have spoken to me of the Abenakis as savages, which they have done more than a million times, the memory of Rabomis comes into my mind.
Her face was oval, and a clear brown in color, like that of Phoebe Marvin after a summer of her deviltries in the water at the mouth of the Arundel River. Below her eyes there was a flush of red, as though a warm light shone up at her. Her black hair was bound by a narrow ribbon of wampum. Her deerskin jerkin was open at the throat; and around her neck were strands of bright blue wampum.
Her English speech was soft and pleasing, and broken a little by queernesses of pronunciation learned from her father, a Huguenot from France, who had become the master of a vessel that was wrecked at the mouth of the Georges River, near Monhegan. Her manner of expression was pleasing, too; for the Abenaki speech is involved and flowery, and it was her custom to speak in English as she would have spoken in Abenaki.
I cannot understand why white men believe that the Abenakis and all other Indians speak in gutturals, with perpetual ugging and gugging. I know little of the speech of the Western Indians, who are despised, probably incorrectly, by Abenakis for living in filth and indulging in obscene practices; but I know the Abenaki speech as well as my own, and there is no speech softer to the ear. I have spoken with Frenchmen of some position concerning this matter, and they have said there is no language in Europe as well adapted to express the niceties of diplomacy and the gentlenesses of society as is that of the Abenakis of the Kennebec, the Androscoggin, and the Saco rivers.
Indeed, it is impossible for me to hear the Abenakis called savages without recalling their honesty, generosity and steadfastness: without remembering the abuse and treachery they suffered at the hands of the lustful, foul-mouthed traders and trappers who fattened on them.
It may be I shall be damned for saying so; but unless I have misread my Bible, I have found more Christianity and human kindness in Rabomis and Hobomok, the m’téoulin, and Natawammet and Mogg Chabonoke and Natanis and other of my Indian friends than in the venerated and violent Cotton Mather of Boston, who has declared in his writings that all red men are Scythians, and that the practising of cruelties on them and the breaking of treaties with them are justified in God’s sight.
There have been many Abenaki children stolen by white settlers during my lifetime and reared in white settlements as servants and slaves. Similarly, there have been many white children stolen by Abenakis and reared along the Androscoggin and the Kennebec and the Penobscot as sons and brothers of their captors. Now this is odd, but true: in nearly every case the Abenaki children who were stolen by the whites have sooner or later escaped and gone back to their own people, too frequently taking with them the evil traits of their captors; whereas the white children who were stolen by Abenakis have either refused to leave their captors, or have been desperately unhappy on returning to the settlements and so have rejoined their red brothers whenever the opportunity offered.
The fearless sachem of the Androscoggins, Paul Higgins, was stolen from the white settlements in his early youth. He said to me once that if he should have to return to the settlements and toil forever at the same tasks, year after year, he would feel like a broody hen, endlessly doing the same useless thing with iron perseverance, and would soon go crazy.
Even the food and the cooking of the Abenakis proved to be better than endurable. During my illness we lived on venison, which at first I refused to eat without salt, though my father devoured it in the Indian manner as eagerly as did Rabomis and Jacataqua, by dipping it in sugared raccoon fat.
Seeing the pleasure my father took in this food, I tried it and found it had merit, though I shall never prefer it to three or four platters of my sister Cynthia’s baked
Her face was oval, and a clear brown in color, like that of Phoebe Marvin after a summer of her deviltries in the water at the mouth of the Arundel River. Below her eyes there was a flush of red, as though a warm light shone up at her. Her black hair was bound by a narrow ribbon of wampum. Her deerskin jerkin was open at the throat; and around her neck were strands of bright blue wampum.
Her English speech was soft and pleasing, and broken a little by queernesses of pronunciation learned from her father, a Huguenot from France, who had become the master of a vessel that was wrecked at the mouth of the Georges River, near Monhegan. Her manner of expression was pleasing, too; for the Abenaki speech is involved and flowery, and it was her custom to speak in English as she would have spoken in Abenaki.
I cannot understand why white men believe that the Abenakis and all other Indians speak in gutturals, with perpetual ugging and gugging. I know little of the speech of the Western Indians, who are despised, probably incorrectly, by Abenakis for living in filth and indulging in obscene practices; but I know the Abenaki speech as well as my own, and there is no speech softer to the ear. I have spoken with Frenchmen of some position concerning this matter, and they have said there is no language in Europe as well adapted to express the niceties of diplomacy and the gentlenesses of society as is that of the Abenakis of the Kennebec, the Androscoggin, and the Saco rivers.
Indeed, it is impossible for me to hear the Abenakis called savages without recalling their honesty, generosity and steadfastness: without remembering the abuse and treachery they suffered at the hands of the lustful, foul-mouthed traders and trappers who fattened on them.
It may be I shall be damned for saying so; but unless I have misread my Bible, I have found more Christianity and human kindness in Rabomis and Hobomok, the m’téoulin, and Natawammet and Mogg Chabonoke and Natanis and other of my Indian friends than in the venerated and violent Cotton Mather of Boston, who has declared in his writings that all red men are Scythians, and that the practising of cruelties on them and the breaking of treaties with them are justified in God’s sight.
There have been many Abenaki children stolen by white settlers during my lifetime and reared in white settlements as servants and slaves. Similarly, there have been many white children stolen by Abenakis and reared along the Androscoggin and the Kennebec and the Penobscot as sons and brothers of their captors. Now this is odd, but true: in nearly every case the Abenaki children who were stolen by the whites have sooner or later escaped and gone back to their own people, too frequently taking with them the evil traits of their captors; whereas the white children who were stolen by Abenakis have either refused to leave their captors, or have been desperately unhappy on returning to the settlements and so have rejoined their red brothers whenever the opportunity offered.
The fearless sachem of the Androscoggins, Paul Higgins, was stolen from the white settlements in his early youth. He said to me once that if he should have to return to the settlements and toil forever at the same tasks, year after year, he would feel like a broody hen, endlessly doing the same useless thing with iron perseverance, and would soon go crazy.
Even the food and the cooking of the Abenakis proved to be better than endurable. During my illness we lived on venison, which at first I refused to eat without salt, though my father devoured it in the Indian manner as eagerly as did Rabomis and Jacataqua, by dipping it in sugared raccoon fat.
Seeing the pleasure my father took in this food, I tried it and found it had merit, though I shall never prefer it to three or four platters of my sister Cynthia’s baked
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