John Trusler’s Conversation with the Wappinger/Stockbridge Chiefs on Civilization

Chapter 18, Trusler’s Memoirs,1

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Preface: Cherokee Chiefs2 – Conversation with them on Civilization, with anecdotes.3

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In 1762, soon after I was chosen lecturer of St. George Botolph Lane5 and had quitted Somerset Chapel,6 being unemployed on Sunday mornings, and Mr. Lowe, who succeeded after my father’s death as proprietor of Marylebone Gardens,7 having a consecrated chapel belonging to him, appointed me the preacher with a handsome salary.  It was but a small building, but I have the satisfaction to say it was exceedingly crowded and was the means of introducing me to the knowledge of some builders, who, from the opinion they formed of me as a preacher, were desirous to erect me a chapel in a more eligible situation and on a larger scale, and almost on any terms I might think proper to accede to.  A site soon offered itself near Bloomsbury Square, and the terms proposed were that they should erect this building at their own expense and either appoint me the sole preacher at a salary of one hundred pounds a year for the Sunday duty or that the building should be let to me on lease, its value ascertained by measurement, and that the rent should be at the rate of seven percent according to its estimated value, I paying the ground rent, and if in the course of the first fifteen years, I should be inclined to purchase it,  it should be mine on paying the price so estimated.  I accepted the latter proposal and the Reader will hereafter see, notwithstanding the good prospect before me, the many difficulties it involved me in.

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In the summer of this year three Cherokee Chiefs were brought over from America in order to give them some idea of the equity and lenity of the English government; and if possible to attach them to it, in preference to France and Spain, which had made them some overtures.  They were brought here and maintained at the expense of the State,  and Mr. Lowe, being acquainted with the captain of the ship8 who had the care of them, prevailed on him to let them reside in his house at Marylebone, saying it might be a means of drawing company to the Gardens, that he would dress them and maintain them at his own expense, and that the money allowed by government for that purpose, which I believe was six guineas a day (for they brought their wives with them) the captain might put into his own pocket.  This being acceded to, these chiefs and their ladies were removed to Marylebone, gaudily dressed and like warriors.9  A raised covered theatre was erected in the public garden, and these men and their wives were exhibited every evening to a crowded company during the hours of their supper.10 They smoked their pipes in public and seemed to enjoy the scene as much as did their spectators.  To do Lowe justice he indulged them in everything their hearts could wish and they were sorry when the curtain dropped, and they were removed to perhaps a less hospitable fare.  Government suffered this farce to go on for a whole summer, and Lowe was enriched by the scheme.

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One of these men was about forty years of age; the other two were under thirty, and their women not exceeding the age of one or two and twenty.  They spoke English tolerably well and were far from being unintelligent.11 I dined frequently with them, found them decent and orderly, and entered much into their way of thinking and living.  They called themselves Kings and spoke of our King as their brother.  They had been once at Court and seemed wonderfully delighted with what they saw.  Their first toast after dinner was always, “Here’s to Brother George!”   And I observed that though there were no hint of wine, etc., they constantly rose sober from table.  Their wives were handsome women and had been married some years but had no children, yet these three ladies continued to be with child before they left Marylebone by Little Bob, the waiter to whom they took a fancy and whom on their account became almost as much beloved by their husbands as the gallant of a French wife becomes on so kind an occasion the amis of her spouse or cara sposa.12

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Perhaps some few traits of their way of thinking may not be unacceptable to my readers, desirous of knowing from what they had seen and experienced in England.  Whether they would prefer living in such society as ours in preference to their own, I made the inquiry; the reply was “No.” The elder of the three said that happiness consisted merely in the gratification of a man’s wants, that these were readily gratified in their own country, their wants being few.   But here continued he, such a variety is offered to the eye and to the palate, as to create incessant wants and if not gratified, must be the source of endless quarrels, for the strongest arm would snatch from the weakest and men would be little better than wild beasts.  Hence, said he, must arise innumerable contests, war, and bloodshed.  I do not give these expressions as the exact language of this untaught Indian but as the purport of it. I represented to him that such evils as he alluded to were checked by good laws and regulations.  Even the laws themselves, said he, would become evils which we never experience: restraints upon conduct which free men are unaccustomed to. We have no statute to impose any service as a duty, no compulsory laws to oblige us to perform it: all our resolutions are voluntary and flow from the impulse of our own minds we have but one law, which is to punish murder.  The man who deprives another of life is put to death.

