University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
MRS. PERKINS ANDERSON.

We are wont to say, with no great sagacity, that the world is
made up of all sorts of people. We know that it takes a monstrous
variety of all sorts to make up the commonest sort of world.
Even our new communities, planted in the wilderness, on the edge
of heathen lands, must have their castes, their classes, their shades,
degrees, and inequalities. Blackguards, for example, are a necessary
element, one of the most necessary. We could not well do
without them. There is a great deal of dirty work to be done in
new communities — not so much, perhaps, as in old ones — which
requires this very sort of agency. In the new communities, we need
even a greater degree of ruffianism than mere blackguardism, and
are always sure to have it. Your pioneer population are of this
latter order in large proportion; and it does not work amiss, and is
very far from out of place, when you reflect upon the sort of work
which requires to be done. Your fine, nice, polished, smooth gentry,
never become pioneers, never explore, never have enterprise, never
found new empires, or exhibit those masculine traits which alone
grapple with lions and hydras, and cleanse Augean stables! It
needs for this a rough, unlicked sort of manhood, the muscle of
which is never restrainable by morocco slippers and soft kid gloves.
Your ancient Hellenes, Pelasgians, Etrurians, and what not, were
blackguards and ruffians at the beginning, just like ours — though
they fined down so beautifully, at last, into model poets, philosophers,
and statesmen. Your sturdy old Romans, who first drove
their stakes into the Seven hills, were admirable scamps, every
man of them, to whom robbery was a glorious sort of manly exercise,

and rape only a pleasant step upward — the first great stride
made — to a most wonderful civilization! Smith's people, when
he founded Jamestown, were great rapscallions; and the puritans,
shod with holiness, though covered with hypocrisy, were the most
atrocious barbarians that ever cut throats, bought scalps, burned
witches, pilloried quakers, and sold the women and children of the
red princes into slavery, after they had butchered their papas and
husbands! And all these bold ruffians and blackguards, if you
believe them, do their dirty work for the glory of some God or
other — Jupiter or Jehovah — it matters not much which to
them! This is a necessary fiction of all society at its first beginnings.

And, even as you see, where the tiger rages, and the snake
crawls, and the frog hops, and the obscene birds prey on garbage,
the lacquered butterfly flickering in air, and hear the plaintive
cooing of innocent doves, and forget yourselves in the spontaneous
gushes of song from gay, glad birds of the sunshine — so, in society,
even where the ruffians and the blackguards most congregate,
you happen upon choice and generous spirits, brave master-minds
of men, gentle as well as brave; and sweet ministers of
love in the guise of innocent women; and gaudy butterflies of
fashion; macaronies, dandies, flirts, and harlots; all breathing one
physical atmosphere, though all at odds; removed from communion
of moral by thousand leagues of gulf and desert in society!

And as new society, when a mere offshoot from an old, seeks
always to emulate the mother-circle, so you may take for granted
that, however new, the infant community will show you the same
moral aspects precisely which are most apparent in the old. The
fashion of the garments may be more stale, but the soul of the
wearer will be of the same ancient type. There will be less polish
among the would-be fine; less learning among the would-be
wise; less grace among the fashionable; and less scruple, exteriorly,
among the ruffianly and scampish. A course of training, in
a growing community, will, however, gradually bring up the standards
of the ambitious; the fashionables will refine; and the scamps
and outlaws will adopt garments of greater cleanliness and more
pacific appearance — disguising with hypocrisy the vicious qualities
which it is not yet their profit to abandon, or in their power
to overcome. This is the tribute which they will pay to the growing

virtues of the social sphere, which they still in some degree
pollute.

Now, we have already hinted to you that, in our humble little
colony on the banks of the Cooper and the Ashley, even at this
early period, in less than thirty years from its first foundation, we
have our castes and classes — our orders of nobility — our aristocracies
— our fashionables — and what nots! The patent nobility
— palatines, landgraves, cassiques, barons — are such, of course,
by law. They are the legitimates. Nobody questions their right
to place. The landgrave's or cassique's carriage stops the way,
but no plebeian tongue cries aloud! The fashionables follow close
upon the heels of these — wealthy parvenues — who, if they can
keep and transmit their wealth to another generation, raise them
to a prescriptive class also; and these are your noble commoners.
This is a history. It is the history in Carolina.

