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Margaret Fuller Ossoli - At Home And Abroad

M >> Margaret Fuller Ossoli >> At Home And Abroad




Mrs. Grant speaks thus of the position of woman amid the Mohawk
Indians:--

"Lady Mary Montague says, that the court of Vienna was the paradise of
old women, and that there is no other place in the world where a woman
past fifty excites the least interest. Had her travels extended to
the interior of North America, she would have seen another instance of
this inversion of the common mode of thinking. Here a woman never was
of consequence, till sire had a son old enough to fight the battles of
his country. From, that date she held a superior rank in society; was
allowed to live at ease, and even called to consultations on national
affairs. In savage and warlike countries, the reign of beauty is very
short, and its influence comparatively limited. The girls in childhood
had a very pleasing appearance; but excepting their fine hair,
eyes, and teeth, every external grace was soon banished by perpetual
drudgery, carrying burdens too heavy to be borne, and other slavish
employments, considered beneath the dignity of the men. These walked
before, erect and graceful, decked with ornaments which set off to
advantage the symmetry of their well-formed persons, while the poor
women followed, meanly attired, bent under the weight of the children
and the utensils, which they carried everywhere with, them, and
disfigured and degraded by ceaseless toils. They were very early
married, for a Mohawk had no other servant but his wife; and whenever
he commenced hunter, it was requisite he should have some one to carry
his load, cook his kettle, make his moccasons, and, above all, produce
the young warriors who were to succeed him in the honors of the chase
and of the tomahawk. Wherever man is a mere hunter, woman is a mere
slave. It is domestic intercourse that softens man, and elevates
woman; and of that there can be but little, where the employments
and amusements are not in common. The ancient Caledonians honored the
fair; but then it is to be observed, they were fair huntresses,
and moved in the light of their beauty to the hill of roes; and the
culinary toils were entirely left to the rougher sex. When the young
warrior made his appearance, it softened the cares of his mother, who
well knew that, when he grew up, every deficiency in tenderness to his
wife would be made up in superabundant duty and affection to her. If
it were possible to carry filial veneration to excess, it was done
here; for all other charities were absorbed in it. I wonder this
system of depressing the sex in their early years, to exalt them,
when all their juvenile attractions are flown, and when mind alone
can distinguish them, has not occurred to our modern reformers.
The Mohawks took good care not to admit their women to share their
prerogatives, till they approved themselves good wives and mothers."

The observations of women upon the position of woman are always more
valuable than those of men; but, of these two, Mrs. Grant's seem
much, nearer the truth than Mrs. Schoolcraft's, because, though her
opportunities for observation did not bring her so close, she looked
more at both sides to find the truth.

Carver, in his travels among the Winnebagoes, describes two queens,
one nominally so, like Queen Victoria; the other invested with a
genuine royalty, springing from her own conduct.

In the great town of the Winnebagoes, he found a queen presiding over
the tribe, instead of a sachem. He adds, that, in some tribes, the
descent is given to the female line in preference to the male, that
is, a sister's son will succeed to the authority, rather than a
brother's son. The position of this Winnebago queen reminded me
forcibly of Queen Victoria's.

"She sat in the council, but only asked a few questions, or gave some
trifling directions in matters relative to the state, for women are
never allowed to sit in their councils, except they happen to be
invested with the supreme authority, and then it is not customary for
them to make any formal speeches, as the chiefs do. She was a very
ancient woman, small in stature, and not much distinguished by
her dress from several young women that attended her. These, her
attendants, seemed greatly pleased whenever I showed any tokens
of respect to their queen, especially when I saluted her, which I
frequently did to acquire her favor."

The other was a woman, who, being taken captive, found means to kill
her captor, and make her escape; and the tribe were so struck with
admiration at the courage and calmness she displayed on the occasion,
as to make her chieftainess in her own light.

Notwithstanding the homage paid to women, and the consequence allowed
them in some cases, it is impossible to look upon the Indian women
without feeling that they _do_ occupy a lower place than women among
the nations of European civilization. The habits of drudgery expressed
in their form and gesture, the soft and wild but melancholy expression
of their eye, reminded me of the tribe mentioned by Mackenzie, where
the women destroy their female children, whenever they have a good
opportunity; and of the eloquent reproaches addressed by the Paraguay
woman to her mother, that she had not, in the same way, saved her from
the anguish and weariness of her lot.

