in New England, except the Pequots, for about forty years.'

Thus, when we were few and they were many,—we were weak and they were strong, instead of driving us back into the sea, as they might have done at any time, they cherished our perilous infancy, and tendered to us the sacred emblems of peace. They gave us land as much as we wanted, or sold it to us for nothing. They permitted us quietly to clear up the wilderness, and to build habitations, and school houses, and churches. And when everything began to smile around us, under the combined influence of industry, education, and religion, these savages did not come to us and say, 'We want your houses-we want your fine cultivated farms: you must move off. There is room enough for you beyond the western rivers, where you may settle down on a better soil, and begin anew.'

Nor, when we were strongly attached to our fire sides, and to our father's sepulchres, did they say, 'You are mere tenants at will: We own all the land, and if you insist upon staying longer, you must dissolve your government and submit to such laws as we choose to make for you.'

No-the Indian tribes of the seventeenth century, knew nothing of these modern refinements: they were no such adepts in the law of nature and nations. They allowed us to abide by our own council fires, and to govern ourselves as we chose, when they could either have dispossessed, or subjugated us at pleasure. We did remain, and we gradually waxed rich and strong. We wanted more land, and they sold it to us at our own price. Still we were not satisfied. There was room enough to the west, and we advised them to move farther

back. If they took our advice, well. If not, we knew how to enforce it. And where are those once terrible nations now? Driven alternately by purchase and by conquest, from river to river, and from mountain to mountain, they have disappeared with their own gigantic forests, and we, their enlightened heirs at law and the sword, now plough up their bones with as much indifference as we do their arrows. Shall I name the Mohegans, the Pequots, the Iroquois, and the Mohawks? What has become of them, and of a hundred other independent nations which dwelt on this side of the Mississippi, when we landed at Plymouth and at Jamestown? Here and there, as at Penobscot, and Marshpee, and Oneida, you may see a diminutive and downcast remnant, wandering like troubled ghosts among the graves of their mighty progenitors. Our trinkets, our threats, our arms, our whiskey, our bribes, and our vices, have all but annihilated those vast physical and intellectual energies of a native population, which for more than a hundred and fifty years, could make us quake and flee at pleasure, throughout all our northern, western, and southern borders.

There is something more than metaphor, more than the wild flowers of Indian rhetoric, in the speech of a distinguished chief to General Knox, about the close of

the last century. 'Brother, I have been looking at your beautiful city-the great waters-your fine country, and I see how you all are. But then I could not help thinking that this fine country, and this great water were once ours. Our ancestors lived here; they enjoyed it as their own place ;-it was the gift of the Great Spirit to them and their children. At last the white people came here in a great canoe. They asked us only to let them tie it to a tree, lest the waters should carry it away; we con

sented. They said some of their people were sick, and asked leave to land them and put them under the shade of the trees. The ice then came and they could not go away. They begged for a piece of land to build wigwams for the winter: we granted it to them. Then they asked for some corn to keep them from starving: and we kindly furnished it to them.

Afterwards more came. They brought spirituous and intoxicating liquors with them, of which the Indians were very fond. They persuaded us to sell them some land. Finally they drove us back from time to time, into the wilderness, far from the water and the fishes. They have destroyed the game; and our people have wasted away; and now we live miserable and wretched, while you are enjoying our fine and beautiful country. This makes me sorry, brother, and I cannot help it.'

Here is truth and nature; nor is there less of either in the speech of the famous Logan to Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia.

6

My cabin, since I had one of my own, has ever been open to any white man who wanted shelter. My spoils of hunting, since first I began to range these woods, have I ever imparted to appease his hunger, to clothe his nakedness. But what have I seen? What! But that at my return at night, laden with spoil, my numerous family lie bleeding on the ground by the hand of those who had found my little hut a certain refuge from the storm, who had eaten my food, who had covered themselves with my skins. What have I seen? What! But that those dear little mouths for which I had all day toiled, when I returned to fill them, had not one word to thank me for all that toil.

What could I resolve upon! My blood boiled within

me. My heart leaped to my mouth! Nevertheless I bid my tomahawk be quiet and lie at rest for that wár, because I thought the great men of your country sent them not to do it. Not long after, some of your men invited our tribe to cross the river and bring their venison with them. They came as they had been invited. The white men made them drunk, murdered them, and turned their knives even against the women. Was not my own sister among them? Was she not scalped by the hauds of the very man whom she had taught to escape his enemies, when they were scenting out his track? What could I resolve upon? My blood boiled thrice hotter than before. Thrice again my heart leaped to my mouth.. I bade no longer my tomahawk be quiet and rest for that war.

I sprang from my cabin to avenge their blood, and fully have I done it in this war, by shedding yours, from your coldest to your hottest sun. I am now for peaceto peace have I advised most of my countrymen. Nay, what is more, I have offered, I will offer myself a victim, being ready to die if their good requires it. Think not that I fear death. I have no relatives left to mourn for Logan's blood runs in no veins but these. I would not turn on my heel to save my life; and why should I? For I have neither wife nor child nor sister to howl for me when I am gone!'

me.

Gone is the mighty warrior, the terrible, avenger, the heart-bursting orator. Gone is the terror and glory of his nation; and gone forever from our elder states, are the red men, who, like Saul and Jonathan, were 'swifter than eagles, and stronger than lions,' and who with the light and advantages which we enjoy, might have rivalled us in wealth and power-in the senate and forum,—as I

am sure that they would have surpassed us in magnanimity and justice.

But while the besom of destruction has thus swept away more than, nine tenths, of the aboriginal sovereignties of the country, a few of the more southern tribes have hitherto escaped, though greatly reduced both in numbers and territory. And where is the philanthropist who has not rejoiced to see these tribes emerging so rapidly from pagan darkness and coming into the light of well regulated, civil, and Christian communities? How delightful has it been to dwell on the hope that the Cherokees, the Choctaws, and their aboriginal neighbors, on this side the great river of the west, would be permitted to make their new and glorious experiment upon the soil which God gave to their fathers. How lately did the visions of their future intellectual and moral greatness shed the glories of a new creation upon all their mountains and plains!

But what cloud is that which now darkens their heavens? What voices of supplication and woe are heard from all their dwellings? The crisis of their fate has suddenly come. The decree has The most forth. gone unjust and oppressive measures are in train, either to drive 70,000 unoffending people from the soil on which they were born, into distant wilds where most of them will perish, or to dissolve their independent governments, rob them of their lands, and bring them under strange laws, the very design of which is to break down their national spirit, and insure their speedy extermination.

To go fully into the great question of Indian rights which is now pending before the American people, and which ought to rouse up all the holy sympathies of humanity, justice, and religon in the land, would require a