MAJOR BOLTON was taken from us to command the Eighth Regiment; they were stationed partly at Magara, by the world-renowned waterfalls which lie between the Great Lakes of Ontario and Erie, and partly at Detroit on the waterway joining Lakes Erie and Huron. We were sorry to lose so considerate an officer, but my private feelings were the more affected by the news of his removal when I learned that Private Harlowe, who was now his orderly, was going along with him. I did not care twopence whether or not I ever beheld Harlowe himself again in the whole future course of ‘my versal life’, but his wife would naturally accompany him; and let me here confess that for months past I had been tormented by longing thoughts of her. Struggle as I might against the spell that she had cast upon me, her face invaded my dreams and constantly stood before my imagination at all hours of the day, especially when I was in a relaxed condition of body after some heavy duty. I had not set eyes on her since we sailed from Ireland, for the women and children had remained behind with the baggage-guard during our advance to St John’s and had been removed to Montreal when we proceeded up the lake. Now, at the first consideration, I was deeply grieved that I should not see her about the camp in the Isle of Jesus, as I had imagined that I would; but, at the second, there came a feeling of relief. For the sick temptation to run on evil courses, as well as the innocent pleasure of looking upon a face that I heartily loved, would be removed by her residence at Niagara. I busied myself in my military duties and began to look forward with keen expectation to the winter, which was the social season in Canada and always passed with great good cheer and merriment – especially in the neighbourhood of Montreal, where there were numerous sports performed in the ice and snow every day, and dances near every night in the better sort of houses. But first came the time called the Indian Summer, marked by a reddish, hazy, quiet atmosphere; the woods were close and warm with the exhalations of fallen and rotting leaves, which bred melancholy thoughts.
However, I was to be absent for some time from my comrades. We had not been in our new quarters above three weeks, during the last few days of which it snowed almost incessantly, so that the ground was covered to a depth of about four feet, when Captain Sweetenham, as he now was, sent for me. ‘Sergeant Lamb,’ he said, ‘Colonel Guy Johnson is inquiring after you, and Corporal Reeves and yourself are to wait upon him this afternoon at his residence near the Place des Armes in Montreal.’
‘I do not know the gentleman, your Honour,’ said I.
‘He is an Irishman, the Superintendent of the Indian Department of our Government and a person of great consequence among the tribes. Colonel Johnson has asked for three months’ leave of absence to be given you for a special mission, in case you wish to accept it.’
‘I shall be glad to go on any mission,’ I answered, ‘and the more adventurous the better it will please me. In Corporal Reeves’s company I would dare go anywhere.’
‘You will hand over your duties to Sergeant Buchanan,’ the Captain said. ‘Inform him so.’
I touched my tall cap and departed, with a pleasurable sense that my friend Thayendanegea was at the bottom of this business; and, upon my arrival at Montreal with Terry Reeves, I found that it was so. Terry and I made the journey in a hired cariole, a sort of carriage upon runners which the horses of the country could draw with ease, through ice or snow, at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. The people of Montreal were very curious in the way that they fashioned their carioles in every possible variety of design, such as the representation of some beast or fowl, a Venetian gondola, a Quaker shoe, a whale, or a monster goldfish. This one simulated a black swan, and was well provided with blankets. The cold was so severe that the St Lawrence itself was now nearly all frozen over, though there is a ten-knot current at Montreal; but Terry and I were surprised that we felt so little inconvenience from it. The reason was the superior dryness of the air. Perhaps this dryness excused a habit of the Canadian which seemed barbarous to us, namely of allowing his horses, sweating after a journey of perhaps twenty or thirty miles, to stand for hours on end, without any covering at all, outside the door where he had gone visiting.
The journey into Montreal was doubled in length by our driver constantly stopping, whenever he came to a wayside shrine or crucifix, to climb down and say a prayer. He was not to be deterred from this practice even by Terry’s threats to cut off his treasured queue with a jack-knife, did he not shorten his orisons. It then occurred to me that the word of command, ‘Marche-donc’, spoken to the horse in tones simulating those of his master, would likely enough set our chariot in motion. The plan succeeded, and the driver, hearing our loud farewells, leapt up, cursing, from his knees and rushed after us. It was fortunate that the horses recognized his voice and presently pulled up, for neither Terry nor I knew the word for ‘Whoa!’, and might well have been arrested for the theft of a cariole. The fur-clad driver was quite breathless from his long run when he climbed up into his seat, which enabled me to anticipate the French sentence which I knew was choking in his throat. ‘Je vais le dire au Général Carleton,’ said I, very severely.