More weariness than anguish, no doubt, falls to the lot of most of
these women. They inherit submission, and the minds of the generality
accommodate themselves more or less to any posture. Perhaps they
suffer less than their white sisters, who have more aspiration and
refinement, with little power of self-sustenance. But their place is
certainly lower, and their share of the human inheritance less.

Their decorum and delicacy are striking, and show that, when these are
native to the mind, no habits of life make any difference. Their whole
gesture is timid, yet self-possessed. They used to crowd round me, to
inspect little things I had to show them, but never press near; on the
contrary, would reprove and keep off the children. Anything they took
from my hand was held with care, then shut or folded, and returned
with an air of lady-like precision. They would not stare, however
curious they might be, but cast sidelong glances.

A locket that I wore was an object of untiring interest; they seemed
to regard it as a talisman. My little sun-shade was still more
fascinating to them; apparently they had never before seen one. For an
umbrella they entertained profound regard, probably looking upon it as
the most luxurious superfluity a person can possess, and therefore a
badge of great wealth. I used to see an old squaw, whose sullied
skin and coarse, tanned locks told that she had braved sun and storm,
without a doubt or care, for sixty years at least, sitting gravely at
the door of her lodge, with an old green umbrella over her head, happy
for hours together in the dignified shade. For her happiness pomp
came not, as it so often does, too late; she received it with grateful
enjoyment.

One day, as I was seated on one of the canoes, a woman came and sat
beside me, with her baby in its cradle set up at her feet. She asked
me by a gesture to let her take my sun-shade, and then to show her how
to open it. Then she put it into her baby's hand, and held it over
its head, looking at me the while with a sweet, mischievous laugh, as
much, as to say, "You carry a thing that is only fit for a baby." Her
pantomime was very pretty. She, like the other women, had a glance,
and shy, sweet expression in the eye; the men have a steady gaze.

That noblest and loveliest of modern Preux, Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
who came through Buffalo to Detroit and Mackinaw, with Brant, and was
adopted into the Bear tribe by the name of Eghnidal, was struck in
the same way by the delicacy of manners in women. He says:
"Notwithstanding the life they lead, which would make most women rough
and masculine, they are as soft, meek, and modest as the best brought
up girls in England. Somewhat coquettish too! Imagine the manners of
Mimi in a poor _squaw_, that has been carrying packs in the woods all
her life."

McKenney mentions that the young wife, during the short bloom of her
beauty, is an object of homage and tenderness to her husband. One
Indian woman, the Flying Pigeon, a beautiful and excellent person, of
whom he gives some particulars, is an instance of the power uncommon
characters will always exert of breaking down the barriers custom has
erected round them. She captivated by her charms, and inspired her
husband and son with, reverence for her character. The simple praise
with which the husband indicates the religion, the judgment, and the
generosity he saw in her, are as satisfying as Count Zinzendorf's more
labored eulogium on his "noble consort." The conduct of her son,
when, many years after her death, he saw her picture at Washington, is
unspeakably affecting. Catlin gives anecdotes of the grief of a
chief for the loss of a daughter, and the princely gifts he offers
in exchange for her portrait, worthy not merely of European, but of
Troubadour sentiment. It is also evident that, as Mrs. Schoolcraft
says, the women have great power at home. It can never be otherwise,
men being dependent upon them for the comfort of their lives. Just
so among ourselves, wives who are neither esteemed nor loved by their
husbands have great power over their conduct by the friction of
every day, and over the formation of their opinions by the daily
opportunities so close a relation affords of perverting testimony
and instilling doubts. But these sentiments should not come in brief
flashes, but burn as a steady flame; then there would be more women
worthy to inspire them. This power is good for nothing, unless the
woman be wise to use it aright. Has the Indian, has the white woman,
as noble a feeling of life and its uses, as religious a self-respect,
as worthy a field of thought and action, as man? If not, the white
woman, the Indian woman, occupies a position inferior to that of man.
It is not so much a question of power, as of privilege.

The men of these subjugated tribes, now accustomed to drunkenness and
every way degraded, bear but a faint impress of the lost grandeur of
the race. They are no longer strong, tall, or finely proportioned.
Yet, as you see them stealing along a height, or striding boldly
forward, they remind you of what _was_ majestic in the red man.

