Lepcha people

“ The inhabitants of the hilly tract consist to a large extent of Nepali immigrants and of aboriginal highland races; in the tarai the people are chiefly Hindus and Mahommedans. The Lepchas are considered to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the hilly portion of the district. They are a fine, frank race, naturally open-hearted and free-handed, fond of change and given to an out-door life; but they do not seem to improve on being brought into contact with civilization. ”

“ The Lepcha voices changed in quality, manifesting great gain in force of conviction, rose higher and higher, and finally gave vent to cries of exultation, aspiration, exaltation—they chanted a triumph: a victory leading them onwards and upwards towards something beyond in the direction of the Eternal Summits magnificent before their very eyes. ”

“ But soon after, the end of our troubles came in view with the sight of some Lepcha cultivation. The men went wild with delight, and I verily believe they had thought that they would never get back to their homes again; they threw down their loads, danced and sang, and then started off with renewed energy to find the owners of the fields in the outlying houses of the village of Sakhyong a few miles further down. ”

“ They are great lovers of Nature, and unequalled as collectors. In their own country and unspoiled they are frank and open, good-natured and smiling, and when they are at their ease, amiable, obliging, and polite. They are indolent and improvident, but they seldom have private or political feuds. They never aggress upon their neighbours. And by nature they are scrupulously honest. Their women are chaste, and neither men nor women drink in excess.
These 6,000 Lepchas certainly have every estimable quality, and many for which we Europeans are not strikingly remarkable. ”

“ The inner life of all these people is represented: Leech draws them as naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables. It is your house and mine: we are looking at everybody's family circle. Our boys coming from school give themselves such airs, the young scapegraces! our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas—a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth century. ”

“ The best-loved workers of every nation are those who embody distinctly national characteristics, whose work breathes a spirit of wholesome national prejudice, who are children of their own soil, and cannot, even in fancy, be associated with any other art or literature save the art or literature of their fatherland. This was the case with honest John Leech, whom England took to her heart and held dear because he was so truly English, because he despised Frenchmen, and mistrusted Irishmen, and hated Jews, and had a splendid British frankness in conveying these various impressions to the world. ”

“ During the quarter of a century of Leech's work, the British public had its crazes—Bloomerism, crinoline, spirit-rapping, and other less dangerous absurdities than the last, seized upon the minds of large portions of the people, to be thrown aside and replaced by other ridiculous fancies. ”

“ Omens are sought in the entrails of fowls, etc., and other vestiges of their savage origin are still preserved, though now gradually disappearing.
The Lepchas profess no religion, though acknowledging the existence of good and bad spirits. To the good they pay no heed; "Why should we?" they say, "the good spirits do us no harm; the evil spirits, who dwell in every rock, grove, and mountain, are constantly at mischief, and to them we must pray, for they hurt us." Every tribe has a priest-doctor; he neither knows nor attempts to practise the healing art, but is a pure exorcist ”

“ Leech turned to his associates who were hanging on his words. “Do you pay them?”
“Nor, dat we don’t,” shouted Nicholas Ash.
“No, the white people pay them—and we mean to make them pay them,” declared Leech.
This declaration was received with an outburst of applause, not unmingled with laughter, for his audience had some appreciation of humor.
“Lands will only stand so much tax,” insisted his interlocutor; “if you raise taxes beyond this point you will defeat your own purpose, for the lands will be forfeited. We cannot pay them. We are already flat of our backs.” ”

“ Leech," said Thackeray, "surveys society from the gentleman's point of view. In old days, when Mr. Jerrold lived and wrote for that famous periodical, he took the other side; he looked up at the rich and great with a fierce, a sarcastic aspect, and a threatening posture, and his outcry or challenge was: 'Ye rich and great, look out! We, the people, are as good as you. Have a care, ye priests, wallowing on a tithe pig and rolling in carriages and four; ye landlords, grinding the poor; ye vulgar fine ladies, bullying innocent governesses, and what not—we will expose your vulgarity ”

“ The sufferings of the workers, through which their employers so often became rich, touched the tender heart of Leech, and he never lost an opportunity [Pg 30] of pointing out the selfish tyranny of both the men and women traders who almost ground the life out of their unhappy assistants.
If John Leech could have entertained a prejudice against any human beings, it must have been against the Jewish race, for there is scarcely an instance in which he deals with the Jews that they do not suffer under his hand. ”

“ They do it on the same principle as the slave population in the South, to drown in sensual gratification the voice of misery that groans in the inner man—that lives within, speaking of the indignity offered to its high nature by the chain that eats beyond the flesh—discoursing of the rights of man, of liberty on the free hills of a happier clime: while amidst the gayest negro dance, not a heart among the laughing gang but would beat with high emotions and seize the boon with indescribable avidity, should it be offered its freedom on the spot. ”

“ It was understood now that Leech was courting Still’s daughter, and it began to be rumored that reinforced by this alliance, after the next election he would probably be the leader in the State. He was spoken of as a possible candidate for the Governorship, the election for which was to come off the following year.
The people were now as flat on their backs as even Leech could wish.
Fortunately there is a law by which conditions through their very excess are sometimes rectified. Absolute success often bears in it the seeds of its own destruction. ”

“ Leech himself headed the procession, walking with impressive solemnity a little in advance of the guard. Quite a large crowd had assembled, mostly negroes; though there were some white men on the edges, looking on with grim faces and glowing eyes, their hats drawn down and their speech low, hardly articulate mutterings. [487] All day long, since the news of the arrival of the soldiery and their work, the negroes had been coming into the village, and they now lined the roadside and packed the court-green near the jail. ”