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But, said I, do theft and adultery never occur among you?  Certainly, returned he. They do, but are not these sufficiently punished by detection?  Why then a multiplicity of laws?  What possesses thee to expose thy person to dangerous voyages and be oppressed about futurity?  Avarice is thy bane and thou art no less tormented in preserving what thou hast than in acquiring more.  Fear of robbery and shipwreck makes thee wretched.  Thus those growest old in thy youth.  Thou hast become grey,13 thy forehead is wrinkled, and a thousand ailments afflict thy body; a thousand distresses surround thy heart, and there movest with painful hurry to the grave; nursed in the lap of ease and in the midst of plenty sickness in a variety of complicated forms assails thy constitution from which in youth we are entirely exempt.  Savage man knows not the name of madness.  Mental derangement arises from chagrin, and you owe this to your society.  Why art thou not content with what thy own country produces?   Why not condemn superfluities as we do?  In a state of nature like ours we enjoy what our labour procures, but in a state of society like yours those who labour most enjoy the least, and thou who labour not at all have the greatest number of enjoyments.  But after all, I like my own state best.  We are unrestrained.   We have no master to serve; no patron to please.  We can lie down and rise up, go out and come in, are lords of the creation, above ceremony, above control and are strangers to restless nights.  Health and liberty is everything with us.  If we have these, we want no more.  The necessaries of life are all within our reach:  we can command game and fish all the year round; a skin supplies us with clothing, and a cabin or a cave shelters us from the weather.  But in a state of civilization like yours, if a provision were not made against the casualties of life, thousands must starve.  Such a fine garb as we now wear would be ridiculed in our country, and such a profusion of dressed food and strong liquors would, if in general use, destroy that health which to us is our greatest blessing.  Every one is contented with what he has.  Notwithstanding this, said I, you are not without your wars.  War, returned he, is with us matter of choice, not of necessity.  We had much fewer wars before we became acquainted with the English. They have drawn us into a state of warfare and have a great deal to answer for, for we fight not so much for ourselves as for you.  It will happen at times that one tribe will make inroads upon another, but this is an evil soon remedied.  Our wars are only the war of a month; yours are almost endless.  Danger, like labour is to us a condition of our nature, and the fear of it never troubles us.  Our wars are merely to prevent encroachment.  In want of agriculture, we are obliged to roam from place to place; when we have exhausted one place, we search for another.  Other tribes do the same; but as interference with each other is an injury to both, we are obligated to prevent encroachments.  A Cherokee, whenever he travels, is always at home.  He carries his little property about him and builds him a cabin as you would erect a tent, sits down and is quiet, but your state of society is an endless source14 of wretchedness.  Eager to accumulate, you lie, deceive, over-reach, plunder and destroy.  Not so, the Cherokee.  He tell no lie.  Ee maffo fonio abada says even the Mandingo Negro, mourning over his murdered son,15 he never told a lie.16  No, never.  Indian lives and lets live and helps man to live.  What better man you than Cherokee?  If there be scarce food in the North, we remove to the South; if in the South, to the North.  All places are alike to us.  You, civilized man, are confined in prisons, bound in chains, shut up in garrisons, and there left to starve or be slaughtered. The enjoyment of property is lost in the anxious care of it.  “Cherokee know no taxes; no arbitrary mandates, no servitude, no mortifications from the great, and if we have no palaces, we have no hospitals.  “What savage feel no want of, he no covet.”  He is subject only to natural evils, and these his hardiness is best able to cope with.  He experiences neither ingratitude nor jealousy; and why, because he expects no return for favors nor any connubial fidelity and as our interests do not clash, we do not necessarily kill each other.  Children do not secretly wish the death of a father, nor one man rejoice at the downfall of another.   “Cherokee is the friend of all.”  If a quarrel arise, a few blows set it to rights, and the weaker submits to the stronger.  In short, such were the sentiments I collected from these men, and it often led me to reflect on the evils of society which doubtless are many and which the savage is exempt from.

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The Citizen is a drudge to the last moment of his life, perpetually toiling & racking his brains for what?  To find out occupation still more laborious.

