Port Desire to Patagonia
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boot, with a short pointed stick fastened to each heel, which served as a spur. Having looked round upon these enormous goblins with no small astonishment, and with some difficulty made those that were still galloping up sit down with the rest, I took out a quantity of yellow and white beads, which I distributed among them, and which they received with very strong expressions of pleasure: I then took out a whole piece of green silk riband, and giving the end of it into the hands of one of them, I made the person that sat next take hold of it, and so on as far as it would reach: all this while they sat very quietly, nor did any of those that held the riband attempt to pull it from the rest, though I perceived that they were still more delighted with it, than with the beads. While the riband was thus extended, I took out a pair of scissars, and cut it between each two of the Indians that held it, so that I left about a yard in the possession of every one, which I afterwards tied about their heads, where they suffered it to remain without so much as touching it while I was with them. Their peaceable and orderly behaviour on this occasion certainly did them honour, especially as my presents could not extend to the whole company: neither impatience to share the new finery, nor curiosity to gain a nearer view of me and what I was doing, brought any one of them from the station that I had allotted him. It would be very natural for those who have read Gay’s fables; if they form an idea of an Indian almost naked returning to his fellows in the woods adorned with European trinkets, to think of the monkey that had seen the world; yet before we despise their fondness for glass, beads, ribands and other things, which among us are held in no estimation, we should consider that, in themselves, the ornaments of savage and civil life are equal, and that those who live nearby in a state of nature, have nothing that resembles glass, so much
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 29, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/066.html