Project MUSE - Following the “Indian Trail”: Isabel’s Lost Mohawk Lineage in Melville’s PIERRE

New work by Yukiko Oshima in the latest Leviathan :

Project MUSE - Following the “Indian Trail”: Isabel’s Lost Mohawk Lineage in Melville’s <i>Pierre</i>

"Melville" defends his favorable view of "Indian character"

The deportment of the whole Cherokee people throughout the transactions which have ended in their expulsion, exhibits a magnanimity which we fear will scarcely find a counterpart in the proceedings of the nation which compelled their removal.

CHARACTER OF THE INDIANS.

In the Watchman of October 19, appeared a letter from a ‘missionary among the Indians,’ in one paragraph of which it was said that ‘Melville, a writer in the Ch. Watchman of Nov. 10, 1837,’ had ‘formed mistaken ideas of the Indian character.’ He adds, ‘Nor is he alone; such I presume is the general impression among those who have not had an opportunity to be among them.’ In proof of this first statement, the missionary who signs himself J. G. P., presents a quotation from the article of ‘Melville,’ which, he avers, represents the Indian character in a too favorable view, and in one which is totally opposed by the experience of himself and brethren among the native tribes.

The writer of the article to which J. G. P. refers, begs leave to state that his description was founded on testimony which he had the very best reasons to consider authentic, from authors whose well known character commands implicit belief to their statements. He relied also on the accounts of some acquaintances who had enjoyed opportunities to observe the Indian character; and he had himself seen cases which answered most happily to these representations. Neither can he readily believe that a nation like our own of proverbial acuteness, which has been in contact with the Indians these two-hundred years, and at war with them no small part of the time, can have invariably ascribed to the Indian character virtues which never existed there.— The deportment of the whole Cherokee people throughout the transactions which have ended in their expulsion, exhibits a magnanimity which we fear will scarcely find a counterpart in the proceedings of the nation which compelled their removal.

That virtues frequently appear in the Indian character, according to the common use of the term, he thinks will hardly be disputed; but he regrets to learn, what he readily admits to be true, that the observation of J. G. P., and other missionaries had ascertained them to be more rarely discoverable than the friends of this unfortunate race could desire. After all it must probably be conceded that the Indian is commonly much like other men—virtuous and happy with the gospel, degraded and wretched without it.

‘Melville’ begs that J. G. P. will do him the justice to believe that his stricture is received with the most unfeigned candor, since it appears to have been made in that spirit, and since he certainly desires to entertain upon this subject only the simple truth. It is his candid wish and prayer to Almighty God, that br. J. G. P. may experience the divine blessing in his labors; and he trusts that no one who feels an obligation to devote himself to the eternal interests of the Indians will be deterred by the consideration that their condition is less happy, and their spiritual wants even more imperative than they have usually been supposed to be.

MELVILLE.

 --From the Christian Watchman [Boston, Massachusetts] Friday, November 23, 1838; found in the online Newspaper Archives at Genealogy Bank.

 Related melvilliana posts:

• Missions to the Western Indians No. 1 - Friday, November 10, 1837
• "Melville" on Missions to the Western Indians No. 2 - March 23, 1838.
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 3 - Wednesday, April 4, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 4 - Friday, April 27, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 5 - Friday, June 22, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 6 - Friday, July 13, 1838

Missions to the Western Indians by "Melville" - No. 6 of 6

From the Christian Watchman [Boston, Massachusetts] Friday, July 13, 1838; found in the online Newspaper Archives at Genealogy Bank. 

For the Watchman.
Missions to the Western Indians.— No. 6.

We have now taken a brief survey of the location and general condition of the principal tribes. We have also looked across the Mississippi to the country which has been assigned to the Indians as their future home, where it is proposed to collect the forlorn remnants of these once powerful bands, with the professed hope that under more auspicious circumstances they may not only preserve an existence, but advance in temporal and moral prosperity. Let the Christian church see to it that wherever shall be their location they shall be affectionately proffered the hopes and blessings of the gospel.

And now, my dear reader, suffer me to press home to your heart and conscience the inquiry, what can you do for the unfortunate Indians? Your red brethren are immortal creatures, subject to the same moral laws, and amenable to the same tribunal with yourself. You are bound to do all in your power to give the gospel to all men. The Indian is your neighbor and your brother. He has been expelled from this country to make room for you in common with others,—from that country which now seems to deny him a place in which to rest his weary head. Will you not, then, be entreated to do your utmost, in person, or through the assisted agency of others, to point the wronged and unhappy outcast to a heavenly home, purchased by the atonement of the divine Saviour, whither the wounded and weary spirit may remove from the storms and calamities of life, and enter to go no more out forever?

There is one way, at least, in which you can enjoy the satisfaction of laboring for this people. It is by supplicating the throne of divine grace in their behalf. The thought of calling down a blessing on them by praying to Him who controls all human destinies and events, and who has therefore complete ability to grant our requests, is one which should inspire joy and gratitude in every pious heart. When, therefore, you are knelt before the altar of devotion to pray for yourself and your friends, let the case of the poor Indian find a place in your remembrance and your supplications.

If you feel a genuine interest for the welfare of this people, and if the providence of God may have favored you with the necessary means, you will scarcely need to be reminded of the duty of contributing to sustain the missionary operations of this department. Your assistance, in this sort, is needed, and your donations, if made from a right motive, may be an occasion of the triple benefit of spiritual comfort to yourself, lasting good to those whose welfare you contemplate, and honor to the cause of the Redeemer. How much you are to bestow in this department of Christian benevolence is not for me to say. I have always thought it an extremely delicate business for a second person to pronounce a decision on a case of this character. If you remember that you are but the steward of God, and under an obligation to honor him with your substance, you will, perhaps, after prayerful consideration, be your own best judge respecting your duty upon this subject. Be sure, however, to do what you can; and never allow yourself to be deterred from this by a vain regret that you can do no more.

Your influence over others may also be made to tell for the spiritual good of the Indians. By conversation, and other means, you may awaken an interest in some minds which have heretofore been indifferent to the subject; and some persons, aroused by your influence may hereafter be missionaries to the aboriginal tribes, or may render efficient aid to the cause in some other way. Be discreet, but diligent, in the use of this influence. Do your utmost to form in the church a sentiment which shall say to the missionaries, “Be encouraged to persevere, and to press forward in your efforts. Be assured that whatever aid is in our power to bestow shall be promptly and cheerfully rendered.— Trust in an omnipotent and gracious Providence; and do not relax your benevolent exertions.” But perhaps the Spirit and providence of God are calling you to engage personally in the work of the evangelization of the native tribes. If so, I trust you will not disregard the divine admonitions. Manifest your gratitude to God, and your love of his creatures by implicit obedience to his evident will. If you can be the instrument of spiritual good to the neglected Indian, your destiny is more to be envied than if you were the recipient of all the wealth, the honor, and the pleasures, which this deceitful world has to bestow; and you may be sure of finding the path of duty to be the path of happiness. Seriously inquire whether you have not a duty to perform in relation to this subject; and then act in view of your high obligations to your heavenly Father, and of the awards of eternity.

