Tlingit people

“ Once upon a time there lived in Alaska a chief of the Tlingit tribe who had one son. When the boy grew to be a man, he saw a girl who seemed to him prettier and cleverer than any other girl of the tribe, and his heart went out to her, and he told his father. Then the chief spoke to the father and the mother of the girl, and they agreed to give her to the young man for a wife. ”

“ After all, what can tend more to the preservation of society?—than such impertinence" was on Lady Tilney's tongue; but she checked herself, and added with a little cough that gave time for reflexion: "What can tend more to the maintenance of a société distinguée than the exercise of this choice, made without reference to the rank or situation of the parties, but merely dependent on the voice of the few who are formed to lead?" ”

“ No peculiarities of the fluctuating mass which is the very life of the city, which is the agglomerate expression of pleasure, pain, vice, crime, good, evil, sadness, joy, are lost upon Steinlen. He seems to be en rapport with those people whom we call our brothers and treat as our inferiors and our enemies. ”

“ The strongest characteristics of the Tlingit are pride, vanity, and a dread of ridicule, so unless one was absolutely assured of more than a formal acceptance of the act by both his own and the other tribal families he would hesitate to place himself in a false position, subject to criticism. The highest and most honored names thus given, were those of the totemic emblem, or referring to some particular feature of the crest figure, as "Raven house," "Brown bear house," "Eagle nest house," "Killer-whale dorsal fin house," etc. ”

“ Very unlucky.
"My grandmother was from another tribe? Not from Mankind?" He knew, of course, that several of the women had been captured from other peoples in neighboring burrows and had the good fortune now to be considered full-fledged members of Mankind. Sometimes one of their own women would be lost this way, when she strayed too far down an outlying burrow and stumbled into a band of Stranger warriors. If you stole a woman from another people, after all, you stole a substantial portion of their knowledge. ”

“ One only has to look at you to know that you appreciate yourself at your full value—and a little over. Forgive my plain speech, but you rather brought it upon yourself.”
Lord Lynton looked curiously at Gaunt, and knew not whether to resent this frankness; but he quickly remembered his mission, and forced a rather sickly smile to his face.
“It is a good thing to hear an opinion of oneself. But let us return to the Congo. I want you to promise to give up this crusade. It can’t really mean very much to you, and you will be doing me a great favor. ”

“ If you wish to remain friends you must be silent.”
Lord Lynton gazed at his sister in wonder.
“Of course, Gaunt may be able to smooth the matter [Pg 202] over. It would be advisable to go to the Amanti people at once, and if necessary, pay them handsomely for withdrawing the charge. Then you can get a clever counsel to go to the police court, and say that it is all a mistake. It is only a question of money,” he said with the idea of making the best of the situation. ”

“ How might a man, imbued with the heroic principles of liberty, hope for advancement and happiness, under the despotic and iron Government of Frederic? I was taught neither to know nor to avoid, but to despise the whip of slavery. Had I learnt hypocrisy, craft, and meanness, I had long since become field-marshal, had been in possession of my Hungarian estates, and had not passed the best years of my life in the dungeons of Magdeburg. I was addicted to no vice: I laboured in the cause of science, honour, and virtue ”

“ Lady Tilney, however, dealt largely in contradiction at all times. The Countess Ellersby smiled; the Comtesse Leinsengen again shrugged her shoulders, drew her shawl around her, and was preparing to depart, saying, "Well! mes chères dames, I leave you to the enjoyment of your liberty, and have done."
"But I have not done," said Lady Tilney; "I am determined we shall have a society that shall be quite our own, and yet not subversive of principles we must uphold. ”

“ No book was allowed to be on any subject, or in any language, which contained a single position, an ambiguous sentence, even a word, which, in the most distant sense, could be construed opposite to the doctrines of the supreme authority of this council of Trent; where it seems to have been enacted, that all men, literate and illiterate, prince and peasant, the Italian, the Spaniard and the Netherlander, should take the mint-stamp of their thoughts from the council of Trent, and millions of souls be struck off at one blow, out of the same used mould. ”

