5814. NEGROES, Indians vs.—
Comparing
them by their faculties of memory, reason,
and imagination, it appears to me that in
memory they are equal to the whites; in reason
much inferior, as I think one could scarcely
be found capable of tracing and comprehending
the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination
they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.
It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for
this investigation. We will consider them here,
on the same stage with the whites, and where
the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment
is to be formed. It will be right to
make great allowances for the difference of condition,
of education, of conversation, of the
sphere in which they move. Many millions of
them have been brought to, and born in Amer
ica. Most of them, indeed, have been confined
to tillage, to their own homes, and their own
society; yet many of them have been so situated
that they might have availed themselves
of the conversation of their masters; many of
them have been brought up to the handicraft
arts, and from that circumstance have always
been associated with the whites. Some have
been liberally educated, and all have lived in
countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated
to a considerable degree, and have had
before their eyes samples of the best works
from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages
of this kind, will often carve figures on their
pipes not destitute of design and merit. They
will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country,
so as to prove the existence of a germ in their
minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish
you with strokes of the most sublime
oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment
strong, their imagination glowing and
elevated. But never yet could I find that a
black had uttered a thought above the level of
plain narration; never saw even an elementary
trait of painting or sculpture.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 382.
Ford ed., iii, 245.
(1782)
