Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/134

114 have the titles and the state offset by literal descriptions in plain English, and sometimes by “cuts and etchings” on his pages. Indian names with an English alias present this incongruousness, thus: “The chieftain Munashum, alias Nimrod.” The romantic story of Pocahontas, as it developed so luxuriously from its original germ in the successive narrations of the same incident by the “Admiral,” is sadly reduced by comparing the different editions of his narrative.

From this point of view it is interesting to compare some pages of two of our most able and faithful New England historians, writing at the same time and on the same themes, — Dr. Palfrey, in his “History of New England,” and Governor Arnold, in his “History of Rhode Island.” It is suggestive and really amusing to note what contrasted views, tones, and ways of speaking of and representing the aborigines of New England are characteristic of those writers. Dr. Palfrey regards them, their habits, and manners with absolute disgust. To him they were little above vermin, — abject, wretched, filthy, treacherous, perfidious, and fiendish. For them existence had but a questionable value. He scorned the attempt to invest them with romance, and ridiculed the attributing to them the qualities of barbaric forest state and royalty. Governor Arnold, however, fondly loved to retain the old romance of the noble and kingly savage, with his wild-wood court, his councillors and cabinet, his wilderness chivalry, with the free, pure air around him, and the abounding lakes and streams, suggesting at least their uses for frequent and effective ablutions. In keeping with these, — their divergent appreciation of the same phenomena, — Dr. Palfrey sets before us the squalor and wretchedness of the Indians, their shiftlessness and incapacity, their improvidence, beastliness, and forlorn debasement; while Governor Arnold dwells bewitchingly upon their grand manhood, their constancy, magnanimity, and dignity. When the friendly