The Conquest of Canada, Vol. 1

Catlin writes thus in 1842: "Among the numerous tribes who have formerly inhabited the Atlantic coast, wampum has been invariably manufactured and highly valued as a circulating medium (instead of coins, of which the Indians have no knowledge), so many strings, or so many hands' breadth, being the fixed value of a horse, a gun, a robe, &c. It is a remarkable fact, that after I passed the Mississippi I saw but very little wampum used, and on ascending the Missouri, I do not recollect to have seen it worn at all by the Upper Missouri Indians, although the same materials for its manufacture are found in abundance in those regions. Below the Lions and along the whole of our western frontier, the different tribes are found loaded and beautifully ornamented with it, which they can now afford to do, for they consider it of little value, as the fur traders have ingeniously introduced an imitation of it, manufactured by steam or otherwise, of porcelain or some composition closely resembling it, with which they have flooded the whole Indian country, and sold at so reduced a price as to cheapen, and consequently destroy, the value and meaning of the original wampum, a string of which can now but very rarely be found in any part of the country."—Catlin, vol. i., p. 223.

263

"Avant d'avoir l'usage des moulins, ils brisaient leurs grains dans les piles, ou des mortiers de bois, avec des pilons de même matière. Hésiode nous donne la mesure de la pile et du pilon des anciens, et de nos sauvages, dans ces paroles, 'Coupez moi une pile de trois pieds de haut, et un pilon de la longueur de trois coudées.' (Hesiod, Opera et Dies, lib. v., 411; Servius in lib. ix., Æneid. Init.) Caton met aussi la pile et le pilon, au nombre des meubles rustiques de son temps. Les Pisons prirent leur nom de cette manière de piler le bled."—Lafitau.

264

"Il leur suffit d'un morceau de bois recourbé de trois doigts de largeur, attaché à un long mouche qui leur sert à sarcler la terre, et à la remuer legèrement."—Lafitau, tom. ii., p. 76.

Catlin says that the tribe of Mandans raise a great deal of corn. This is all done by the women, who make their hoes of the shoulder-blades of the buffalo or elk, and dig the ground over instead of plowing it, which is consequently done with a vast deal of labor.—Vol. i., p. 121.

265

"Nothing so distinctly marks the uncivilized condition of the North American Indian as his total ignorance of the art of metallurgy. Forged iron has been in use among the inhabitants of our hemisphere from time immemorial; for, though the process employed for obtaining the malleability of a metal in its malleable state is very complicated, yet M. de Marian has clearly proved that the several eras at which writers have pretended to fix the discovery are entirely fabulous."—Lettres sur la Chine.

Consequently the weapons of brass and other instruments of metal found in the dikes of Upper Canada, Florida, &c., are among the strongest indications of the superiority of those ancient races of America who have now entirely passed away.

"Know, then," says Cotton Mather, "that these doleful creatures are the veriest ruins of mankind. They live in a country full of metals, but the Indians were never owners of so much as a knife till we came among them. Their name for an Englishman was 'knife-man.'"

266

Chateaubriand, vol. i., p. 233; Charlevoix.

"The dances of the Red Indians form a singular and important feature throughout the customs of the aborigines of the New World. In these are typified, by signs well understood by the initiated, and, as it were, by hieroglyphic action, their historical events, their projected enterprises, their hunting, their ambuscades, and their battles, resembling in some respects the Pyrrhic dances of the ancients."—Washington Irving's Columbus, vol. ii., p. 122.

"In the province of Pasto, on the ridge of the Cordillera, I have seen masked Indians, armed with rattles, performing savage dances around the altar, while a Franciscan monk elevated the host."—Humboldt's Nouveau Espagne, vol. i., p. 411.

See, also, Lafitau's Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains comparés aux mœurs des premiers temps, tom. i., p. 526. He refers to Plutarch, in Lycurgo, for an account of similar Spartan dances.

267

Charlevoix; Lafitau; Boucher, Histoire du Canada.

"The players prepare for their ruin by religious observances; they fast, they watch, they pray."—Chateaubriand, vol. i., p. 240. See Appendix,(vol. II.) No. LIX.

268

See Preface to Bancroft's History of the United States.

269

"Sir Humphrey had published, in 1576, a treatise concerning a northwest passage to the East Indies, which, although tinctured with the pedantry of the age, is full of practical sense and judicious argument."—P.F. Tytler's Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, p. 26.

