CHAPTER I.

        IT was in the year 182-, that I first travelled in the vallies of the great south-west. Circumstances, influenced in no slight degree by an "errant disposition," beguiled me to the Choctaw nation, which, at that time, occupied the greater part of the space below the Tennessee line, lying between the rivers Tombeckbe and Mississippi, as low, nearly, as the town of Jackson, then, as now, the capital of the State of Mississippi. I loitered for several weeks in and about this region, without feeling the loss or the weight of time. Yet, the reader is not to suppose that travelling at that day was so simple a matter, or possessed many, if any of the pleasant facilities of the present. Au contraire: It was then a serious business. It meant travail rather than travel. The roads were few and very hard to find. Indian foot-paths--with the single exception of the great military traces laid out by General Jackson, and extending from Tennessee to Lake Ponchartrain--formed almost the only arteries known to the "Nation;" and the portions of settled country in the neighbourhood, nominally civilized only, were nearly in the same condition. Some of the Indian paths, as I experienced, seemed only to be made for the perplexity of the stranger. Like Gray's passages which "led to nothing," they constantly brought me to a stand. Sometimes they were swallowed up in swamps, and, in such cases, your future route upon the earth was to be discovered only by a deliberate and careful survey of the skies above. The openings in the trees over head alone instructed you in the course you

were to pursue. You may readily imagine that this sort of progress was as little pleasant as edifying, yet, in some respects, it was not wanting in its attractions, also. To the young and ardent mind, obstacles of this nature tend rather to excite than to depress. They contain the picturesque in themselves, at times, and always bring out the moral in the man. "To learn to rough it," is an educational phrase, in the dialect of the new countries, which would be of great service, adopted as a rule of government for the young in all. To "coon a log"--a mysterious process to the uninitiated--swim a river--experiment, at a guess, upon the properties of one, and the proprieties of another route--parley with an Indian after his own fashion--not to speak of a hundred other incidents which the civilized world does not often present--will reconcile a lad of sanguine temperament to a number of annoyances much more serious than will attend him on an expedition through our frontier countries.

        It was at the close of a cloudy day in November, that I came within hail of the new but rude plantation settlements of Colonel Harris. He had but lately transferred his interests to Mississippi, from one of the "maternal thirteen"--had bought largely in the immediate neighbourhood of the Choctaw nation, and had also acquired, by purchase from the natives, certain reserves within it, to which he chiefly owes that large wealth, which, at this day, he has the reputation of possessing. In place of the stately residence which now adorns his homestead, there was then but a miserable log-house, one of the most ordinary of the country, in which, unaccompanied by his family, he held his temporary abiding place. His plantation was barely rescued from the dominions of nature. The trees were girdled only the previous winter, for his first crop, which was then upon the ground, and an excellent crop it was for that immature condition of his fields. There is no describing the melancholy aspect of such a settlement, seen in winter, on a cloudy day, and in the heart of an immense forest, through which you have travelled for miles, without glimpse of human form or habitation. The worm-fence is itself a gloomy spectacle, and the girdled trees, erect but dead, the perishing skeletons of recent life, impress you with sensations not entirely unlike those which you would experience in going over some

battle-field, from which the decaying forms of man and horse have not yet been removed. The fences of Col. Harris were low in height, though of great extent. They were simply sufficient to protect the fields from the random assaults of cattle. Of his out-houses, the most respectable in size, solidity and security, was the corn crib. His negro-houses, like the log-house in which he himself dwelt, were only so many temporary shanties, covered with poles and thatched with bark and pine-straw. In short, every thing that met my eye only tended the more to frown upon my anticipations of a cheerful fireside and a pleasant arrangement of the creature-comforts. But my doubts and apprehensions all vanished at the moment of my reception. I was met by the proprietor with that ease and warmth of manner which does not seem to be conscious of any deficiencies of preparation, and is resolved that there shall be none which sincere hospitality can remedy. I was soon prepared to forget that there were deficiencies. I felt myself very soon at home. I had letters to Col. Harris, which made me particularly welcome, and in ten minutes we were both in full sail amongst all the shallows and deeps of ordinary conversation.

