London, April to September 1822
FOR TWELVE days, I remained under the care of my doctors, the Indians of Niagara. There, I saw other tribes who were coming from Detroit or from the country southeast of Lake Erie. I inquired about their customs, and in exchange for little gifts I received reenactments of their old customs, for these customs had already ceased to exist. Yet, at the start of the War of American Independence, the savages were still eating their prisoners, or at least the ones who were killed: an English captain, dipping a ladle into an Indian stewpot, once drew out a hand.
The Indian traditions surrounding birth and death are the least forgotten, for they do not pass lightly, like the life that intervenes; they are not things of fashion that come and go. The oldest name of the family is still conferred on the newborn, as a sign of honor: the name of his grandmother, for example, for names are always taken from the maternal line. From then on, the child occupies the place of the woman whose name he has taken, and he is addressed as the ancestor that this name brings back to life: thus an uncle may address his nephew by the title of “grandmother.” This custom, laughable as it may seem, is nonetheless touching. It resurrects the dead; it reproduces the weakness of old age in the weakness of infancy; it connects the two extremities of life, and the beginning and the end of the family; it conveys a kind of immortality to one’s ancestors and supposes that they are present among their descendants.
As regards the dead, it is easy to find motives for the savage’s attachment to holy relics. Civilized nations, to preserve their country’s memories, have the mnemonics of writing and the arts; they have cities, palaces, towers, columns, and obelisks; they have the scarring of the plow on formerly cultivated fields; their names are carved in bronze and marble, and their actions are inscribed in books. Not so for the peoples of the wilderness: their names are not written on the trees; their hut, built in a matter of hours, may disappear in a matter of moments; their labor hardly grazes the earth and cannot even raise a furrow. Their traditional songs fade with the last memory that retains them and vanish with the last voice that repeats them. The tribes of the New World thus have only one monument: their graves. Take the bones of their fathers from these savages and you take their history, their laws, and even their gods; you rob these men, and their future generations, of the proof that they ever existed or that they were ever annihilated.
I wanted very much to hear my hosts sing. A little Indian of fourteen named Mila, who was very pretty (Indian women are only pretty at that age), sang a charming song. Was it not the very verse quoted by Montaigne? “Adder, stay; stay, adder, that my sister may, by the pattern of thy many-colored coat, fashion and work a rich ribbon, which I shall give to the one I love; so may thy beauty and thy ornament be forever preferred above all other serpents.”
The author of the Essais met a few Iroquois in Rouen who, according to him, were very reasonable characters. “But what’s the use?” he added. “They don’t wear breeches.”[8]
If I ever publish the stromates or follies of my youth, and speak as freely as Saint Clement of Alexandria, you shall surely encounter Mila there.