Then I offered him a drink of spirits and presently we were good friends again. He only descended for a short prayer at one more shrine, where was represented the sponge, vinegar-bottle, spear, and various other instruments mentioned in the Gospel chapters concerning the crucifixion of Jesus Christ; the whole assemblage surmounted by St Peter’s cock.
Montreal presented a very animated appearance, for this was the season when the Indian fur-trappers assembled with their peltry to sell to the resident merchants. The city then took on the appearance of a great fair, with booths adorned with fir-branches set up in all public places for the sale of every conceivable object of utility or luxury. We saw numerous painted, pipe-smoking Indians, with capes over their head and shoulders wadded with feathers, and the squaws dressed in their finest clothes with jewellery, ribbons, and dyed plumes; British officers on horseback in full regimentals of flashing gold, silver, blue and scarlet; merchants whose Parisian extravagance of dress was intended to impress the Indians with an idea of their consequence; priests, friars, lay-sisters; armed parties of British soldiers in travel-worn greatcoats, marching to fife and drum; groups of animated French Habitants of both sexes’ the women in long scarlet cloaks, the men in their sleekest furs, and swarms of warmly muffled, exuberant children; fantastic carioles jingling and whirling up and down the narrow streets; and, in the squares, frequent statues of men, monsters, beasts, and birds fashioned of heaped snow and glazed to perfection by pails of coloured water dashed over them.
At the Place des Armes, a sort of square which was used before the Conquest as a parade-ground for French soldiers, we were directed to the house of Colonel Guy Johnson, who had succeeded his recently deceased father-in-law, Sir William Johnson, in his Superintendency. We were given rum in an ante-room, where stood glass cases full of curiosities of Indian domestic manufacture – such as embroidered wampum-belts, pouches and tobacco-pipes of intricate manufacture, weapons of various sorts, and ceremonious head-dresses. The corporal on duty gave us an account of them, and told us among other surprising things that the ‘wampum’ or shell-beads, strung on leather, which are of universal currency as money among the Indian tribes, are coined in Old England: wampum was formerly made by the Indians themselves in the form of crude beads of baked white clay, but then of sea-shell, which we could cut by machinery much more expeditiously and regularly then they by hand, to the shape and size of the glass bugles worn on ladies’ dresses. The shell used was that of the clam, a large sort of scallop found on the coasts of New England and Virginia, and the purple sort was more esteemed by the Indians than the white: they would pay an equal weight in silver for it.
This corporal was one of the armourers employed by the Indian Department for mending the firelocks of friendly Indians; but he had the week before been wounded in the hand by a drunken Indian and withdrawn from his employment until it healed.
Colonel Johnson presently sent for us, and was most affable. He said, ‘My friend Thayendanegea has an invitation to offer you.’
Thayendanegea was at table with him, in a company of several other war-chiefs of the Six Nations – Senecas, Oneidas, Onondagoes, Cayugas, Tuskaroras, and Mohawks – among them the Chief Sachem of the Mohawks himself, by name Little Abraham. This venerable person, it seems, secretly favoured an alliance of the Confederacy with the revolted colonists, and was now doing what he could to incline his inferior chiefs to that course. But Thayendanegea and his very active wife Miss Molly, with whom he lived in monogamous union on account of his Christian faith, were leaders of the opposition to Little Abraham; and their influence seemed to be preponderant at the table. The cloth was spread with beefsteaks, salted bear’s-legs, dressed capons, and a number of fricassees and complicated confections in the French style which the Indians universally preferred to our English style of cooking. They were all to some degree intoxicated and had, as was their wont before sitting down to drink, given their weapons into the safe keeping of one of their number, who was pledged for the occasion to keg himself. However, on so ceremonious an occasion it was not to be expected that they would risk their dignity by any recourse to violence. For Indians of rank deemed it highly becoming to accommodate their manners to those of a distinguished stranger, especially a host, and they were wonderfully observant; so that you would seldom find a well-born Indian behaving other than with ease and gentility in the most select company, if a hint were but supplied him, before his entry, of the forms expected. Yet the Colonel was visibly restraining his impatience with the unusual and unexpected ill manners which one or two of his guests were showing. I was told later that the offenders on this occasion had recently been the guests of a Brunswick officers’ mess at Three Rivers, and the greater licence for horse-play and raillery there permitted to the intoxicated had given them an incorrect notion of what would be fashionable in Montreal at the residence of a British officer of rank.
