Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/363

No. 116] the tortures they inflict on their prisoners, I readily grant ; but let us look on the reverse of this terrifying picture, and we shall find them temperate both in their diet and potations (it must be remembered, that I speak of those tribes who have little communication with Europeans) that they withstand, with unexampled patience, the attacks of hunger, or the inclemency of the seasons, and esteem the gratification of their appetites, but as a secondary consideration.

We shall likewise see them sociable and humane to those whom they consider as their friends, and even to their adopted enemies ; and ready to partake with them of the last morsel, or to risk their lives in their defence.

In contradiction to the report of many other travellers, all of which have been tinctured with prejudice, I can assert, that notwithstanding the apparent indifference with which an Indian meets his wife and children after a long absence, an indifference proceeding rather from custom than insensibility, he is not unmindful of the claims either of connubial or parental tenderness; the little story I have introduced in the preceding chapter of the Naudowessie woman lamenting her child, and the immature death of the father, will elucidate this point, and enforce the assertion much better than the most studied arguments I can make use of.

Accustomed from their youth to innumerable hardships, they soon become superior to a sense of danger or the dread of death ; and their fortitude, implanted by nature, and nurtured by example, by precept, and accident, never experiences a moment's allay.

Though slothful and inactive whilst their store of provision remains unexhausted, and their foes are at a distance, they are indefatigable and persevering in pursuit of their game, or in circumventing their enemies.

If they are artful and designing, and ready to take every advantage, if they are cool and deliberate in their councils, and cautious in the extreme either of discovering their sentiments, or of revealing a secret, they might at the same time boast of possessing qualifications of a more animated nature, of the sagacity of a hound, the penetrating sight of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the agility of a bounding roe, and the unconquerable fierceness of the tyger.

In their public characters, as forming part of a community, they possess an attachment for that band to which they belong, unknown to the inhabitants of any other country. They combine, as if they were actuated only by one soul, against the enemies of their nation, and banish from their minds every consideration opposed to this.