University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

But though warmed with these encouraging fancies, our conceited
hero found the difficulties to be much more numerous and
formidable than he had anticipated. The woman was as shy as
the most modest wife could have shown herself, and no Desdemona
could have been more certainly true to her liege lord.
Mingo paid no less than three visits that day to the wigwam, and
all without seeing her, except at his first coming, when she was
busied with, but retired instantly from, her potteries, in which
Richard Knuckles took no part, and seemingly no interest. Lazy,
like all his race, he lay in the sun, on the edge of the encampment,
with an eye but half open, but that half set directly upon
the particular movements of his young wife. Indians are generally
assumed to be cold and insensible, and some doubts have
been expressed, whether their sensibilities could ever have been
such as to make them open to the influence of jealousy. These
notions are ridiculous enough; and prove nothing half so decidedly
as the gross ignorance of those who entertain them. Something,
of course, is to be allowed for the natural differences
between a civilized and savage people. Civilization is prolific,
barbarism sterile. The dweller in the city has more various
appetites and more active passions than the dweller in the camp;
and the habits of the hunter, lead, above all things, to an intense
gathering up of all things in self; a practice which tends, necessarily,
to that sort of independence which is, perhaps, neither
more nor less than one aspect of barrenness. But, while the
citizen is allowed to have more various appetites and intenser passions
in general, the Indian is not without those which, indeed,
are essential to constitute his humanity. That he can love, is
undeniable—that he loves with the ardour of the white, may be
more questionable. That he can love, however, with much
intensity, may fairly be inferred from the fact that his hate is
subtle and is nourished with traditional tenacity and reverence.

But the argument against the sensibility of the savage, in his
savage state, even if true, would not apply to the same animal in
his degraded condition, as a borderer of the white settlements.
Degraded by beastly habits, and deprived by them of the fiercer
and warlike qualities of his ancestors, he is a dependent, (and
jealousy is a creature of dependence)—a most wretched dependent,
and that, too, upon his women—she who, an hundred years ago,
was little other than his slave, and frequently his victim. In his
own feebleness, he learns to esteem her strength; and, in due
degree with his own degradation, is her rise into importance in
his sight. But it does not matter materially to our present narrative,
whether men should, or should not agree, as to the sensibilities
of the savage to the tender passion. It is probable, that
few warlike nations are very susceptible of love; and as for the
middle ages, which might be urged as an exception to the justice
of this remark, Sismondi is good authority to show that Burke
had but little reason to deplore their loss: “Helas! cet heroisme
universel nous avons nomme la chevalerie, n'exista jamais comme
fictions brillantes!” There were no greater brutes than the
warriors of the middle ages.

Richard Knuckles, whether he loved his young wife or not,
was certainly quite as jealous of her as Othello was of his.
Not, perhaps, so much of her affections as of her deference; and
this, by the way, was also something of the particular form of
jealousy under which the noble Moor suffered. The proud spirit
chafes that another object should stand for a moment between his
particular sunlight and himself. His jealousy had been awakened
long before, and this led to his temporary separation from his
tribe. Caloya, it may be added, yielded, without a murmur, to
the caprices of her lord, to whom she had been given by her
father. She was as dutiful as if she loved him; and, if conduct
alone could be suffered to test the quality of virtue, her affection
for him was quite as earnest, pure and eager, as that of the most
devoted woman. That she could not love him, is a conclusion
only to be drawn from the manifest inequalities between them.
He was old and brutal—a truly worthless, sottish savage—while
she, if not a beauty, was yet comely to the eye, very youthful,

and, in comparison with Indian squaws in general, remarkably
tidy in person, and good humoured in disposition.

Our hero, Mingo, was not only persuaded that she could not
love Knuckles, but he equally soon became convinced that she
could be made to love himself. He left no opportunity untried to
effect this desirable result; and, after a most fatiguing trial, he
succeeded so far in a part of his scheme as to beguile the husband
into good humour if not blindness. Returning towards
nightfall to the camp, Mingo brought with him a “chunk-bottle”
of whiskey, the potency of which, over the understanding of an
Indian, he well knew; and displaying his treasure to Knuckles,
was invited by him, for the first time, with a grunt of cordiality,
to enter the wigwam of the squatters. The whiskey while it
lasted convinced Knuckles, that he had no better friend in the
world than Mingo Gillison, and he soon became sufficiently
blinded by its effects, to suffer the frequent and friendly glances
of the Driver towards his wife, without discovering that they
were charged with any especial signs of intelligence. Yet never
was a more ardent expression of wilful devotion thrown into
human eyes before. Mingo was something of an actor, and
many an actor might have taken a goodly lesson of his art from
the experienced Driver. He was playing Romeo, an original
part always, to his own satisfaction. Tenderness, almost to tears,
softened the fiery ardour of his glance, and his thick lips grew
doubly thick, in the effort to throw into them an expression of
devoted languor. But all his labour seemed to go for nothing
—nay, for something worse than nothing—in the eyes of the
faithful wife. If her husband could not see the arts of the amorous
negro, she would not see them; and when, at supper, it
sometimes became necessary that her eyes should look where the
lover sat, the look which she gave him was stony and inexpressive
—cold to the last degree; and, having looked, it would be averted
instantly with a haste, which, to a less confident person would
have been vastly discouraging and doubtful. As it was, even
the self-assured Mingo was compelled to acknowledge, in his
mental soliloquy that night as he made his way homeward, that,
so far his progress was not a subject of brag, and scarcely of
satisfaction. The woman, he felt, had resisted his glances, or,

which was much worse, had failed to see them. But this was
owing, so he fancied, entirely to her caution and the natural
dread which she had of her fiercely minded sovereign. Mingo
retired to his couch that night to plan, and to dream of plans, for
overcoming the difficulties in the way of his own, and, as he persisted
in believing, the natural desires of Caloya. It may be
stated in this place, that, under the new aspects which the squatters
had assumed in his eyes, he did not think it necessary to make
any very copious statement of his proceedings to his master; but,
after the fashion of certain public committees, when in difficulty
among themselves, he wisely concluded to report progress and
beg permission to sit again.