A Treatise on the Six Nation Indians
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James Bovell Mackenzie >> A Treatise on the Six Nation Indians
The Rev. James Chance was one of the old English type of clergyman,
cheery, genial, and whole-souled. Had he planned nothing higher than the
infusing of some of his own geniality into the Indian nature; and, had his
missionary work effected nothing greater than this, his would have been
no unworthy part. As the spiritual husbandman, he strove so to break up
the fallow ground, that the harvest of souls might be the more bountiful.
I have not referred to the later or present occupants of the mission-field
amongst the Indians, as they were, or have been identified for so short a
time with them. I would also say, that it is from no denial to them of the
achieving of solid, lasting work, that I have not alluded to missionaries
outside of the Episcopal body. I have merely made such allusions here
as personal contact with the missionaries has enabled me to record.
It may be thought that any work which contemplates the chronicling of
the Indian's history, will be incomplete, which should fail to trace the
career of Thayandanagea, or Chief Joseph Brant; or which should, at least,
withhold reference to that mighty chieftain. Lest my making no mention
of Brant here might be taken as denying to him the possession of those
sublime qualities, which have formed the theme for so much of laudatory
writing, I make a passing allusion to his life, passing, because his acts
and career have engaged the ability and eloquence of so many writers of
repute for their due commemoration, that I cannot hope to say anything
that should cause further honour or glory to attach to his name.
Brant, above all others of his race, deserves an abiding place in the
memories of his countrymen, and he is entitled to be held in enduring
remembrance by us also.
In the war waged by Britain against the United States in 1812-15, he
allied himself, it is well known, with the British. He bridled license and
excess among his people, and strove to add lustre to the British arms,
by dissuading them from giving rein to any of those practices, nay, by
putting his stern interdict on all those practices, into which Indian
tribes are so prone to be betrayed, and to which they are frequently
incited by merciless chiefs. He posed, indeed, during the war as the
apostle of clemency, not as the upholder of the traditional cruelty of
the Indian.
He always displayed conspicuous bravery, and was the exponent, in his
own person, of that intense and unflinching loyalty, which I verily
believe to be bound up with the life of every Indian.
His loyalty was untainted with the slightest suspicion of treachery,
another vile characteristic from which he redeemed the Indian nature.
The position of Brant and of Sir Walter Scott, so far as each has
left living descendant to uphold his name, is almost analogous, and
marks a rather interesting coincidence. The male line in both families
is extinct. Sir Walter's blood runs now only in the daughter of his
grand-daughter: two daughters alone of a grand-daughter are living,
who own the blood of Brant.
Brant is buried in the graveyard of the old Mohawk Church, a building
instinct with memories of the departed might and prowess of the Indian.
CONSIDERATIONS UPON HIS STANDING AS A MINOR.
Is it a wise or a politic thing in the Government to seek to brand the
Indian, in perpetuity, as a minor in the eye of the law? Repressing in
him anything like self-assertion, is not, to hold him such, fatal to his
self-respect? Does it not make him doubt his manhood entirely? Does it
really, save in the single respect of the restraining of his drinking,
conserve his true interests?
Is that a judicious law, which, while decreeing the Indian's disability
for making a contract with a white man, yet visits upon him no penalty
when he evades and contemns such law; which, guaranteeing to him
immunity for violating or dishonouring his engagement, prompts him to
cast about for some new and, haply, more admired expedient, whereby he
may circumvent and defraud his creditor? Is that an enviable position for
one to be placed in, who, ignorant of the disability I have mentioned,
and guileless enough to suppose, that an Indian, who has fair worldly
substance, when he gives a promissory note, means to pay it, and who, in
that belief, surrenders to him valuable property, only to find afterwards
that the debt is irrecoverable by legal process, and the chattels are
likewise, by moral, or any other effectual, process?
It will be said that the white should not be a party to a contract with
an Indian. Well, man is often trustful, and he does not always foresee
the disaster that his trustfulness shall incur. He frequently credits
his white fellow with an honourable instinct: why may he not, sometimes,
impute it to the Indian?
The law, so far as it involves the restraining of the Indian's drinking,
cannot be impeached: and in the application to the white of a similar
law lies the only solution of the temperance problem.
REFLECTIONS AS TO THE POSSIBLE EFFECT UPON HIM OF ENFRANCHISEMENT.
