Читать книгу Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium (Vol. 1&2) - George Catlin - Страница 30

Table of Contents

Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Coburg and Prince Ernest visit the Collection—His Royal Highness the (little) Duc de Brabant visits the Collection with the Hon. Mr. Murray—The Author presents him an Indian pipe and pair of mocassins—Visit of His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex to the Collection—His noble sympathy for the Indians—He smokes an Indian pipe under the wigwam—The Author takes breakfast with the Duke of Sussex in Kensington Palace—The Duke’s dress and appearance—John Hunter, the Indian traveller—The Duke’s inquiries about him—Monsieur Duponceau—Visit to the Bank of England—To Buckingham Palace—To Windsor Castle—Author visits the Polish Ball with several friends in Indian costumes.

Among the distinguished visitors to my rooms about this time were their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Coburg, and Prince Ernest, the father and brother of Prince Albert, at that time on a visit to the Queen and the Prince. They were accompanied by Mr. Murray, who took great pains to explain the collection to the Duke, who took me by the hand when he left the room, and told me I deserved the friendship of all countries for what I had done, and pronounced it “a noble collection.” His second visit was made to it a few days after, when he was also accompanied by Mr. Murray, and remained in the rooms until it was quite dark.

His Royal Highness the Duc de Brabant, the infant son of the King of the Belgians, on a visit to the Queen, was also brought in by Mr. Murray. He was an intelligent lad, nine or ten years of age, and was pleased with a miniature Indian pipe which I presented to him, and also a small pair of Indian mocassins suitable for his age.

His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, though in feeble health, paid my collection his first visit. It was his wish, from the state that he was in, to meet me alone “in an Indian Council,” as he called it. My first interview with him lasted for an hour or more, when he told me that if his strength would have permitted it, he could have been amused the whole day. To this fine old venerable man my highest admiration clung: he expressed the deepest sympathy for the Indians, and seemed to have formed a more general and correct idea of them and their condition than any person I had met in the kingdom. When he left my rooms he took me by both hands and thanked me for the rich treat I had afforded him, and assured me that for the benefits I was rendering to society, and the justice I was doing to the poor Indians, I should be sure to meet my reward in the world to come, and that he hoped I would also be recompensed in this.

The Duke of Sussex was a great amateur of pipes and good smoking, and took much interest in the hundreds of different designs and shapes of the carved pipes in my exhibition. He was curious to know what the Indians smoked, and I showed him their tobacco, a quantity of which I had brought with me. The Indians prepare it from the inner bark of the red willow, and when dried and ready for smoking, call it “k’nick-k’neck.” I prepared and lit a pipe of it for His Royal Highness to smoke, with which he took a seat under the middle of the Indian wigwam, where our conversation was held at the moment; and as he drew the delicious fumes through the long and garnished stem which passed between his knees, with its polished bowl, carved in the red pipe stone, resting on the floor, he presented for a few moments the finished personification of beatitude and enjoyment. He pronounced the flavour delicious, wanting only a little more strength, which he thought the addition of tobacco would give it.

I told him that the Indians were always in the habit of mingling tobacco with it when they could afford to buy it: “Good fellows (said he), they know what is good—their tastes are as good as ours are.” After he had finished his pipe, and we were moving towards the front door, the moment before taking leave of me as I have mentioned above, he asked me if I ever knew John Hunter, who wrote a work on the Indians of America, to which I replied in the affirmative. He seemed much pleased in learning this fact, and said to me, “You see what a feeble wreck I am at present; my strength is gone, and I must leave you; but you will take your breakfast with me at Kensington Palace to-morrow morning: I am all alone. I am too ill to see the world; they cannot find the way to me: but I will see you, and take great pleasure in your society. Your name will be made known to the servants at the back entrance to the palace.”

The next morning, at the hour named, found me at the door of the palace, where my name was recognised, and I at once was ushered into the apartment of the Duke, where I found him in his arm-chair, wrapped in his morning gown of white flannel, and his head covered with a cap of black velvet richly embroidered with gold. He rose and took me by the hand in the most cordial manner, and instantly led me to another part of the room, in front of a portrait hanging on the wall.—“There,” said he, “do you know that face?” “Very well,” said I; “that is the portrait of John Hunter; it is an admirable likeness, and looks to me like a picture by one of our American artists. If I had met it anywhere else but in this country I should have said it was by Harding, one of our most valued portrait painters.” “Well,” said he, “you know that portrait too, do you?” “Very well—that is his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex.” “Well,” said the Duke, “now I will tell you, they were both painted by Mr. Harding. Harding is a great favourite of mine, and a very clever artist.”

