Читать книгу Memoirs of an American Lady - Anne MacVicar Grant - Страница 15

Table of Contents

Lay-Brothers—Catalina—Detached Indians.

Before I quit this attempt to delineate the number of which this community was composed, I must mention a class of aged persons, who, united by the same recollections, pursuits, and topics, associated very much with each other, and very little with a world which they seemed to have renounced. They might be styled lay-brothers, and were usually widowers, or persons who, in consequence of some early disappointment, had remained unmarried. These were not devotees, who had, as was formerly often the case in Catholic countries, run from the extreme of licentiousness to that of bigotry. They were generally persons who were never marked as being irreligious or immoral—and just as little distinguished for peculiar strictness or devotional fervour. These good men lived in the house of some relation, where they had their own apartments to themselves, and only occasionally mixed with the family. The people of the town lived to a great age; ninety was frequently attained, and I have seen different individuals of both sexes, who had reached a hundred. These ancients seemed to place all their delight in pious books and devotional exercises, particularly in singing psalms, which they would do in their own apartments for hours together. They came out and in like ghosts, and were treated in the same manner, for they never spoke unless when addressed, and seemed very careless of the things of this world, like people who had got above it. Yet they were much together, and seemed to enjoy each other’s conversation. Retrospection on the scenes of early life, anticipations of that futurity, so closely veiled from our sight, and discussions regarding different passages of holy writ, seemed their favourite themes. They were mild and benevolent, but abstracted, and unlike other people, their happiness, for happy I am convinced they were, was of a nature peculiar to themselves, not obvious to others. Others there were not deficient in their attention to religious duties, who, living in the bosom of their families, took an active and cheerful concern to the last, in all that amused or interested them; and I never understood that the lay-brothers, as I have chosen to call them, blamed them for so doing. One of the first Christian virtues, charity, in the most obvious and common sense of the word, had little scope. Here a beggar was unheard of. People, such as I have described in the bush, or going there, were no more considered as objects of pity, than we consider an apprentice as such, for having to serve his time before he sets up for himself. In such cases, the wealthier, because older settlers, frequently gave a heifer or colt each, to a new beginner, who set about clearing land in their vicinity. Orphans were never neglected; and from their early marriages, and the casualties their manner of life subjected them to, these were not unfrequent. You never entered a house without meeting children; maidens, bachelors, and childless married people, all adopted orphans, and all treated them as if they were their own.