MELVILLE.

 Related melvilliana posts:

• Missions to the Western Indians No. 1 - Friday, November 10, 1837
• "Melville" on Missions to the Western Indians No. 2 - March 23, 1838.
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 3 - Wednesday, April 4, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 4 - Friday, April 27, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 5 - Friday, June 22, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 6 - Friday, July 13, 1838

Missions to the Western Indians by "Melville" - No. 5 of 6

From the Christian Watchman [Boston, Massachusetts] Friday, June 22, 1838; found in the online Newspaper Archives at Genealogy Bank.

For the Watchman.
Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 5.

The tract called the Indian or Western Territory, and, more recently, Neosho, which has been assigned as a residence for such of the Indians as may be removed from the States under the direction of the government, is situated between the States of Missouri, and Arkansas, and the Rocky Mountains. Several unsuccessful attempts have been made to settle its boundaries, but no efforts have yet produced a final adjustment of them.

The general location of the territory, however, has been definitively settled; and though a formal proposition has been submitted to Congress, during the present session, greatly to extend the limits originally proposed, yet it will probably be considered expedient to adhere to the former arrangement, which furnishes nearly the following boundaries.— A small river, called the Puncah, from a tribe of Indians, forms the northern boundary, from the twenty-third degree of longitude, eastwardly, to where that river discharges its waters into the Missouri. The latter river bounds the Territory on the northeast, and on the east until we meet the western boundaries of Missouri and Arkansas. These states complete the eastern boundary. Red River is the boundary on the southern side, and separates the country from Texas. On the west, it is proposed to make the twenty-third degree of longitude the boundary. These limits will be seen to include a tract about six hundred miles in length, with an average width of about two hundred miles.

The country presents an aspect of great uniformity. It is mostly an elevated prairie, or a tract naturally destitute of wood. In some parts the land is uneven; but by far the greater portion is a plain with only occasional undulations. The soil is extremely fertile; the climate pleasant and healthful. From the extent and position of the country, however, a considerable variety of temperature must be observable in different sections; the northern part of the Territory being in nearly the same latitude with Massachusetts, and the southern with the Carolinas.

The Territory is well watered; being intersected by numerous rivers, creeks, and rivulets. It also affords extensive facilities for the manufacture of salt; and has mines of iron, lead, and coal. A scarcity of wood, in many parts of the Territory, is an apparent deficiency; but the supply is calculated to be adequate to the wants of the present, and one or two future generations. It has also been proved by experiment that the settlement of the country conduces to the growth of wood in the vicinity of the settlements. This seeming paradox is explained in the following manner. The great obstacle to the growth of wood is the annual fires, which sweep across the prairies, and consume the tender shrubs. In the case of settlements, the cattle of the Indian colonists, by devouring the dry grass which supports the fires, proportionably diminish its ravages. In these spots, trees arise, and grow with astonishing rapidity. The united testimony of the most intelligent persons, who have enjoyed opportunities for observation upon this subject, goes to prove that the scarcity of wood in the Territory is owing, not to any natural unadaptedness of the soil to the production of that article, for nowhere do trees, if unmolested, ascend with richer luxuriance, but to the fact alluded to above. When this inconvenience shall be obviated by the population of the country, it is reasonable to suppose that the forest and the coal-mine will each furnish its stores in such abundance as to preclude all fears of a destitution of fuel.

The grass which covers the prairies is, in many places, suitable for the scythe. Some parts of the country abound with excellent game, and are thus fitted to afford a ready subsistence to those tribes who are unaccustomed to the labors of the field, and ignorant of the arts of agriculture.

In the occupation of the lands, each emigrant tribe is to have a distinct portion assigned to it, and each of these districts is to be sufficiently extensive to afford the most ample accommodations to its inhabitants, to render the close neighborhood of two tribes unnecessary, and thus to avoid the principal occasions of those bloody and interminable wars, which, under ordinary circumstances, are so apt to occur between proximate tribes of hostile savages.

The expenses incurred in the removal of the tribes are to be borne by the United States. The Indians are furnished with provisions and necessaries for their journey, and assisted to locate themselves in their new possessions. Each tribe is to receive more or less from the United States in the form of annuities, the appointment and support of teachers, agricultural implements, the preparation of land for planting and sowing, the erection of grist mills and saw mills, and, in short, in the supply of whatever may seem necessary to their comfortable subsistence and residence in the Territory assigned them.

It is proposed to tender to the tribes a simple and practicable system of confederative government for the Territory. The following are the outlines of the proposed organization. “Delegates are to be chosen by the several tribes, to represent them in general council, once a year, or oftener, if necessary. The character of this council will be similar to that of the legislative council of one of our Territories. It will be competent to enact laws of a general nature for the Territory. These laws will take effect after they have been approved by the President of the United States. Each tribe will enact laws which relate merely to its own internal concerns; similar to the action of townships or of city corporations. The tribes thus confederated will choose a delegate, who must be an Indian, to represent them at the seat of government of the United States, during each session of Congress. He will be paid by the United States, and his compensation will be equal to that of a member of Congress. All civil offices, excepting two, which shall be created in the Territory by this organization, will be filled by Indians, if such be found competent to discharge the duties.”

Such are some of the general features of the natural condition and proposed civil organization of Neosho, or the Indian Territory. Assigned by the general government as the future home of the Indians, it possesses an interest for their friends in the United States, and in other places, and especially for those self-consecrated individuals who propose to spend their lives in efforts to dispense the blessings of Christianity to this unfortunate people.

MELVILLE.

Source of the quoted section (highlighted above) and most of the factual information is the Periodical Account of Baptist Missions for 1836, published in 1837 by frontier Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy.

So then. Our professedly Baptist writer, call him "Melville," likes to re-write his sources, and in revision introduces bits of his own such as "proved by experiment." Proved by experiment?!

Herman Melville, re-writing one of his whaling sources, William Scoresby or Desmoulins via Beale:

But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.  --Moby-Dick, The Blanket

My spell-check automatically underscored "proportionably" and "unadaptedness," neither in Isaac McCoy's 1837 publication.