270

"Sir Walter Raleigh, step-brother to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was one of his companions in this enterprise, and, although it proved unsuccessful, the instructions of Sir Humphrey could not fail to be of service to Raleigh, who at this time was not much above twenty-five, while the admiral must have been in the maturity of his years and abilities."—Tytler, p. 27.

271

"On its homeward passage, the small squadron of Gilbert was dispersed and disabled by a Spanish fleet, and many of the company were slain; but, perhaps owing to the disastrous issue of the fight, it has been slightly noticed by the English historians."—Oldy's Life of Raleigh, p. 28, 29.

272

Raleigh, who had by this time risen into favor with the queen, did not embark on the expedition, but he induced his royal mistress to take so deep an interest in its success, that, on the eve of its sailing from Plymouth, she commissioned him to convey to Sir H. Gilbert her earnest wishes for his success, with a special token of regard—a little trinket representing an anchor guided by a lady. The following was Raleigh's letter, written from the court: "Brother—I have sent you a token from her majesty, an anchor guided by a lady, as you see; and, further, her highness willed me to send you word that she wished you as great good hap and safety to your ship as if she herself were there in person, desiring you to have care of yourself as of that which she tendereth; and therefore, for her sake, you must provide for it accordingly. Farther, she commandeth that you leave your picture with me. For the rest, I leave till our meeting, or to the report of this bearer, who would needs be the messenger of this good news. So I commit you to the will and protection of God, who sends us such life and death as he shall please or hath appointed. Richmond, this Friday morning. Your true brother, Walter Raleigh."—This letter is indorsed as having been received March 18, 1582-3, and it may be remarked that it settles the doubt as to the truth of Prince's story of the golden anchor, questioned by Campbell in his Lives of the Admirals. In the Heroologia Angliæ, p. 65, there is a fine print of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, taken evidently from an original picture; but, unlike the portrait mentioned by Granger, it does not bear the device mentioned in the text. Raleigh's letter explains this difference. When Sir Humphrey was at Plymouth, on the eve of sailing, the queen commands him, we see, to leave his picture with Raleigh. This must allude to a portrait already painted; and, of course, the golden anchor then sent could not be seen in it. Now, he perished on the voyage. The picture at Devonshire House, mentioned by Granger, which bears this honorable badge, must, therefore have been painted after his death.—Tytler's Raleigh, p. 45; Granger's Biographical History, vol. i., p. 246; Cayley, vol. i., p. 31; Prince's Worthies of Devonshire.

273

"This ship was of 200 tons burden: it had been built under Raleigh's own eye, equipped at his expense, and commanded by Captain Butler, her master being Thomas Davis, of Bristol."—Tytler, p. 44.

274

The Delight. The Swallow had, a short time before, been sent home with some of the crew, who were sick. The remaining barks were the Golden Hind and the Squirrel, the first of forty, the last of ten tons burden. For what reason does not appear, the admiral insisted, against the remonstrances of his officers and crew, in having his flag in the Squirrel. It was a fatal resolution. The larger vessel, the Golden Hind, arrived at Falmouth on the 22d September, 1583.

275

See Captain Edward Haies's Narrative of the Expedition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert; Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 143-159.

276

Oldy's Life of Raleigh, p. 58. The description given of Virginia by the two captains in command of the expedition (Captains Philip Amadas and Walter Barlow) was, that "the soil is the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world. We found the people most gentle, loving, faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the Golden Age."

277

Unfortunately, on White's arrival in England, the nation was wholly engrossed by the expected invasion of the Spanish Armada, and Sir Richard Greenville, who was preparing to sail for Virginia, received notice that his services were wanted at home. Raleigh, however, contrived to send out White with two more vessels; but they were attacked by a Spanish ship of war, and so severely shattered that they were obliged to return. Another expedition could not be undertaken until 1590; and no trace could then, or ever after, be found of the unfortunate colony left by White.

"Robertson reproaches Raleigh with levity in now throwing up his scheme of a Virginian colony. But, really, when we consider that in the course of four years he had sent out seven successive expeditions, each more unfortunate than the other, and had spent £40,000—nearly his whole fortune—without the least prospect of a return, it can not be viewed as a very unaccountable caprice that he should get sick of the business, and be glad to transfer it into other hands."—Murray, vol. i., p. 254.