On the shores of Lake Superior, it is said, if you visit them at
home, you may still see a remnant of the noble blood. The Pillagers
(Pilleurs), a band celebrated by the old travellers, are still
existent there.

"Still some, 'the eagles of their tribe,' may rush."

I have spoken of the hatred felt by the white man for the Indian: with
white women it seems to amount to disgust, to loathing. How I could
endure the dirt, the peculiar smell, of the Indians, and their
dwellings, was a great marvel in the eyes of my lady acquaintance;
indeed, I wonder why they did not quite give me up, as they certainly
looked on me with great distaste for it. "Get you gone, you Indian
dog," was the felt, if not the breathed, expression towards the
hapless owners of the soil;--all their claims, all their sorrows quite
forgot, in abhorrence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices
the whites have taught them.

A person who had seen them during great part of a life expressed his
prejudices to me with such violence, that I was no longer surprised
that the Indian children threw sticks at him, as he passed. A lady
said: "Do what you will for them, they will be ungrateful. The savage
cannot be washed out of them. Bring up an Indian child, and see if you
can attach it to you." The next moment, she expressed, in the presence
of one of those children whom she was bringing up, loathing at the
odor left by one of her people, and one of the most respected, as
he passed through the room. When the child is grown, she will be
considered basely ungrateful not to love the lady, as she certainly
will not; and this will be cited as an instance of the impossibility
of attaching the Indian.

Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of love and intelligence
from, the white man, have been civilized and made a valuable
ingredient in the new state, I will not say; but this we are sure
of,--the French Catholics, at least, did not harm them, nor disturb
their minds merely to corrupt them. The French, they loved. But the
stern Presbyterian, with his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle
and the college, with their niggard concessions and unfeeling stare,
have never tried the experiment. It has not been tried. Our people and
our government have sinned alike against the first-born of the
soil, and if they are the fated agents of a new era, they have done
nothing,--have invoked no god to keep them sinless while they do the
hest of fate.

Worst of all is it, when they invoke the holy power only to mask their
iniquity; when the felon trader, who, all the week, has been besotting
and degrading the Indian with rum mixed with red pepper, and damaged
tobacco, kneels with him on Sunday before a common altar, to tell
the rosary which recalls the thought of Him crucified for love of
suffering men, and to listen to sermons in praise of "purity"!!

"My savage friends," cries the old, fat priest, "you must, above all
things, aim at _purity_."

Oh! my heart swelled when I saw them in a Christian church. Better
their own dog-feasts and bloody rites than such mockery of that other
faith.

"The dog," said an Indian, "was once a spirit; he has fallen for his
sin, and was given by the Great Spirit, in this shape, to man, as his
most intelligent companion. Therefore we sacrifice it in highest honor
to our friends in this world,--to our protecting geniuses in another."

There was religion in that thought. The white man sacrifices his own
brother, and to Mammon, yet he turns in loathing from, the dog-feast.

"You say," said the Indian of the South to the missionary, "that
Christianity is pleasing to God. How can that be?--Those men at
Savannah are Christians."

Yes! slave-drivers and Indian traders are called Christians, and the
Indian is to be deemed less like the Son of Mary than they! Wonderful
is the deceit of man's heart!

I have not, on seeing something of them in their own haunts, found
reason to change the sentiments expressed in the following lines, when
a deputation of the Sacs and Foxes visited Boston in 1837, and were,
by one person at least, received in a dignified and courteous manner.


GOVERNOR EVERETT RECEIVING THE INDIAN CHIEFS,

NOVEMBER, 1837.

Who says that Poesy is on the wane,
And that the Muses tune their lyres in vain?
'Mid all the treasures of romantic story,
When thought was fresh and fancy in her glory,
Has ever Art found out a richer theme,
More dark a shadow, or more soft a gleam,
Than fall upon the scene, sketched carelessly,
In the newspaper column of to-day?

American romance is somewhat stale.
Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale,
Wampum and calumets and forests dreary,
Once so attractive, now begins to weary.
Uncas and Magawisca please us still,
Unreal, yet idealized with skill;
But every poetaster, scribbling witling,
From the majestic oak his stylus whittling,
Has helped to tire us, and to make us fear
The monotone in which so much we hear
Of "stoics of the wood," and "men without a tear."

