Tuscarora

“ Here again we hear of the Tuscarora sachem, Solomon Longboard, with about thirty-five Tuscarora volunteers, stationed at Lewiston on guard. I have recorded some of the names of these volunteers, which I was able to obtain from some of the old people that were yet living in the year 1878, which are as follows, to-wit: The two sons of Solomon Longboard, Jacob Taylor, Joseph Cusick, John Cusick, David Cusick, John Black Nose and his brother, Samuel Thompson, John Obediah, Aaron Pempleton, James Pempleton, John Mt. Pleasant, Harry Patterson, John Green, Isaac Allen, Capt. ”

“ We cannot expect that men educated in the ways of the forest, shall be wiser than those who boast of their civilization."
"But is there no way," asked Ruth, "in which this conflict can be avoided?"
"None, perhaps, that would be honorable." Ralph then gave an account of the wrongs which the Tuscarora had received from the Senecas, together with the capture of his squaw. Ruth acknowledged the impossibility of complying with the demands of the Senecas. Her heart at once sympathised with the wrongs of the Tuscarora ”

“ The Tuscaroras who preserve this tradition are located in the vicinity in which this mound of bones were found. All historians are very cautious to leave out or omit from the pages of their history, any circumstance in the nature of the above tradition. ”

“ These views are submitted to the consideration of the Tuscaroras, in the hope that they will receive their serious attention, and lead to the adoption of an improved and proper division of the employments, both of the men and women of the nation ”

“ The Tuscaroras, so called from the Wild Rice, were a race of the Iroquois. It is of them that the fable was narrated that Owen Chapelain (in 1619) saved himself from their hands, when they were about to scalp him, by speaking in his Gaelic mother tongue. Catlin is inclined to consider the fair and frequently blue-eyed nation of the Tuscaroras to be a mixed race, between the ancient Welsh and the American aboriginal tribes. ”

“ To them also belong the Ges nations, south of the lower Amazon, and others. They are on a low grade of culture, going quite naked, not cultivating the soil, ignorant of pottery, and with poorly made canoes. They are dolichocephalic, and must have inhabited the country a long time." D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pages 269-270. {107} AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Turiero. See above: CHIBCHAS. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Tuscaroras. See above: IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY, and IROQUOIS TRIBES OF THE SOUTH. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Tuteloes. See above: SIOUAN FAMILY. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Twightwees, or Miamis. ”

“ I have always played with Iroquois children; I went to school with Magdalen Brant. I taught among our Mohawks and Oneidas when I was thirteen. Then I was instructed by sachems and I learned what the witch-drums say, and I need use no signs in the six languages or the clan dialects, save only when I speak with the Lenni-Lenape. Maybe, too, the Hurons and Algonquins have words that I know not, for many Tuscaroras do not understand them save by sign. ”

“ They are mountaineers, a strong race. At pallone one day, I saw muscles "all a-ripple down the back," arms and shoulders, which would have intoxicated the great old "amatore del persona" himself. For their vivacity, it is racial; I think all Tuscans, more or less, retain the buoyant spirits, the alertness as of birds, which crowned Italy with Florence instead of Rome or Milan. Tuscan Art is a proof of that, and Tuscan Art can be studied at its roots in Pistoja: you see there the naked thing itself with none of the wealth of Florence to make the head swim. ”

“ A few miles brought us into Tuscany; and here we were struck with a remarkable improvement in the appearance of the people and the face of the country. The inhabitants are tidily dressed, clean and industrious. The roads are in excellent repair. The towns and villages are neat and thriving. The Tuscans, in fact, are the Yankees of Italy, and their country stands in much the same relation to the rest of the peninsula, that New England does to the other portion of the United States. It has a hard, rugged soil, and a comparatively cool climate. ”

