celebrated the individual may be, is secondary to the history of a mighty people and the inquiry into its origin. We care little, comparatively, when or how Red Jacket spoke, but we do care whence his people came. Our object is to learn the polity and customs of his nation, to analyze its language—in short, thoroughly to understand its history and character. To do this is what constitutes Colonel Stone’s design, but as yet he has only incidentally carried out his plan. Neither the life of Brandt nor that of Red Jacket does more than skim over the great question our author has proposed to discuss. Biography is not history: the narrative of a few land treaties is not the account of a nation’s glory. As the greatest people of the Indian race, and as the conquerors of the Alligewi, we feel an interest in dissipating the obscurity which attends the origin of the Six Nations. It is in vain to say such an attempt would be fruitless. Has it ever been methodically, analytically, perseveringly tried? Why does Colonel Stone avoid this portion of his subject—the portion which should naturally claim his attention first? We tell him frankly that he would gain ten times more reputation, and prove himself possessed of ten times more talent, if he would come up to this matter gallantly, and not scour around and around it, like a frightened hound.
Red Jacket was a sachem or civil chief among the Senecas. He seems to have been of no family, and to have won his way to the first place in the councils of his people, by his tact, his patriotism, and, more than all his eloquence. Few men have ever lived who surpassed him in oratory, if we may judge his proficiency in that art by the effect he produced on his hearers. All that has been related of Demosthenes and Cicero among the ancients, or of Bolingbroke and Chatham among the moderns, may be applied with equal truth to this great orator of the Senecas. When he rose to speak not a word was heard—when he took his seat his enthusiasm infected all. He was even able to carry his point when superstition, in its darkest guise, was arrayed against him. Some specimens, at least, of such wonderful powers of eloquence may naturally be expected to have come down to us; yet, with but one or two exceptions, his printed speeches are tame to mediocrity. Much of this, no doubt, is to be attributed to incompetent translations: indeed, our author lays the whole fault at this door. But there is another and simpler reason, to which Colonel Stone has not alluded.
Every nation has its distinctive spirit, or, to speak more plainly, its peculiar mode of thought. To this the orator must accommodate himself. The same style of eloquence which affects an Englishman, falls cold on the ear of an Italian. Even the Philippics of Demosthenes, or the orations of Cicero, were unrivalled, only so far forth as they were adapted to the peculiarities of an Athenian or Roman audience; and, had the situation of either of these orators been changed, there is great chance that, unless they altered their style, they would have been hooted from the forum, or at least listened to in silence. So with the oriental orators, whose most celebrated passages seem turgid to us. We take it, then, that one of the great secrets of this apparent tameness in Red Jacket’s orations, arises, as much from our different appreciation of his style, as from the inadequacy of the translations. We admit that there exists no perfect transcript of a harangue by him, but could one of his speeches be handed down to us, word for word, we predict that it would seem to us little better than turgid bombast or inflated allegory. Yet that Red Jacket was a great Seneca orator, we have the concurrent testimony of more than fifty years—to say nothing of the evidence, in the book before us, of his vigorous intellect and grace of manner, the two most important requisites for oral eloquence.
The character of this celebrated chieftain was an odd mixture of “dirt and divinity.” He was great as a whole, but mean in the detail. He ruled over warriors, and was an arrant coward. He professed to be frank, and lived on intrigue. His constant struggle was to retain the lands of his people, and yet more than once he would have sold them for his personal emolument. He was a hypocrite, a drunkard, and devoured by vanity; but he was also an orator, a statesman, and devoted to his country. He sometimes was capable of the loftiest generosity, and at other times he would stoop to cheat the government out of a coat. But in one thing his character is above reproach—he never ceased asserting the rights of his country; and from the treaty at Canandaigua, down to the latest hour of his life, he opposed manfully every alienation of the Seneca soil. He was often unsuccessful, and always misrepresented; but he did not relax his efforts. On the size of their domain, he said, depended the importance of his people; and that people it was his ambition to preserve an entire nation. For this he would have built up a wall of separation betwixt them and the whites—for this he excluded missionaries—for this he opposed schools—for this he denounced intermarriages—for this he lived and died a pagan. Yet he survived to see all his efforts in vain. He survived to behold the Senecas dwindled to half their numbers, to see their forests cut down, and to witness their lands slip piecemeal from their hands. How melancholy to contemplate the poor old chief, when, returning to hunt in the beautiful valley of the Gennesee, he found the ravages which the white men had made in the forest so great, that he sat down and wept.
We have said that Red Jacket was intemperate; and the vice grew on him as he grew older. When a council was to be held, however, he abstained from indulgence until the deliberations were past, but then his excesses were often frightful. An anecdote is related by Colonel Stone, which shows the old chiefs propensity in rather a ludicrous light. Colonel Snelling was a great favorite with him. When that officer was given the command of Governor’s Island, Red Jacket bade him farewell in the following words:
“Brother:—I hear you are going to a place called Governor’s Island. I hope you will be a governor yourself. I understand that you white people think children a blessing. I hope you may have a thousand. And above all, I hope, wherever you go, you may never find whiskey above two shillings a quart.”
Red Jacket died in 1830, and with him perished the glory of the once powerful Six Nations. Their subsequent history is well known. Their last rood of land in New York has now passed into the hands of the white man; the places which knew them shall know them no more, and in a few years the Iroquois will be numbered with the dead.
The short sketches of the lives of Cornplanter, Farmer’s Brother, and Harry O’Bail, in the conclusion of the work, are unusually interesting.
The volume is printed well, on paper of the finest quality, but disfigured, here and there, with typographical mistakes.