236 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



to ; tho' a great number of them have been, and still continue to be educated 

 at WilUamshurg-coUege in Virginia, by the benefaction of the great Mr. Boyle, 

 whose pious design was that after attaining a due qualification, they should 

 inculcate amongst their brethren true religion and virtue, yet I have never 

 heard of an instance conformable to that worthy intention. And so innate 

 an affection have they to their barbarous customs, that tho' from their in- 

 fancy they have been bred, and fared well with the English, yet as they aj)- 

 proach towards manhood, it is common for them to elope several hundred 

 miles to their native country, and there to resume their skins, and savage 

 way of life, making no further use of their learning so unworthily bestowed 

 upon them. (Catesby, 1731-43, vol. 2, p. xn.) 



Now the simple answer to this is that, on account of his Indian 

 blood and ancestry, the student found that he could not function in 

 white society, and that his white education unfitted him for Indian 

 society. Thus he must either remain in white society but be held 

 at arms length by it or return to his ancestral one and adopt, or re- 

 adopt, the usages necessary to it or demanded by it. The situation 

 is stated with remarkable clearness in the report of a committee of the 

 board of correspondents of the Scots Society for Propagating Chris- 

 tian Knowledge, who visited the Oneida and Mahican Indians in 1796. 

 This committee consisted of Jeremy Belknap and Jedidiah Morse, but 

 which of these was responsible for the sections in quotes, or whether 

 they were from some third person is not clear. 



"An Indian youth has been taken from his friends and conducted to a new 

 people, whose modes of thinking and living, whose pleasures and pursuits 

 are totally dissimilar to those of his own nation. His new friends profess 

 love to him, and a desire for his improvement in human and divine knowledge, 

 and for his eternal salvation ; but at the same time endeavour to make him 

 sensible of his inferiority to themselves. To treat him as an equal would 

 mortify their own pride, and degrade themselves in the view of their neigh- 

 bours. He is put to school; but his fellow students look on him as being of 

 an inferior species. He acquires some knowledge, and is taught some orna- 

 mental, and perhaps useful accomplishments; but the degrading memorials 

 of his inferiority, which are continually before his eyes, remind him of the 

 manners and habits of his own country, where he was once free and equal 

 to his associates. He sighs to return to his friends; but there he meets with 

 the most bitter mortification. He is neither a white man nor an Indian ; 

 as he had no character with us, he has none with them. If he has strength 

 of mind suflScient to renounce all his acquirements, and resume the savage life 

 and manners, he may possibly be again received by his countrymen : but the 

 greater probability is, that he will take refuge from their contempt in the 

 inebriating draught ; and when this becomes habitual, he will be guarded 

 from no vice, and secure from no crime." (Belknap, 1798, pp. 29-30.) 



Estimates of the character of lower Mississippi Indians differed like 

 those of the explorers farther east. Dumont regarded all of the 

 Indian tribes with which the French had dealings, even those sup- 

 posed to be friends, as utterly perfidious. "One is persuaded," writes 

 the missionary St. Cosme, "that they are all thieves and try only to 



