Note 27 — Chapter V
Reading edition
The instances of heathen kindness and hospitality, experienced by George Fox and others who have visited the Indians in a friendly manner, contrast very favourably in comparison with the many acts of bigoted intolerance and cruelty recorded in these volumes on the part of those professedly civilized and Christian.
Many incidents might be related in proof of Indian kindness when unprovoked to opposite conduct. When the Quakers were under a cruel persecution by the magistrates of Boston, in New England, Nicholas Upshal, “a man of unblameable conversation,” and a church member of their communion, showed the sufferers kindness, by giving five shillings a week to the jailer to let those confined in prison have the sustenance necessary for life—the magistrates having caused the jail window to be boarded up, that none might communicate with, or help them. He proceeded afterwards to reason with the magistrates, and warn them not to be found fighting against God, for which he was fined £20, imprisoned, and then banished; though a weakly old man, and the season the depth of winter. In his banishment in the wilderness, he met an Indian, who, having understood how he had been dealt with, took compassion on him, and very kindly told him, if he would live with him he would make him a warm house; and further said, “What a God have these English, who deal so with one another about their God!”
See here the Red Indian’s kindly care
Though he the name of savage bear.
Christian, more savage thou than he,
Blush for thy cruel deeds of infamy:
The Indian’s unasked cup of charity
Is larger than as mixed by thee.
The white man aged, through frost and snows,
A banish’d exile to his country goes,
Full many a welcome does he say,
To his warm house whate’er the day.
More Christian he who thus does prove
By practice kindred with a God of love.
More Christian he than they who thus pollute
Their faith, and for their God a brother persecute.