Part 8

“Glikhican never forgave himself for having committed this crime, although many times, and long before his becoming a Christian, he had begged the woman’s pardon with tears in his eyes, and received her free and full forgiveness. In vain she pointed out to him all the circumstances that he could have all edged to excuse the deed; in vain she reminded him of his unwillingness at the time, and his having been in a manner compelled to do it by his French associates; nothing that she did say could assuage his sorrow or quiet the perturbation of his mind; he called himself a wretch, a monster, a _coward_, (the proud feelings of an Indian must be well understood to judge of the force of this self-accusation,) and to the moment of his death the remembrance of this fatal act preyed like a canker worm upon his spirits. I ought to add, that from the time of his conversion he lived the life of a Christian, and died as such.”

In the “Report on the condition of the Indians of Upper Canada,” published by the Aborigines Protection Society, we find the following statements respecting the attempts which have been made to civilize them:—

“It is an important additional fact in regard to the light in which the Indians of North America were once looked upon, that their rights are stipulated for in the treaty of Utrecht. But on the other hand, modern writers on the laws of nations seem inclined to exclude them from its benefits. And modern statesmen carry this theory further, so as to sacrifice them by positive injustice in practice. Sir Francis Bond Head recommended the discontinuance of payment due by treaty to certain tribes, on the ground of those tribes being at war with our present allies, the people of the United States; a matter undoubtedly deserving grave consideration, in reference to the point especially raised, namely, the supply of arms; but which also involves a question of international rights, on this occasion much too summarily disposed of by the Canadian governor. Lord Glenelg hesitated to adopt his recommendation, but his lordship does not seem to have taken entirely a just view of the case.[79]

“It is strictly within the limits of truth to say, that neither the Home government, nor the Colonial authorities have acted up to the injunctions of those two documents of 1670, and 1763, which are unquestionably binding to this day; and the extent to which these injunctions have been neglected, fully accounts to us for the ruin of the Indians. That extent is proved,

“First,—By the unjust and improvident manner in which the land of the Indians has been dealt with by us, their insecurity of title, and their actual removal from it in late remarkable cases under an oppressive and fraudulent treaty, and by unjust contracts.

“Second,—By the neglect of obvious means of securing justice to Indians in courts of law, in their participation of civil rights; and in just regulations of trading with them. And

“Third,—By the small provision of direct means of improving the Indians, in missions, in schools, and other institutions.

“Unquestionably the various benefits contemplated by the royal instructions of 1670, have not been conferred: and the frauds and abuses mentioned in the proclamation of 1760, have been repeated down to a very late period by the government itself, instead of being repressed.

“We shall prove the unworthiness of this course of neglect and injustice, by producing incontrovertible evidence of the capacity of the Indians to become civilized, and of their desire to accept the elements of civilization at our hands, as well to be gradually incorporated with the Colonists.

“We shall also show, that numerous Colonists are anxious to promote the civilization of the Indians.”

The undue acquisition of the Indians’ land, and encroachments upon it, are not new; and the personal appeals of their delegates to the crown, have been frequent. More than thirty years ago such a delegate, John Norton, had the countenance of the late Mr. Wilberforce.[80] In 1822, the younger Brant, and Colonel Kerr, came to London on such a mission for the six nations. Subsequently, the Rev. Peter Jones has come over more than once for the Mississaguas, of the river Credit, on the like errand. And the visit of Heshtona-quet, has shewn the Indians of the river St. Clair to be in the same danger.

Other examples might be cited, and it is believed that none have produced proper results. The case however of the river Credit Indians, has some favourable aspects; and it will be mentioned fully.

But these visits have exhibited Indians to the impartial English public most favourably; and they in that respect, as well as in some others to be mentioned hereafter, deserve particular attention.

We pass by the earlier cases of alienation of land from the Indians of Upper Canada, amounting for example in the years 1818, 1819, and 1820, to 4,680,000 acres acquired by the government for annuities of £512.[81]

The sum due annually to these Indians from the crown for lands acquired from them; was stated in the “Parliamentary Papers” of 1834, at £5106 currency, or £4426 sterling.[82]

Those earlier cases, appear to be more remarkable for general neglect of a proper system of treatment of the Indians, than for any extreme oppression and injustice in the bargains made. They did not involve the REMOVAL of the Indians from the unimproved land sold, and still less the alienation of their improvements and forms. On the contrary, in the year 1823, a general reform of the old system was very seriously contemplated by the Secretary of State of that time, Earl Bathurst. One of the Sub-Committee was in fact employed by the Secretary of State in 1823, to draw up a general plan for that reform, which had the approbation of the late Bishop of Quebec, the Honourable Dr. Stuart. But it was not acted upon.

