Memoirs of a captivity among the Indians of North America, from childhood to the age of nineteen: with anecdotes descriptive of their manners and customs. To which is added, some account of the soil, climate, and vegetable productions of the territory westward of the Mississippi / [John Dunn Hunter].

  • Hunter, John Dunn, 1798?-1827
Date:
1824 [i.e. 1826?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of a captivity among the Indians of North America, from childhood to the age of nineteen: with anecdotes descriptive of their manners and customs. To which is added, some account of the soil, climate, and vegetable productions of the territory westward of the Mississippi / [John Dunn Hunter]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    149/508 (page 113)
    generously warning me of the danger I had to fear from the venomous potency of its fangs, to kill it with my tomahawk, These reptiles, as before observed, especially in stony grounds, are very numerous: the black ones are short and thick, but the parti-coloured ones are very large and long. I saw many that would, I am certain, have measured seven or eight feet in length. They are not, however, considered by the Indians so poisonous as the former ; but, from the distance they are able to strike, and the great depth of the wounds they inflict, they are much the most to be dreaded. They never attack till after they have alarmed the object of their fears, and on account of this conceived magnanimity of character, the Indians very seldom destroy them. Indeed, so much do they esteem them for this trait, that I have known several instances in which the occupants of a wigwam have temporarily resigned its use, without fear or molestation, to one of these visitants who had given due notice of his arrival. The regard the Indians have for this snake has been illiberally construed into an idolatrous veneration ; which is far from being the case. Bravery, generosity, and magnanimity, form most important traits in the character of the warrior; and the practice of these qualities is much more strictly inculcated in early life, and observed in ma* turer years by them, than are the commands of the Decalogue by the respective sects which profess to believe in and obey them. It is from impressions arising from these sources that the Indian, surrounded by his most bitter enemies, and the implements of cruel and vindictive torture, derives his consolation, i