        Not that we confined ourselves to these. Our discourse, after a little while, turned upon a circumstance which I had witnessed on riding through his fields and while approaching his dwelling, which struck me with considerable surprise, and disturbed, in some degree, certain pre-conceived opinions in my mind. I had seen, interspersed with his negro labourers, a goodly number of Indians of both sexes, but chiefly young persons, all equally and busily employed in cotton picking. The season had been a protracted one, and favourable, accordingly, to the maturing of great numbers of the bolls which an early and severe winter must have otherwise destroyed. The crop, in consequence, had been so great as to be beyond the ability, to gather in and harvest, of the "force" by which it was made. This, in the new and fertile vallies of the south-west, is an usual event. In ordinary cases, when this happens, it is the custom to buy other negroes from less productive regions, to consummate and secure the avails of labour of the original "force." The whole of these, united, are then addressed to the task of opening additional lands, which, should

they yield as before, necessarily demand a second purchase of an extra number to secure and harvest, in season, the surplus fruits of their industry. The planter is very readily persuaded to make this purchase so long as the seeming necessity shall re-occur; and in this manner has he continued expanding his interests, increasing the volume of his lands, and incurring debt for these and for his slaves, at exorbitant prices, in order to the production of a commodity, every additional bag of which, disparages its own value, and depreciates the productive power, in an estimate of profit, of the industry by which it is produced. It will not be difficult, keeping this fact in mind as a sample of the profligacy of western adventure--to account, in part, for the insolvency and desperate condition of a people in possession of a country naturally the most fertile of any in the world.

        The crop of Col. Harris was one of this description. It far exceeded the ability of his "force" to pick it in; but instead of buying additional slaves for the purpose, he conceived the idea of turning to account the lazy Choctaws by whom he was surrounded. He proposed to hire them at a moderate compensation, which was to be paid them weekly. The temptation of gain was greedily caught at by these hungering outcasts, and, for a few dollars, or an equivalent in goods, groceries, and so forth, some forty-five of them were soon to be seen, as busy as might be, in the prosecution of their unusual labours. The work was light and easy--none could be more so--and though not such adepts as the negro, the Indian women soon contrived to fill their bags and baskets, in the course of the day. At dark, you might behold them trudging forward under their burdens to the log-house, where the proprietor stood ready to receive them. Here he weighed their burdens, and gave them credit, nightly, for the number of pounds which they each brought in. The night of my arrival was Saturday, and the value of the whole week's labour was then to be summed up and accounted for. This necessarily made them all punctual in attendance, and nothing could be more amusing than the interest which they severally displayed as Col. Harris took out his memorandum book, and proceeded to make his entries. Every eye was fixed upon him, and an old Indian, who, though he did not work himself, represented the interests

of a wife and two able-bodied daughters, planted himself directly behind this gentleman, and watched, with looks of growing sagacity, every stroke that was made in this--to him--volume of more than Egyptian mystery and hieroglyphics. Meanwhile, the squaws stood about their baskets with looks expressive of similar interest, but at the same time of laudable patience. The negroes in the rear, were scarcely less moved by curiosity, though a contemptuous grin might be seen on nearly all their countenances, as they felt their superiority in nearly every physical and intellectual respect, over the untutored savages. Many Indians were present who neither had nor sought employment. Of those employed, few or none were of middle age. But these were not wanting to the assemblage. They might be seen prowling about the rest--watchful of the concerns of their wives, sons and daughters, with just that sort and degree of interest, which the eagle may be supposed to feel, who, from his perch on the tree-top or the rock, beholds the fish-hawk dart into the water in pursuit of that prey which he meditates to rend from his jaws as soon as he shall re-ascend into the air. Their interest was decidedly greater than that of the poor labourer. It was in this manner that these vultures appropriated the fruits of his industry, and there was no remedy. They commonly interfered, the moment it was declared what was due to the employée, to resolve the pay into a certain number of gallons of whiskey; so many pounds of tobacco; so much gunpowder and lead. If the employer, as was the case with Col. Harris, refused to furnish them with whiskey, they required him to pay in money. With this, they soon made their way to one of those moral sinks, called a grog-shop, which English civilization is always ready to plant, as its first, most familiar, and most imposing standard, among the hills and forests of the savage.