278

For an account of Sir Richard Greenville's death, see Appendix, No. LX.

279

"The fundamental idea, of the older British colonial policy appears to have been, that wherever a man went, he carried with him the rights of an Englishman, whatever these were supposed to be. In the reign of James I., the state doctrine was, that most popular rights were usurpations; and the colonists of Virginia, sent out under the protection of government, were therefore placed under that degree of control which the state believed itself authorized to exercise at home. The Puritans exalted civil franchise to a republican pitch: their colonies were therefore republican; there was no such notion as that of an intermediate state of tutelage or semi-liberty. Hence the entire absence of solicitude on the part of the mother country to interfere with the internal government of the colonies arose not altogether from neglect, but partly from principle. This is remarkably proved by the fact that representative government was seldom expressly granted in the early charters; it was assumed by the colonists as a matter of right. Thus, to use the odd expression of the historian of Massachusetts, 'A house of burgesses broke out in Virginia,' in 1619,[ Hutchinson's History of assachusetts, p. 94] almost immediately after its second settlement; and although the constitution of James contained no such element, it was at once acceded to by the mother country as a thing of course. No thought was ever seriously entertained of supplying the colonies with the elements of an aristocracy. Virginia was the only province of old foundation in which the Church of England was established; and there it was abandoned, with very little help, to the caprice or prejudices of the colonists, under which it speedily decayed. The Puritans enjoyed, undisturbed, their peculiar notions of ecclesiastical government. 'It concerned New England always to remember that they were originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade. And if any man among us make religion as twelve, and the world as thirteen, such an one hath not the spirit of a true New Englandman.' And when they chose to illustrate this noble principle by decimating their own numbers by persecution, and expelling from their limits all dissenters from their own establishment, the mother country never exerted herself to protect or prohibit. The only ambition of the state was to regulate the trade of its colonies: in this respect, and this only, they were fenced round with restrictions, and watched with the most diligent jealousy. They had a right to self-government and self-taxation; a right to religious freedom, in the sense which they chose themselves to put upon the word; a right to construct their municipal polity as they pleased; but no right to control or amend the slightest fiscal regulation of the imperial authority, however oppressively it might bear upon them.

"Such, I say, were the general notions prevailing in England on the subject of colonial government during the period of the foundation and early development of our transatlantic colonies—the notions by which the practice of government was regulated—although I do not assert that they were framed into a consistent and logical theory. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong in regarding Lord Chatham as the last distinguished assertor of these principles, in an age when they had begun to be partially superseded by newer speculations."—Merivale On Colonization, vol. i., p. 102.

280

"In the spring of 1606, James I. by patent divided Virginia into two colonies. The southern included all lands between the 34th and 41st degrees of north latitude. This was granted to the London Company. The northern included all lands between the 38th and 45th degrees of north latitude, and was granted to the Plymouth Company. To prevent disputes about territory, the colonies were forbidden to plant within a hundred miles of each other. There appears an inconsistency in these grants, as the lands lying between the 38th and 41st degrees are covered by both patents.

"In the month of August, 1615, Captain John Smith arrived in England, where he drew a map of the northern part of Virginia, and called it New England. From this time the name of Virginia was confined to the southern part of the colony."—Winterbottom's History of America, vol. iv., p. 165. See Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i., p. 120.

281

Percy, in Purchas, iv., 1687.

282

"This celebrated scene is preserved in a beautiful piece of sculpture over the western door of the Rotundo of the Capitol at Washington. The group consists of five figures, representing the precise moment when Pocahontas, by her interposition, saved Smith from being executed. It is the work of Capellano, a pupil of Canova's."—Thatcher's Indian Biography, vol. i., p. 22. See Appendix, No. LXI., (vol. II.) for the History of Pocahontas.

283

Smith, in Pinkerton, xiii., 51-55. "The account is fully contained in the oldest book printed in Virginia, in our Cambridge library. It is a thin quarto, in black letter, by John Smith, printed in 1608."—Bancroft's Hist. of the United States, vol. i., p. 132.

284

In the year 1610, the South Virginian or London Company sealed a patent to Lord Delawarr, constituting him Governor and Captain-General of South Virginia. His name was given to a bay and river, and to the Indians who dwelt in the surrounding country, called in their own tongue Lenni-Lenape, which name signifies THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE. Lord Delawarr's health was ruined by the hardships and anxieties he was exposed to in Virginia, and he was obliged to return to England in little more than a year.

