The Chainbearer; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts

«It is true the pale-faces are the most numerous, now; but once they were not. Do not your traditions tell you how few the Yangeese were, when they fi rst came across the salt lake?»

«Come in big canoe – two, t’ree full – no more».

«Why then did two or three shipfuls of white men become so strong as to drive back from the sea all the red warriors, and become masters of the land? Can you give a reason for that?»

«‘Cause he bring fi re-water wid him, and red man big fool to drink».

«The Great Spirit has created man as he is, and the earth as it is; and he has left the one to be master of the other. If it were not his pleasure that man should not do as he has done, it would not be done. Different laws and different feelings would then bring about different ends. When the law places all men on a level, as to rights, it does as much as can be ex­pected of it. Now, this level does not consist in pulling ev­erything to pieces periodically, but in respecting certain great principles that are just in themselves; but which, once started, must be left to follow their own course. When the rights of property are fi rst established, they must be established fair­ly, on some admitted rule; after which they are to remain in­violable – that is to say, sacred».

«Dat true», answered the Indian, smiling; for he seldom laughed; and repeating a common saying of the country – «By – de – day – by – de – day – By de job, job, job! Dat pale­face religion, young chief».

Although the property of Ravensnest had been settled fully thirty years when I fi rst saw it, none of those signs of rapid and energetic improvement were visible that we have witnessed in the efforts of similar undertakings since the Revolution. Pre­viously to that great event, the country fi lled up very slowly, and each colony seemed to regard itself, in some measure, as a distinct country. Thus it was that we in New York obtained very few immigrants from New England, that great hive which has so often swarmed since, and the bees of which have carried their industry and ingenuity over so much of the republic in our own time. We of New York have our prejudices against the Yankees, and have long looked upon them with eyes of

distrust and disfavor. They have repaid us in kind, perhaps; but their dislikes have not been strong enough to prevent them from coming to take possession of our lands. For my own part, while I certainly see much in the New England character that I do not like (more in their manners and minor ways, perhaps, than in essentials), I as certainly see a great deal to command my respect. If the civilization that they carry with them is not of a very high order, as is connected with the tastes, senti­ments, and nicer feelings, it is superior to that of any other country I have visited, in its common-sense provisions, and in its care over the intellectual being, considered in reference to the foundations of learning. More persons are dragged from out the mire of profound ignorance under their system, than under that of any other people; and a greater number of candi­dates are brought forward for intellectual advancements. That so few of these candidates rise very high in the scale of knowl­edge, is in part owing to the circumstance that their lives are so purely practical; and, possibly, in part to the fact that while so much attention has been paid to the foundations of the so­cial edifi ce, that little art or care has as yet been expended on the superstructure. Nevertheless, the millions of Yankees that are spreading themselves over the land, are producing, and have already produced, a most salutary infl uence on its prac­tical knowledge, on its enterprise, on its improvements, and consequently on its happiness. If they have not done much for its tastes, its manners, and its higher principles, it is because no portion of the earth is perfect. I am fully aware that this is conceding more than my own father would have conceded in their favor, and twice as much as could have been extracted

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The thirty years of the settlement of my patent, then, had not done much for it, in the way of works of art. Time, it is true, had effected something, and it was something in a manner that was a little peculiar, and which might be oftener discov­ered in the country at the time of which I am writing, than at the present day. The timber of the ‘Nest, with the exception of some mountain-land, was principally what, in American par­lance, is termed «hard wood». In other words, the trees were not perennial, but deciduous; and the merest tyro in the woods knows that the roots of the last decay in a fourth of the time that the roots of the fi rst endure, after the trunk is severed. As a consequence, the stumps had nearly all disappeared from the fi elds; a fact that, of itself, gave to the place the appear­ance of an old country, according to our American notions. It is true, the virgin forest still fl ourished in immediate contact with those fi elds, shorn, tilled, and smoothed as they were, giv­ing a wild and solemn setting to the rural picture the latter

The background of this picture, to which a certain de­gree of rural beauty was not wanting, was the «boundless woods». Woods stretched away, north, and south, and east, far as eye could reach; woods crowned the sides and summits of all