We cannot estimate the transforming power that his enfranchisement might
exert over the Indian character.
The Indian youth, who is now either a listless wanderer over the confines
of his Reserve; or who finds his highest occupation in putting in, now
and then, desultory work for some neighbouring farmer at harvest-time;
who looks even upon elementary education as useless, and as something
to be gone through, perforce, as a concession to his parents' wish, or
at those parents' bid, would, if enfranchisement were assured to him,
esteem it in its true light, as the first step to a higher training,
which should qualify him for enjoying offices or taking up callings,
from which he is now debarred, and in which, mayhap, he might achieve a
degree of honour and success which should operate, in an incalculable
way, as a stimulus to others of his race, to strive after and attain
the like station and dignity.
There can, I think, be no gainsaying of the view that the Indian, if he
were enfranchised, would avail much more generally than he does now,
of the excellent educational facilities which surround him. The very
consciousness, which would then be at work within him, of his eligibility
for filling any office of honour in the country, which enfranchisement
would confer, would minister to a worthy ambition, and would spur him
on to develop his powers of mind, and, viewing education as the one
grand mean for subserving this end, he would so use it and honour it,
as that he should not discredit his office, if, haply, he should be
chosen to fill one.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
The present Indian legislation, in my judgment, operates in every way
to blight, to grind, and to oppress; blasts each roseate hope of an
ameliorated, a less abject, estate: quenches each swelling aspiration
after a higher and more tolerable destiny; withers each ennobling
aim, cancels each creditable effort that would assure its eventuation;
opposes each soul-stirring resolve to no longer rest under the galling,
gangrenous imputation of a partial manhood.
Though not authorised to speak for the Indian, I believe I express his
views, when I say that he cherishes an ardent wish for enfranchisement,
a right which should be conceded to him by the Legislature, though
it should be urged only by the silent, though not, therefore, the less
weighty and potent, appeal, of the unswerving devotion of his forefathers
to England's crown.
He desires, nay, fervently longs, to break free from his condition of
tutelage; to bring to the general Government the aid of his counsels,
feeble though such may seem, if we measure him by his present status; aid,
which, erstwhile, was not despised, but was, rather, a mighty bulwark of
the British crown; and pants for the occasion to assert, it may be on the
honour-scroll of the nation's fame, his descent from a vaunted ancestry.
ADDENDA TO SECTION ON ENFRANCHISEMENT.
It will be said, perhaps, that to harbor the idea of the Indian's
elevation, following, in any way, upon his closer assimilation with the
white; his divestiture of the badge of political serfdom, and deliverance
from even the suggestion of thraldom--all of which his enfranchisement
contemplates; or that these would assure, in greater degree, his national
weal, would be to indulge a wild chimera, which could but superinduce
the purest visionary picture of his condition under the operation
of the gift. Some might be found, as well, to discredit the notion
that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile
political systems of the disabling regime that now governs, an epoch,
which would witness the shaking off, by the heavy, phlegmatic red man of
the present, of his dull lethargy, with the casting behind him of former
inaction and unproductiveness; and his being moved to assert a healthy,
genuine, wholesome activity, to be directed to lofty or soulful purpose,
or expressed in high and honourable endeavour. And it might be set down
as a reasoning from the standpoint of an illusory optimism, to look for,
through any change in the Indian's political condition, the incoming of
an age, which should be distinguished by a hopeful and helpful accession
to his character of honesty, uprightness, and self-respect, or by their
conservation; or which should be the natal time for the benign rule
over him of contentment, charity, and sobriety, or for the dominance
of a seemly morality. That, likewise, might be deemed idle expectancy,
which would foresee, as a result of the changed order of things, now being
prospectively considered, a season in the Indian's experience, when should
be illustrated the greater sacredness of the marriage relation, and the
happy prevalence of full domestic inter-communion, harmony, and order;
or should be honored a more gracious definition of the woman's province,
with the license to her to embrace a kindlier lot than one decreeing for
her mere slavish labour; or project a mission, to see its fruit in the
softening and refining, and in the reviving of the slumbrous chivalry,
of the man, or to leave, mayhap, some beauteous impress on the race.