“ In all Carrara and the valley of Torano I saw no beautiful or distinguished faces,—the women were without sweetness, the men a mere gang of workmen. Now, common as this is in any manufacturing city of the North, it is very uncommon in Italy, where humanity has not been injured and enslaved by machinery as it has with us. You may generally find beauty, sweetness, or wisdom in the faces of a Tuscan crowd in any place. Only here you will see the man who has become just the fellow-labourer of the ox. ”

“ A TUSCAN COUNTRYSIDE AND THE FESTA AT IL MELO I had left Clementina and the little ones behind me, and had moved further up among the Apennines to a village which, perched on a low hill, overlooks the river and the winding valley. The summits of the mountains all around rise bare and scarped from dark pine and ash woods, while their bases are clothed with chestnuts. Many a long line of soldiers have the villagers seen marching up the valley on the other side of the river which flows at their feet: for the pass is an important one, being the high road from Tuscany into the Modenese. ”

“ Of all the people in the whole of proud old Tuscany assuredly none were so easy-going and vivacious, none so light-hearted and full of poetry as those Livornese people passing to and fro below us. The more I had dwelt among the Tuscan people the more I loved them. There is surely no other people on the face of the earth so entirely lovable, even with their many sad faults, as they; none so gregarious, so neighbourly, so courteous, kindly or poetic, none so content upon the most meagre fare that ever held body and soul together. ”

“ In each one we have the typical Tuscan landscape, filling the whole picture with its tranquil beauty. The "glad green earth" blossoms with dainty flowers; the fair blue sky above is reflected in the placid surface of a lake. From its shores rise gently undulating hills, where towers show the signs of happy activity. In the foreground of this peaceful scene sits a beautiful woman with two charming children at her knee. They belong to the landscape as naturally as the trees and flowers; they partake of its tranquil, placid happiness. ”

“ Follow up any of the Tuscan rivers—through the Val d'Ema, Val di Pesa, Val d'Elsa, or the valleys of the Mugnone, Sieve, Bisenzio, and Ombrone, every one an affluent of the Arno—and you will find a pathway of delight, a real progress through a world of exquisite colour, form, and fragrance. Yet it is not easy to turn away from Florence and wander off in pastures new; like a siren, she holds us in willing thraldom by the infinite variety of charms so potent that all the [6] world beyond her warm, grey walls becomes vague and unreal. ”

“ Of the manifold charms of Tuscany, perhaps there is none so great or so enduring as the charm of manner peculiar to its rural population. Frank without being free, deferential but never servile, not without a fine reserve yet with never a touch of shyness, withholding not a certain tribute to social superiority, while tacitly intimating the fundamental equality that appertains to human brotherhood, the demeanour and speech of Tuscan contadini keep intercourse perpetually fresh, and impart to conversation on the tritest and most familiar themes perennial liveliness and interest. ”

“ Indeed, not a fact or trait of modern Tuscan life seems to have escaped the author's vigilant observation and patient record; the life of the effete noble, the frugal citizen, the shrewd broker, the pampered, ecclesiastic, the peasant, and the artist is revealed with the most precise and graphic detail. We are taken to the promenade and the caffè, to the piazza and the church, to the farm-house and the palazzo; and there we see and hear the actual everyday intercourse of the people. ”

“ It resembles a rosebush all bloom and dew and leaf and sunshine, inside which is made the nest of a little snake, never seen, but always there; sometimes, instead of the snake, there is only a flat stone; but something alien there always is under the carelessly blowing roses.
The Tuscan never completely trusts his nearest or dearest, his oldest friend, his truest companion, his fondest familiar; be he gentle or simple, he never gives himself away. ”

“ There is a certain feudality of feeling, if I may so speak, among Tuscan servants. They identify themselves with a family, and like to remain in its service. It is a common custom among Italians to remember their servants in their wills, and it is an ambition which the true unsophisticated Tuscan servant always acknowledges, to remain many years with the same master. It is curious to hear how, after a man or woman has been a certain time in a situation, he or she always speaks in the first person plural as regards all the belongings of the family. ”

