Pioneers of the Old Southwest [21]
and imitating savages in many diabolical lessons of obscenity and blasphemy."
In these statements, contemporary records bear him out. There is no sadder reading than the many pleas addressed by the Indian chiefs to various officials to stop the importation of liquor into their country, alleging the debauchment of their young men and warning the white man, with whom they desired to be friends, that in an Indian drink and blood lust quickly combined.
Adair's book was published in London in 1775. He wrote it to be read by Englishmen as well as Americans; and some of his reflections on liberty, justice, and Anglo-Saxon unity would not sound unworthily today. His sympathies were with "the principles of our Magna Charta Americana"; but he thought the threatened division of the English-speaking peoples the greatest evil that could befall civilization. His voluminous work discloses a man not only of wide mental outlook but a practical man with a sense of commercial values. Yet, instead of making a career for himself among his own caste, he made his home for over thirty years in the Chickasaw towns; and it is plain that, with the exception of some of his older brother traders, he preferred the Chickasaw to any other society.
The complete explanation of such men as Adair we need not expect to find stated anywhere--not even in and between the lines of his book. The conventionalist would seek it in moral obliquity; the radical, in a temperament that is irked by the superficialities that comprise so large a part of conventional standards. The reason for his being what he was is almost the only thing Adair did not analyze in his book. Perhaps, to him, it was self evident. We may let it be so to us, and see it most clearly presented in a picture composed from some of his brief sketches: A land of grass and green shade inset with bright waters, where deer and domestic cattle herded together along the banks; a circling group of houses, their white-clayed walls sparkling under the sun's rays, and, within and without, the movement of "a friendly and sagacious people," who "kindly treated and watchfully guarded" their white brother in peace and war, and who conversed daily with him in the Old Beloved Speech learned first of Nature. "Like towers in cities beyond the common size of those of the Indians" rose the winter and summer houses and the huge trading house which the tribe had built for their best beloved friend in the town's center, because there he would be safest from attack. On the rafters hung the smoked and barbecued delicacies taken in the hunt and prepared for him by his red servants, who were also his comrades at home and on the dangerous trail. "Beloved old women" kept an eye on his small sons, put to drowse on panther skins so that they might grow up brave warriors. Nothing was there of artifice or pretense, only "the needful things to make a reasonable life happy." All was as primitive, naive, and contented as the woman whose outline is given once in a few strokes, proudly and gayly penciled: "I have the pleasure of writing this by the side of a Chikkasah female, as great a princess as ever lived among the ancient Peruvians or Mexicans, and she bids me be sure not to mark the paper wrong after the manner of most of the traders; otherwise it will spoil the making good bread or homony!"
His final chapter is the last news of James Adair, type of the earliest trader. Did his bold attacks on corrupt officials and rum peddlers--made publicly before Assemblies and in print--raise for him a dense cloud of enmity that dropped oblivion on his memory? Perhaps. But, in truth, his own book is all the history of him we need. It is the record of a man. He lived a full life and served his day; and it matters not that a mist envelops the place where unafraid he met the Last Enemy, was "weighed on the path and made light."
Chapter IV. The Passing Of The French Peril
The great pile of the Appalachian peaks was not the only barrier which held back the settler with his plough and his rifle from following the trader's tinkling
In these statements, contemporary records bear him out. There is no sadder reading than the many pleas addressed by the Indian chiefs to various officials to stop the importation of liquor into their country, alleging the debauchment of their young men and warning the white man, with whom they desired to be friends, that in an Indian drink and blood lust quickly combined.
Adair's book was published in London in 1775. He wrote it to be read by Englishmen as well as Americans; and some of his reflections on liberty, justice, and Anglo-Saxon unity would not sound unworthily today. His sympathies were with "the principles of our Magna Charta Americana"; but he thought the threatened division of the English-speaking peoples the greatest evil that could befall civilization. His voluminous work discloses a man not only of wide mental outlook but a practical man with a sense of commercial values. Yet, instead of making a career for himself among his own caste, he made his home for over thirty years in the Chickasaw towns; and it is plain that, with the exception of some of his older brother traders, he preferred the Chickasaw to any other society.
The complete explanation of such men as Adair we need not expect to find stated anywhere--not even in and between the lines of his book. The conventionalist would seek it in moral obliquity; the radical, in a temperament that is irked by the superficialities that comprise so large a part of conventional standards. The reason for his being what he was is almost the only thing Adair did not analyze in his book. Perhaps, to him, it was self evident. We may let it be so to us, and see it most clearly presented in a picture composed from some of his brief sketches: A land of grass and green shade inset with bright waters, where deer and domestic cattle herded together along the banks; a circling group of houses, their white-clayed walls sparkling under the sun's rays, and, within and without, the movement of "a friendly and sagacious people," who "kindly treated and watchfully guarded" their white brother in peace and war, and who conversed daily with him in the Old Beloved Speech learned first of Nature. "Like towers in cities beyond the common size of those of the Indians" rose the winter and summer houses and the huge trading house which the tribe had built for their best beloved friend in the town's center, because there he would be safest from attack. On the rafters hung the smoked and barbecued delicacies taken in the hunt and prepared for him by his red servants, who were also his comrades at home and on the dangerous trail. "Beloved old women" kept an eye on his small sons, put to drowse on panther skins so that they might grow up brave warriors. Nothing was there of artifice or pretense, only "the needful things to make a reasonable life happy." All was as primitive, naive, and contented as the woman whose outline is given once in a few strokes, proudly and gayly penciled: "I have the pleasure of writing this by the side of a Chikkasah female, as great a princess as ever lived among the ancient Peruvians or Mexicans, and she bids me be sure not to mark the paper wrong after the manner of most of the traders; otherwise it will spoil the making good bread or homony!"
His final chapter is the last news of James Adair, type of the earliest trader. Did his bold attacks on corrupt officials and rum peddlers--made publicly before Assemblies and in print--raise for him a dense cloud of enmity that dropped oblivion on his memory? Perhaps. But, in truth, his own book is all the history of him we need. It is the record of a man. He lived a full life and served his day; and it matters not that a mist envelops the place where unafraid he met the Last Enemy, was "weighed on the path and made light."
Chapter IV. The Passing Of The French Peril
The great pile of the Appalachian peaks was not the only barrier which held back the settler with his plough and his rifle from following the trader's tinkling