As a scholar with philosophical and ethnological
leanings, however, he deplores it, and hopes that Priber's
valuable manuscripts may "escape the despoiling hands of military
power." Priber had spent his leisure in compiling a Cherokee
dictionary; Adair's occupation, while domiciled in his winter
house in Great Telliko, was the writing of his Indian Appendix to
the Pentateuch. As became brothers in science, they had exchanged
notes, so we gather from Adair's references to conversations and
correspondence. Adair's difficulties as an author, however, had
been increased by a treacherous lapse from professional etiquette
on the part of the Secretary: "He told them [the Indians] that in
the very same manner as he was their great Secretary, I was the
devil's clerk, or an accursed one who marked on paper the bad
speech of the evil ones of darkness." On his own part Adair
admits that his object in this correspondence was to trap the
Secretary into something more serious than literary errata. That
is, he admits it by implication; he says the Secretary "feared"
it. During the years of their duel, Adair apparently knew that the
scholarly compiler of the Cherokee dictionary was secretly
inciting members of this particular Lost Tribe to tomahawk the
discoverer of their biblical origin; and Priber, it would seem,
knew that he knew!
Adair shows, inferentially, that land encroachment was not the
sole cause of those Indian wars with which we shall deal in a
later chapter.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82