Now, dear friends, do not be surprised when we tell you that,
next to our patent nobility, the highest order was that of the Indian
traders. The Indian traders of 1684, and down thence to
1770, ranked second to the local noblesse. They did a flourishing
business; they ushered in the first merchants. They were
bold adventurers, chiefly of the class called Scotch-Irish, who possessed
a hardy enterprise, great personal courage; were shrewd,
intelligent, and cautious; not learned, but possessed of mother-wit;
were greedy of gain, and ready to risk life upon it; but ambitious
of social position, and not unwilling to peril for it that
which was more precious than life, money! They aimed at something
(and this is a right ambition) of social position for themselves
and their descendants. They preceded and paved the way for a
bold and liberal commercial enterprise, for which they made the
forests furnish the materiel. The Indian trade, which had already
begun to extend to the remote regions of the Choctaws and Chickasaws,
seven hundred miles from Charleston, as well as to the
nearer country of the Muscoghees, Cherokees, and Floridians —
in other words, on every hand — was a greatly profitable one.
The simple red man could be won by a knife, a hatchet, a bell, a
medal, a tin pan, or a copper kettle, to exchange the choicest furs
and skins with his white brother from the East. So profitable
was the business, that the governors of the colony, and the chief
people, were fain to participate in the trade; and it was rather

with the view to this trade that treaties were made with the red
men, followed by nominal purchases of that territory, for which
the red men themselves could make no title, and which they dared
not attempt to occupy. The whites bought immunity, rather than
land.

Now, while our hands are in for it, let us tell you, though it be
episodical, that these Indian traders, from a very early period,
exercised a large influence, not only over the Indians, but in
bringing about those events which affected the European struggles
for ascendency in America. Could the court of England
have cast off, as so many worthless old slippers, their worthless
courtiers to whom they confided most of the colonial governments
in America, and given their trusts chiefly to these Scotch or
Scoto-Irish adventurers, thousands of lives would have been saved
from butchery, millions of dollars kept in the treasury, and the
miseries which belong to the caprices of an uncertain Indian war
upon a wild frontier would have been escaped. The French
would, moreover, have been beaten out of the country almost as
soon as they appeared in it.

It was in vain that these bold, red-headed adventurers wrote,
and memorialized, and undertook to teach, the silken courtiers to
whom the colonies were confided, the true state of the case — the
true nature of the red men — the processes by which to win their
hearts or to subdue their arms. It was in vain that these traders
showed them, by frequent examples, how peace was to be made,
and war carried on; for they traversed the Indian country with
little danger to themselves — avowed that they knew no danger,
and never suffered harm, till the blunders of the governors made
the white race absolutely contemptible in the eyes of the savage.
These white adventurers were found ready and capable to raise
an Indian force, in the heart of Choctaw and Chickasaw settlements
— to lead the red men successfully against the French on
the Alabama, the Tombeckbe, and the Meschacebe — capable of a
patriotism which could prompt them to use their stock in trade as
presents to subsidize the savages and reconcile them, when their
blood was boiling for war, and when the young warriors had already
struck the tomahawk in the painted tree. Neither example
nor exhortation availed; and most of the bloodshed along the frontiers
was due to the gross incompetence of the white authorities — to

their vanity, love of show, insolence, and ignorance, which led them
to outrage the red men with scorn and insult, and then to recoil,
like timid children, at the warwhoop and the painted warrior whom
they had aroused, without preparing for the presence which they
conjured — incapable of wisdom, strength, or courage, when they
had themselves provoked the strife! This much for the Indian
traders, whom we must not suffer to be disparaged by a presentation
of the simple idea of trade in their connection. On this trade
they perilled life, and in its prosecution they exercised a firm will,
a noble courage, an energy, vigilance, caution, and shrewd ingenuity,
which endowed them finally with a capital of character
such as few educational institutions of the civilized world could
possibly impart; and they thus raised trade to the dignity of war
and statesmanship — to a moral status which, per se, it never could
assert.

Such were these traders from the beginning. In 1684, their
number was comparatively small. It grew rapidly, however, far
in proportion beyond the growth of the colonies. Between 1700
and 1770, they constituted something like a small army. But
their profits were less than in the early period of which we
write.

Perkins Anderson was one of the most prosperous of these Indian
traders at this time (1684). The governors of Carolina had,
severally, a sort of secret partnership with Perkins Anderson for
the profits of this trade. They conciliated Perkins Anderson.
He, Perkins, was not unwilling to be conciliated. The governor
got his profits. The furs and skins came down from the interior,
consigned to him or to his agent; and, in the benevolence of his
heart, thus softened by certain quarterly profits, the governor lowered
his social dignity, and Mrs. Perkins Anderson was graciously
welcomed in the parlor and at the parties of Lady Quarry, wife
of his excellency the governor. Of course, Perkins was not displeased
with this recognition of his wife; but, if the truth were
known, he would not have cared a button though a lady of quality
never once looked on the lady of the Indian trader. He was too
sedulous in pursuit of the main chance, to give much heed to the
butterfly enjoyments of your tripping, gay citizens.