Before 1828, however, a reform was begun by the government, in addition to what had been long doing usefully by the Moravians, the New England Company, and other societies. It was pursued during eight or nine years with great success, although the plan was defective in several material points.

The character of what was accomplished may be inferred from the following extracts from the Parliamentary papers of 1834, No. 617.

In 1828, General Darling reported to Earl Dalhousie as follows on the subject:—

The Mississaquas of Rice Lake, consisting of 317 souls, and the Mohawks of Bay of Quinti, and the Rice Lake have recently been converted to Christianity by the Methodist society, who have introduced missionaries among the Indians here, and in every part of Upper Canada, where they have been able to obtain a footing. These missionaries come chiefly from the United States, and belong to the “Canada Conference Missionary Society,” auxiliary to the “Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the State of New York,” from which they receive a small salary, seldom exceeding £40 a year. It is undoubted that they have done some good, by influencing the Indians to embrace Christianity, and have inculcated the first principles of civilization, particularly in the tribes now under consideration, which shows itself in the desire which they have expressed to be collected in a village, and have lands allotted them for cultivation.

The Mohawks of the Bay of Quinti were separated from the Mohawk nation about the year 1784, and settled in the Bay of Quinti; amongst these are some becoming tolerable farmers. They have in many instances assumed the dress of the European, which is sometimes mixed with their native attire, presenting a curious compound of barbarism and civilization.

_Chippawas under the Chief Yellow head._—These Indians amount, upon an average, to 550 souls; they occupy the lands about Lake Simcoe, Holland River, and the unsettled county in the rear of York. They have expressed a strong desire to be admitted to Christianity, and to adopt the habits of civilized life; in these respects they may be classed with the Mississaquas of the Bay of Quinti, and Rice Lake, but are at present in a more savage state.

_Mississaquas of the Credit._—The present state of this tribe, amounting to 180 souls, who were lately notorious for drunkenness and debauchery, affords, in my humble opinion, the strongest encouragement to extend to the other tribes now disposed to Christianity and civilization, the experiment that has been tried by his Excellency Sir Peregrine Maitland, with every promise of success with these Mississaquas.

They are now settled in a delightful spot on the banks of the Credit, about sixteen miles from York, in a village consisting of twenty substantial log huts, eighteen feet by twenty-four, having an upper story or garret to each. They have a school-house for the boys (in which is combined decent arrangement for the performance of divine service, which is regularly attended,) and another for the girls.

The progress made in the former is highly creditable to the superintendent, considering the short time it has been established. I found it attended by thirty-one boys, mostly very young, who spelt and read fluently in English; they also answered several questions which I put to them promiscuously from the church catechism, and sung a hymn, remarkable for the loyalty of its sentiments. Finding the houses built for them too few for their numbers, they have added some of their own construction similar to those first erected.

They have two enclosures of about seven acres of wheat, and a field on the banks of the river, containing about thirty-five acres of Indian corn, in a promising state of cultivation. A small plot is attached to each house for their potatoes or other garden stuff.

The expense of these buildings has not exceeded, I believe, £14 currency each, say £250 sterling on the whole. A respectable Englishman, now a Methodist missionary, who receives a pension from the British government for the loss of an arm in the late war, when he served in the provincial marine of Upper Canada, resides amongst these Indians, and as his feelings towards Great Britain have been well tried, there is every reason to hope that his exertions for the perfect civilization of his flock will be crowned with success.

_Mohawks and the Six Nations._—Under 2000 souls are settled on the banks of the Ouse, or Grand River, a fine and fertile tract of country, which was purchased from the Chippawas (the Aborigines) exclusively from them when they were brought to this country from the Mohawk River, in the State of New York, at the termination of the revolutionary American war.

The proclamation of Sir F. Haldimand, which constitutes, I believe, their only title, allots them “six miles deep from each side of the river, beginning at Lake Erie, and extending in that proportion to the head of the river.”

They are now considered as having retained about 260,000 acres of land, mostly of the best quality. Their possessions were formerly more extensive, but large tracts of land have been sold by them, with the permission of his majesty’s government; the monies arising from which sales were either founded in England, or lent on interest in this country. The proceeds amount to about £1500 per annum.