“ Naturally enough, we find that the same craving for stimulants is reflected by Indian stomachs; and now that they have fully grasped the understanding of how to successfully satisfy that aching, no valid reason can be presented why the Thlinket will not continue to gratify a burning desire in this fatal direction to the ultimate extinction of his race. This fault of our civilization is far more potent to effect his worldly degeneration, than any one or all of our combined virtues are to regenerate his earthly existence. ”

“ Gregory [Pg 243] could not help thinking what a fascinating, what an amazing thing, really, it was (providing it were true) that so dark a personality as Tilney could secure such an attractive girl to do his vile work. Think of it, only twenty-one, beautiful, able to further herself in many ways no doubt, and yet here she was under suspicion of him, a trickster possibly. What could be the compulsion, the reward?
“My boy, you don’t know these people,” Blount was always telling him. “They’re the limit. In politics you can get people to do anything—anything. ”

“ My friend the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who had been Governor of Magdeburg during my imprisonment, offered me a commission among the troops going to America, but I answered—“Gracious prince, my heart beats in the cause of freedom only; I will never assist in enslaving men. Were I at the head of your brave grenadiers. I should revolt to the Americans.”
During 1775 I continued at Aix-la-Chapelle my essays, entitled, “The Friend of Men.” My writings had made some impression; the people began to read; the monks were ridiculed, but my partisans increased, and their leader got himself cudgelled. ”

“ Trenck left his dungeon shielded from contempt; the day of freedom was the day of triumph. I, on the contrary, was exposed to every calamity. The spirit of Trenck again raised itself. I have laboured many a night that I might neither beg nor perish the following day: working for judges who neither knew law nor had powers of mind to behold the beauty of justice: settling accounts that, item after item, did not prove that the lord they were intended for, was an imbecile dupe. ”

“ As far as I could gather, the chief speakers were congratulating the hearers upon their luck in belonging to the Tlingas, which was the greatest tribe on earth and the favorite of Naol, the lizard god. We capered round the tribal pole, I capering with the rest of them of course. Somerfield took a picture of it. Then there was a procession of prospective mothers with Ista among them. Rotten, I thought it. Don't imagine female beauty, by the way, as some of the writers on savage life would have you imagine it. ”

“ Bors sat with clenched hands. It was the barbaric insistence of Mekin upon conquest that was at fault, of course. But this happens everywhere, as it has throughout all history. There are, really, three kinds of people in every community, as there have always been. There are the barbarians, and there are the tribesmen, and there are the civilized. This was true when men lived on only one planet, and doubtless was true when the first village was built. There were civilized men even then. ”

“ The blacks looked upon the spectacle of a man being flogged with feelings which does them honour, for on another occasion Tench says:—
'But toil cannot be long supported without adequate refreshment. The first step in every community, which wishes to preserve honesty, should be to set the people above want. The throes of hunger will ever prove too powerful for integrity to withstand. ”

“ Yes, this land which stretched from the mouth of the Congo for miles was laid desolate; what had been once a densely populated country was deserted—the work of the white men.
And when he thought of Gaunt, a glad light came to his eyes, for he had grown to love the millionaire as a brother. And then like a fair picture Lady Ethel came to his mind, and he wondered if she ever thought of him. ”

“ The upper classes! This community of semi-imbeciles, who secretly lived like dogs, but showed one another respect as long as there was no public scandal; that was to say as long as one did not honestly revoke an agreement and wait until it had lapsed before one made use of one’s newly-regained freedom! And these vicious upper classes were the awarders of social position and respect, according to a scale on which honesty ranked far below zero. Society was nothing but a tissue of lies! ”

“ I attacked, in my weekly writings, those sharpers who attend at Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa to plunder both inhabitants and visitants, under the connivance of the magistracy; nor are there wanting foreign noblemen who become the associates of these pests of society. The publication of such truths endangered my life from the desperadoes, who, when detected, had nothing more to lose. How powerful is an innocent life, nothing can more fully prove than that I still exist, in despite of all the attempts of wicked monks and despicable sharpers. ”