I at this moment presented to the Duke the Indian pipe, through which he had smoked the day before, and also an Indian tobacco-pouch, filled with the k’nick-k’neck (or Indian tobacco) with which he had been so much pleased.

He thanked me for the present, which he assured me delighted him very much; and, after showing me a great variety of curious and most ingenious pipes from various countries, we took our seats alone at the breakfast table. In the course of our conversation, which ran upon pipes—upon Indians and Indian countries, his Royal Highness said he had reasons for asking me if I had known Hunter, and should feel most happy if he found in me a person who had been acquainted with his history. He said he had known Hunter familiarly while he was in London, and had entertained him in his palace, and thought a great deal of him. He had thought his life a most extraordinary one, well entitling him to the attentions that were paid to him here—that he had been entertained and amused by his narrations of Indian life, and that he had made him several presents, amongst which was a very valuable watch, and had had his portrait painted, which he highly valued. He said he had learned, with deep regret, since Hunter had left here, that a learned French gentleman in Philadelphia, M. Duponceau, and some others, had held him up to the public, through the journals, as an impostor, and his narrations as fabulous. “This to me,” said the Duke, “you can easily see, has been a subject of much pain (as I took more pains to introduce him and his works in this country than any one else), and it explains to you the cause of my anxiety to learn something more of his true history.”

I replied to his Royal Highness that I had been equally pained by hearing such reports in circulation in my own country, and that my acquaintance with Hunter had not been familiar enough to enable me wholly to refute them, I stated that I had been introduced to Mr. Hunter in New Orleans, where he was well known to many, and that I had met him in two or three other parts of the United States, and since reading his work I had visited many of the Indian villages, in which he lived, and had conversed with chiefs and others named in his work, who spoke familiarly of him. I felt assured, therefore, that he had spent the Indian life that he describes in his work; and yet that he might have had the indiscretion to have made some misrepresentations attributed to him, I was not able positively to deny. His work, as far as it treats on the manners and customs of the American Indians, and which could not have been written or dictated by any other than a person who had lived that familiar life with them, is decidedly the most descriptive and best work yet published on their every-day domestic habits and superstitions; and, of itself, goes a great way, in my opinion, to establish the fact that his early life was identified with that of the Indians.

I stated that I believed his character had been cruelly and unjustly libelled, and that I had the peculiar satisfaction of believing that I had justly defended it, and given the merited rebuke at the fountain of all his misfortunes, which I described as follows:—

“On my return from an eight years’ residence amongst the remotest tribes of Indians in America, and paying a visit to my old friends in the city of Philadelphia, M. Duponceau, of whom your Royal Highness has spoken, an old and very learned gentleman, and deeply skilled in the various languages of America, and who was then preparing a very elaborate work on the subject, invited me to meet several of his friends at his table to breakfast; which I did. He was at this time nearly blind and very deaf, and still eagerly grasping at every traveller and trapper from the Indian country, for some new leaf to his book, or some new word to his vocabularies, instead of going himself to the Indian fireside, the true (and in fact the only) school in which to learn and write their language.

“After our breakfast was finished and our coffee-cups removed, this learned M. Duponceau opened his note-book upon the table and began in this way—‘My dear Sir (addressing himself to me), I am so delighted with such an opportunity—I am told that you have visited some forty or fifty tribes of Indians, and many of them speaking different languages. You have undoubtedly in eight years learned to speak fluently; and I shall draw from you such a valuable addition to my great work—what a treat this will be, gentlemen, ha? Now you see I have written out some two or three hundred words, for which you will give me the Blackfoot, the Mandan, the Pawnee Pict, &c. You have been amongst all these tribes?’ ‘Yes.’ The old gentleman here took a pinch of snuff and then said, ‘In this identical place, and on this very table, it was, gentlemen, that I detected the imposture of that rascal Hunter! Do you know that fellow, Mr. Catlin?’ ‘Yes, I have seen him.’ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I was the first to detect him;—I published him to the world and put a stop to his impostures. I invited him to take breakfast with me as I have invited you, and in this same book wrote down the Indian translation of a list of words and sentences that I had prepared, as he gave them to me; and the next day when I invited him again, he gave me for one-third at least of those words a different translation. I asked for the translation of a number of words in languages that were familiar to me, and which he told me he understood, and he gave them in words of other tribes. I now discovered his ignorance, and at once pronounced him an impostor, and closed my book.’

