London, April to September 1822
THE NEXT day I went to pay a visit to the sachem of the Onondagas. I reached his village at about ten in the morning. No sooner had I arrived than I was surrounded by a group of young savages who addressed me in their own language, mixed with English phrases and a few French words. They were noisy and jovial, like the Turks I met years later, in Koroni, when I first set foot on the soil of Greece. These Indian tribes, enclaved in clearings made by the whites, have horses and herds; their huts are stocked with utensils bought in Québec, Montréal, and Detroit, or from the markets of the United States.
The explorers of the North American interior found, among the various savage nations, every form of government known to civilized man. The Iroquois belonged to a race that seemed destined to conquer the other Indian races, if outsiders had not come to drain his blood and quash his spirit. These intrepid men were not awed by firearms when they were first used against them. They stood tall while bullets whistled and cannon boomed, as though they had heard these things all their lives: they appeared to pay them no more mind than they would a thunderstorm. As soon as he could get his hands on a rifle, the Iroquois put it to better use than any European. He did not, however, abandon the tomahawk, or the scalping knife, or the bow and arrow; instead, he added to them the carbine, the pistol, the dagger, and the hatchet, as if he could never have enough weaponry to equal his valor. Doubly armed with the murderous instruments of Europe and America, his head adorned with feathers, his ears slit, his face striped with ceremonial paint, his arms tattooed and dyed with blood, this New World champion became as daunting to see as he was to fight on the shores that he defended, foot by foot, against the invaders.
The sachem of the Onondagas was an old Iroquois in the strictest sense of the word: he preserved, in his person, the ancient traditions of the wilderness.
English accounts never fail to call the Indian sachem “the old gentleman.” Now, the old gentleman is completely naked. He has a feather or a fishbone going through his nose, and sometimes he covers his head, which is as smooth and round as a cheese, with a lacy three-cornered hat, as a sign of European honor. Has Velly not inscribed history with the same truth? The Frankish chieftain Khilpéric rubbed his hair with rancid butter, infudens acido comam butyro, painted his cheeks with woad, and wore a colorful coat or tunic made from the skins of wild beasts; he is depicted by Velly as a prince, magnificent to the point of ostentation in his furniture and his retinue, voluptuous to the point of debauchery, and hardly believing in God, whose ministers he scorned and mocked.
The sachem of the Onondagas received me well and offered me a seat on his braided mat. He spoke English and understood French; my guide knew Iroquois: conversation was easy. Among other things, the old man told me that, although his nation had always been at war with mine, he had always respected it. He complained of the Americans, whom he found unjust and greedy. He regretted that in the distribution of Indian lands his tribe had not gone to increase the lot of the English.
The women served us a meal. Hospitality is the last virtue left to the savages in the midst of European civilization; from them, one knows well what hospitality must have been in ancient days, when the hearth was as sacred as the altar.
Whenever a tribe was driven from its woods, or whenever a man came asking for hospitality, the stranger began what was called the Dance of the Supplicant: a child put his hand to the threshold of the hut and said, “Here is the stranger!” And the chief replied, “Child, lead this man in!” Then the stranger, entering under the child’s protection, would go and sit on the ashes of the hearth. And the women would recite the Song of Consolation: “The stranger has found a mother and a wife; the sun will rise and set for him, as it did of old.”
These customs seem borrowed from the Greeks: Themistocles, in the house of Admetus, kisses the penates and the youngest son of his host (in Megra, years later, I may have trod on the poor woman’s hearthstone, under which Phocion’s cinerary urn lay concealed);[5] and Ulysses, in the palace of Alcinous, implores Arete: “Noble Arete, daughter of Rhexenor, having suffered cruel misfortunes, I throw myself at your feet. . . .”[6] Once he has finished saying these words, the hero goes off to sit on the ashes of the hearth.
I took my leave of the old sachem. He had been present at the taking of Québec. Among all the disgraceful events of the reign of Louis XV, this episode of the Canadian War consoles us, as though it were a page of our ancient history recovered from the Tower of London: Montcalm, charged with defending Canada, unaided, and fighting against forces frequently replenished and four times as numerous, battles on successfully for two years. He defeats Lord Loudon and General Abercrombie. Finally, Fortune abandons him. Wounded beneath the walls of Québec, he collapses, and two days later he breathes his last. His grenadiers bury him in a crater opened by a bomb, a grave worthy of the honor of our arms. His noble enemy, Wolfe, dies a few feet away from him; he pays for Montcalm’s life with his own, and has the glory of dying on a few French flags.