Note 486 — Chapter XXX · 1765. RUIN OF THE INDIAN CAUSE.

Journal of George Croghan, on his journey to the Illinois, 1765. This journal has been twice published—in the appendix to Butler’s History of Kentucky, and in the Pioneer History of Dr. Hildreth. A manuscript copy also may be found in the office of the secretary of state at Albany. Dr. Hildreth omits the speech of Croghan to the Indians, which is given above as affording a better example of the forms of speech appropriate to an Indian peace harangue, than the genuine productions of the Indians themselves, who are less apt to indulge in such a redundancy of metaphor.

A language extremely deficient in words of general and abstract signification renders the use of figures indispensable; and it is from this cause, above all others, that the flowers of Indian rhetoric derive their origin. In the work of Heckewelder will be found a list of numerous figurative expressions appropriate to the various occasions of public and private intercourse,—forms which are seldom departed from, and which are often found identical among tribes speaking languages radically distinct. Thus, among both Iroquois and Algonquins, the “whistling of evil birds” is the invariable expression to denote evil tidings or bad advice.

The Indians are much pleased when white men whom they respect adopt their peculiar symbolical language,—a circumstance of which the Jesuit missionaries did not fail to avail themselves. “These people,” says Father Le Jeune, “being great orators, and often using allegories and metaphors, our fathers, in order to attract them to God, adapt themselves to their custom of speaking, which delights them very much, seeing we succeed as well as they.”