"I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logans hungry, and he gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not."--Speech of au Indian Chief.
THERE is something in the character and habits of the North Ameri savage, taken in e with the sery over which he is aced te, its vast lakes, boundless forests, majestic rivers, and trackless plains, that is, to my mind, wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern, simple, and enduring, ?tted to grapple with dif?culties and to support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for the support of the kindly virtues; a, if we would but take the trouble to pee through that proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity which lock up his character from casual observation, we should ?nd him lio his fellow-man of civilized life by more of those sympathies and affes than are usually ascribed to him.
It has bee of the unfortunate abines of Ameri the early periods of ization to be doubly wronged by the white men. They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by merary and frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traduced by bigoted and ied writers.
The ists ofteed them like beasts of the forest, and the author has endeavored to justify him in his es. The former found it easier to extermihan to civilize; the latter to vilify than to discrimihe appellations of savage and pagan were deemed suf?t to san the hostilities of both; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and defamed, not because they were guilty, but because they were ignorant.
The rights of the savage have seldom been properly appreciated or respected by the white man. In peace he has too oftehe dupe of artful traf? war he has been regarded as a ferocious animal whose life or death was a question of mere precaution and venience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile and is scious of the power to destroy.
The same prejudices, which were indulged thus early, exist in on circulation at the present day. Certain learned societies have, it is true, with laudable diligence, endeavored to iigate and record the real characters and manners of the Indian tribes; the Ameri gover, too, has wisely and humanely exerted itself to inculcate a friendly and forbearing spirit towards them and to protect them from fraud and injustice.* The current opinion of the Indian character, however, is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes whifest the frontiers and hang on the skirts of the settlements. These are too only posed of degee beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without beied by its civilization. That proud independence whied the main pillar of savage virtue has been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their native ce cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whion of fertility. It has eed their strength, multiplied their diseases, and superinduced upon their inal barbarity the low vices of arti?cial life. It has given them a thousand super?uous wants, whilst it has