Yet Nature, ever buoyant, ever young,
If let alone, will sing as erst she sung;
The course of circumstance gives back again
The Picturesque, erewhile pursued in vain;
Shows us the fount of Romance is not wasted,--
The lights and shades of contrast not exhausted.

Shorn of his strength, the Samson now must sue
For fragments from the feast his fathers gave;
The Indian dare not claim what is his due,
But as a boon his heritage must crave;
His stately form shall soon be seen no more
Through all his father's land, the Atlantic shore;
Beneath the sun, to _us_ so kind, _they_ melt,
More heavily each day our rule is felt.
The tale is old,--we do as mortals must:
Might makes right here, but God and Time are just.

Though, near the drama hastens to its close,
On this last scene awhile your eyes repose;
The polished Greek and Scythian meet again,
The ancient life is lived by modern men;
The savage through our busy cities walks,
He in his untouched, grandeur silent stalks.
Unmoved by all our gayeties and shows,
Wonder nor shame can touch him as he goes;
He gazes on the marvels we have wrought,
But knows the models from whence all was brought;
In God's first temples he has stood so oft,
And listened to the natural organ-loft,
Has watched the eagle's flight, the muttering thunder heard.
Art cannot move him to a wondering word.
Perhaps he sees that all this luxury
Brings less food to the mind than to the eye;
Perhaps a simple sentiment has brought
More to him than your arts had ever taught.
What are the petty triumphs _Art_ has given,
To eyes familiar with the naked heaven?

All has been seen,--dock, railroad, and canal,
Fort, market, bridge, college, and arsenal,
Asylum, hospital, and cotton-mill,
The theatre, the lighthouse, and the jail.
The Braves each novelty, reflecting, saw,
And now and then growled out the earnest "_Yaw_."
And now the time is come, 'tis understood,
When, having seen and thought so much, a _talk_ may do some good.

A well-dressed mob have thronged the sight to greet,
And motley figures throng the spacious street;
Majestical and calm through all they stride,
Wearing the blanket with a monarch's pride;
The gazers stare and shrug, but can't deny
Their noble forms and blameless symmetry.
If the Great Spirit their _morale_ has slighted,
And wigwam smoke their mental culture blighted,
Yet the _physique_, at least, perfection reaches,
In wilds where neither Combe nor Spurzheim teaches;
Where whispering trees invite man to the chase,
And bounding deer allure him to the race.

Would thou hadst seen it! That dark, stately band,
Whose ancestors enjoyed all this fair land,
Whence they, by force or fraud, were made to flee,
Are brought, the white man's victory to see.
Can kind emotions in their proud hearts glow,
As through these realms, now decked by Art, they go?
The church, the school, the railroad, and the mart,--
Can these a pleasure to their minds impart?
All once was theirs,--earth, ocean, forest, sky,--
How can they joy in what now meets the eye?
Not yet Religion has unlocked the soul,
Nor Each has learned to glory in the Whole!

Must they not think, so strange and sad their lot,
That they by the Great Spirit are forgot?
From the far border to which they are driven,
They might look up in trust to the clear heaven;
But _here_,--what tales doth every object tell
Where Massasoit sleeps, where Philip fell!

We take our turn, and the Philosopher
Sees through the clouds a hand which cannot err
An unimproving race, with all their graces
And all their vices, must resign their places;
And Human Culture rolls its onward flood
Over the broad plains steeped in Indian blood
Such thoughts steady our faith; yet there will rise
Some natural tears into the calmest eyes,--
Which gaze where forest princes haughty go,
Made for a gaping crowd a raree-show.

But _this_ a scene seems where, in courtesy,
The pale face with the forest prince could vie,
For one presided, who, for tact and grace,
In any age had held an honored place,--
In Beauty's own dear day had shone a polished Phidian vase!

Oft have I listened to his accents bland,
And owned the magic of his silvery voice,
In all the graces which life's arts demand,
Delighted by the justness of his choice.
Not his the stream of lavish, fervid thought,--
The rhetoric by passion's magic wrought;
Not his the massive style, the lion port,
Which with the granite class of mind assort;
But, in a range of excellence his own,
With all the charms to soft persuasion known,
Amid our busy people we admire him,--"elegant and lone."