Just as we entered, Thayendanegea was addressing in English a Seneca chief named Gyantwaia, or ‘Cornplanter’, who was gravely balancing a bottle of Madeira upon his nose (distinguished for a gold nose-ring with a little gold bell-pendant dropping to his upper lip). Thayendanegea said very civilly to him: ‘My courageous ally and brother, it impresses me vastly to observe your feats of leger de nez; but perhaps the hilarity of the occasion has blinded your eye to the fact that a lady is present!’ – indicating Miss Molly, who modestly turned away. Then improving upon the occasion, for Cornplanter (whose father, by the way, was a Dutch settler from Albany in New York) seemed somewhat abashed, Thayendanegea added: ‘And if our generous host will permit it, we will now cease our potations of his very fine liquors, which have somewhat disequilibriated our judgment. Instead, we will keep my wife, Miss Molly, company in a dish of tea, which as the rebellious colonists regard as noxious to all disloyal persons, so we may well drink with pride and gratification in honour of our ally and father, King George.’
Little Abraham was put in a cleft stick by this artful orator. He could not refuse to drink tea without discourtesy to Miss Molly, who was sitting there in the quality of a Christian matron, not an Indian squaw; yet he feared that to partake of the beverage would constitute a declaration in favour of the British side in the conflict, and that the Americans would have news of it, and cease to give him presents.
He said, in halting English, that the Madeira wine had so confused his wits that he did not know with which part of his face to drink, and that therefore he would abstain.
Thayendanegea pressed his advantage – and it was remarkable that, from courtesy to his overlord, he never failed to rise from his chair whenever he spoke so much as a word in his presence: ‘My father, were you to embrace the Christian faith and read our Scriptures, you would learn into what shameful dangers the sin of intemperance is apt to lead such venerable old men as the patriarch Noah and yourself; nor would you drink anything but tea, avoiding the fermented juice of the grape. I will send you a present, tomorrow, of fifty pounds’ weight of superior tea, to refresh your whole household.’
Cornplanter, who was of Little Abraham’s way of thinking, spoke up in his behalf; he had not Thayendanegea’s command of English, but was not without eloquence. He said, in substance: ‘My brother and ally, I thank you. Your words are very pretty. But we would not wish the Colonel to think that his wines are either so worthless or so injurious to us that we reject them and call for tea; which is no more than boiling water poured upon a dried herb. To call upon him for tea at such a social time would be to violate the custom of the white officers, with which I am well acquainted.’
Thayendanegea smiled pleasantly: ‘My dear friend, do as you think fit, and no doubt my revered father, Little Abraham, will do likewise. But avoid provoking the Colonel to laughter. You talk of your knowledge of the white officers’ customs, yet know no better than to eat that peach unpeeled!’
Leaving his two opponents, both now thoroughly disconcerted, to please themselves whether they drank tea or no, Thayendanegea dismissed the matter as settled. He waved a greeting to Corporal Reeves and myself with his pipe and asked us directly, without preamble, whether we would care to accompany a hunting expedition of his tribe towards the southwest. He said that General Carleton had wished aloud, in his presence, that our light infantry could be acclimatized to American forest life, especially in winter-time, so that they could contend on equal terms with the revolutionaries. Thereupon, said Thayendanegea, he had offered the General to act as schoolmaster to one or two of them at least, who could pass the lesson on to the rest – as in the monitor system now in use in the popular schools of Great Britain. Remembering our names and his debt to us in the matter of Sweet Yellow Head, he had then asked the General whether Colonel Johnson might apply for our temporary release from The Ninth for the purpose of accompanying him; and the General had consented.