Related melvilliana posts:

• Missions to the Western Indians No. 1 - Friday, November 10, 1837
• "Melville" on Missions to the Western Indians No. 2 - March 23, 1838.
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 3 - Wednesday, April 4, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 4 - Friday, April 27, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 5 - Friday, June 22, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 6 - Friday, July 13, 1838

Missions to the Western Indians by "Melville" - No. 4 of 6

From the Christian Watchman [Boston, Massachusetts] Friday, April 27, 1838; found in the online Newspaper Archives at Genealogy Bank.

For the Watchman.
Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 4.

The Seminoles are about four thousand in number. They occupy a tract on the western coast of the peninsula of Florida. This tribe is descended from another who were named Yemassees. They have made but small advances in civilization, and are extremely warlike.— About twenty-five years since, they became engaged in a war with the United States. The contest proved most disastrous to the Seminoles. The American troops under Gen. Jackson, drove them into the then Spanish towns of St. Marks and Pensacola, then taking possession of those places, held the fugitives completely in their power. Under these circumstances, the disheartened Indians accepted a proffered treaty of peace.

In 1835, arose a second war with the Seminoles. Their country had previously been ceded to the United States; and stipulations had been made for their removal to the Indian territory. Discontent subsequently arose, however, between the parties to this treaty, and the sparks of disaffection were soon fanned into a flame. Slaves belonging to the Florida planters escaped from their masters, and sought a refuge among the Seminoles. When the agents of the United States, in the name of the government, claimed the occupancy of the country, and the removal of the Indians, a violent spirit of resistance was instantly manifested. One of the principal chiefs having advised to yield to the demands of the United States, a number of his fellow chiefs sought his hut, and despatched him, sending each an arrow through his body.

The Seminoles immediately fled to arms. Troops from the United States were sent against them; but from the nature of the country the latter could contend with the Indians only at a tremendous disadvantage. Florida abounds in treacherous swamps and stagnant pools, which are thickly infested with noxious serpents and most troublesome insects. The Indians possessing an intimate acquaintance with the country, would frequently sally forth against the invading foe, and then retire to those swamps which were inaccessible to the foot of civilized man.

The war is still raging without a prospect of a speedy conclusion though the principal chiefs have been captured, and the Indians defeated in several engagements. The issue can only be known from the developments of the future. Under the present circumstances, it would necessarily be idle to speak of the Seminoles in Florida as the subjects of missionary labor. The Christian can only beseech Him who performs his will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, to hush the commotions of war into the stillness and security of peace. It will then be more rational to hope that the benign influences of the gospel may be borne to the hearts of the degraded and unfortunate Seminoles.

MELVILLE.

 Related melvilliana posts:

• Missions to the Western Indians No. 1 - Friday, November 10, 1837
• "Melville" on Missions to the Western Indians No. 2 - March 23, 1838.
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 3 - Wednesday, April 4, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 4 - Friday, April 27, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 5 - Friday, June 22, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 6 - Friday, July 13, 1838

"Melville" on "Missions to the Western Indians" and "a celebrated infidel book"

Communications to the Boston Christian Watchman signed "MELVILLE" appeared as early as 1828 ("Profitable Pleasure," March 7, 1828, commending the Solar Microscope to families with children) and 1833 (promoting "Wayland's Discourses," July 26, 1833). The numbered "Western Indians" series is more substantial and elaborately argued than anything previously by "MELVILLE" in the Baptist newspaper published by William Nichols and at that time edited by Ebenezer Thresher, then William Crowell. From the Christian Watchman [Boston, Massachusetts], Friday, March 23, 1838; found in the online Newspaper Archives at Genealogy Bank.

Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 2.

It will readily be conceded by every person disposed to reason upon Christian principles, that the church is bound to prosecute, with resolute and unremitting energy, those measures which appear best adapted to spread the gospel through every country on the globe. But it would certainly seem that the claims of the Indian tribes upon the American church, for the light of divine truth, partake more of the nature of strict and imperative justice than any which can be preferred in behalf of another people. The nation is under a deep obligation to the race of red men for the soil of this country. Disguise it as we will, it was hard, on the part of the Indians, to be dispossessed of the territory in the manner they were; and that, too, by a people, whom they had received, on their first landing, as a handful of feeble and forlorn adventurers; and to whom they had manifested that spirit of kind hospitality which may exist as truly in a savage breast as in that of the most enlightened European.

There is something painful in the contemplation of this subject; even after all the mitigating circumstances connected with it has been explained and acknowledged. It has been gravely adduced in justification of Anglo-American rapacity, that the country being capable of affording sustenance to a far more dense population, might permit the expulsion of the former to make room for their civilized neighbors. If this argument proves any thing, it proves too much for ourselves. On the same principle, a deputation from the swarming hordes of China might land on the Atlantic coast and take possession of New England itself. A body of Irish emigrants direct from their over-peopled native island, where a family must contrive to subsist on the produce of half an acre, and pay an enormous rent besides, might prefer a similar and far more urgent claim to the country.

What has been done, however, cannot be undone. It would probably be impossible, and certainly inexpedient to reinstate the Indians in the country of their ancestors. No eligible course remains, therefore, but to hasten forward with promptness and alacrity to the discharge of the duties growing out of our present relations to the Aborigines without consuming time in unavailing regret for the past. The country is wide enough for both races. Let them maintain a friendly neighborhood, and dwell together as brethren. Our people are called to this duty, on their part, by every consideration which should influence a magnanimous and powerful nation, and, above all, by the spirit of that divine gospel which is tacitly recognized as the national faith.

The Christian church, too, owe it to themselves, to the missionaries whom they have dispatched to this field of labor, and to whom they have pledged their zealous and constant co-operation; to their peculiar relations and locality in respect to the Indians as a nation; and above all to their assured obligations of fidelity to the interests of the divine Saviour, in humble reliance on the efficacy of the Spirit to be dispensed from on high, to make a more general and vigorous effort to give the gospel to the Indian tribes, within the jurisdiction and neighborhood of the United States. Here is a great moral and religious enterprise, worthy of the most strenuous exertions and the most ardent prayers of Christian philanthropy. It is a work, too, which circumstances appear to have devolved exclusively upon American Christians. On the Eastern continent and on the Pacific Islands, England and Denmark may very properly divide with ourselves the field of missionary labor. It is not so in respect to the North American Indians; especially as it relates to the tribes inhabiting the territorial lands of the United States, or dwelling in the vicarage [vicinage] of our Western or Southern border.

MELVILLE.

