Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/298

278 noteworthy that in every instance reported to us in which natives of any age, by fraud or voluntarily, were carried either to Spain, England, or France, none of them wished to remain abroad, but all pined for their wilderness homes. It was thought that their amazement, curiosity, and interest, engaged in foreign scenes by court pageantry and all the sights and splendors of civilization, — castles, churches, machinery, — would wean them from their rude habits and associations. But it proved quite otherwise. Exile was to them misery; and when after expatriation they returned, they were like uncaged birds or wild beasts escaped from the toils. This fact, as we shall note, has a bearing upon the question of the capacity and aptitude of the Indian for civilization.

Before Cartier returned from his second voyage up the St. Lawrence, in 1535, by a mean artifice he entrapped on board his vessel Donnacona and other chiefs, from whom he had received a hearty welcome and much food. Most of the captives died of home-sickness in France, though rich amends, it was presumed, had been made to them by the privilege of baptism. When these kidnapped chiefs were afterwards inquired for by their kinsfolk, Cartier told them that Donnacona had died, but that others of them had made high marriages in France, and lived in state like lords.

It might have seemed, as has been said, that the French colonists could have lived at peace with the natives, and indeed have found their interest in so doing, especially as their main object was not so much, or scarce at all, the clearing and occupancy of large spaces of land, but the enriching fur-trade. The example may be cited of the companies and brigades of Scotchmen and Englishmen who, in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company for nearly two centuries, carried on a vastly lucrative trade with the savages, being at perfect amity, and indeed in most cordial relations, with them. But, as we shall see, the scheme