Having given a sketch, that appears to my recollection, (aided by subsequent conversations with my fellow-travellers,) a faithful one of the country and its inhabitants, it is time to return to the history of the mind of Miss Schuyler, for by no other circumstances than prematurity of intellect, and superior culture, were her earliest years distinguished. Her father, dying early, left her very much to the tuition of his brother. Her uncle’s frontier situation, made him a kind of barrier to the settlement; while the powerful influence that his knowledge of nature and of character, his sound judgment and unstained integrity, had obtained over both parties, made him the bond by which the aborigines were united with the colonists. Thus, little leisure was left him for domestic enjoyments or literary pursuits, for both of which his mind was peculiarly adapted. Of the leisure time he could command, however, he made the best use, and soon distinguished Catalina as the one amongst his family to whom nature had been most liberal; he was at the pains to cultivate her taste for reading, which soon discovered itself, by procuring for her the best authors in history, divinity, and belles lettres; in this latter branch, her reading was not very extensive, but then the few books of this kind that she possessed, were very well chosen, and she was early and intimately familiar with them. What I remember of her, assisted by comparisons since made with others, has led me to think that extensive reading, superficial and indiscriminate—such as the very easy access to books among us encourages, is not at an early period of life, favourable to solid thinking, true taste, or fixed principle. Whatever she knew, she knew to the bottom; and the reflections which were thus suggested to her strong, discerning mind, were digested by means of easy and instructive conversation. Colonel Schuyler had many relations in New-York—and the governor and other ruling characters there, carefully cultivated the acquaintance of a person, so well qualified to instruct and inform them on certain points as he was. Having considerable dealings in the fur trade, too, he went every winter to the capital for a short time, to adjust his commercial concerns, and often took his favourite niece along with him, who, being of an uncommonly quick growth and tall stature, soon attracted attention by her personal graces, as well as by the charms of her conversation. I have been told, and should conclude from a picture I have seen drawn when she was fifteen, that she was in her youth very handsome. Of this, few traces remained when I knew her; excessive corpulence having then overloaded her majestic person, and entirely changed the aspect of a countenance, once eminently graceful. In no place did female excellence of any kind more amply receive its due tribute of applause and admiration than here, for various reasons; first, cultivation and refinement were rare. Then, as it was not the common routine that women should necessarily have such and such accomplishments, pains were only taken on minds strong enough to bear improvement, without becoming conceited or pedantic; and lastly, as the spur of emulation was not invidiously applied, those who acquired a superior degree of knowledge, considered themselves as very fortunate in having a new source of enjoyment opened to them. But never having been made to understand that the chief motive of excelling was to dazzle or outshine others, they no more thought of despising their less fortunate companions, than of assuming pre-eminence for discovering a wild plum-tree or bee-hive in the woods, though, as in the former case, they would have regarded such a discovery as a benefit and a pleasure; their acquisitions, therefore, were never shaded by affectation. The women were all natives of the country, and few had more than a domestic education; but men, who possessed the advantages of early culture and usage of the world, daily arrived on the continent from different parts of Europe; so that if we may be indulged in the inelegant liberty of talking commercially of female elegance, the supply was not equal to the demand. It may be easily supposed that Miss Schuyler met with due attention; who, even at this early age, was respected for the strength of her character, and the dignity and composure of her manners. Her mother, whom she delighted to recollect, was mild, pious, and amiable; her acknowledged worth was chastened by the utmost diffidence. Yet, accustomed to exercise a certain power over the minds of the natives, she had great influence in restraining their irregularities and swaying their opinions. From her knowledge of their language, and habit of conversing with them, some detached Indian families resided for a while in summer in the vicinity of houses occupied by the more wealthy and benevolent inhabitants. They generally built a slight wigwam under shelter of the orchard fence, on the shadiest side; and never were neighbours more harmless, peaceable, and obliging—I might truly add industrious, for in one way or other they were constantly occupied. The women and their children employed themselves in many ingenious handicrafts, which, since the introduction of European arts and manufactures, have greatly declined. Baking trays, wooden dishes, ladles and spoons, shovels and rakes, brooms of a peculiar manufacture, made by splitting a birch block into slender but tough filaments; baskets of all kinds and sizes, made of similar filaments, enriched with the most beautiful colours, which they alone knew how to extract from vegetable substances, and incorporate with the wood. They made also of the birch-bark, (which is here so strong and tenacious, that cradles and canoes are made of it,) many receptacles for holding fruit and other things, curiously adorned with embroidery—not inelegant, done with the sinews of deer, and leggins and moomesans, a very comfortable and highly ornamental substitute for shoes and stockings, then universally used in winter among the men of our own people. They had also a beautiful manufacture of deer skin, softened to the consistence of the finest Chamois leather, and embroidered with beads of wampum, formed like bugles; these, with great art and industry, they formed out of shells, which had the appearance of fine, white porcelain, veined with purple. This embroidery showed both skill and taste, and was among themselves highly valued. They had belts, large embroidered garters, and many other ornaments, formed, first of deer sinews, divided to the size of coarse thread, and afterwards, when they obtained worsted thread from us, of that material, formed in a manner which I could never comprehend. It was neither knitted nor wrought in the manner of net, nor yet woven—but the texture was formed more like an officer’s sash than any thing I can compare it to. While the women and children were thus employed, the men sometimes assisted them in the more laborious part of their business, but oftener occupied themselves in fishing on the rivers, and drying or preserving, by means of smoke, in sheds erected for the purpose, sturgeon and large eels, which they caught in great quantities, and of an extraordinary size, for winter provision.

Boys on the verge of manhood, and ambitious to be admitted into the hunting parties of the ensuing winter, exercised themselves in trying to improve their skill in archery, by shooting birds, squirrels, and raccoons. These petty huntings helped to support the little colony in the neighbourhood, which, however, derived its principal subsistence from an exchange of their manufactures with the neighbouring family, for milk, bread, and other articles of food.

The summer residence of these ingenious artisans promoted a great intimacy between the females of the vicinity and the Indian women, whose sagacity and comprehension of mind were beyond belief.

It is a singular circumstance, that though they saw the negroes in every respectable family not only treated with humanity, but cherished with parental kindness, they always regarded them with contempt and dislike, as an inferior race, and would have no communication with them. It was necessary then that all conversations should be held, and all business transacted with these females, by the mistress of the family. In the infancy of the settlement, the Indian language was familiar to the more intelligent inhabitants, who found it very useful, and were, no doubt, pleased with its nervous and emphatic idiom, and its lofty and sonorous cadence. It was, indeed, a noble and copious language, when one considers that it served as the vehicle of thought to a people, whose ideas and sphere of action we should consider as so very confined.