The editorial correction to vicinage (meaning "vicinity") appeared in the Christian Watchman on March 30, 1838. Articles in the series on "Missions to the Western Indians" appeared over the signature "Melville" during 1837-8 in the Christian Watchman as follows:

• Missions to the Western Indians [unnumbered]. Christian Watchman, Friday, November 10, 1837
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 2. - Friday, March 23, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 3 - Wednesday, April 4, 1838 
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 4 [on the Seminoles] - Friday, April 27, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 5 - Friday, June 22, 1838
• Missions to the Western Indians.—No. 6 - Friday, July 13, 1838

On October 19, 1838 a missionary signing himself "J. G. P." wrote to correct "Melville's" benign view of Indian character, as presented in the first installment of "Missions to the Western Indians" on November 10, 1837. "Melville" had written that missionaries to the Indians

“shall find in the natives of our western wilds, a race possessing some of the noblest qualities which the fall of man has left to the world—hospitality, generosity, strong affection, and a delicate sense of honor. Let the missionary, then, endeavor to impart to these children of nature that blessed gospel, which shall refine and crown all these estimable qualities.”  --"Melville" in the Christian Watchman, November 10, 1837

"Melville" defended this view in a reply to J. G. P.,  published in the Christian Watchman November 23, 1838. Coincidentally, in his unsigned 1849 review of The Oregon Trail, Herman Melville would tangle with Francis Parkman over the same issue of Indian character. Also employing biblical references and evangelical rhetoric, Melville rebutted Parkman's negative stereotypes as follows:

It is too often the case, that civilized beings sojourning among savages soon come to regard them with disdain and contempt. But though in many cases this feeling is almost natural, it is not defensible; and it is wholly wrong. Why should we contemn them? Because we are better than they? Assuredly not; for herein we are rebuked by the story of the Publican and the Pharisee. Because, then, that in many things we are happier? But this should be ground for commiseration, not disdain. Xavier and Elliot despised not the savages; and had Newton or Milton dwelt among them they would not have done so. When we affect to contemn savages, we should remember that by so doing we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also. Who can swear, that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found? Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us—Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks, and Indians—sprung from one head, and made in one image. And if we regret this brotherhood now, we shall be forced to join hands hereafter. A misfortune is not a fault; and good luck is not meritorious. The savage is born a savage; and the civilized being but inherits his civilization, nothing more. Let us not disdain, then, but pity. And wherever we recognise the image of God, let us reverence it, though it hung from the gallows.  

--The Literary World, Volume 4 - March 31, 1849.

In September 1838 "Melville" wrote the Watchman from Union, Connecticut after attending a Sabbath-School convention in Pomfret on September 26, 1838. The letter from "Melville" closes with a reference to Israel Putnam and his legendary killing of the last wolf in Connecticut:

"God speed to our Connecticut brethren in their spirited enterprize; and from the town where Putnam killed the wolf, which was mentioned as the place of the proposed seminary, may an efficient influence go forth to tame down the fierce dispositions of men to the bland and amiable spirit of Christian virtue."

Poems by "Melville" in the Christian Watchman

• "LINES / WRITTEN ON READING A CELEBRATED INFIDEL BOOK." Friday, March 2, 1838

Christian Watchman / March 2, 1838

This "celebrated infidel book" sounds kind of like the unnamed one that troubled young Nathan in Herman Melville's long poem of spiritual questing, Clarel--especially since "Melville" identifies his book with the "boastful creed of reason." Melville scholar William Schurr in The Mystery of Iniquity identifies Nathan's volume as most likely "Paine's Age of Reason, or possibly Ethan Allan's Reason the Only Oracle of Man." And how about that prayer of "Melville" to preserve illusory hopes in the face of doubt:

"O, let the sweet delusion last!"

 whew! there's nothing more Melvillean than that.

"When now—enlightened, undeceived—
What gain I, barrenly bereaved!"  --After the Pleasure Party

In the same vein, "Nor wake the peaceful dreamer thou" is basically what Vine instructs a monk in the first part of Clarel, telling him not to wake up the sleeping Nehemiah:

... Spare to molest
Let this poor dreamer take his rest.  --Clarel Part 1 - Canto 30

On the other hand, you wouldn't expect to find Herman Melville in late September 1838 at a Baptist Sunday-school convention in Pomfret, Connecticut. Eh? Let's see, where was the young scamp (just 19), anyway? Uh-oh:

"There is no evidence as to where he was from mid-September until early November."
--Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography - Volume 1 page 132

• "THANKSGIVING HYMN." November 28, 1838. This is the last item signed "Melville" that I have been able to find so far in the Christian Watchman. 

Ungar's forest name

UNCAS AND MIANTONOMOH.
Edmund Ollier, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The name "Ungar" of the unhappy ex-Confederate in Clarel sounds like and possibly suggests "hunger" or "anger." Both of which English words might fit the self-exile whom critics often call "embittered." Few of them ever get round to saying exactly how is Ungar Indian. One sparkling exception is Vincent Kenny, quoted below. Before looking up Kenny on Clarel, I was trying to work it out. Well, Ungar's ancestors are supposedly Maryland Catholic and Indian. As suggested in a previous post, Ungar seems descended from somebody quite like Giles Bent who married princess Mary Kittamaquund,

orphaned daughter of a Piscataway leader who had been raised by Margaret Brent and Jesuit missionaries who had converted her and her father to Christianity.

Musing on Ungar's mixed blood a fellow pilgrim imagines

An Anglo brain, but Indian heart

 and describes the name "Ungar" as his "forest name," the Indian name he adopts as a whim or "freak":

(In freak, his forest name alone
Retained he now)....  --Clarel part 4 canto 5

Maybe the "R" in UNGAR marks the way Melville pronounced his a's. Lecturing in Detroit, Melville spoke of Padua and the newspaper reporter heard "Ardua," meaning that Melville must have said PARDUA.

--Can Art not Life make the Ideal?

So, forgetting the R:

UNGAR = UNGA.

Albert Gallatin in A Synopisis of the Indian Tribes within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains has a grammar chart of Indian pronouns and the first one is

I, unga

More specifically, the name Ungar evokes "Uncas" the Mohegan chief of historical fact and Cooper's fictions. Here is a suggestively worded overview from late in the 19th century:

