Excerpts related to the Penobscot Indian in Hawthorne's "The Seven Vagabonds."
My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indian would prefer
his own solitary musings, to the gay society thus offered him; on the contrary,
the girl's proposal met with immediate acceptance, and seemed to animate him with
a misty expectation of enjoyment. I now gave myself up to a course of thought,
which, whether it flowed naturally from this combination of events, or was drawn
forth by a wayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deep
music. I saw mankind, in this weary old age of the world, either enduring a sluggish
existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or, if they breathed a purer air,
still lying down at night with no hope but to wear out to-morrow, and all the
to-morrows which make up life, among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched
toil, that had darkened the sunshine of to-day. But there were some, full of the
primeval instinct, who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest years
by the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits, and new associates;
and cared little, though their birth place might have been here in New England,
if the grave should close over them in Central Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament
of these free spirits; unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common
centre, they had come hither from far and near; and last of all, appeared the
representative of those mighty vagrants, who had chased the deer during thousands
of years, and were chasing it now in the Spirit Land. Wandering down through the
waste of ages, the woods had vanished around his path; his arm had lost somewhat
of its strength, his foot of its fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his
heart and mind of their savage virtue and uncultured force; but here, untameable
to the routine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road, as of old
over the forest leaves, here was theIndian
still. . . .