Far otherwise with Mrs. Perkins Anderson. She was just the
creature for it — to whom such a life had become a sort of necessity.

She had graduated for society as an Edinburgh mantuamaker,
or milliner, and in this capacity Perkins had picked her
up. She was the very person to know something about dress,
and to love it. Her costume always came from London. She
had the first advices of the last fashions. She set the mode on
Ashley river, just one hundred and seventy years ago! We
should surely venerate her memory.

She had a laudable ambition to shine in society. She visited
the governor's lady; and, though not exactly acknowledged by
the Mortons, the Middletons, the Berkeleys, and other folks who
claimed to have been born in the shadow of the purple, if not
absolutely within its folds, they were yet compelled to hear of her
as a sort of rival for the social rule in Charleston. She was at
home everywhere in the immediate precincts of the town. It was
only at the baronial seats that she had no entrée. Whether she
cared for it or not is hardly a matter of concern. She made the
most of her own province. She gave balls and parties, and had
her evenings, just as such people have them now. She knew,
too, the value of a supper in conciliating affections and melting
granitic pride and moral, and her suppers were a model and a
proverb all over town. Mrs. Perkins Anderson was herself a
model.

Poor thing! we must not blame her. Perkins was absent some
ten months every year, and, when at home, was not exigent as a
husband. He had his consolations, and why should she not have
hers? He had a wife in each of the tribes — one at Euchee, another
at Echotee, another at Tuckabatchie, another at Highwassee,
and he acknowledged to half a dozen more — lamenting, to
his Caucasian dame, the painful necessity which required that,
for his safety, he should take a wife in every tribe with which
he traded. And there may have been some truth in his story.
It is very certain that, among the red chiefs, sooner than a
white brother should go without a wife, each would give his
own; and that, too, with a cheerful resignation which was almost
Christian!

And it was beautiful to see the cheerful resignation with which
Mrs. Perkins Anderson submitted to these dispensations of love,
made on behalf of her husband; beautiful the meekness with
which she bore his annual ten months' absence; delightful to

note how readily she received all his pleas, excuses, and pretences;
admirable to see how happily she contrived to console
herself under her privation, by cheerfully yielding herself to
the claims of society on every side. Verily, she was a model
woman.

And now let us show the uses we have for Mrs. Perkins Anderson.
She has just returned from a drive that afternoon — “up
the path” — that being the fashionable route in those primitive
days, when we had no “Battery.” But it was a glorious drive,
notwithstanding that it lay very much within the original grace
of Nature. The road had been simply cut through a forest of
live oaks and other noble trees, counting their lives by centuries.
Their branches met and interweaved across the road, festooned
with moss, and spanned the space between, making a grand Gothic
archway, shutting out the sun. As old Archdale (himself a landgrave)
wrote, at a later period — “No prince in Europe hath such
an avenue in all his dominions.”

Well, Mrs. Perkins Anderson had just returned from her evening
drive, in her stately, lumbering English carriage of that date,
drawn by two noble grays. Her carriage bore a lion for its crest,
though what Perkins or herself had ever to do with lions nobody
could say. Her livery was green and gold. Her style was admitted
to be exactly the thing. The whole establishment was
what the English fine-vulgar would call “a dem'd elegant turnout!”

Well, she had returned from her drive, had left the carriage —
was entering her dwelling — one of the best in town, somewhere
near the corner of Church and Tradd streets, as we have them
now — when she found our “ancient mariner,” Franks, awaiting
her at the door. At a signal, he followed her into the house,
and might have said a dozen words — scarcely more — when he
might have been seen backing out of the dwelling, making most
formal bows until he was fairly in the street, and the door shut
upon him.

These dozen words were of peculiar potency. Mrs. Perkins
Anderson remained at home that night — yet received no company.
Externally, the house was in utter darkness. The servants
were allowed to depart, having a holyday from the mistress
in her amiable mood; and, at a certain hour, the door has

been opened by the fair lady herself, to admit two sturdy seamen,
bearing a basket of such dimensions, that we can recall no fellow
to it, save that which enabled Falstaff to escape the keen scrutiny
and cudgel of good Master Ford. This was filled with fruits of
Cuba, then rare in the market. It may have been an hour later,
when the door opened again, and this time to admit our rover,
the gallant Captain Calvert.