Missionaries Among the Indians
Take, for instance, the following scene, as described with great naïveté by one of the Moravian missionaries. After a conference with some of the Delaware chief men, in which they were informed that these missionaries had come to teach them a better and purer religion, of which the one fundamental principle, leading to eternal salvation, was belief in the Redeemer, and atonement through his blood for the sins of all mankind—all which was contained in the book which he held in his hand,—“Wangoman, a great chief and medicine-man among them, rose to reply. He began by tracing two lines on the ground, and endeavoured to explain that there were two ways which led alike to God and to happiness, the way of the Red man, and the way of the White man, but the way of the Red man, he said, was the straighter and the shorter of the two.”
The missionary here interposed, and represented that God himself had descended on earth to teach men the true way. Wangoman declared that “he had been intimately acquainted with God for many years, and had never heard that God became a man and shed his blood, and therefore the God of whom Brother Zeisberger preached could not be the true God, or he, Wangoman, would have been made acquainted with the circumstance.”
The missionary then declared, “in the power of the spirit, that the God in whom Wangoman and his Indians believed was no other than the devil, the father of lies.” Wangoman replied in a very moderate tone, “I cannot understand your doctrine; it is quite new and strange to me. If it be true,” he added, “that the Great Spirit came down into the world, became a man and suffered so much, I assure you the Indians are not in fault, but the white men alone. God has given us the beasts of the forest for food, and our employment is to hunt them. We know nothing of your book—we cannot learn it; it is much too difficult for an Indian to comprehend.”
Brother Zeisberger replied, “I will tell you the reason of it. Satan is the prince of darkness: where he reigns all is dark, and he dwells in you—therefore you can comprehend nothing of God and his word; but when you return from the evil of your ways, and come as a wretched lost sinner to Jesus Christ, it may be that he will have mercy upon you. Do not delay therefore; make haste and save your poor souls!” &c.
I forbear to repeat the rest, because it would seem as if I intended to turn it into ridicule, which Heaven knows I do not; for it is of far too serious import. But if it be in this style that the simple and sublime precepts of Christianity are first presented to the understanding of the Indians, can we wonder at the little progress hitherto made in converting them to the truth? And with regard to all attempts to civilise them, what should the red man see in the civilisation of the white man which should move him to envy or emulation, or raise in his mind a wish to exchange his “own unshackled life, and his innate capacities of soul,” for our artificial social habits, our morals, which are contradicted by our opinions, and our religion, which is violated both in our laws and our lives? When the good missionary said, with emphasis, that there was no hope for the conversion of the Indians but in removing them as far as possible from all intercourse with Europeans, he spoke a terrible truth, confirmed by all I see and hear—by the opinion of every one I have spoken to, who has ever had any intercourse with these people. It will be said, as it has often been said, that here it is the selfishness of the white man which speaks; that it is for his interest, and for his wordly advantage, that the red man should be removed out of his way, and be thrust back from the extending limits of civilisation—even like these forests, which fall before us, and vanish from the earth, leaving for a while some decaying stumps and roots over which the plough goes in time, and no vestige remains to say that here they have been. True; it is for the advantage of the European agriculturist or artisan, that the hunter of the woods, who requires the range of many hundred square miles of land for the adequate support of a single family, should make way for populous towns, and fields teeming with the means of subsistence for thousands. There is no denying this; and if there be those who think that in the present state of things the interests of the red man and the white man can ever be blended, and their natures and habits brought to harmonise, then I repeat, let them come here, and behold and see the heathen and the so-called Christian placed in near neighbourhood and comparison, and judge what are the chances for both! Wherever the Christian comes, he brings the Bible in one hand, disease, corruption, and the accursed fire-water, in the other; or flinging down the book of peace, he boldly and openly proclaims that might gives right, and substitutes the sabre and the rifle for the slower desolation of starvation and whisky.
Every means hitherto provided by the Canadian government for the protection of the Indians against the whites has failed. Every prohibition of the use or sale of ardent spirits among them has proved a mere mockery. The refuse of the white population along the back settlements have no perception of the genuine virtues of the Indian character. They see only their inferiority in the commonest arts of life; their subjection to our power. They contemn them, oppress them, cheat them, corrupt their women, and deprave them by the means and example of drunkenness. The missionaries alone have occasionally succeeded in averting or alleviating these evils, at least in some degree; but their influence is very, very limited. The chiefs and warriors of the different tribes are perfectly aware of the monstrous evils introduced by the use of ardent spirits. They have held councils, and made resolutions for themselves and their people to abstain from their use; but the very first temptation generally oversets all these good resolves. My Moravian friend described this intense passion for intoxicating liquors with a sort of awe and affright, and attributed it to the direct agency of the devil. Another missionary relates that soon after the Delaware Indians had agreed among themselves to reject every temptation of the kind, and punish those who yielded to it, a white dealer in rum came among them, and placing himself in the midst of one of their villages, with a barrel of spirits beside him, he introduced a straw into it, and with many professions of civility and friendship to his Indian friends, he invited every one to come and take a suck through the straw gratis. A young Indian approached with a grave and pensive air and slow step, but suddenly turning round, he ran off precipitately as one terrified. Soon after he returned, he approached yet nearer, but again ran off in the same manner as before. The third time he suffered himself to be persuaded by the white man to put his lips to the straw. No sooner had he tasted of the fiery drink, than he offered all his wampum for a dram; and subsequently parted with everything he possessed, even his rifle and his blanket, for more.