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The Citizen sacrifices truth and decency to his own interest and transforms the man into the sycophant and buffoon.

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The Citizen cringes to those whom he hates and fawns upon a rich man whom he secretly despises.

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The Citizen takes pleasure often in the misfortunes of his neighbour and rejoices at his undoing.

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The Citizen prays for the death of that parent who gave him life that he may enjoy

his property and his honors.

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The Citizen looks forward eagerly to calamities, to public distresses, to commotion, to wars, hoping to profit by the event, regardless of the massacre of slaughtered thousands.

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The Citizen will with the same breath caress and curse, enemies to each other by duty, knaves by interest.

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But savage man when he has dined is the friend of all his fellows and is at peace with all the world.

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Many authors have been of opinion that civilization is an evil and has tended more to human infelicity than any one thing in existence.  What has occasioned wars, all that strife among men, that slaughter which has deluged the earth but contest for property, the effect of Civilization?  A single question will determine this.  Ask the civilized man if he be happy and ask the savage the same, and their answer will decide it.  The first will tell you no; the other will answer Yes.  The difference of the two states of men cannot be determined by those who have not experienced both.

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Did not Selkirk the Scotchman who was cast away on the Island of Fernandez live there alone for four years, and did he not declare that after he had lost all reflection of the past and all the anxiety for the future he felt himself eased of the burden of social life and was as happy as he supposed man was capable of being in this sublunary world.

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And we read in Kolben’s history of the Cape of Good Hope17 that one of the Dutch governors, having brought up a Hottentot boy from an infant in all the luxury of exalted life according to the customs and fashion of Europeans, had him taught several languages, instructed in the principles of the Christian religion; and all the useful sciences and when of adult age sent him to Batavia under the Commissary with an appointment and salary equal to any man’s wishes.18   Yet this young man on his return from India, having requested leave to go and see his relations in the country, after a week or two was seen coming to the fort stripped of his fine clothes and covered only with a bear-skin, carrying a bundle with a stick upon his shoulder.  Meeting the governor, he laid down his bundle, which contained his garments, saying “I feel myself, Sir, under a thousand obligations to you for your parental tenderness and care of me from my infancy to the present hour, but I have seen my relations, their mode of living and their state of happiness, and I prefer their savage life to anything I have hitherto experienced.  My return here is to thank you for all your kindness to me; to return you the clothes which belong to you and which I shall never wear again, requesting only your permission to keep my hanger, which I shall ever be proud to use in your defence.”  Thus saying, he waited not an answer, but turned upon his heel, made the best of his way to his savage friends and said, “the Cape no more.”  The East India Company made the like experiment with two young Hottentots and with no better success.  A similar circumstance occurred in Bennelong, a native of New South Wales, brought over here 1792 who returned 1795, whilst in London, he was instructed; and had every comfort that could be bestowed on him, but on his return, took to his native woods, and no inducement could prevail on him to quit them.

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It was noticed on the peace of 1763, after the Indian War was carried on in North America by Colonel Bouquet, that among the Indians were some young men, Europeans, who had been made prisoners at a time of life capable of distinguishing between things needful and comfortable and the want of them, who from five years cohabitation with the Indians acquired such an attachment to their modes of living, etc., that it was with the utmost reluctance they returned to the bosom of their parents, expressing both sorrow and distress at parting with a savage life, seeming in the conflict to sacrifice their own happiness to that of their parents.

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In drawing the line, however, between a savage and a civilized state, we must say there are advantages in both unknown to the other, that in order  to be happy, what we approve in a savage state we should endeavor to imitate, and what we disapprove in a

state of civilization we should endeavor to avoid.19

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But may it not be said that in civilizing of mankind, the Christian civilizer has much to answer for.  He invades an island inhabited, say, by savages only, in order to conquer them and hold possession of a territory belonging to others – On what principle? The manifest intent is extent of territory dominion and power to the invader not the extension of Christianity among a race of infidels which appears to me to be the only good arising from the change.  For this seeming good, they are executing evil.  They are invading a peaceful country.  Robbing the natives of their property murdering all that oppose them as lords of the domain, calling every native that contends for his property a rebel and putting him to death in a Christian manner, by a Christian executioner – How stands this Christian in the eyes of his Creator, who thus presumes to dictate to him?  What ought to have been done and which they, as Christians would not in conscience, have undone!