It may be maintained, indeed, that the withdrawal from the Indian of
the Government's protecting arm, and the recognition of his position,
as no longer that of a needy, grovelling annuitant, but as one of equal
footing with the white before the law, would--far from bringing blessings
in their train--promote, with other evils, a pernicious development,
with calamitous reaction upon him, of the aggrandizing instinct of
the white, who would lure and entrap him into every kind of disastrous
negotiation--its outcome, in truth, a very maelstrom of artful intrigue
and shameless rapacity, looking to the absorption of the Indian's land,
and of the few worldly possessions he now has. Nay, many would foresee
for the Indian, through the consummation of his enfranchisement, naught
but gloom and sorest plight. These would invest their picture with the
sombrest hues; and, making this assume, under their pessimist delineation,
blackest Tartarean aspect, would crown it with the exhibition of the
Indian, as one sunken, at the instance of the white, in extremest depths
of human sorrow; as plunged, engulphed, and detained in a horrible slough
of degradation and misery. Such would, in short, have an era opened up,
which should mark, at once, the exaltation of the white to a revolting
height of infamy, proclaiming the high carnival of unblushing trickery and
chicane; and should signalize the whelming of the Indian in the noxious
flood of the high-handed, unrighteous, and unprincipled practice of the
white, who would project for him, and through whose unholy machinations he
would be consigned to, a state of existence which should be the hideous
climax of physical and moral debasement.
Now I contend that the claim to ascendancy of the Indian over the white,
in respect of sagacity and cunning and craft, which this condition of
things presupposes, is not satisfactorily made out. And I can readily
conceive of the application of that astuteness, that distinguishes the
Indian in his present trading relations with the white, to the wider
field for its display, which would arise from the extended intercourse and
more frequent contact with the white, that would ensue upon the Indian's
enfranchisement; and of this astuteness operating as his efficient
shield against evil hap or worsting by the white in any coping of the
kind with him.
I do not deny, however, that there might be realization, in part, of
such painful spectacle, as has just been imagined, were enfranchisement,
_pure and simple,_ conferred upon the Indian; and I would distinctly
demur to being taken as an advocate of enfranchisement for him without
certain safeguards. Yet I honor a somewhat wide use of the term, and
discredit the system of individual election for the right (if I may
so call it)--which, I believe, obtains--with its vexatious exactions
as to mental and moral fitness, and the very objectionable feature,
to my mind, of laying upon the band, as a collective organization, the
obligation of assigning to the individual member seeking enfranchisement
so much land, thus imposing upon it, in effect, the onus of conferring
the land qualification. Let its consummation be approached gradually,
and with caution; and let a modified form of it, designed to meet
the Indian's peculiar situation, be recognized and enforced. Let the
enfranchisement be made a tentative thing; and let there be a provision
for the divestiture of the Indian of the right, in case disaster to him
should supervene upon its application.
I have spoken elsewhere of the _fact_ of the Indian's enfranchisement
prompting him, in view of the prospect of occupying various stations
of dignity in the country, which, through the extension to him of the
franchise, would be thrown open to him, to set a greater value upon
education, as qualifying him for enjoying and filling with credit these
stations. Perhaps, it would be the stricter view, and more apropos,
to regard the Indian's more thorough education as that which would lead
him to more readily perceive and better appreciate the full import and.
significance of enfranchisement; which would bring home to his mind a
clear apprehension of the duties and obligations it exacts, and enable
him, as well, to exercise the rights thereto pertaining with a wiser
foresight and greater intelligence.
Let a higher order of mental attainment than he now displays be insured,
by all means, and if possible, to the Indian; and, to this end, let
the authorities concerned invite, through the inducement of something
better than a mere bread-and-butter salary, the accession to the Reserve
of teachers, no one of whom it shall be possible for an Indian youth of
tender years to outstrip in knowledge; or shall be reduced to parrying,
as best as he can, the questionings of a pupil on points bearing upon
merely elementary education.
I would mention a prospective result of the Indian's enfranchisement,
which would suggest, forcibly, the desirability of, and the need for his
anticipatory instruction in the English language. He, unlike the German
or Frenchman, has never been able to maintain, indeed, has never had,
a literature; and I can scarcely conceive of his _tongue_ even
surviving the more general mingling with the white, which would be the
certain concomitant of enfranchisement, which, indeed, with its other
subverting tendencies, would seem to me to ordain its utter effacement.