VI.
Indian devil-worship. The interest in America was heightened by popular curiosity regarding the Indians. The American savages were sometimes treated as sun-worshipers, but they were more commonly thought to be worshipers of devils. The prevailing belief in witchcraft, divination, and abounding evil spirits rendered it easy for Europeans to accept the Indian deities as supernatural beings, and to credit the pretensions of the powwows, or Indian priests, to give knowledge of distant or future events, to heal the sick, and even to bring rain in time of drought. But it was observed at Plymouth that when the Pilgrims prayed for rain it fell gently, and that the rain procured by the Indian conjurers was violent and destructive—a rain with something devilish about it. According to writers of the time, the demons worshiped by the savages were able to materialize themselves on great occasions, appearing to their votaries in some beastly form. This belief in Indian devil-worship fitted well with the religious faith of the period, which can hardly be described as anything but a sort of Manichæism dividing the government of the universe almost equally between good and evil powers. Religionists of all schools desired to convert these subjects of Satan, not from those philanthropic motives that are main considerations in modern propagandism, but because their conversion would glorify God, and yet more because it would despite the devil. Sometimes the religious motive was incongruously supported by hopes of commercial advantage. The navigator Davis wrote to Secretary Walsingham that if the Indians "were once brought over to the Christian faith they might soon be brought to relish a more civilized kind of life and be thereby induced to take off great quantities of our coarser woolen manufactures."
Indians exhibited. The early explorers made a practice of kidnapping Indians and transporting them to England, where the sight of barbarians without doublet or hose quickened the interest in projects for colonization and adventure. In our age of commercial activity and extended geographical knowledge one can form but a weak conception of the excitement produced by the sight of "the Indian man and woman," no doubt Esquimaux, brought by Frobisher. Portraits of these rarities were made for the king and queen and others. In 1605 Weymouth brought from the coast of Maine five kidnapped Indians, "with all their bows and arrows" and two beautiful birch-bark canoes. Rosier's True Relation. "This accident," exclaimed Sir Ferdinando Gorges, "hath been the means of putting life into all our plantations." Some of the savages captured at various times were exhibited for money, and one perhaps was shown after he was dead; at least we may venture to conjecture so much from Shakespeare's jeer in The Tempest at the idle curiosity of the crowd. In England, says Trinculo, "any strange beast makes a man. Tempest, ii, 2. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." This interest in outlandish savages no doubt suggested to the poet the creation of the monster Caliban, who probably seemed a realistic figure to the imagination of that age.
VII.
Notions about animals. The animals of the new continent excited the wonder of the people of Europe and increased the interest in America. Regarding them, also, the most extravagant stories were easily credited. It was recorded in the sober Latin of Peter Martyr that the advance of Cabot's ships was retarded by the multitude of codfish on the Newfoundland coast, and that the bears were accustomed to catch these fish in their claws. Note 9. It is hard to recognize the familiar opossum in the description by Purchas: "A monstrous deformed beast, whose fore part resembleth a fox, the hinder part an ape, excepting the feet, which are like a man's; beneath her belly she hath a receptacle like a purse, where she bestows her young until they can shift for themselves." The humming bird was believed to be a cross between a fly and a bird. The Hudson River Dutch settlers went further, and named it simply "the West Indian bee." These dainty creatures were prepared for exportation to Europe in New Amsterdam by drying them, in Barbadoes by filling them with sand. Evelyn's Diary, i, 277. They were accounted "pretty delicacies for ladies, who wore them at their breasts and girdles." Evelyn saw two preserved as great rarities at Oxford, in 1564. A New England versifier extols
The humbird for some queen's rich cage more fit
Than in the vacant wilderness to sit.
Wood's New Eng. Prospect, p. 23. Flying squirrels, when brought into English parks in 1608, were the occasion of much wondering excitement. King James begged for one of them, like a spoiled child. The skins of muskrats were esteemed for their odor and were brought to England "as rich presents." It was thought that musk might be extracted from this animal. Hariot, the learned man of Ralegh's first colony, fancied that the civet cat would prove profitable to settlers in America, but his words indicate that he had been misled by traces of the skunk, whose perfume has never yet come into request. De Bry's Hariot, p. 10. Speaking of the "civet catte," he says, "in our travails there was found one to have been killed by a salvage or inhabitant; and in many places the smell where one had lately beene before."
The raccoon, the "aroughcun" of the Virginia Indians, being a plantigrade, was esteemed a monkey; the peccaries were called the wild hogs of America, and were thought to have "their navels on the ridge of their backs." Note 10. Somewhere in the region of the Hudson River a beast is described as having a horn in the middle of his forehead, from which it would appear that the unicorn on the royal coat of arms may have been found running at large. It is not easy to account for the "camel mare," reported to have been seen about three hundred miles west from the coast of New Jersey, unless it belonged to the genus Incubus. The bewildering number of new creatures found in America troubled the European scholars of that day, who were ever theological. They were puzzled to get so many four-footed beasts and creeping things into the compass of Noah's ark. Mercator, the Flemish geographer, avoided this difficult embarkation by concluding that America had been excepted from the Deluge.
VIII.
Thus grotesque and misleading were many of the glimpses that Europe got of the New World as the mists of ignorance slowly lifted from it. An age of romance and adventure. These erratic notions regarding America give one an insight into the character of the English people at the period of discovery and colony-planting. Credulity and the romantic spirit dwell together. The imagination in such an age usurped the place of discrimination, and the wonderful became the probable. The appetite for the marvelous fostered exaggeration; every man who had sailed in foreign seas thought it shame not to tell of wonders. The seventeenth century indeed betrayed a consciousness of its own weakness in a current proverb, "Travelers lie by license." History and fiction had not yet been separated. Like every other romantic age, the period of Elizabeth and James was prodigal of daring adventure; every notable man aspired to be the hero of a tale. English beginnings in America were thus made in a time abounding in bold enterprises—enterprises brilliant in conception, but in the execution of which there was often a lack of foresight and practical wisdom.
Elucidations.
Note 1, page 3. See the careful and learned