upon the whites, killing the men, capturing the women and children, and destroying and laying waste the settlements.

So it was all the way from the St. Lawrence to the Antilles. Within twelve years of the discovery of the Island of St. Domingo, its teeming population who had received the strangers with the most generous hospitality, were driven to desperation by such perfidious betrayal as no savage nation ever could surpass, and after a heroic resistance in which they perished by the thousands, the miserable and broken-hearted remnant were reduced to abject slavery.

The frauds and injuries of which they were the victims, were not forgotten by the natives, but, as was quite natural were eventually returned with interest. The wars were never discontinued, except in isolated and exceptional instances, until within our own time the curtain was rung down on the final ending, it is to be hoped, of the drama of this race war. Now and then an enlightened conciliatory and just course of dealing was initiated by a Peter Stuyvesant or a William Penn, and always with the happiest results, but in the main the policy above indicated was the one pursued from the discovery down to our own day. Is it to be wondered at that just in proportion as they were brought into contact with the European their character changed, absorbing the worst elements of the strangers without acquiring the best?

Catlin, after many years given to the study of Indian character under every variety of circumstance, noted the following results of contact with the white race upon the Indian, the effect being classified as secondary:

Catlin, after his eight years of life among the Indians, deliberately characterizes as "an anomaly, a white man dealing with Indians and meting out justice to them."

One of Washington Irving's most popular works was that relating to the adventures of Captain Bonneville in the far West. The captain was an enterprising army officer who obtained an indefinite leave of absence with the object of studying the Indian in his native haunts. As a means to this end he adopted the profession of a fur-trader and spent five years in the region of the Rocky Mountains in the ostensible pursuit of a fortune. He "started into the country with one hundred and ten men; whose very appearance and equipment exhibited a piebald mixture-half civilized and half savage." They sojourned among the Nez Percés, the Flatheads, and many other tribes of Indians until then uncontaminated by exotic influences, and what were their characteristics? "They were friendly in their dispositions and honest to the most scrupulous degree in their intercourse with the white men." Again, "Their hon

esty is immaculate; and their purity of purpose and their observance of the rites of their religion

are most uniform and remarkable. They are certainly more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages."

And how was this "simple, timid, inoffensive race" requited for the welcome given these men? The very same account explains, and it is the old, sad story of wrong to the Indian. "One morning one of the trappers, of a violent and savage character, discovering that his traps had been carried off in the night, took a horrid oath that he would kill the first Indian he should meet, innocent or guilty. As he was returning with his comrades to camp, he beheld two unfortunate Root-Digger Indians seated on the river bank, fishing; advancing upon them, he levelled his rifle, shot one upon the spot, and flung his bleeding body into the stream."

It is questionable whether any other native races have so much of that stately dignity and pleasing deportment, as had the North American Indian, while yet uncontaminated by foreign influences. Bishop Whipple wrote:

"The North American Indian is the noblest type of a heathen man on the earth. He recognizes a Great Spirit; he believes in immortality; he has a quick intellect; he is a clear thinker; he is brave and fearless, and, until betrayed, he is true to his plighted faith. He has a passionate love for his children, and counts it joy to die for his people. Our most terrible wars have been with the noblest types of the Indians, and with men who had been the white man's friend."

Nicollet said the Sioux were the finest type of wild men he had Lewis and Clark, Governor Stevens, and Colonel Steptoe bore testimony to the devoted friendship of the Nez Percés for the white man. Colonel Boone, Colonel Bent, General Harney and others speak in the highest praise of the Cheyennes.

The Indian's civility to strangers has been remarked by all the early

writers, and countless illustrations given to show that they were well disposed, and that they treated newcomers with marked consideration. It is a well-known fact that if it had not been for their hospitality and generosity in furnishing supplies of food, especially Indian corn, the early colonists both of New England and of Virginia must have perished with hunger.

Duplicity and cruelty born of avarice and bigotry on the one hand, and a sensitive pride and resentful spirit on the other, soon developed into a race war in which the untutored savage showed himself an apt pupil in the school of cruelty, injustice and indiscriminate revenge. Slow to anger, he has been terrible in his wrath, pitiless in his animosity and relentless in his pursuit of revenge. I cannot better close this chapter on Indian character than by a few quotations from some of our recognized authorities, and none stands higher on any topic he deals with than the illustrious Benjamin Franklin. He says:

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Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility. They think the same of theirs.

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Perhaps if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude as to be without any rules of politeness, nor any so polite as not to have some remains of rudeness.

"The Indian meu, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counselors ; for all their government is by counsel of the sages, there is no force, there are no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment. Hence, they generally study oratory; the best speaker having the most influence. The Indian women till the ground, dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve and hand down to posterity the memory of public transactions. The employments of men and women are accounted

natural and honorable; having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning on which we value ourselves they regard as frivolous and useless. An instance of this occurred at the treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the government of Virginia and the Six Nations. After the principal business was settled, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians by a speech, that there was at Williamsburg a college with a fund for educating youth ; and that, if the Six Nations would send half a dozen of their young lads to that college, the government would take care that they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the learning of the white people. It is one of the Indian rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition on the same day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it respect by taking time to consider it as of a matter important. They therefore deferred their answer till the day following, when their speaker began by expressing their deep sense of the kindness of the Virginian For we know says he, that you highly esteem government in making them that offer. the kind of learning taught in these colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men with you would be very expensive to yoư. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal, and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know, that different nations have different conceptions of things, and you will therefore not take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences, but when they came back to us they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither

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how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy; spoke our language imperfectly; were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, or counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.'

"Having frequent occasions to hold public counsels, they have acquired great order and decency in conducting them. The old men sit in the foremost ranks, the warriors in the next, and the women and children in the hindermost. The business of the women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their memories (for they have no writing),

and communicate it to their children. They are the records of the council, and they preserve traditions of the stipulations in treaties one hundred years back, which, when we compare them with our writings, we always find exact. He that would speak, rises; the rest observe a profound silence. When he has finished, and sits down, they leave him five or six minutes to recollect, so that if he has omitted anything he intended to say, or has anything to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent. How different this is from the conduct of a polite British House of Commons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion that makes the Speaker hoarse in calling to order! and how different from the mode of conversation in the polite companies of Europe, where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffered to finish it!