Few invitations could have given me keener pleasure, but I had observed that it was regarded as a virtue among the Indians to appear indifferent to good news or bad; that no man would be esteemed a good warrior or a dignified character who openly betrayed any extravagant emotions of surprise, joy, sorrow, or fear on any occasion whatsoever. I replied calmly that if the General approved the plan, it would please me well; and that I and my comrade would be ready to set forth at whatever time was most convenient to him on the following day. Thayendanegea named a rendezvous on the road half-way between Montreal and our barracks, and after the exchange of a few civilities we took our leave.
Colonel Johnson went with us into the ante-room and advised us, if we would have an interesting and prosperous journey, to live as nearly as possible in the Indian style: in which we would find, if we were philosophers, more matter for admiration than for disgust. He said: ‘They are, contrary to what is usually said of them, a sensitive, generous, and poetical people. Their apathy is only assumed, and proceeds from no real want of feeling. No people on earth are more alive to the calls of friendship or more ready to sacrifice everything they possess to help an ally in distress. If they appear greedy, that is no more than the reverse side of their generosity. Do you dress Indian fashion, observe their ways, cultivate their goodwill and forget nothing you learn. The hunting expedition on which you are going is, in reality, a missionary tour undertaken by Thayendanegea to excite the whole confederacy of the Six Nations to take up the hatchet for us in the coming campaign.’
The Colonel was then obliging enough to put us in the hands of his clerk, who undertook to provide us with Indian clothes and necessaries, which we signed for, and to claim the amount thus expended from the paymaster of the Regiment. We both chose to wear round beaver caps with flaps for our ears; deerskin leggings, dark blue cloth breech-clouts, red riding-frocks, and fur-lined half-boots; also whiteish capes of buffalo-skin, reduced to silky softness by a laborious process of dressing them with the brains of the dead beast. Terry fixed in his cap a little silver badge of Britannia seated, which was the device verbally conferred on The Ninth by Queen Anne. This later won him an Indian name which I have forgotten, the significance of which was, at all events, ‘husband-of-the-woman-with-a-fork’. I may here mention that I was complimented for my willingness to indulge in any adventure or prank that was on foot, with the name Otetiani, or ‘always ready’. But often we were called ‘Teri’ and ‘Geri’. Both of us had rifle-guns, that we had picked up during the American retreat from Three Rivers, and which were weapons of precision. With a little practice I could hit a board the size of a man’s head at two hundred and fifty paces.
‘Remember,’ said Colonel Johnson to us in parting, ‘this invitation is a great honour to you, and I would have you remember that your behaviour and bearing will everywhere be remarked, and that if you win the esteem of your hosts this will reflect well upon the British Army as a whole. I may say that I have satisfied myself by inquiries from your commanding officer that you are worthy of the choice.’
The party, who were at the rendezvous the next day, consisted of Thayendanegea, Strong Soup, and four young warriors of rank, with their squaws. Were I to recount our adventures and wanderings of the next three months it would make a volume in itself. I will be brief then, and confine my account to a few particulars. Thayendanegea took us for a tour of the whole territory of the Six Nations, which lies between Lake Ontario and the headwaters of the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers. We proceeded first along the shores of Lake Ontario until we came to the Falls of Niagara, and then striking south-west, below Lake Erie, for a short excursion into Wyandot territory, made a circuit through the northern borders of Pennsylvania and so back by the Susquehanna River, the Mohawk valley, and the hills to the westward of Lake Champlain. I was surprised at the high degree of civilization in the several Indian settlements that we visited in the fertile region of the Susquehanna, which must have been very beautiful in the summer. We were everywhere welcomed and feasted and Thayendanegea succeeded by his oratory in persuading many hundreds of warriors to join our standard.