• 1. While this document is from the collections of The Lewis Walpole Library, a draft exists at the Bath Central Library, Bath England. For a modern commentary of the document from the Stockbridge perspective, see Rick Wilcox, "Stockbridge Mohican wisdom on a life well-lived: A conversation with Mohican delegation in London, 1766," The Berkshire Edge, January 8, 2018.https://theberkshireedge.com/stockbridge-mohican-wisdom-on-a-life-well-l....
• 2. In 1762, Henry Timberlake brought three Cherokee headmen to London, where they enjoyed the hospitality of the imperial government and keen interest of the town’s populace.  At one point, the group visited Marylebone Gardens, but, because many of the historical facts about this visit are not consistent with the account given here by Trusler, it is more likely that this document may relate to a later visit of Mohican/Wappinger delegates in 1766 (See, for example, Public Advertiser, August 7, 1766). Consequently, our annotation of Trusler’s account of the conversation with the Indians assumes that his informants were Mohican/Wappingers and not Cherokees, even though a group of Cherokees had returned to the metropole in 1764-1765.  For a detailed explanation of our reasoning for this, please see the editorial headnote associated with this document.
• 3. The caption for Chapter 18 begins on page 1 of the manuscript.  Each folio is paginated with a sequential number on the recto and verso.  A more recent cataloguing numbering system labels each folio page only on the recto in pencil.
• 4. The section which we transcribe and annotate here starts on page 11 of the manuscript and continues until page 26. 
• 5. St George Botolph Lane was a church off Eastcheap, in the ward of Billingsgate in the City of London. It was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and rebuilt with rubble from the old St. Paul's Cathedral by Sir Christopher Wren. The church was demolished in 1904. Wikipedia.
• 6. Trusler served as an assistant to Dr. Bruce, the royal chaplain at Somerset House in 1761.  John Trusler, Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Dr. Trusler, Part 1 (London, 1806), 177.
• 7. Trusler uses the form “Marybone.” 
• 8. Captain Barnabas Binney’s vessel was called The Ship Lion, which sailed from Boston on June 16, 1766,  According to a newspaper article, the seven Indians (four men and three women) were accompanied by four other individuals, three of whom were William Gregg, Jr., Bartlet Brundige, and another interpreter.  Boston Evening Post, June 30, 1766, p. 3; London Evening Post, August 5, 1766; William Cutter, New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial: A Record of the Achievements of Her People, Vol. 4 (New York, 1915), 1767.
• 9. A contemporary account in the London Chronicle gave further details.  “The sachems are remarkably tall and stout, one of them six feet and an half high without shoes, which they do not wear; of a brown, shining complexion, and bold manly countenance, dressed in the Indian manner.  The women, who are ladies of fashion, were of the same complexion with the men.  They appeared very modest and decent in their behaviour, and seemed remarkably delighted with a few trinkets, such as ear rings, necklaces, &c that were presented to them by some ladies, who went to pay their respects to them at their arrival [at Salisbury].”  The London Evening Post, August 5, 1766.
• 10. See, for example, The Daily Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, August 12, 1766; August 13, 1766.
• 11. The Indians were Daniel Nimham, Jacob Cheeksaunkun, Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut, John Naunauphtaunk, and the wives of three of the four men.   They were in London to meet with British authorities regarding colonial encroachments on their lands.
• 12. Cara sposa, literally “dear wife” or, more figuratively, a devoted female companion.  OED.
• 13. The word “old” is deleted.
• 14. The word “state” is crossed out and “source” inserted.
• 15. The word “master” is deleted and “son” substituted.
• 16. The source for this quote is Mungo Park’s account of a herdsman wounded by the Moors, whose mother cries out, Ee maffo fonia abada, which, according to Park, means “he never told a lie; no, never.”  Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association, in the Years, 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London, 1799), 102.
• 17. The name “Robbins” is crossed out.  Peter Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, Containing A Particular Account of the Several Nations of the Hottentots, 2nd Edition (London, 1738).
• 18. Kolben’s account of Governor van der Sel and the Khoikhoi boy is found in The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, pp. 106-107.
• 19. The text following this paragraph is added to the manuscript with the words “See Addition. But &c.”  It is written on different paper and sewn into the original folios between pages 25 and 26.