THE AMERICAN INDIAN

I

Not many generations ago, where you now sit, encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of being. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian 5 hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate.

Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, the council fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now 10 they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death song, all were here; and, when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace.

Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom 15 went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in everything around.

He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his midday throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine, that defied a thousand whirl

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winds; in the timid warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, 5 to whose mysterious Source he bent, in humble, though blind, adoration.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path 10 of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted, forever, from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. 15 Here and there, a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamed, untamable progenitors! The Indian of falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked 20 in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has long since gone out 25 on the shore, and their war cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever.

Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their 5 rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

II

There is in the fate of these unfortunate beings much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much which may be urged to excuse their 10 own atrocities; much in their characters which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? By law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow but sure extinction. Everywhere at the approach of the white man they fade away. We hear 15 the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone forever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago the smoke of their wigwams and the fires of their councils rose in every valley from Hudson's Bay to the farthest 20 Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war dance rang through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunter's trace and dark encampment startled the wild beasts in 25 their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The

young listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down; but they wept not. They should soon be at rest in fairer regions, where 5 the Great Spirit dwelt in a home prepared for the brave, beyond the western skies. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage and fortitude, and sagacity and perseverance beyond most of the human race. They shrank from no dangers, and they feared no 10 hardships. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. 15 Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave.

But where are they? Where are the villagers, and warriors, and youth; the sachems and the tribes; the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are con20 sumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No, nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which has eaten into their heart-cores a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated - a poison which betrayed them into a 25 lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes the aged, the helpless, the women,

and the warriors"few and faint, yet

fearless still."

The smoke no

They shed
There

The ashes are cold on their native hearths. longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or dispatch; but they heed him not. They turn 5 to take a last look at their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, 10 but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim nor method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them no, never. Yet there 15 lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant, not unseen. It is to the general burial ground of their race.

Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read in such a 20 fate much that we know not how to interpret; much of provocation to cruel deeds and deep resentments; much of apology for wrong and perfidy; much of pity mingling with indignation; much of doubt and misgiving as to the past; much of painful recollections; much of dark fore- 25 bodings.

JOSEPH STORY.