“ ‘And now,’ said I, ‘M. Duponceau, lest you should make yourself and me a great deal of trouble, and call me an impostor also, I will feel much obliged if you will close your book again; for I am quite sure I should prove myself under your examination just as ignorant as Mr. Hunter, and subject myself to the same reproach which is following him through the world, emanating from so high an authority. Mr. Hunter and myself did not go into the Indian countries to study the Indian languages, nor do we come into the civilized world to publish them, and to be made responsible for errors in writing them. I can well understand how Mr. Hunter gave you, to a certain extent, a different version on different days; he, like myself, having learned a little of fifteen or twenty different languages, would necessarily be at a loss, with many of his Indian words, to know what tribe they belong to; and our partial knowledge of so many tongues involves us at once in a difficulty not unlike the confusion at Babel, and disqualifies his responses or mine, as authority for such works as I hope you are preparing for the world. With these views (though I profess to be the property of the world, and ready and pleased to communicate anything that I have distinctly learned of the Indians and their modes), I must beg to decline giving you the translation of a single word; and at the same time to express a hope that you may verbally, or in the valuable works which you are soon to bequeath to posterity, leave a repentant word at least, to remove the censure which you say you were the first to cast upon Hunter, and which is calculated to follow him to the grave.’ ”

His Royal Highness was much interested and somewhat amused by this narrative, and agreed with me, that such men as M. Duponceau, and others, to whom the world is to look for a full and correct account of the Indian languages of America, should go themselves to the wigwams of the Indians, and there, in their respective tribes, open the books in which to record their various vocabularies, rather than sit at home and trust to the ignorant jargon that can be caught from the trapper and the trader and the casual tourists who make flying visits through the Indian countries. He related to me many curious anecdotes of poor Hunter, and as I left him enjoying his k’nick-k’neck through his Indian pipe, he said to me, “Your name, sir, will be familiar at my door, and I shall be delighted to see you again at the same hour, whenever you feel disposed to come.”

Amidst the many avocations that were now demanding and engrossing the most of my time, I was still able, by an effort, to allot certain portions of the day to the pleasures that are found in the domestic circles of wives and little ones, and nowhere else; and with them spent the happiest moments of my life, notwithstanding the attentions of the world and the efforts to make my enjoyment complete. With my dear Clara I took my strolls and my rides to see what was amusing or instructive in the great metropolis, and we saw much that amused and still more that astonished us. Through the kindness of our untiring friend Mr. Murray, we got access to the palaces of St. James and Buckingham, and to the public and private rooms of Windsor Castle; we saw the “five tons’ weight of gold plate” that are said to enrich that noble palace, and which but few eyes are allowed to gaze upon.

We visited the Royal Mint, the Tower, the noble mansions of the Dukes of Sutherland and Devonshire, and the Bank of England. I was surprised that we were allowed to pass through every part of this wonderful sanctuary of gold and silver, and still more so that a guide should stand ready to conduct us through all its numerous ramifications, and as he passed along from room to room, from office to office, and from vault to vault, to hear him lecture upon everything we passed, as if they feared we might not appreciate it in all its parts. It has been many times described and needs no further comment here, except an occurrence in one of the vaults which deserves a current notice. The Honourable Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, was among our companions on the occasion, and as we were shown into this apartment, which I think was called a vault, though it was a large square room with the light of a dome over it, the gentleman having charge of it within received us in the most courteous manner, and as if it were a public exhibition which we had paid our shilling to see, he led us around the room and with his keys opened the iron safes which were all sunk in the walls, with double doors of iron, and showed us the amount of gold and notes contained in them, and on opening one that was filled with packages of Bank of England notes, he took a bundle of them some ten or twelve inches in diameter, and smilingly placing it in the hands of my wife, asked her if she had any idea how much money she was holding. Her rough guess was a very moderate one: she was so much excited and so recently from New York, that she had forgotten pounds sterling, and replied “Perhaps a thousand dollars;” when he turned it the other side up and referred us to the label upon it—“two millions of pounds!” He then took out another parcel of equal size, and placing that on the top of it said to her, “Now, madam, you have four millions.” Poor thing! she looked pale as she handed it back, saying, “Ah, well, I am glad it is not mine.” The kind and gentlemanly attention shown to us, and the pains taken to explain everything as we passed along, were unexpected, and even a mystery in politeness which was beyond my comprehension. We were conducted from this room to the arched vaults, where we traced for a long distance the narrow aisles to the right and the left and to the north and the south, through phalanxes of wheelbarrows loaded with bars of silver and of gold, and all with their heads one way, seemed ready for a subterraneous crusade in case of necessity.

