141 CHAPTER XIII. INDIAN ANECDOTES. JUSTICE. THE Indians have a strong innate sense of justice, which will lead them sometimes to acts which some men will call heroic, others romantic, and not a few, perhaps, will designate by the epithet barbarous; a vague indefinite word, which if it means any thing, might, perhaps, be best explained by something not like ourselves. However that may be, this feeling certainly exists among the Indians, and as I cannot describe it better than by its effects, I shall content myself with relating on this subject a characteristic anecdote which happened in the year 1793, at an Indian village called La Chine, situated nine miles above Montreal, and was told me in the same year by Mr. La Ramée, a French Canadian inhabitant of that place, whom I believe to be a person of strict veracity. I was then on my return from Detroit, in company with General Lincoln and several other gentlemen, who were present at the relation, and gave it their full belief. I thought it then so interesting, that I inserted it in my journal, from which I now extract it. There were in the said village of La Chine, two remarkable Indians, the one for his stature, being six feet four inches in height, and the other for his strength and activity. These two meeting together one day in the street (a third being present,) the former in a high tone made use of some insulting lan guage to the other, which he could not well put up with: he called him a coward, said he was his inferior in every respect, and so provoked his anger, that unable any longer to contain himself, the latter instantly replied: "You have grossly insulted me; but I will prevent you from doing the like again!" and at the same moment stabbed him through the body with his knife, so that he dropped down dead by his side. The alarm being immediately spread through the village, a crowd of Indians assembled, and the murderer having seated himself on the ground by the side of the dead body, cooly awaited his fate, which he could not expect to be any other than immediate death, particularly as the cry of the people was "Kill him! Kill him!" But although he placed his body and his head in a proper posture to receive the stroke of the tomahawk, no one attempted to lay hands on him; but after removing the dead body from where it lay, they left him alone. Not meeting here with his expected fate, he rose from this place for a more public part of the village, and there lay down on the ground, in the hope of being the sooner despatched; but the spectators, after viewing him, all retired again. Sensible that his life was justly forfeited, and anxious to be relieved from a state of suspense, he took the resolution to go to the mother of the deceased, an aged widow, whom he addressed in these words: "Woman, I have killed thy son; hẹ had insulted me, it is true: but still he was thine, and his life was valuable to thee. I, therefore, now surrender myself up to thy will. Direct as thou wilt have it, and relieve me speedily from misery." To which the woman answered: "Thou hast indeed, killed my son, who was dear to me, and the only supporter I had in my old age. One life is already lost, and to take thine on that account, cannot be of any service to me, nor better my situation. Thou hast, however, a son, whom if thou wilt give me in the place of my son whom thou hast slain, all shall be wiped away." The murderer then replied: "Mother, my son is yet but a child, ten years old, and can be of no service to thee, but rather a trouble and charge; but here am I, truly capable of supporting and maintaining thee: if thou wilt receive me as thy son, nothing shall be wanting on my part to make thee comfortable while thou livest." The woman, approving of the proposal, forthwith adopted him as her son, and took the whole family to her house.HECKEWELDer. FORBEARANCE OF TEMPER IN ACCIDENTAL They judge with calmness on all occasions, and decide with precision, or endeavour to do so, between an accident and a wilful act;-the first (they say) they are all liable to commit, and therefore it ought not to be noticed, or punished ;-the second being a wilful or premeditated act committed with a bad design, ought on the contrary to receive due punish ment. To illustrate this subject, I shall relate a few of the cases of this description which have come within my knowledge. One morning early, an Indian came into the house of another who was yet a-bed, asking for the loan of his gun for a morning hunt, his own being out of repair. The owner readily consented, and said: "As my gun is not loaded, you will have "to take a few balls out of your pouch!" In taking the gun down, it, however, by some accident went off, and lodged the contents in the owner's head, who was still lying on the bed, and now expired. The gun, it appeared, was loaded, though unknown to him, and the lock left in such condition that by a touch it went off. A cry was heard from all sides in the house: "O! the accident!" for such it was always considered to have been, and was treated as such. A hunter went out to kill a bear, some of those animals having been seen in the neighbourhood. In an obscure part of a wood, he saw at a distance something black moving, which he took for a bear, the whole of the animal not being visible to him; he fired, and found he had shot a black horse. Having discovered the mistake, he informed the owner of what had happened, expressing at the same time his regret that he was not possessed of a single horse, with which he could replace the one he had shot. What! replied the Indian whose horse had been killed, do you think I would accept a horse from you, though you had one to give, after you have satisfied me that you killed mine by accident? No, indeed! for the same misfortune might also happen to me. An aged Indian who had gone out to shoot a turkey, mistook a black hog in the bushes for one of those birds, and shot him; fiuding out by inquiry to whom the hog belonged, he informed the owner of the mistake he had made, offering to pay for the hog; which the other, however, not only would not accept of, but having brought the meat in, gave him a leg of the animal, because he thought that the unfortunate man, as well on account of his disappointment, in not feasting on turkey as he expected soon to do when he shot the hog, as for his honesty in informing of what he had done, was entitled to a share of what he had killed. Two Indians with a large canoe, going down the Muskingum river to a certain distance, were accosted by others going by land to the same place, who requested them to take their heavy articles, as kettles, axes, hoes, &c., into their canoe, which they freely did, but unfortunately were shipwrecked at the rocks of White Eyes's falls (as the place is called,) where the whole cargo was lost, and the men saved themselves by swimming to the shore. The question being put and fully discussed, whether those men with the canoe, who had taken charge of the proper ty of the others, and by this neglect lost the whole; were not liable to pay for the loss? It was decided in the negative, on the following grounds : 1. That the canoe men had taken the articles on board, with the pleasing hope that they thereby would oblige their fellow men, and did not expect any recompense for that service. 2. That although they might have avoided the danger and the loss, by unloading the canoe at the head of the fall, and carrying the cargo by land below it, (which was but a short distance,) as was customary, when the river was not in a proper state to run through, yet that, had those who travelled by land been in the place of those in the canoe, they might, like them, have attempted to have run through, as is sometimes done with success, and been equally unfortunate. 3. That the canoe men having had all their own property on board, which was all lost at the same time, and was equally valuable to them, it was clear that they had expected to run safely through, and could not have intentionally or designedly brought on themselves and others the misfortune which had happened, and therefore the circumstance must be ascribed entirely to accident.-HECKEWELDER. MATRIMONY AND DIVORCE. Had the following anecdote been in existence in the time of our great poet Milton, would he not have translated it into his high style, and given it a place in his treatise on the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce?" One can easily conceive how he would have chuckled over such a thing in the midst of the bitterness (caused by his wife's misconduct,) with which he sat down to compose his "Tetrachordon," and other tracts on the subject. B. An aged Indian, who for many years had spent much of his time among the white people both in Pennsylvania and New-Jersey, one day about the year 1770 observed, that the Indians had not only |