The winter was not expected to be an intensely cold one, nor did it prove so. The approach of intense cold was always known in advance to the Indians by the behaviour of the birds and beasts that migrated in great flocks and droves in the autumn before: bears and pigeons coming down from the northern regions of Canada and swimming or flying over the St Lawrence River into the province of New York, black squirrels, on the contrary, crossing over into Canada at a narrow piece of water just above the Falls of Magara. Nevertheless, it froze very hard already; and on the first night when we encamped in the snowy woods far from any human habitation, Terry Reeves and I stared at each other in fearful surmise, wondering how we should live through the night. The Indians, however, soon cleared away the snow from a place under the shelter of an overhanging rock and piled it up high to form the walls of a hut. The squaws cut and plaited together brushwood hurdles which made the foundation of a roof, over which more snow was heaped, but a small orifice was left to allow the smoke of our camp-fire to escape. The interior of this dwelling soon became extremely warm, and after dining well upon the fresh pork we had brought with us from the city, seethed with potatoes in an iron kettle suspended above the blaze, we wrapped ourselves in our buffalo capes with our feet to the fire and slept in great comfort until dawn; the squaws taking turns to watch and mend the fire.
Thayendanegea amused us with tales of his first experience of life among the white men at Lebanon; how he was frightened by the way that the family gazed at him as if they wished to kill him, and disconcerted by the fire being built at one end of the house and not in the middle, and scandalized by the wife of the Rev. Dr Wheelock when she ordered her husband to go outside and feed the chickens for her, for she was busy. He blacked his face as a sign of affliction and sat apart from them in the barn for two days; but to please his father, who had sent him to this place, he did not run away, and soon he became reconciled to the white man’s ways. He told us an anecdote of another young Indian, a chief’s son, who had come with him to Lebanon, and was directed by Dr Wheelock’s son to saddle his horse. The Indian refused to do so on the ground that this was a menial office, unbefitting a gentleman’s son. ‘Pray, do you know what a gentleman is?’ young Wheelock had asked. He replied, ‘I do. A gentleman keeps racehorses and drinks Madeira wine. You do neither, nor does your father. Saddle the horse yourself.’
It was fortunate for us that Thayendanegea could speak English perfectly and could teach us a little of the Mohawk tongue. We learned more for ourselves by a study of the Book of Common Prayer, a copy of which he presented to me, printed at New York seven years previously: which we could compare in memory with the English liturgy. It is not generally understood that there is no language common to all the Indians and that often neighbouring tribes speak in a manner as little intelligible one to the other as the English and French. Nor is it always possible to learn by the use of gestures the name of common things, because of misunderstandings. If a savage wishes to teach a traveller the word for ‘head’, and puts his hand upon his crown, it is possible to mistake him: he may be wishing to indicate ‘top’, or ‘hair’, or ‘thought’ as resident in the head. When I offered one of my companions, who enjoyed the peculiar appellation of ‘Kiss Me’, some tobacco from my pouch, and he put out his hand for more, uttering a word which I took to mean ‘give me more’, it proved later that the significance was ‘only a little, please’.
It is said that the very word ‘Canada’ derived from a misunderstanding. It was the reply given by an Indian to the original European discoverer of the mainland, who haughtily asked, ‘What is the name of this desolate country?’ When the first settlers came to study the language, the word proved not to be the name of the country at all, but an injurious expletive.
It was a habit of our hosts upon a march to keep perfectly silent and follow one behind the other, constantly glancing from side to side. To this habit we naturally conformed, and soon I came to understand it as not merely due to caution, the constant fear of being surprised by an enemy, but to a concentration of attention upon the natural features of the landscape; so that Indians never lose themselves in a country through which they have once passed. To a European eye, one wild stretch of forest is much the same as another; to the Indian, a rock, or a withered branch, or a knotted bole, is noted for its unique shape, and its relation to neigh-bouring objects, and becomes an unforgettable landmark.
This was the season when bear, squirrel, wild-cat, and many other beasts of the forest take to their long winter rest in hollow trees or caves, and remain there asleep until the snows melt and the warmth of the sun awakens them. The Indians took pleasure in awakening the beasts before their time, and startling them from their hiding-places to kill them for their fur and flesh. Into such a method of hunting we were soon initiated. One of the party came upon the trail of a bear, which they all agreed was not above three days old; and we followed it for perhaps fifteen miles, though in places it was obliterated by new snow and we had to cast about until we hit it once more. We had three bear-dogs with us, a breed between the bloodhound and mastiff, and when we reached the hollow whiteoak where our quarry was concealed they set up a dismal barking and howling.