“ The productive powers of the land become exhausted in a few years, when the clearing is abandoned, a new site is chosen, and the same operations are carried on de novo. The Lepchas are also the ordinary out-door labourers on the hills. They have no caste distinctions but speak of themselves as belonging to one of nine septs or clans, who all eat together and intermarry with each other. In the upper or northern tarai, along the base of the hills, the Mechs form the principal ethnical feature. ”

“ A report is spreading that the troops at Sennâr, and the people of Melek Idris Adlân, had overcome the negroes. The Tamaniât slaves are also said to have been pursued by the Arnauts, and killed or dragged back, while the rebellion in Kamlîn has been suppressed. Little confidence can yet be placed in these reports, as the news came to me by our khawass from the people of the Pasha, and a wish was particularly expressed to me, that I should spread it further, and write it in my letters to Cairo. ”

“ The Hill-tribes of India furnish other instances. There are the amiable Bodo and Dhimals, without military arrangements, and having no weapons but their agricultural inplements who are industrially advanced to the extent that there is exchange of services, and that the men do all the out-of-door work; and they are monogamous. Similarly the monogamous Lepchas are wholly unwarlike. Such, too, is the relation of traits in certain societies of the New World distinguished from the rest by being partially or entirely industrial. ”

“ Leech, you are on trial to-day. Don’t make a false step. You are the controlling spirit of these negroes. They await but your word. So do we. If a hand is lifted you will never be Governor. We have stood [235] all we propose to stand. You are standing on a powder magazine. I give you warning.”
He turned off and walked back to his own crowd.
It was the boldest speech that had been made to Leech in a long time. His whole battalion of guards were on the grounds, and a sign from him would have lodged Steve in the jail, which frowned behind the old brick clerk’s office. ”

“ The present Governor, Krafton, was a candidate for re-election, and his city organ declared that Leech was pledged to him. He had “made Leech,” it said. “Leech [229] was bound to him by every tie of gratitude and honor.” Leech in private sneered at the idea. “Does he think I’m bound to him for life? Ain’t he rich enough? Does he want to keep all the pie for himself? Why don’t he pay that rent to the State for the railroad him and his crowd leased? He talk about beatin’ me! I’ll show him. You wait until after next session and all h—l can’t beat me,” he said to Hiram Still. ”

“ Lesha’s birthday was made indeed an occasion for bringing eligible young men to the house for his grown sisters’ sake.
All were merry and smiling—the older members of the party as well as the young boys and girls, who ran up and down the yellow sand of the well-kept footpaths; a pale, unimpressive boy, who was sitting alone on a bench under a lilac bush and looking silently at the other boys, was also smiling. His loneliness, his silence, and his well-worn though clean clothes, all pointed to his poverty and to his embarrassment in the company of these lively, well-dressed children. ”

“ Only one man in the whole village appeared absolutely out of humor over the stir and preparations, and that was Leech. The plan which he and Still had laid down to prevent the assembly having failed, Leech determined to break it up, at all hazards. Still was in constant, if secret, conference with him. They had told Sherwood and Moses that they could prevent it. If it were held in spite of them, it would prove that they were less powerful than they pretended to be. ”

“ Even the negroes were looking on him more coldly.
“I knows if he lays his han’ ’pon me, I’m gwine to cut his heart out ’n him,” said a tall, black young negro in the crowd as Leech passed, on his way to his office. It was evidently intended for Leech to hear. Leech had not then learned to distinguish black countenances and he did not yet know Jerry.
Still was equal to the emergency. “These quality-niggers ain’t used to bein’ talked to so,” he explained to Leech; “and they won’t stand it from nobody but quality. They’re just as stuck up as their masters, and you can’t talk to ’em that way. ”

“ Evidence is frequent of pity for the sufferings of the poor and the oppressed. In many a scene Leech becomes a warm sympathizer with unmerited distress; and constantly his honest heart is stirred into indignation at some instance of injustice; then we find that the pencil which can deal so gently with childhood and woman can also, in indelible lines, stigmatize the stony-hearted oppressor. ”

“ When they ruled over East Nepal, their system was feudal; and on their uniting against the Nepalese, they were with difficulty dislodged from their strongholds. They are said to be equally brave and cruel in battle, putting the old and weak to the sword, carrying the younger to slavery, and killing on the march such captives as are unable to proceed. Many enlist at Dorjiling, which the Lepchas never do; and the rajah of Nepal employs them in his army, where, however, they seldom obtain promotion, this being reserved for soldiers of Hindoo tribes. ”

“ One man only had been seriously hurt. It was the man with whom McRaffle had had the difficulty.
The whites had not been wholly exempt.
Leech had spent the night at Hiram Still’s. They had talked over the events of the meeting and the whole situation. Ash’s speech proposing Leech for Governor had taken well with the negroes, and for the whites they did not care. The whites had evidently been overawed. This was Leech’s interpretation of their quietude. Leech was triumphant. It was the justification of his plan in arming his followers. ”

“ Of all our satirists, none have such a pervading sense and power of girlish, ripe, and womanly beauty as Leech.... There is a genuine domesticity about his scenes that could come only from a man who was much at his own fireside, and in the nursery when baby was washed. You see, he is himself pater familias, with no Bohemian trait or raffish turn. What he draws, he has seen; what he asks you to live in, and laugh at and with, he has laughed at and lived in. ”

“ The negroes were led in lines to cast their votes.
It was a notable thing that in all the county there was not an angry word that day between a white man and a negro. Leech, in a letter to Mrs. Welch describing the [201] occasion, declared that the quietness with which the election passed off was due wholly to the presence of the soldiery, and he was very eloquent in his denunciation of the desperadoes who surrounded him, and who were held at bay only by fear of the bayonets about them. ”