Assuming the former, we present an
admitted and proclaimed fact. His contemporaries, while they conceded to
him the highest attributes and accomplishments of eloquence, unite in
affirming that his reported speeches come far short of the original.
_Captain Horatio Jones_, a favorite interpreter, has frequently
declared,--"_it is impossible to do Red Jacket justice_." The peculiar
shade given to the idea, its beauty in its own native idiom, was often
entirely lost in the transfer. In much the same way, Captain Jasper
Parrish, of Canandaigua, has frequently been heard to speak, when
referring to the forensic efforts of the orator.
And besides, those passages that were most deeply fraught with eloquence,
were often lost entirely, from the fact that the way having been prepared
by a recital of those details that are reported, the reporter himself has
been carried away by the very flood that surrounded, uplifted, and carried
away the mass of those who heard him speak. So that the only note that
would be made, of a passage of considerable length, is given in one or two
short sentences. [Footnote: Conversation of the author with Col. Wm.
Jones.]
By the generality of the Iroquois, the terms of the treaty at Fort Stanwix
were regarded as severe; and though the services of the renowned
Cornplanter were engaged by the commissioners, in an effort to persuade
the disaffected into a reconciliation with it, the attempt was but
partially successful, and was made at the expense of his own high standing
among his people.
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