We formed a circle around the tree, where the bear’s clawmarks were clearly distinguishable on the bark, and waited for the emergence of our quarry. To rouse him out, the Indians had applied a blazing torch to the hole, at the height of a man’s head, by which he had entered. Soon thick clouds of smoke could be seen, issuing from a small hole a good deal higher up; the fire having caught the pine-branches that the bear had drawn together to stop the lower hole as a protection from the cold. We heard a choking, a coughing, and a grumbling noise. The bear emerged, a large, reddish brute, half-stifled by the smoke, and scrambled out from the upper hole. The Indians all fired at once, but they are as wretched marksmen with a gun as they are wonderful with the blow-pipe or the bow, and the bear was not even wounded. He descended at his ease, and while his enemies darted away behind trees, he stood blinking stupidly. Then Terry, who was posted on the other side of the tree from him, came around and shot him in the shoulder. This roused the bear to fury, and he made a rush for the warrior Kiss Me, whose head he espied behind a bush, but Kiss Me avoided him by springing nimbly aside. The dogs now set upon Bruin. He killed one with a blow of his paw and hugged another to his breast, but was struck down with a dexterously hurled tomahawk from Thayendanegea’s hand, that caught him on the side of the head. I stepped up swiftly and put him out of action with a bullet through his head. The ball that the Canadians used for bear is a very heavy one, of the size of thirty to a pound; but the frontiersmen of New York and Pennsylvania preferred one of half that weight.
The killing of the bear caused much satisfaction, and he was soon flayed with skinning knives, and cut up with tomahawks. The choicest parts were taken off with us, but the rest left where it lay. I noticed that the paws, which are held in great estimation as a delicacy, were gashed with a knife, and were hung in the smoke-hole of our hut that night to dry. Later, we ate them stewed with young puppies, which is a traditional dish on all festive occasions; and not to be despised by Europeans.
It is said that the bear, who never lays in any store of provisions and yet is as fat when the thaw comes in May as when he began his sleep in the previous November, is a good deal subsisted by licking his own greasy paws; but this is an unlikely tale. Natural philosophers believe that the bear, by discontinuing the process of sweating when in this lethargic state, is saved from those losses of the constitution which other animals, not similarly gifted, repair by regular eating and drinking.
When we came into Seneca territory I was greatly astonished with the precision with which the young men of this nation would kill little red squirrels or big black squirrels, such as were not yet a-bed for the winter, with their long blow-pipes, of cane reed. The arrows were not much thicker than the lower string of a violin, headed with tin, and feathered with thistledown. They were propelled through the tube by a sharp puff of the breath, and at fifteen yards these marksmen never missed, but drove them through and through the squirrels’ heads. The effect of these weapons was at first like magic: the tube was placed to the mouth, and the next instant the skipping squirrel on the bough fell lifeless to the ground. North America is remarkable for its variety of squirrels, among which are many that burrow and some that fly.
On one occasion, when we were in need of fresh meat, a number of squirrels were seen at the top of a hollow tree; the trunk was hewn at with tomahawks and the squirrels presently slain as they jumped clear of the toppling tree. We were told that such a practice was permitted by the Great Spirit, but not the felling of a tree for the sake of wild honey, which was unlucky and would result in death.
We hunted a great variety of animals – the stag, the caribou, the elk – and came one day to a colony of beavers, where the Indians, with no thought of compassion for these harmless and social creatures, broke down their dam and so drained the water from the artificial lake that they had made in a stream, and left their cabins high and dry. The beavers, hearing a barking from the lake-side, tried to escape from the back doors of the cabins, which led to the woods; where the Indians shot them. The cabins were built upon piles and divided into apartments spread with fir-boughs, each large enough to contain a male and a female. There were also storehouses in each hut proportionate to the number of the company that built it; it is said that each member knows his own store and would scorn to steal from his neighbour. The apartments were very fresh and clean. Beavers are big creatures, weighing from forty to sixty pounds, with a flat, oval tail, rat-like head, and webbed hind-feet. How they sink the piles for the cabins is as absurd a tale as any, but true, nevertheless. Four or five of them gnaw a stake through with their teeth, sharpening one end; with their nailed fore-feet they dig a hole in the bottom of the stream; with their teeth they rest the stake against the bank; with their feet again they raise it and sink it in the hole; and with their tails they whisk clay about it to make it secure. They also interweave branches between the piles to secure them.
