A Commonplace Book


When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make an Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return. [But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.

Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753

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