The principal village, or Mohawk Castle, as it is called, consists now of half a dozen miserable huts, scattered without any order, and a paltry church.

The town was formerly more respectable; but the increasing scarcity of fuel in its neighbourhood, and the fine quality of the soil, induced them by degrees to separate and settle on the bank of the river, where they cultivate the ground in companies or bands, a certain number of families divided amongst them the produce of certain numbers of acres. Their knowledge of farming is exceedingly limited, being chiefly confined to the cultivation of Indian corn, beans and potatoes; but those of more industrious habits follow the example of their white neighbours, and have separate farms, on which they raise most kind of English grain.

Were I to offer to your lordship all the observations which appear to me worthy of attention respecting these ancient allies of his majesty, this report would assume the character of a history and far exceed the expected limits. I hasten, therefore, to submit a statement, which has been compiled with great attention, showing their present possessions in houses, horses, cattle, &c.; viz.

Dwelling-houses 416 Computed number of acres of land in cultivation 6872 Horses 738 Cows 869 Oxen 613 Sheep 192 Swine 1630

I have already adverted to the introduction of Methodist Missionaries and teachers amongst the Indians of Upper Canada, several of whom are found in this neighbourhood.

There is also an English Protestant Missionary, lately sent out from London by the New England Corporation, a young man whose zeal and devotion to the cause in which he has embarked promise the best results, the Indians giving in all cases the preference to whatever is given or recommended by their great father, to whatever comes from any other quarter. In earnest of their disposition to profit by and assist the labours of this minister, they have readily agreed, on my recommendation, to allot one hundred acres of land to each school that may be established on the Grand River, under his direction.

I submit, with all deference, whether it is not worthy the liberality of the British government to encourage the disposition now shown generally amongst the resident Indians of the province, to shake off the rude habits of savage life, and to embrace Christianity and civilization.

It appears to me that this would not be attended with much expence. A small sum, by way of salary, to a schoolmaster wherever a school may be formed, say four or five in the whole, a trifling addition to the salary of the present missionary, who is paid by a society, and of a second if appointed, which I believe is contemplated by the Lord Bishop of the diocese; and some aid in building school houses.

There are Chippawas who have prayed urgently for a missionary and schoolmaster to be sent amongst them.

_Of the attempts which have been made to civilize the American Indians._

The Indians of America owe very few obligations to the white people that have settled among them. The latter have endeavoured to exterminate the former, and by violence or fraud, to get possession of their territories. They have slaughtered a great part of the American Aborigines in open war, endeavoured to enslave the rest, and multiplied so rapidly, and spread themselves so regularly over the face of the transatlantic world, as to render the Indian mode of procuring subsistence exceedingly precarious. “While the diminution of their supplies” observes a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ “was thus sowing the seeds of decay, the lessons which they learnt from their new neighbours, drunkenness and other excesses, with several diseases which they imported, tended to accelerate their utter extinction. It appeared indeed quite obvious, that if the Indians did not, by imitating the whites learn new habits and occupations, their race in a few years would be completely destroyed.”

“From these considerations a duty devolved upon the European settlers, which several bodies of men in the United States, seem to have felt extremely urgent. They were called upon to contribute as much as lay in their power towards the alleviation of the sufferings which their own increased prosperity was daily entailing upon the original and rightful proprietors of the country. They were called upon to prevent, if possible, the utter extinction of a race, which their own progress in wealth and in numbers, was constantly depriving of the means of subsistence. Accordingly, various plans were adopted with this view, sometimes by the government, sometimes by individuals, and public bodies. Pensions were granted to certain tribes, whose hunting had been destroyed by the clearing of the forests. Such a relief, unaccompanied by any change in their character and habits, was at best but temporary, and, in the end, rather did evil than good; for the same people who bestowed the annuity, had taught the Indians to drink, and continued to supply them with spirituous liquors: the temptations of which, those savages had not fortitude to resist. Another means adopted, with somewhat more wisdom, was the employment of missionaries among them, for the purpose of converting and instructing them. But this plan was involved in one radical mistake, and was also injudiciously pursued. The Indians had a religion of their own, to which, as the inheritance of their ancestors, they were strongly attached. The evils of their situation lay not in the errors of their faith, but of their practice. They might be converted to Christianity, without leaving off the habits of the hunting state; and it by no means followed, that their growth in grace must be attended with a proportionate improvement in the arts of common life. Yet the missionary scheme hinged entirely on religious points. Its object was to send a multitude of preachers among the Indians; to preach them, not out of their ignorance and idleness, but out of their theological errors; to convert them, not to the life of husbandmen and shepherds, but to the knowledge of the life to come. Add to this, that the missionaries who could be found, in a country so little prone to any but commercial and agricultural labours as America, were necessarily zealots; persons of narrow views; ignorant and superstitious, and ill natured; and, in the affairs of this world, idle. They had no success at all. They preached the gospel to men already satisfied with their spiritual condition, and only anxious for food and raiment; they despised and intolerantly cried down all the notions held sacred by a people as prejudiced and bigoted as themselves; they recommended sobriety as a religious duty, to men whose former faith did not prohibit the use of strong liquors, and whose tastes all point to bodily intoxication as a greater blessing than the holy raptures of their new instructors. Thus the missionaries always quarrelled with their flocks, and made but few converts; nor among these produced any real improvement.