We returned from this half-day’s work, fatigued, and almost sorry that we had seen so much of the “shining dust” which our hands are labouring so hard through life to earn a pittance of.

There were several Americans with us on this day’s expedition, and all agreed that we drew more pleasure from the gentlemanly politeness we met in the Bank of England than we did from its wonderful system (which was all explained to us), and from its golden riches which were all laid open to our view.

Our fatigue, when we got home, seemed enough for one day; but as it happened on that day, our sight-seeing was only begun; for it had been arranged that we were to go to the Polish ball at the Mansion House on that evening, and what was to make it a double task, it was arranged that we should all go, some five or six of us, in Indian costumes. My Indian wardrobe was therefore laid under heavy contributions for that night. My nephew Burr and myself were dressed as chiefs, and two or three more of my friends were arrayed as warriors. My dear little Christian Clara, whose sphere it was not, and who never wore an Indian dress or painted her fair face before, becoming inspired with a wish to see the splendour of the scene, proposed to assume the dress of an Indian woman and follow me through the mazes of that night as an Indian squaw follows her lord on such occasions. I selected for her one of the prettiest and most beautifully ornamented women’s dresses, which was made of the fine white skin of the mountain sheep; and with her hair spread over her back, and her face and her arms painted to the colour of a squaw, and her neck and ears loaded with the usual profusion of beads and other ornaments, and her fan of the eagle’s tail in her hand, she sidled along with us amidst the glare and splendour, and buzz and din of the happy throng we were soon in the midst of, and dragging our awkward shields and quivers and heavy buffalo robes through, as well as we could. We took good care not to dance on that occasion, so we kept the paint on our faces, and by understanding no questions, answered none, and passed off with everybody as real Indians. We went resolved to gratify our eyes, but to give no gratification to others besides what they could take to themselves by looking at us. Our interpreter was true to his promise: he made out his own descriptions for us, and assured all who inquired, that we could not speak a word of English. French, German, Russian, and Italian were all tried in vain upon us; and as they turned away, one after another, from us, they exclaimed, “What a pity! how unfortunate the poor things can’t speak English! how interesting it would be to talk with them! that’s a noble-looking fellow, that big chief; egad, he is six feet and a half. I’ll be bound that fellow has taken many a scalp. That’s a nice-looking little squaw: upon my word, if she had a white skin she would be rather pretty!” and a thousand such remarks, as the reader can imagine, while we were wending our tedious way through the bewildering mazes of this endless throng. The task for my poor Clara soon became more than she had anticipated before entering the room, and was growing too much for her delicate frame to bear: she had not thought of the constant gaze of thousands she was to stand in every moment of the evening; and another discipline (which she knew must be strictly adhered to, to act out the character she was supporting, and which had not occurred to her before she had commenced upon the toils of the evening) made her part a difficult one to act—that was the necessity of following in the wake of all the party of men when we were in motion, the place assigned to Indian women on the march rather than by the side or on the arms of their husbands. This, in the street or in the wilderness or anywhere else would have been tolerable, she said, but in her present condition was insupportable. The idea was so ridiculous to her, to be the last of a party of Indians (who always walk in single file) so far behind her husband, and then the crowd closing in upon her and in danger of crushing her to death. We soon however were so lucky as to find a flight of several broad steps which led to a side room, but now closed, which furnished us comfortable seats above the crowd, which we took good care to hold until our curiosity was all gratified, and we were ready to return home. Our interpreter, in answer to all inquiries as to the locale of these strange foreigners, mentioned the Egyptian Hall; and for weeks after, Daniel testified to the increase of our receipts, and bore sad evidence too of the trouble he had in explaining the difficulty of showing to his visiters the “real Indians.” After having satiated our curiosity, and several of the youngest of the party having received some very pretty trinkets and other presents that had been forced upon them, we made our way home in good season to enjoy the joke, and part of a good night’s rest.