He scarce needs words: so exquisite the skill
Which modulates the tones to do his will,
That the mere sound enough would charm the ear,
And lap in its Elysium all who hear.
The intellectual paleness of his cheek,
The heavy eyelids and slow, tranquil smile,
The well-cut lips from which the graces speak,
Pit him alike to win or to beguile;
Then those words so well chosen, fit, though few,
Their linked sweetness as our thoughts pursue,
We deem them spoken pearls, or radiant diamond dew.

And never yet did I admire the power
Which makes so lustrous every threadbare theme,--
Which won for La Fayette one other hour,
And e'en on July Fourth could cast a gleam,--
As now, when I behold him play the host,
With all the dignity which red men boast,--
With all the courtesy the whites have lost;
Assume the very hue of savage mind,
Yet in rude accents show the thought refined;
Assume the _naivete_ of infant age,
And in such prattle seem still more a sage;
The golden mean with tact unerring seized,
A courtly critic shone, a simple savage pleased.
The stoic of the woods his skill confessed,
As all the father answered in his breast;
To the sure mark the silver arrow sped,
The "man without a tear" a tear has shed;
And them hadst wept, hadst thou been there, to see
How true one sentiment must ever be,
In court or camp, the city or the wild,--
To rouse the father's heart, you need but name his child.

The speech of Governor Everett on that occasion was admirable; as I
think, the happiest attempt ever made to meet the Indian in his own
way, and catch the tone of his mind. It was said, in the newspapers,
that Keokuck did actually shed tears when addressed as a father. If he
did not with his eyes, he well might in his heart.

Not often have they been addressed with such intelligence and tact.
The few who have not approached them with sordid rapacity, but from
love to them, as men having souls to be redeemed, have most frequently
been persons intellectually too narrow, too straitly bound in sects
or opinions, to throw themselves into the character or position of
the Indians, or impart to them anything they can make available. The
Christ shown them by these missionaries is to them but a new and more
powerful Manito; the signs of the new religion, but the fetiches that
have aided the conquerors.

Here I will copy some remarks made by a discerning observer, on the
methods used by the missionaries, and their natural results.

"Mr. ---- and myself had a very interesting conversation, upon the
subject of the Indians, their character, capabilities, &c. After ten
years' experience among them, he was forced to acknowledge that the
results of the missionary efforts had produced nothing calculated to
encourage. He thought that there was an intrinsic disability in them
to rise above, or go beyond, the sphere in which they had so long
moved. He said, that even those Indians who had been converted, and
who had adopted the habits of civilization, were very little improved
in their real character; they were as selfish, as deceitful, and
as indolent, as those who were still heathens. They had repaid the
kindnesses of the missionaries with the basest ingratitude, killing
their cattle and swine, and robbing them of their harvests, which,
they wantonly destroyed. He had abandoned the idea of effecting any
general good to the Indians. He had conscientious scruples as to
promoting an enterprise so hopeless as that of missions among
the Indians, by sending accounts to the East that might induce
philanthropic individuals to contribute to their support. In fact, the
whole experience of his intercourse with them seemed to have convinced
him of the irremediable degradation of the race. Their fortitude
under suffering he considered the result of physical and mental
insensibility; their courage, a mere animal excitement, which they
found it necessary to inflame, before daring to meet a foe. They have
no constancy of purpose; and are, in fact, but little superior to the
brutes in point of moral development. It is not astonishing, that one
looking upon the Indian character from Mr. ----'s point of view should
entertain such sentiments. The object of his intercourse with them
was, to make them apprehend the mysteries of a theology, which, to the
most enlightened, is an abstruse, metaphysical study; and it is not
singular they should prefer their pagan superstitions, which address
themselves more directly to the senses. Failing in the attempt to
Christianize before civilizing them, he inferred that in the intrinsic
degradation of their faculties the obstacle was to be found."

Thus the missionary vainly attempts, by once or twice holding up the
cross, to turn deer and tigers into lambs; vainly attempts to convince
the red man that a heavenly mandate takes from him his broad lands. He
bows his head, but does not at heart acquiesce. He cannot. It is not
true; and if it were, the descent of blood through the same channels,
for centuries, has formed habits of thought not so easily to be
disturbed.

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