UNPRODUCTIVE LABOR.

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propriation such as this, raises up the same invincible obstacles to the production of utility; because, with this original defect, there must necessarily be unprofitable labor, small accumulation, limited exchange. Let us exemplify this by another individual case.

We have seen, in the instances of the Mosquito Indian and of Selkirk, how little a solitary man can do for himself, although he may have the most unbounded command of natural supplies-although not an atom of those natural supplies, whether produced by the earth or the water, is appropriated by others-when, in fact, he is monarch of all he surveys. Let us trace the course of another man, advanced in the ability to subdue all things to his use by association with his fellow-men; but carrying on that associa tion in the rude and unproductive relations of savage life; not desiring to "replenish the earth" by cultivation, but seeking only to appropriate the means of existence which it has spontaneously produced; laboring, indeed, and exchanging, but not laboring and exchanging in a way that will permit the accumulation of wealth, and therefore remaining poor and miserable. We are not about to draw any fanciful picture, but merely to select some facts from a real narrative.

CHAPTER IV.

ADVENTURES OF JOHN TANNER.-HABITS OF THE AMERICAN

INDIANS.-THEIR SUFFERINGS FROM FAMINE, AND FROM THE ABSENCE AMONG THEM OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DIVISION OF LABOR.-EVILS OF IRREGULAR LABOR.-RESPECT TO PROPERTY.-THEIR PRESENT IMPROVED CONDITION.-HUDSON'S BAY IN

DIANS.

In the year 1828 there came to New York a white man named John Tanner, who had been thirty years a captive among the Indians in the then North-west Territory. He was carried off by a band of these people when he was a little boy, from a settlement on the Ohio river, which was occupied by his father, who was a clergyman. The boy was brought up in all the rude habits of the Indians, and became inured to the abiding miseries and uncertain pleasures of their wandering life. He grew in time to be a most skillful huntsman, and carried on large dealings with the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, in the skins of beavers and other animals which he and his associates had shot or entrapped. The history of this man was altogether so curious, that he was induced to furnish the materials for a complete narrative of his adventures; and, accordingly, a book, fully descriptive of them, was prepared for the press by Dr. Edwin James, and printed at New York, in 1830. It is of course not within the intent of our little work to furnish any regular abridgment of John Tanner's story; but it is our wish to direct attention to some few particulars, which appear to us strikingly to illustrate some of the positions which we desire to enforce, by thus exhibiting their practical operation.

JOHN TANNER-AMERICAN INDIANS.

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The country in which this man lived so many years was the immense territory belonging to the United States, which at that period was covered by boundless forests which the progress of civilization had not then cleared

away. In this region a number of scattered Indian tribes maintained a precarious existence by hunting the moosedeer and the buffalo for their supply of food, and by entrapping the foxes and martens of the woods and the beavers of the lakes, whose skins they generally exchanged with the white traders for articles of urgent necessity, such as ammunition and guns, traps, axes, and woolen blankets; but too often for ardent spirits, equally the curse of savage and of civilized life. The contact of savage man with the outskirts of civilization perhaps afflicts him with the vices of both states. But the principle of exchange, imperfectly and irregularly as it operated among the Indians, furnished some excitement to their ingenuity and their industry. Habits of providence were thus to a certain degree created; it became necessary to accumulate some capital of the commodities which could be rendered valuable by their own

labor, to exchange for commodities which their own labor, without exchange, was utterly unable to procure. The principle of exchange, too, being recognized among them in their dealings with foreigners, the security of propertywithout which, as we have shown, that principle can not exist at all-was one of the great rules of life among themselves. But still these poor Indians, from the mode which they proposed to themselves for the attainment of property, which consisted only in securing what nature had produced, without directing the course of her productions, were very far removed from the regular attainment of those blessings which civilized society alone offers. We shall exemplify these statements by a few details.

The extent of country over which these Indians roamed, was not less than five hundred thousand square miles—an area of the earth's surface equal to that of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland and Portugal combined. They had the unbounded command of all the natural resources of this immense territory; and yet their entire numbers did not equal the present population of a single county in one of the New England States. It may be fairly said, that each Indian required the use of at least a thousand acres for his maintenance and support. The supplies of food were so scanty-a scantiness which would at once have ceased had there been any cultivation-that if a large number of these Indians assembled together to co-operate in their hunting expeditions, they were very soon dispersed by the urgent desire of satisfying hunger. Tanner says, "We all went to hunt beavers in concert. In hunts of this kind the proceeds are sometimes equally divided; but in this instance every man retained what he had killed. In three days I collected as many skins as I could carry. But in these distant and hasty hunts little meat could be brought in; and the whole band was soon suffering with hunger.

VICISSITUDES OF SAVAGE LIFE.

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Many of the hunters, and I among others, for want of food became extremely weak, and unable to hunt far from home." What an approach is this to the case of the lower animals; and how forcibly it reminds us of the passage in Job (c. iv., v. 11), "The fierce lion perisheth for lack of prey."* In another place he says, "I began to be dissatisfied at remaining with large bands of Indians, as it was usual for them, after having remained a short time in a place, to suffer from hunger." These sufferings were not, in many cases, of short duration, or of trifling intensity. Tanner describes one instance of famine in the following words:-"The Indians gathered around, one after another, until we became a considerable band, and then we began to suffer from hunger. The weather was very severe, and our suffering increased. A young woman was the first to die of hunger. Soon after this, a young man, her brother, was taken with that kind of delirium or madness which precedes death in such as die of starvation. In this condition he had left the lodge of his debilitated and desponding parents; and when, at a late hour in the evening, I returned from my hunt, they could not tell what had become of him. I left the camp about the middle of the night, and, following his track, I found him at some distance, lying dead in the snow."

This worst species of suffering equally existed at particular periods, whether food was sought for by large or by small parties, by bands or by individuals. Tanner was traveling with the family of the woman who had adopted him. He says, "We had now a short season of plenty; but soon became hungry again. It often happened that for two or three days we had nothing to eat; then a rabbit or two, or a bird, would afford us a prospect of protracting the sufferings of hunger a few days longer." Again he says, "Having subsisted for some time almost entirely on the • The authorized version has old; the more correct translation is fierce