Below is the full Samuel Johnson essay referenced in this chapter. A brief introduction and annotations have also been provided, and the essay is followed by questions.

Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 81 [On Native Americans] (1759)

Introduction: The eighteenth-century British writer Samuel Johnson (1709–84) was a staunch opponent of the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War), which was fought between the British and the French for control over their colonies in North America. Both countries tried during the war to enlist the support of various Indigenous peoples, with limited success. Both in France and in Britain, significant minorities felt that what was then the French colony of New France (and which is now largely part of Canada) was not worth fighting for—that France had spent vast amounts in its efforts to colonize the territory, with little return. Johnson was unusual in that he criticized not only the war, but the principle of colonization itself. In this essay he imagined things from the point of view of an Indigenous chief.

The essay was first published in Britain in the Universal Chronicle on 3 November 1759 (a little over two weeks after the news of the British victory over the French at Quebec had been received).

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As the English army was passing towards Quebec^[1] along a soft savanna between a mountain and a lake, one of the petty chiefs of the inland regions stood upon a rock surrounded by his clan, and from behind the shelter of the bushes contemplated the art and regularity of European war. It was evening, the tents were pitched: he observed the security with which the troops rested in the night, and the order with which the march was renewed in the morning. He continued to pursue them with his eye till they could be seen no longer, and then stood for some time silent and pensive.

Then turning to his followers,^[2] “My children,” said he, “I have often heard from men hoary with long life, that there was a time when our ancestors were absolute lords of the woods, the meadows and the lakes, wherever the eye can reach or the foot can pass. They fished and hunted, feasted and danced, and when they were weary lay down under the first thicket, without danger and without fear. They changed their habitations, as the seasons required, convenience prompted, or curiosity allured them, and sometimes gathered the fruits of the mountain, and sometimes sported in canoes along the coast.

“Many years and ages are supposed to have been thus passed in plenty and security when, at last, a new race of men entered our country from the great ocean. They enclosed themselves in habitations of stone, which our ancestors could neither enter by violence, nor destroy by fire. They issued from those fastnesses, sometimes covered, like the armadillo, with shells, from which the lance rebounded on the striker, and sometimes carried by mighty beasts which had never been seen in our vales or forests, of such strength and swiftness, that flight and opposition were vain alike. Those invaders ranged over the continent slaughtering, in their rage, those that resisted, and those that submitted, in their mirth. Of those that remained, some were buried in caverns, and condemned to dig metals for their masters; some were employed in tilling the ground, of which foreign tyrants devour the produce; and, when the sword and the mines have destroyed the natives, they supply their place by human beings of another colour, brought from some distant country to perish here under toil and torture.

“Some there are who boast their humanity, and content themselves to seize our chases^[3] and fisheries, who drive us from every tract of ground where fertility and pleasantness invite them to settle, and make no war upon us except when we intrude upon our own lands.

“Others pretend to have purchased a right of residence and tyranny; but surely the insolence of such bargains is more offensive than the avowed and open dominion of force. What reward can induce the possessor of a country to admit a stranger more powerful than himself? Fraud or terror must operate in such contracts; either they promised protection which they never have afforded, or instruction which they never imparted. We hoped to be secured by their favour from some other evil, or to learn the arts of Europe, by which we might be able to secure ourselves. Their power they never have exerted in our defence, and their arts they have studiously concealed from us. Their treaties are only to deceive, and their traffic^[4] only to defraud us. They have a written law among them, of which they boast, as derived from Him who made the earth and sea, and by which they profess to believe that man will be made happy when life shall forsake him. Why is not this law communicated to us? It is concealed because it is violated. For how can they preach it to an Indian nation, when I am told that one of its first precepts forbids them to do to others what they would not that others should do to them?

“But the time, perhaps, is now approaching, when the pride of usurpation shall be crushed, and the cruelties of invasion shall be revenged. The sons of rapacity have now drawn their swords upon each other, and referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned upon the slaughter, and remember that the death of every European delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret,^[5] of the tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute their title to regions which they cannot people, to purchase by danger and blood the empty dignity of dominion over mountains which they will never climb, and rivers which they will never pass. Let us endeavour, in the meantime, to learn their discipline, and to forge their weapons; and, when they shall be weakened with mutual slaughter, let us rush down upon them, force their remains to take shelter in their ships, and reign once more in our native country.”

Questions

1. Like many eighteenth-century writers, Johnson tends to use long, “periodic” sentences (such as the second sentence in the last paragraph of this essay). What means does Johnson employ to help the reader follow his train of thought in such a long sentence?
2. Summarize in a single paragraph the case against the European colonizers that Johnson puts forward in this essay.
3. Typically we consider it morally praiseworthy to “put oneself in the other person’s shoes.” Typically as well, though, we consider it morally presumptuous to try to speak on behalf of people of another culture—and particularly of another culture that has been oppressed by one’s own people. How deserving of either praise or blame is Johnson for having “appropriated the voice” of a Native North American in this essay? Would it have been better (either ethically or aesthetically) for him to have tried to make the same points in an essay without assuming a Native voice?

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[1] As … Quebec A pivotal point in the conflict was the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, 13 September 1759, in which British forces under James Wolfe defeated the French at Quebec.

[2] Then … followers The basis for this speech may have been one given by the chief of the Mi’kmaq that had been printed in the London Magazine the previous year.

[3] chases Hunting grounds.

[4] traffic Trade.

[5] leveret Young hare.