Un-cas, an American Indian who was famous in the early annals of New England. He was originally a Pequod (see PEQUOD), who, with his following, revolted against Saasacus (about 1635), and formed a new band, called Mohegans, after the ancient name of the tribe. He acquired considerable power, and, with great foresight, allied himself steadily with the whites, and shared in their victories over the Pequods and other tribes, receiving grants of conquered territory. This made him new enemies among the red men, by whom lie was regarded as a traitor, and unsuccessful attempts were made to assassinate him. This led to his attacking hie old allies the Narragansetts, and in 1643 he overpowered them and captured their chief, Miantonomioh, in a battle that look place near Norwich, Ct, The English authorities at Hartford consented that this powerful and hitherto friendly chief should be savagely put to death by Uncas, and a monument now marks the spot on Sachem's Plain, north of Norwich, where he was slain. This whole episode was doubtless a quarrel fomented by the English in the hope of getting rid of the red race by each other's tomahawks. The remainder of the Narragansetts continued the struggle for some years, and once would have overcome Uncas had he not boon assisted at the last moment by English troops. Thus the whites played one against the other. He lived in the neighborhood of Norwich, Conn., to a great age, always a man of mental force as well as physical power, but always an unregenerate savage. He died in 1682, and is buried in a little plot in the city of Norwich, known as the royal Mohegan burying-ground, among the bones of ancestors long antedating his momentous career and the coming of Europeans. He was the "Last of the Mohicans," and, as such became the hero of Cooper's novel; and President Andrew Jackson dedicated the granite obelisk which now marks his grave.  --Imperial Reference Library

Originally a Pequod. A romantic hero then, after Cooper, type of the "noble savage" and "vanishing American" whose treason (in one view) might be said to parallel the treason of Ungar as rebel southerner.

Image Credit: Society of Colonial Wars

Vincent Kenny pointed out Ungar's nominal association with Uncas way back in 1973. What's more, along with the allusion to Uncas, Kenny sees a pun on "gar" as "spear" and ha!
G. A. R. (= Grand Army of the Republic, the patriotic and powerful organization of Union veterans):

Equally severe [as the name Mortmain] is the harsh sound of Ungar, the Anglo-American Indian. It echoes Cooper's famous Uncas; it also rhymes with the livid scar on Ungar's neck. Melville punned with the name; first, with the "gar" as a spear, or Ungar's prominent sword; and second as a jibe on the enemy he fought, the G. A. R. reduced by the negative prefix.  --Herman Melville's Clarel: A Spiritual Autobiography p126

Ex-confederate Ungar, un-G.A.R., obviously does not wear the Grand Army badge:

Neither does the Union hero Jack Gentian, who in one of Melville's "Jack Gentian" sketches, stubbornly sports the aristocratic badge of the Cincinnati Society. Major Gentian's political rival Colonel J. Bunkum glories rather in the democratic symbolism of the Grand Army badge:

“the badge of the national brotherhood of veterans in whose Chapters the grade of the field is ignored, and the general salutes the private—comrade!”  --Great Short Works of Herman Melville

Getting back to Uncas, the description at CT Monuments of the Norwich monument refers to uncertainty about the spelling of his name:

The Uncas monument sits in a small burial ground on Sachem Street. The square base of the monument was dedicated in 1833, with President Andrew Jackson participating in the dedication ceremonies. The granite column was dedicated nine years later in 1842, after organizers had resolved several problems with the monument, including quarrying granite that met their specifications and reaching a consensus on the proper spelling of “Uncas.”

 For further study this looks too good to miss: Uncas, First of the Mohegans (Cornell University Press, 2003) by Michael Leroy Oberg. 

Heroic Indians in Fact and Fiction

I'm reading the Kindle version of Native American Whalemen and the World by UConn historian Nancy Shoemaker. It's good to learn about the real and important presence of Indians in the whaling industry. The book introduces and analyzes a staggering number of primary sources like whaling journals and logbooks. Also published narratives of whaling. Most of these sources are new to me, so I'm delighted to know more about them and grateful to the author for her work of investigating them.

Regarding the book I did know something about: Moby-Dick receives what might be called obligatory mentions, delivered with a sigh. As historian, more interested in facts than fiction, Professor Shoemaker has little professional use for Moby-Dick, notwithstanding Melville's heroic Indian harpooneer, Tashtego, and the illustrious name Melville gave to the fated whaleship, Pequod:

"Moby-Dick is full of this sort of typical New England romanticism about Indians...."
--Nancy Shoemaker, interview with Andrew Epstein at 11:08; via UConn Today

Native American Whalemen incorporates much of Shoemaker's earlier article in Journal of the American Republic, the point of which was that unlike Melville's stereotypical noble savage, real-life Tashtegos on American whaleships were frequently mates and boatseerers (official job title of Melville's "harpooneers"). Their professional status entitled real-life Tashtegos to be addressed respectfully as "Mr." Citation:

Shoemaker, Nancy. "Mr. Tashtego: Native American Whalemen in Antebellum New England." Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 33 no. 1, 2013, p. 109-132. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jer.2013.0017.

And so we're busted. No denying it, Moby-Dick is full of romanticism--about pretty much everything, and strongly influenced by European (not only American) models in Goethe and Byron and Mary Shelley. Fair enough, but it's depressing to encounter romantic as a kind of code word for "bad" (if not "despicably evil") and "worthless." Reminds me in that regard of Cynthia Wachtell's reading of dreadful glory in Melville's Civil War poem, "Inscription for the Slain at Fredericksburgh."

From the start, Professor Shoemaker's enterprise involves a problem of methodology which she acknowledges with admirable candor:

"The absence of a racial category on crew lists has confounded historians investigating race in maritime history."

Yes! Especially when the subjects of their study do not fit neatly into one "racial category" or box. Sure, Melville's "token New England Indian" (as Professor Shoemaker calls Tashtego, p. 37) is a romantic fiction. Back in the real world of nineteenth-century whaling, your Indian whaleman might well be a respected officer, "Mr. Tashtego." And he might also be African-American. Joel G. Jared, the first named of Professor Shoemaker's exemplary Gay Head Indians, was identified as Negro (offensively, using the common slur) in documentary evidence that she defers to chapter 3 on "The Primacy of Rank." Looking online, I see Jared is described as "malatto" in one 1856 Crew List of the Anaconda.

The discussion in chapter 2 on "Race, Nationality, and Gender" works surprisingly hard to define people by race. Varying contemporary identifications of Haskins men as "mulatto," "black," and "Indian" are cited as signs of uncertainty if not incompetence rather than eyewitness evidence:

"Samuel Haskins's own identity was probably not this quixotic." --Native American Whalemen and the World, chapter 2

Really? I wonder what "identity" here even means. Racial identity, it sounds like, but then why not say so. Whatever "identity" means, maybe it is that quixotic, after all. Quixotic to scholars examining racial categories, for a start, since Martha S. Putney names the brothers Amos and Samuel Haskins in her groundbreaking roll of Black Sailors: Afro-American Merchant Seamen and Whalemen Prior to the Civil War.

As if he wanted to make matters more quixotic, Amos Haskins went and married Elizabeth P. Farmer (1824-90)

"the African American daughter of the widow Dianna Farmer, who had lived in New Bedford at least as early as 1826"  --New Bedford Historical Society, Inc.