“The instruction of the Indians in schools, among the Europeans settled at the great towns, was another method which was adopted with the same view, and with no better success. After receiving in part the education, and in whole the vices of civilized life, those pupils returned to their naked and hunting brethren, from corruption the most profligate, and from necessity the most idle, members of the Indian community. They found a society in the woods, to which they originally belonged by blood, but for the manners and pursuits of which they had been altogether incapacitated by education. We need go no further, to illustrate the absurdity of this plan of inoculating the Indian tribes with civilization, than the remarks of a person in this predicament. He had been educated at Prince town; and upon being asked by an American commandant in the neighbourhood of his tribe, why his countrymen continued so perversely addicted to a savage life, he replied: ‘it is natural that we should follow the footsteps of our forefathers; and when you white people undertake to divert us from this path, you teach us to eat, drink, dress, and write like yourselves, and then turn us loose, to beg, starve, or seek our native forests, without alternative; and, outlawed from your society, we curse you for the feelings you have taught us, and resort to excess, that we may forget you.’

“Such having been the necessary consequence of the feeble and ill-planned attempts, both of government and other societies, to civilize the Indians, we had begun to despair of ever seeing this laudable undertaking prosper. Men seemed resolved (as appears from the foregoing statement, which we have prefixed to the present article, as a proper introduction) to begin at the wrong end, and to neglect the only plain and simple method by which these savage tribes ever can be reclaimed from their barbarism, or made the partakers, and not the victims of the civilization that surrounds them. Happily our fears have proved groundless. The people called Quakers, a society in many respects by far the most meritorious and amiable among our religious sects, seems to have solved the problem; and, by a close attention to the principles above sketched out, they appear to have laid a very solid foundation for the rapid civilization of those unhappy natives. The little tract now before us, contains a plain unvarnished detail of their benevolent and most judicious proceedings. It was printed originally at Philadelphia, and is now reprinted in London. We trust it will meet with due attention, as it is, in fact, one of the most interesting publications which has appeared of late years. We shall now present our readers with a short account of what the Quakers have done. The scene of their operations was among the Indians of the Five Nations, who inhabit a tract of country about three hundred miles North West, from Philadelphia; and of these nations, the experiments now to be described, were performed on the Oneidas and Senecas.

“The Quakers appear to have proceeded upon the fundamental assumption that the only means of civilizing those tribes, and indeed of preserving their existence, must be sought in a well planned attempt to reclaim them from the precarious and idle life of hunters. For this purpose, they conceived that the settlement of a few missionaries among them was absolutely necessary. But the missionaries, whom they choose, were not preachers; they were artizans, carpenters, blacksmiths, and ploughmen. They likewise imagined that a very small number of such persons, chosen for their quiet conduct and industrious regular habits, and sent to settle among the Indians without parade or pomp, would do more good than the most splendid scheme of colonization, by means of the greatest and wealthiest body of settlers. Example was to be their great engine—and example, they well knew, works slowly, gradually, and quietly.

“Proceeding upon these principles, they waved, for the present, every idea of converting the Indians to Christianity. The remarks of the committee, to whose care we owe this publication, are particularly judicious and enlightened on this point. ‘It is probable,’ they observe, ‘that some readers may think every scheme of civilization defective, that does not immediately attempt to plant Christianity. Of the infinite value of Christianity, our Pensylvanians are doubtless aware; but here, though not directly acting the part of missionaries, they are preaching religion by example; and are probably preparing the Indians, by more means than one, for the reception and acknowledgment of the gospel.’