        It may be supposed that this experiment upon the inflexibility of Indian character and habit--for it was an experiment which had been in trial only a single week--was a subject of no little curiosity to me, as it would most probably be to almost every person at all impressed with the humiliating moral and social deterioration which has marked this fast decaying people. Could it possibly be successful? Could a race, proud, sullen, incommunicative,

wandering, be persuaded, even by gradual steps, and with the hope of certain compensation, to renounce the wild satisfaction afforded by their desultory and unconstrained modes of life? Could they be beguiled for a season into employments which, though they did not demand any severe labours, at least required pains-taking, regular industry, and that habitual attention to daily recurring tasks, which, to their roving nature, would make life a most monotonous and unattractive possession? How far the lightness of the labour and the simplicity of the employment, with the corresponding recompense, would reconcile them to its tasks, was the natural subject of my inquiry. On this head, my friend, Col. Harris, could only conjecture and speculate like myself. His experiment had been in progress but a few days. But our speculations led us to very different conclusions. He was a person of very ardent character, and sanguine, to the last degree, of the success of his project. He had no question but that the Indian, even at his present stage, might be brought under the influence of a judicious civilization. We both agreed that the first process was in procuring their labour--that this was the preliminary step, without taking which, no other could be made; but how to bring them to this was the question.

        "They can be persuaded to this," was his conclusion. "Money, the popular god, is as potent with them as with our own people. They will do any thing for money. You see these now in the field. They have been there, and just as busy, and in the same number, from Monday last."

        "How long will they continue?"

        "As long as I can employ and pay them."

        "Impossible! They will soon be dissatisfied. The men will consume and squander all the earnings of the females and the feeble. The very motive of their industry, money, to which you refer, will be lost to them after the first payment. I am convinced that a savage people, not as yet familiar with the elements of moral prudence, can only be brought to habitual labour, by the one process of coercion."

        "We shall see. There is no coercion upon them now, yet they work with wonderful regularity."

        "This week will end it. Savages are children in all but physical

respects. To do any thing with them, you must place them in that position of responsibility, and teach them that law, without the due employment of which, any attempt to educate a child, must be an absurdity--you must teach them obedience. They must he made to know, at the outset, that they know nothing--that they must implicitly defer to the superior. This lesson they will never learn, so long as they possess the power, at any moment, to withdraw from his control."

        "Yet, even were this to be allowed, there must be a limit. There must come a time when you will be required to emancipate them. In what circumstances will you find that time? You cannot keep them under this coercion always; when will you set them free?"

        "When they are fit for freedom."

        "How is that to be determined? Who shall decide their fitness?"

        "Themselves; as in the case of the children of Israel. The children of Israel went out from bondage as soon as their own intellectual advancement had been such as to enable them to produce from their own ranks a leader like Moses:--one whose genius was equal to that of the people by whom they had been educated, and sufficient for their own proper government thereafter."

        "But has not an experiment of this sort already been tried in our country?"

        "Nay, I think not--I know of none."

        "Yes: an Indian boy was taken in infancy from his parents, carried to one of the Northern States, trained in all the learning and habits of a Northern college and society, associated only with whites, beheld no manners, and heard no morals, but those which are known to Christian communities. His progress was satisfactory--he learned rapidly--was considered something of a prodigy, and graduated with eclât. He was then left, with the same option as the rest enjoyed, to the choice of a profession. And what was his choice? Do you not remember the beautiful little poem of Freneau on this subject? He chose the buck-skin leggins, the moccasins, bow and arrows, and the wide, wild forests, where his people dwelt."

