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William Priest - Travels in the United States of America
dreams! Sometimes I start awake, as if the great hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of
our dogs seems to announce the arrival of the enemy: we leap out of bed, and run to arms; my poor wife,
with panting bosom, and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if we were to see each other no more. She
snatches the youngest children from their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent
questions the horrour of the dreadful moment! She tries to hide them in the cellar, as if our cellar was
inaccessible to the fire! I place all my servants at the window, and myself at the door, where I am
determined to perish. Fear industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to each
other his fears and conjectures. We remain thus, sometimes for whole hours, our hearts and our minds
racked by the most anxious suspense! What a dreadful situation! A thousand times worse than that of a
soldier engaged in the midst of a most severe conflict! Sometimes feeling the spontaneous courage of a
man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the
children, quite unmans me. Away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest despondency: at
last, finding it was a false alarm, we return once more to our beds; but what good can the sleep of nature
do us, when interrupted with such scenes?"
* * * * *
But we will suppose our planter to have escaped the scalping knife and tomahawk; and in the course of
years situate in a thick, settled neighbourhood of planters like himself, who have struggled through all the
foregoing difficulties: he is now a man of some consequence, builds a house by the side of his former
hut, which now serves him for a kitchen; and as he is comfortably situate, we will leave him to the
enjoyment of the fruits of his industry.
Such a being has often ideas of liberty, and a contempt of vassalage and slavery, which do honour to
human nature.
The planter I have endeavoured to describe, I have supposed to be sober and industrious: but when a man
of an opposite description makes such an attempt, he often degenerates into a demisavage; he cultivates
no more land than will barely supply the family with bread, or rather makes his wife, and children
perform that office. His whole employment is to procure skins, and furs, to exchange for rum, brandy,
and ammunition; for this purpose he is often for several days together in the woods, without seeing a
human being. He is by no means at a loss; his rifle supplies him with food, and at night he cuts down
some boughs with his tomahawk, and constructs a wigwam[Footnote: The Indian name for their
huts so constructed.], in which he spends the night, stretched on the skins of those animals he has killed
in the course of his excursion. This manner of living he learned from his savage neighbours, the Indians,
and like them calls every other state of life slavery. It sometimes happens, that an unsuccessful
back settler joins the Indians at war with the states. When this is the case, it is observed he is, if possible,
more cruel than his new allies; he eagerly imbibes all the vices of the savages, without a single spark of
their virtues. Farewell,
Yours &c.
Philadelphia, March 18th, 1794.
Dear Friend,
My present intention is to give you some conception of the family of a planter, whose ancestors had in
some degree gone through all the difficulties I described in my last.
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