285

Captain Smith says of Virginia, "that the number of felons and vagabonds did bring such evil character on the place, that some did choose to be hanged rather than go there, and were."—Graham's Rise and Progress of the United States, vol. i., p. 71.

"England adopted in the seventeenth century the system of transportation to her North American plantations, and the example was propagated by Cromwell, who introduced the practice of selling his political captives as slaves to the West Indians. But the number of regular convicts was too small, and that of free laborers too large, in the old provinces of North America, to have allowed this infusion of a convict population to produce much effect on the development of those communities, either in respect of their morals or their health.[It must be remembered that the crimes of the convicts were chiefly political. The number transported to Virginia for social crimes was never considerable—scarcely enough to sustain the sentiment of pride in its scorn of the laboring population—certainly not enough to affect its character.—Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 191] Our own times are the first which have witnessed the phenomena of communities, in which the bulk of the working people consists of felons serving out the period of their punishment."—Merrivale, vol. ii., p. 3.

286

Stith's Hist. of Virginia, p. 167, 168; Chalmers's Annals of the United Colonies, p. 69.

287

Stith's Hist. of Virginia, p. 307.

288

It is asserted by Camden that tobacco was first brought into England by Mr. Ralph Lane, who went out as chief governor of Virginia in the first expedition commanded by Sir Richard Greenville. There can be little doubt that Lane was desired to import it by his master, Sir Walter Raleigh, who had seen it used in France during his residence there.—Camden, in Kennet, vol. ii., p. 509.

"There is a well-known tradition that Sir Walter first began to smoke it privately in his study, and the servant coming in with his tankard of ale and nutmeg, as he was intent upon his book, seeing the smoke issuing from his mouth, threw all the liquor in his face by way of extinguishing the fire, and, running down stairs, alarmed the family with piercing cries that his master, before they could get up, would be burned to ashes."—Oldy's Life of Raleigh, p. 74.

"King James declared himself the enemy of tobacco, and drew against it his royal pen. In the work which he entitled 'Counterblast to Tobacco,' he poured the most bitter reproaches on this 'vile and nauseous weed.' He followed it up by a proclamation to restrain 'the disorderly trading in tobacco,' as tending to a general and new corruption of both men's bodies and minds. Parliament also took the fate of this weed into their most solemn deliberation. Various members inveighed against it, as a mania which infested the whole nation; that plowmen took it at the plow; that it 'hindered' the health of the whole nation, and that thousands had died of it. Its warmest friends ventured only to plead that, before the final anathema was pronounced against it, a little pause might be granted to the inhabitants of Virginia and the Somer's Isles to find some other means of existence and trade. James's enmity did not prevent him from endeavoring to fill his coffers by the most enormous imposts laid upon tobacco, insomuch that the colonists were obliged for some time to send the whole into the ports of Holland. The government of New England, more consistently, passed a complete interdict against tobacco, the smoke of which they compared to that of the bottomless pit. Yet tobacco, like other proscribed objects, throve under persecution, and achieved a final triumph over all its enemies. Indeed, the enmity against it was in some respects beneficial to Virginia, as drawing forth the most strict prohibitions against 'abusing and misemploying the soil of this fruitful kingdom' to the production of so odious an article. After all, as the impost for an average of seven years did not reach a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, it could not have that mighty influence, either for good or evil, which was ascribed to it by the fears and passions of the age."—Chalmers. b. i., ch. iii., with notes. Massaire, p. 210. Wives, p. 197, quoted by Murray.

"Frenchmen they call those tobacco plants whose leaves do not spread and grow large, but rather spire upward and grow tall; these plants they do not tend, not being worth their labor."—Mr. Clayton's Letter to the Royal Society, 1688. Miscellanea Curiosa, vol. iii., p. 303-310.

289

The colonists of Virginia, in a kind of manifesto published in 1622, expressed their satisfaction at some late warlike excursions of the Indians as a pretext for rubbing and subjugating them. "Now these cleared grounds in all their villages, which live situated in the fruitfullest parts of the land, shall be inhabited by us, whereas heretofore the grubbing of woods was the greatest labor. The way of conquering them is much more easy than that of civilizing them by fair means; for they are a rude, barbarous, and naked people, scattered in small companies, which are helps to victory, but hinderances to civility."—Tracts relating to Virginia in the British Museum, quoted by Merrivale. See Appendix, No. LXII. (vol. II.)

