Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman (SRSC 12)

100

Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman

we being together while our horses ate grass had some friendly conversation; but they, traveling faster than we, soon left us. This Moravian, I understood, has this spring spent some time at Wehaloosing, and was invited by some of the Indians* to come again. Thirteenth of Sixth Month.—The sun appearing, we set forward, and as I rode over the barren hills my meditations were on the alterations in the circumstances of the natives of this land since the coming in of the English. The lands near the sea are conveniently situated for fishing; the lands near the rivers, where the tides flow, and some above, are in many places fertile and not mountainous, while the changing of the tides makes passing up and down easy with any kind of traffic. The natives have in some places, for trifling considerations, 2 sold their inheritance so favorably situated, and in other places have been driven back by superior force; their way of clothing themselves is also altered from what it was, and they being far removed from us have to pass over mountains, swamps, and barren deserts, so that traveling is very troublesome in bringing their skins and furs to trade with us. By the extension of English settlements, and partly by the increase of English hunters, the wild beasts on which the natives chiefly depend for subsistence are not so plentiful as they were, and people too often, for the sake of gain, induce them to waste their skins and furs in purchasing a liquor which tends to the ruin of them and their families. My own will and desires were now very much broken, and my heart was with much earnestness turned to the

2 Trifling Considerations – A small wage or remuneration. Woolman’s point is that some Native Americans lost control of the land for woefully inadequate compensation.