“ From the very beginning they are strong, but sullen. Solidity and power, rather than beauty and grace, are what they aim at; and in this, Michael Angelo was a true Tuscan. If we look at the massive old Etruscan buildings, the Cyclopean walls of Fæsulæ and Volterræ, with their gigantic unhewn blocks, or the gloomy tombs of Clusium, with their heavy portals, and then at the frowning façade of the Strozzi or the Pitti Palace, we shall see in these, their earliest and latest terms, the special marks of Tuscan architecture. ”

“ Changeful in its beauty, this wide landscape always preserved a quality of humanness and domestication which made it, to my mind at any rate, the best of all landscapes to live with. Day by day one travelled through its different beauties; but the journey, like our ancestors’ Grand Tour, was always a journey through civilisation. For all its mountains, its steep slopes and deep valleys, the Tuscan scene is dominated by its inhabitants. They have cultivated every rood of ground that can be cultivated; their houses are thickly scattered even over the hills, and the valleys are populous. ”

“ But the most direct and unequivocal testimony to the power of the Tuscans, and that that power was principally, if not entirely, derived from their maritime skill and commerce, is to be found in Livy. This historian informs us, "that before the Roman empire, the Tuscan dominions extended very far both by sea and land, even to the upper and lower sea, by which Italy is surrounded, in form of an island. Their very names are an argument for the vast power of this people; for the Italian natives call the one the Tuscan Sea, and the other the Adriatic, from Adria, a Tuscan colony. ”

“ The Tuscans, of all classes, appeared to me to be a very polished people, as if still retaining traces of their early civilisation. The peasants were far superior in every respect to those of other countries, and fewer crimes were at that time committed in Tuscany than in any other part of Europe.
On the 30th of April, 1791, we once more found ourselves in Rome.
The two French princesses, Madame Adelaide and Madame Victoire, aunts of Louis XVI., were lodged at Cardinal de Bernis’. The cardinal having declined to take the oath of allegiance to the republic, was no longer ambassador ”

“ All the men are whistling or have broken out in glad carol. Each heart is gay, for we have at last reached Tucson, the commercial entrepôt of Arizona and the remoter Southwest—Tucson, the Mecca of the dragoon, the Naples of the desert, which one was to see and die; Tucson, whose alkali pits yielded water sweeter than Well of Zemzen, whose maidens were more charming, whose society was more hospitable, merchants more progressive, magazines better stocked, climate more dreamy, than any town from Santa Fé to Los Angeles ”

“ The modern Tuscans, like their ancestors, have known a time when they took the lead amongst the people of Italy, and even now they stand at the head of the nation in certain respects. After the decadence of Rome, when civilisation gravitated towards the north, the valley of the Arno became one of the great centres of the world’s activity. At that time the passage of the Alps was still difficult, but communications by sea were established between Tuscany, France, and Spain. ”

“ I now hastened to luxuriate in Arcadian beatitude. The pastoral habit of Tuscany was favourable; nothing remained but to rival an Ida, or a Glorvina, in simple touches of nature; and to trip along the lawns, like a Daphne or a Hamadryad.
In an instant, I sprang across a hedge, and fled towards the little valley, light as a wood-nymph flying from a satyr. I then took up a most picturesque position. It was beside of the streamlet, under a weeping willow, and on a grassy bank. ”

“ The labour of the husbandmen in Tuscany is very graceful, partly, I think, because it is so primitive, but also because the people have an eminently noble carriage, and are fashioned on the lines of antique statues. I noticed two young contadini in one field, whom Frederick Walker might have painted with the dignity of Pheidian form. They were guiding their ploughs along a hedge of olive-trees, slanting upwards, the white-horned oxen moving slowly through the marl, and the lads bending to press the plough-shares home. ”

“ There are but few really handsome women in Tuscany, but these few are of a class of beauty that may well have ravished the rest of their sex in this fair clime. Her countenance was radiant with thought and feeling, and her large and dewy eyes of blue—nature's own sweet tint—rested fondly on him by her side. ”