290

"Il faut envisager surtout l'influence qu'à exercée le Nouveau Continent sur les destinées du genre humain sous le rapport des institutions sociales. La tourmente religieuse du seizième siècle, en favorisant l'essor d'une libre reflexion, a préludé à la tourmente politique des temps dans lesquels nous vivons. Le premier de ces mouvemens a coincidé avec l'époque de l'établissement des colonies Européennes en Amérique; le second s'est fait sentir vers la fin du dix-huitième siècle, et a fini par briser les liens de dépendance qui unissaient les deux mondes. Une circonstance sur laquelle on n'a peut-être pas assez fixé l'attention publique et qui tient à ces causes mystérieuses dont a dépendu la distribution inégale du genre humain sur le globe, a favorisée, on pourrait dire, à rendre possible l'influence politique que je viens de signaler. Une moitié du globe est restée si faiblement peuple que, malgré le long travail d'une civilisation indigène, qui a eu lieu entre les découvertes de Lief et de Colomb, sur les côtes Américaines opposées à l'Asie, d'immenses pays dans la partie orientale n'offroient au quinzième siècle que des tribus éparses de peuples chasseurs. Cet état de depopulation dans des pays fertiles et éminemment aptes à la culture de nos céreales, a permis aux Européens d'y fonder des établissemens sur une échelle qu'aucune colonisation de l'Asie et de l'Afrique n'a pu atteindre. Les peuples chasseurs ont été refoulés des côtes orientales vers l'interieur, et dans le nord de l'Amérique, sous des climats et des aspects de végétation très analogues à ceux des îles Britanniques, il s'est forme par émigration, des la fin de l'année 1620, des communautés dont les institutions se présentent comme le reflet des institutions libres de la mère patrie. La Nouvelle Angleterre n'étoit pas primitivement un établissement d'industrie et de commerce, comme le sont encore les factoreries de l'Afrique; ce n'étoit pas une domination sur les peuples agricoles d'une race différente, comme l'empire Britannique dans l'Inde, et pendant longtemps, l'empire Espagnole au Mexique et au Pérou. La Nouvelle Angleterre, qui a reçu une première colonisation de quatre mille familles de puritains, dont descend aujourd'hui un tiers de la population blanche des Etats Unis, étoit un établissement religieux. La liberté civile s'y montrait des l'origine inséparable de la liberté du culte. Or l'histoire nous revèle que les institutions libres de l'Angleterre, de la Hollande, et de la Suisse, malgré leur proximité, n'ont pas réagi sur les peuples de l'Europe latine, comme ce reflet de formes de gouvernemens entièrement democratiques qui, loin de tout ennemi extérieur, favorisés par une tendance uniforme et constante de souvenirs et de vielles mœurs, ont pris dans un calme longtemps prolongé, des développemens inconnus aux temps modernes. C'est ainsi que le manque de population dans des régions des Nouveau Continent opposées à l'Europe, et le libre et prodigieux accroissement d'une colonisation Anglaise audelà de la grande vallée de l'Atlantique, a puissamment contribué à changer la face politique et les destinées de l'ancien continent. On a affirmé que si Colomb n'avoit pas changé, selon les conseils d'Alonzo Pinzon,[Alonzo s'étoit écrié "que son cœur lui disoit que pour trouver la terre, il falloit gouverner vers le sud-ouest." L'inspiration d'Alonzo étoit moins mystériuse qu'elle peut le paraître au premier abord. Pinzon avoit vu dans la soirée passer des perroquets, et il savoit que ces oiseaux n'alloient pas sans motif du côte du sud. Jamais vol d'oiseau n'a eu des suites plus graves] le 7 Octobre, 1492, la direction de sa route, qui étoit de l'est à l'ouest, et gouverné vers le sud-ouest, il seroit entre dans le courant d'eau chaude ou Gulf Stream, et auroit été porté vers la Floride, et de là peut-être vers le cap Hatteras et la Virginie, incident d'une immense importance, puisqu'il auroit pu donner aux Etats Unis, en lieu d'une population Protestante Anglaise, une population Catholique Espagnole."—Humboldt's Géog. du Nouveau Continent, tom. iii., p. 163.