Let me see if there's anything about Amos Haskins's wife in Native American Whalemen and the World. Yes, though no mention of her being African American which is fine by me but odd in a book fixated on "the Contingency of Race" (as the subtitle has it). One Samuel Haskins of Gay Head we can glimpse for ourselves, thanks to the miracles of Google and Facebook. This Samuel Haskins is reportedly the son of Amos Haskins, according to information provided by Edith Andrews as summarized in the January 2000 Faces of Whaling Oral History Project by the National Parks Service.

Samuel J. Haskins was publicly honored with other Gay Head whalemen for heroic actions during a notable maritime disaster, the 1884 wreck of the City of Columbus at Devil's Bridge.

At about nine o'clock a life-boat was successfully launched by a crew of Gay Head Indians, consisting of Joseph Peters captain, Samuel Haskins, Samuel Anthony, James Cooper, Moses Cooper, and John Vanderhoop. After battling an hour they were able to bring seven men ashore rescued from the rigging. A second crew manned it, all Indians, except the captain, James T. Mosher. They were Leonard L. Vanderhoop, Thomas C. Jeffers, Patrick Divine, Charles Grimes, and Peter Johnson. They had rescued thirteen men when the U. S. Revenue Cutter Dexter arrived to render assistance, having been called to the scene by telegraphic messages.  --Charles Edward Banks, History of Martha's Vineyard

More recently, local historian Thomas Dresser also has published a vivid chronicle of the 1884 shipwreck in his eleventh book, Disaster Off Martha's Vineyard. Pictures of both rescue crews and boats may be found on Facebook. Here's the one showing a "Samuel Haskins" in the first life-boat, second man from the left (according to the caption at Facebook which may be wrong):

Left to Right [or the reverse, Right to Left?]:
 Joseph Peters, Samuel Haskins, Samuel Anthony,
James Cooper, Moses Cooper, John Vanderhoop — 

Photo Credit: Martha's Vineyard Antique Photos via Facebook

Later (8/01/2015): Thomas Dresser reproduces a wonderful group photo showing "Sam Haskins" (bearded?) with other Gay Head heroes, on page 116 of Disaster Off Martha's Vineyard. The "Samuel Haskins" in the Facebook photo above looks more like the man "Tom Cooper" in Dresser's group photograph. Same hat! And the man shown standing in the photo above is the same man identified in Dresser's photo as "Joe Peters." Yes it looks like the intended order of the given names must be Right to Left, making Samuel Haskins the second man from the right--bearded like "Sam Haskins" in Dresser's photograph.

The men of both crews were identified by name and commended as "Gallant Rescuers... all native Indians of Gay Head" in the New York Herald (Monday, January 21, 1884). The Massachusetts Humane Society honored each man with a silver medal and $25.00 award. A similar notice in the rival New York Tribune employed more condescending language (and puzzling, as in the unexplained term "Narves"). It's complicated all right. Spite of the woeful stereotypes, the newspaper's praise for "the heroic islanders" of Gay Head feels real and heartfelt:

New York Tribune (January 21, 1884)

In The Story of Martha's Vineyard, Charles Gilbert Hine reproduces a photo of the medal received by courageous lifesavers:

As related at website of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, these medals of honor awarded by the Massachusetts Humane Society

"are proudly passed down through the generations from one family member to another."

I don't yet know what happened to Joel G. Jared, but his Gay Head wife Rosanna also figures in the story of the Columbus shipwreck.  Rosanna later married "seaman and farmer" Abram Rodman, identified as "Black" (not "Mulatto" and not "Indian") in the 1880 census. Rosanna Gershom Rodman (the former Rosanna Gershom Jared, born Rosanna Gershom David on April 25, 1839) won public notice during the disaster as one of the island heroes. With other women of Gay Head, Mrs. Rodman (by then a widow, evidently) received $5.00 and a certificate from the Massachusetts Humane Society

"for noble and humane exertions on the occasion of the wreck of the steamer City of Columbus, Gay Head, Jan. 18, 1884."   --Worcester Daily Spy, February 5, 1884

With her husband Abram and others, Rosanna Gershom Rodman is also distinguished in New England history as a petitioner for property and voting rights.

Ironically, the determination to critique supposed exhibits of racism by unenlightened observers gets in the way of appreciating great acts of heroism by people of color. Case in point, Professor Shoemaker's mishandling of a chapter in A Year with a Whaler by Walter Noble Burns, Burns has been called "America’s premier romantic outlaw-lawman mythmaker" but Shoemaker does not even footnote his influential career as historian and romancer of the wild American West. Rather, Burns shows up as a racist stooge for his prose portrait of the third mate, a Cape Verdean named Tomas Mendez, which Professor Shoemaker blasts as

"virulent racism mixed with xenophobia." --Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World

My take: Burns unaffectedly relates his inexperienced, racially prejudiced view of Mendez as a monster of evil. All that's transparent. What Professor Shoemaker fails to mention is the context--which of course is everything, the whole point. Possibly she did not read far enough. Mendez turns out to be the hero of the chapter which is devoted to him, poetically and evocatively titled, "The Night King." The narrator exaggerates his hatred of Mendez at the beginning to set up the dramatic twist at the end. In a stove whaleboat Mendez heroically cuts the harpoon lines to save his crew:

When the whale crushed the boat—at the very moment, it must have been—the Night King had snatched the knife kept fastened in a sheath on the bow thwart and with one stroke of the razor blade, severed the harpoon lines. He thus released the whale and prevented it from dragging the boat away in its mad race. The Night King's last act had saved the lives of his companions.... 

The qualities that had made him hated when he was indeed the Night King flooded back upon me, but I did not forget the courage of my enemy that had redeemed them all and made him a hero in the hour of death.  --A year with a whaler, The Night King

In a later, emotionally powerful scene (also overlooked by Professor Shoemaker) the brother of Mendez unexpectedly learns of his death:

A pathetic incident grew out of the visit of the captain from the other ship. Tomas Mendez's brother, a boat-steerer, came aboard with the boat's crew. He was a young negro whom all the boat-steerers and officers knew. He came swinging lightly over our rail, laughing and happy over the prospect of seeing his brother. 

"Hello, fellers," he called to the Portuguese officers and boat-steerers who welcomed him. 

"Where's my brudder?" 

"Dead, my boy," said one of the boat-steerers gently. 

"Dead?" echoed Mendez. 

He staggered back. When he had heard the details of his brother's death, he burst into tears. All the time his skipper remained aboard, the poor fellow stood by the cooper's bench and sobbed.