“ To sum up the character of the Thlinkeets, they may be called bold, brave, shrewd, intelligent, industrious, lovers 114 of art and music, respectful to women and the aged; yet extremely cruel, scalping and maiming their prisoners out of pure wantonness, thievish, lying, and inveterate gamblers. In short they possess most of the virtues and vices incident to savagism.
THE TINNEH.
The Tinneh, the fifth and last division of our Hyperborean group, occupy the 'Great Lone Land,' between Hudson Bay and the conterminous nations already described ”

“ But do you think it will do much material good? Things will go on as before, and the natives will suffer just the same,” she answered quietly.
“I am not so sure about that, for it is evident that England is waking up. The papers are pitching it a bit more strongly, and who knows that we may not be able to force the government to move.”
“You seem almost as enthusiastic as your brother and Mr. Gaunt,” she remarked, and gave him a quick look from beneath her lashes, which brought the color to his cheeks.
“I have been doing a great deal of hard thinking since I came back from West Africa. ”

“ It cannot be said that these were the reflections of Lady Tilney, as she stood for the few moments alone in the crowd at Lady Feuillemerte's. It would be injustice to her to suppose that they were, or that she contemplated in the formation of a coterie, according to her own peculiar prejudices, any of the evils with which the system was sure to be pregnant. It is thus, however, with all reforms, entered upon for private ends; the individual sees but the accomplishment of his own and his immediate associates' views, in what is to be overturned ”

“ Fifteen free men form a borough, fifteen slaves a household, fifteen fettered serfs a chain-gang. Did I need such a crowd to help me by holding the lustral victims during the lengthy rite? No! the only victims you mentioned were hens! Were they to count the grains of incense? or to knock Thallus down?
48. You assert also that by promising to heal her I inveigled to my house a free woman who suffered from the same disease as Thallus; that she, too, fell senseless as a result of my incantations. ”

“ He observed that these fishing people really represent a remnant of the aboriginal community, careless and inconsiderate, without the peasant's forethought for the morrow and next year. They were like the savage who hunts two days and sleeps eight, and like the savage they possessed certain negative faculties to do without, and endure, but lacked the positive ability to improve their situation through investigation, having a decided and instinctive dislike for innovation, thereby betraying their inability to adapt themselves to a higher stage of culture. ”

“ The Tocalinian who had lived with them, and who joined us at the headwaters of the Codajaz, maintained that there had been too much inbreeding. So there was some arrangement by means of which they invited immigrants, as it were. Men from other neighboring tribes were encouraged to join the Tlingas. And they did. The Tlingas had a fat land and welcomed the immigrants. The immigrants on their part expected to have an easy time. ”

“ Then the Thlingets hated the Tsimpseans with a fierce hatred because one of their maidens had brought this evil upon them. In those days the Indian believed in an eye for an eye, a life for a life. So they fell upon the Tsimpseans and slew one of the sons of their chief. Then for many, many moons they made war upon each other.
“The Thlingets made a big camp at Ketch-kah. They built three great log forts. One was where Chief Johnson’s lodge now stands. [19] ”

“ Connected with this system, the pride of ancestry too was necessarily another subject of ridicule with Lady Tilney, who thought that those who, on such grounds, pretended to take any lead in the world of fashion, had much better retire to their castles, and there indulge in dreams of their greatness. ”

“ Tallente felt the thrill of the moment, felt the sincerity of the man whose hand pressed gently upon his arm.
"If you are our man, Tallente," his visitor continued, "if you see eye to eye with us as to the great Things, if you can cast away what remains to you of class and hereditary prejudice and throw in your lot with ours, there is no office of the State which you may not hope to occupy. I had not meant to appeal to your ambitions. I do so now only generally. As a rule, every man connected with a revolution thinks himself able to govern the State. ”