The Indians have never considered, as British sportsmen do, the propriety of sparing an occasional pair of any kind of animal for breeding purposes; but have killed all indiscriminately, so that many of the rarer fur-bearing animals are in danger of one day becoming extinct. The most beautiful animal that I saw was the ermine; a squirrel-like creature with fine white fur and a jetty spot at the end of his long, bushy tail. In the summer his tail-tip only would remain unaltered in hue, the rest of his fur turning as yellow as gold. I was shown the track of a marten, which appeared the footstep of a larger animal; but this was occasioned by his jumping along in his pursuit of small birds and giving the marks of both feet at once.
The Indians concentrated their minds so closely upon the chase as hardly to have time for any other topic of interest, though I was occasionally questioned upon life in Europe. I took pains, in answering through the mouth of Thayendanegea, to present my own former condition, and that of my fellow-countrymen in Ireland, as far more splendid and prosperous than it was. My father, I told them (may God forgive me!), was a merchant who owned a number of vessels and a great warehouse full of scarlet cloth, looking-glasses, guns, beads, kettles, compasses, and all useful things. He daily took out a great map of the world and told his captains where to send his goods for trading purposes.
The Indians did not dispute the first part of the story, but disbelieved in the map, when Thayendanegea informed them that the design of the whole world could be reduced to little upon a single sheet of paper. However, they are never so indelicate as to give a person the lie: they said, ‘We dare say, brother, that you yourself believe this to be true, but it appears so improbable to us that to assent to it would confuse our minds in respect to other related subjects.’ I had with me, in an oiled silk bag, a map of the River St Lawrence and the Great Lakes. They understood the principle of a map: for in giving directions to a traveller, they would often trace on the ground with a stick the course of a river and indicate the natural features of the surrounding country. I showed them Buffalo Creek, down which we were travelling at the time, and ‘There are the Falls of Niagara,’ I said, ‘and there is Lake Erie, and, if you cross the water at this point, in a matter of ten days or so in a canoe you will reach Detroit, and so upwards to Lake Huron.’ They were fascinated, and exclaimed ‘Wawa!’ in astonishment.
‘Then,’ said I, ‘if you shrink this map to a tenth the size, the directions and shapes remain the same, and there is room on the paper for my home in Ireland, and for the hot lands in the south, and for all the rest of the world.’
They confessed that they had been at fault and begged my pardon; so that the lie about my father, which I told in order to enhance my consequentiality among them – for they have a great scorn of indigent and ill-born persons – passed as Gospel truth.
Terry and I were in perfect health. He had a flux on the third day, but this was soon cured by a medicine that they gave him, decocted from a sort of fungus that grows on the pine. The squaws are the physicians of the tribe and carry medicine bags containing herbal remedies for wounds, snake-bite, and the commoner ailments. So healthy is the blood of these Indians (and I may say that they have the best teeth and sweetest breath of any people I know – by the bye, the cigar-smoking New York Dutch have the worst) that they recover rapidly from the effects of wounds that would be fatal in a European. I inquired closely into the appearance and properties of these herbs, many of which I was able to recognize in their green state when the summer came again, and add to my military pharmacopoeia.
Near Lake Seneca there was a solemn conference of chiefs in a fine grove of butter-nut trees upon a hill, where it was resolved to support the British cause to the utmost. As we approach the Senecan village of Buffalo. Terry was accidentally shot in the leg by a feu de joie of welcome to us. He remained there in Cornplanter’s lodge to recover of his wound, much to my regret. Terry took an Indian girl to wife, which was an inconsiderate action on his part, for these women are remarkably faithful, and he could not hope to keep her with him on his return to the Regiment; the life of a soldier’s wife in a crowded barrack would be death to a girl trained in the freedom of the woods and lakes. However, who am I to judge of Terry? For, on my resuming the journey, I fell into what will be judged by my readers to be still graver error.