The final chapter of Native American Whalemen and the World counterbalances old negative stereotypes of degradation with the positive theme of respect. If she had not already dismissed Tashtego as Melville's "token New England Indian" Professor Shoemaker might have fittingly cited the last chapter of Moby-Dick as an enduring fictional tribute to the prominence and heroism of Native Americans in the whaling industry. However romanticized, Melville's Tashtego still belongs in the category of respectful treatments of Indians. I almost wrote "the famous last chapter of Moby-Dick" but that could be wishful thinking.

Here's the tableau with Tashtego from chapter 135, THE CHASE — THIRD DAY:

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight. 

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;—at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. --Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

 Related post

•  Isaac D. Rose (1811-1890)
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Sacred White Deer in and around Pittsfield, Mass.

Syracuse [New York] Daily Journal, November 21, 1913

For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared [sacred?] white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,--even though it be covertly, and by snatches.  --Herman Melville, Hawthorne and His Mosses

Online texts of Hawthorne and His Mosses follow the original 1850 printing in the New York Literary World, where Melville in the guise of a Virginian on vacation compares elusive Truth to a frightened deer, "a scared white doe" in the woods. The Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Piazza Tales likewise prints "scared white doe" but in his Herman Melville: A Biography Hershel Parker emends "scared" to "sacred," making it rather a "sacred white doe." Parker gives the rationale behind his correction in the Documentation section of Volume 1 along with relevant analogues elsewhere in Melville's writing. Parker reasons that for Melville

"Truth is apt to be holy, even if secretive...."

Additional literary analogues might be and have been cited, for example Wordsworth's White Doe and The Fawn of Sertorius. But this particular emendation seems not to have caught on (except ha! by accident when critics misread the text they are quoting). On Facebook last year Robert Tally gave the change of "scared" to "sacred" as an example of editorial "mischief" and asked "who worships deer again?" --Texas State University - Department of English

Great question! One answer is, Indians including Mohegans according to a local Berkshire legend retold in Taghconic by Herman Melville's Pittsfield friend and neighbor J. E. A. Smith.

Another gentleman, to whom I mentioned this anecdote, tells me an aboriginal legend of this same White Deer. "Long before the Englishmen set foot in the Housatonic valley," he said, "the Indians used to notice a deer, of complete and spotless white, which came often, in the Summer and Autumn months, to drink at Onota. Against this gentle creature no red man's arrow was ever pointed; for, in their simple faith, they believed that with her light and airy step she brought good fortune to the dwellers in the valley. 'So long,' the prophecy ran, 'So long as the snow white doe comes to drink at Onota, so long famine shall not blight the Indian's harvest, nor pestilence come nigh his lodge, nor foemen lay waste his country.' In the graceful animal the tribe recognized and loved their good genius. He among them who dared to harm her would have met swift punishment as a sacriligious wretch and traitor."  --Taghconic

Pittsfield residents long remembered Smith's Legend of the White Deer, as evidenced by the newspaper report "Sacred White Deer Is Shot" from the Syracuse NY Daily Journal (November 21, 1913). For oral testimony of a similar tradition, listen to Simon Pokagon

THE SACRED WHITE DEER.

There is a very old superstition, still extant among our people, that white, or albino deer—which are very rare—are sacred. They have for time out of mind been called Manito sucsee wabe ("the sacred white deer"). 

It is believed that if anyone should shoot at and miss a white deer, he would be sick in consequence; and, that should he kill one, death would soon be the result. I once encamped while hunting with a white man for partner. Returning to our lodge one night, I told him how, during the day, I had had a chance to kill a most beautiful white buck, having the most perfect antlers I had ever seen, but that I had not had the heart to take his life, for I had always heard our old hunters say that the white deer was sacred, and that they never knew a hunter who killed one to live long. He called me many hard names, and among other things, said: "Pokagon, you are as superstitious as an uneducated redskin. Don't you know anything? Why, we could have sold that deer for more than fifty dollars!" 

Yet this same man, a few days later, when we had started on our morning hunt, went back to the lodge, a distance of at least half a mile, to get an old horse-chestnut which he claimed had brought him good luck for years. 

He would not hunt on Friday; fearing he might get shot. I suggested to him one Friday morning that, if he should fill his pockets with chestnuts, he would be perfectly safe. He talked very eloquently to me for some time; but he did not thank me for my advice.   

--The Forum, Volume 25

Graphically sacred is already contained in scared. Either word suggests both, as somewhere I read or heard a brilliant commentator point out (probably on the glorious old Ishmail). So you don't absolutely have to emend scared, but Hershel Parker's fix could still help readers who otherwise never dream that Truth is as sacred as shy.

Image Credit: Chewie World Order

Related posts on Melvilliana:

• Legend of the White Deer in Godfrey Greylock's Taghconic

• Forced to fly: Dryden's hind and Melville's doe
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/06/forced-to-fly-drydens-hind-and.html

Charles Sprague on "The Character and Extirpation of the Indians of New England"

If you sang "John Henry" as many times as me – "John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain't nothin' but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I'll die with that hammer in my hand." If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you'd have written "How many roads must a man walk down?" too.  --Bob Dylan

Taking Dylan's hint about sources and influences: if as a kid you read (recited? heard recited or declaimed?) Charles Sprague on "Extirpation of the Indians," you might write this in your first book:

The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. --Herman Melville, Typee

From William B. Fowle's The New Speaker, Or Exercises in Rhetoric:

EXTRACT FROM AN ORATION DELIVERED AT BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. —THE CHARACTER AND EXTIRPATION OF THE INDIANS OF NEW ENGLAND.
— C. SPRAGUE.

ROLL back the tide of time; how powerfully to us applies the promise: "I will give thee the heathen for an inheritance." Not many generations ago, where you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, the council fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here ; and when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but He had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in every thing around. He beheld him in the star that sunk in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine, that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent, in humble though blind adoration.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there, a stricken few remain, but how unlike their bold, untameable progenitors; The Indian of falcon glance, and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.  

As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of persons they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.

I started looking at Fowle's The New Speaker because it has several pieces that were declaimed at the awards ceremony held by Albany Academy on August 4, 1831. Herman Melville received a prize that day for his superior ciphering books. The extract above from Sprague's 4th of July oration might be the one assigned to Albany Academy student Nathan Hawley, which is identified in the Albany Argus announcement only as "Extract from an Oration by C. Sprague." The New Speaker gives four extracts from orations by Charles Sprague, and "Extirpation of the Indians" comes first--so Herman Melville possibly could have heard it recited the day he received his award for excellent arithmetic.

Or not. Here's another possibility: it could be that Nathan Hawley gave them the extract from Sprague on the "Devotion of La Fayette to the Cause of America." Six years later, Sprague on Lafayette is specifically named as one of the selections to be presented by students in a similar awards ceremony, as announced by the Albany Academy in the Albany Argus on Friday, August 11, 1837.

Other pieces in the 1831 program which appear in Fowle's New Speaker:

• "Ames on the British Treaty" delivered first by Griffith W. Griffiths at the 1831 ceremony is the first selection in The New Speaker. 
• "Harper, on Resisting French Agggressions"
• "Dewitt Clinton's address before the Phi Beta" (identified in The New Speaker as Clinton's 1823 discourse at Schenectady)
• "Wayland on Missionary Efforts"
• "Belshazzar's Doom" by Croly
• "Extract from Story’s Address before the Phi Beta Kappa"
• Casabianca
• Marco Bozzaris

Parke Godwin on intractable not untraceable Indians

 

We won't bow down
Not on that ground . . . 

 

Finally I'm reading Christopher Freeburg's provocative and mind-expanding book Melville and the Idea of Blackness. Here's a correction to pencil-in now, and later (hopefully) incorporate in the next edition:

At page 140, the quoted phrase from the article on "Annexation" in Putnam's Magazine should read "savage and intractable race," substituting the correct word "intractable" for the unfortunate error of  "untraceable":

"This picture of irredeemable African rule before European intervention shares the same historical perspective as depictions of the Indians in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. Consequently, in another Putnam's article pushing for the United States to annex Africa, Indians are commonly referred to as a stationary, uncivilized, "savage and untraceable race." --Melville and the Idea of Blackness, 140.

Here is the whole sentence, transcribed from the 1854 source:

A small, but savage and intractable race suddenly surrounded in the Providence of God by a powerful and civilized people, whose laws and customs it cannot or will not accept, but whose vices are readily spread among them, has no other destiny but to die of its corruptions, to perish in arms, or to be removed by gentle methods to some more remote and untroubled hunting grounds.  -- Annexation, Putnam's Monthly Magazine (February 1854) page 189.

Freeburg's readers will want to know also that veteran New York journalist and editor Parke Godwin wrote the unsigned article on "Annexation," which is collected with other of his topical contributions to Putnam's and published in book form as Political Essays. By Parke Godwin. (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1856).

Another quotation, oddly ascribed by Freeburg to "Putnam's on Cuban annexation," is from Godwin's essay titled What Impression Do We, And Should We, Make Abroad? in the October 1853 issue of Putnam's Monthly Magazine, reprinted as "Our Foreign Influence and Policy" in Godwin's collected Political Essays. Here too we find mistakes in Freeburg's transcription needing correction. The original reads:

"We must be the masters of our own destinies, and not mere ciphers in the world, like the savage tribes of our western wilderness, or the remote, feeble, degraded despised islanders of the Pacific."  -- Putnam's October 1853 page 349

Freeburg makes a singular "master" where Godwin wrote "masters" and leaves out one of Godwin's alliterating adjectives, "despised."

Update: Uh-oh, reading on in this prize-winning chapter I see the long quotation from the Hunilla sketch as printed on pages 159-60 of Freeburg's book is only distantly related to the cited text from the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Piazza Tales. Do I have to do all the work around here?

Still later: Wow! Most (all?) of the longer quotations from Melville's works in Freeburg's book are wretchedly transcribed. Really messed up, like this bit from Moby-Dick (The Castaway):

Wisdom, revealed his hoarded ships; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-ever juvenile eternities. . . --Christopher Freeburg, Melville and the Idea of Blackness page 52.

Actually I sort of like the poetical ring of "ever-ever," but I miss Melville's heaps.

While I'm at it, the phrase "primitive families in the wilderness" that Freeburg quotes at page 141 is from the Putnam's article on Bancroft in the March 1853 Putnam's, page 302. Only the second quote in Freeburg's sentence, "stationary tribes" is from the footnoted Putnam's essay on "Annexation." Freeburg's footnote properly credits "Annexation," but this and another quotation of "stationary" from "Annexation" make me think Freeburg does not understand the term "stationary" as Godwin employs it. In this particular context, "stationary" primarily means "settled." Godwin following many writers before him wants to distinguish peaceful, friendly, settled tribes from warlike, hostile, nomadic peoples.  This is important to get because Godwin regards the stationary tribes, dwellers in villages, as well on their way to being civilized, hence not backwards or frozen in un-progressive "timelessness." By contrast, Godwin would have perceived roving hunters of the plains, of the great Sioux and Comanche nations for example, as the warlike and intractable ones.

We won't bow down
Not on that ground . . .

Son-in-law of William Cullen Bryant and at one time a passionate Fourierist, Godwin dedicated his volume of Political Essays to friend Charles Sumner.

Godwin once publicly vouched for HM as a real and mostly truthful person.



Writing from New York on July 17, 1847 Parke Godwin confirmed to the editor of The People's Journal that he had personally seen Herman Melville "in Albany the other day as large as life, where he and his family are well known, and his narratives bearing a little artistic ornament, are held to be perfectly authentic."

via Wikimedia Commons

Related post

• More thoughts and facts about Christopher Freeburg's "major intervention"
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2014/08/more-thoughts-and-facts-about.html
  

George Catlin's Letters in the NY Commercial Advertiser, 1832-1837

So George Catlin's celebrated Indian Gallery debuted in Herman Melville's back yard on May 15, 1837. Admission 50 cents, children half price. Ok, just about debuted. In Wild West Shows Paul Reddin mentions Utica first.

From Albany Catlin traveled with his exhibit to Troy, whose citizens were no less prompt than their Albany neighbors in honoring Catlin with printed testimonials of thanks.

In Removals Lucy Maddox ventures the reasonable guess that Melville read Catlin's 1841 book, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians before writing Typee.  Now we know a bit more, that Melville possibly could have seen Catlin's Indian exhibit at Stanwix Hall and heard Catlin's conversational lecture, just like "Z" did.

That admission price of fifty cents might well have seemed prohibitive to all the Melvilles, considering Gansevoort's bankruptcy and the family financial crisis then underway (see Hershel Parker's biography, V1.113).  But the imposing Stanwix Hall was built and owned by Gansevoorts.  Uncle Peter had his law office there at No. 5--where Herman's younger brother Allan was sent in early June. You would think Allan and Herman and Gansevoort could manage to see Catlin's Indians if they wanted to.  And how could they not want to?

Another thing to keep in mind, about those Letters of Catlin.  Maddox cites the 1841 London edition of the book, but Catlin's letters had already appeared in the pages of the New York Commercial Advertiser. And of course other newspapers reprinted Catlin's fascinating contributions from the prairie.

The Smithsonian has an incomplete and hard to read collection of photostatic copies online, dating from July 24, 1832 to September 30, 1837. Has any editor or intrepid sub-sub collected and compared all of Catlin's original letters with the book version?