        "Freneau's poem tells the story somewhat differently. The

facts upon which it is founded, however, are, I believe, very much as you tell them. But what an experiment it was! How very silly! They take a copper-coloured boy from his people, and carry him, while yet an infant, to a remote region. Suppose, in order that the experiment may be fairly tried, that they withhold from him all knowledge of his origin. He is brought up precisely as the other lads around him. But what is the first discovery which he makes? That he is a copper-coloured boy--that he is, alone, the only copper-coloured boy--that wherever he turns he sees no likeness to himself. This begets his wonder, then his curiosity, and finally his suspicion. He soon understands--for his suspicion sharpens every faculty of observation--that he is an object of experiment. Nay, the most cautious policy in the world could never entirely keep this from a keen-thoughted urchin. His fellow pupils teach him this. He sees that, to them, he is an object of curiosity and study. They regard him, and he soon regards himself, as a creature set apart, and separated, for some peculiar purposes, from all the rest. A stern and singular sense of individuality and isolation is thus forced upon him. He asks--Am I, indeed, alone?--Who am I?--What am I?--These inquiries naturally occasion others. Does he read? Books give him the history of his race. Nay, his own story probably meets his eye in the newspapers. He learns that he is descended from a nation dwelling among the secret sources of the Susquehannah. He pries in all corners for information. The more secret his search, the more keenly does he pursue it. It becomes the great passion of his mind. He learns that his people are fierce warriors and famous hunters. He hears of their strifes with the white man--their successful strifes, when the nation could send forth its thousand bow-men, and the whites were few and feeble. Perhaps, the young pale faces around him, speak of his people, even now, as enemies; at least, as objects of suspicion, and perhaps antipathy. All these things tend to elevate and idealize, in his mind, the history of his people. He cherishes a sympathy, even beyond the natural desires of the heart, for the perishing race from which he feels himself, "like a limb, cast bleeding and torn." The curiosity to see his ancestry--the people of his tribe and country--would be the most natural feeling of the white boy,

under similar circumstances--shall we wonder that it is the pre-dominant passion in the bosom of the Indian, whose very complexion forces him away from any connection with the rest! My idea of the experiment--if such a proceeding may be called an experiment--is soon spoken. As a statement of facts, I see nothing to provoke wonder. The result was the most natural thing in the world, and a man of ordinary powers of reflection might easily have predicted it, precisely as it happened. The only wonder is, that there should be found, among persons of common education and sagacity, men who should have undertaken such an experiment, and fancied that they were busy in a moral and philosophical problem."

        "Why, how would you have the experiment tried?"

        "As it was tried upon the Hebrews, upon the Saxons--upon every savage people who ever became civilized. It cannot be tried upon an individual: it must be tried upon a nation--at least upon a community, sustained by no succour from without--having no forests or foreign shores upon which to turn their eyes for sympathy--having no mode or hope of escape--under the full control of an already civilized people--and sufficiently numerous among themselves, to find sympathy, against those necessary rigours which at first will seem oppressive, but which will be the only hopeful process by which to enforce the work of improvement. They must find this sympathy from beholding others, like themselves in aspect, form, feature and condition, subject to the same unusual restraints. In this contemplation they will be content to pursue their labours under a restraint which they cannot displace. But the natural law must be satisfied. There must be opportunities yielded for the indulgence of the legitimate passions. The young of both sexes among the subjected people, must commune and form ties in obedience to the requisitions of nature and according to their national customs. What, if the Indian student, on whom the "experiment" was tried, had paid his addresses to a white maiden! What a revulsion of the moral and social sense would have followed his proposition in the mind of the Saxon damsel;--and, were she to consent, what a commotion in the community in which she lived. And this revulsion and commotion would have been perfectly natural, and, accordingly,

perfectly proper. God has made an obvious distinction between certain races of men, setting them apart, and requiring them to be kept so, by subjecting them to the resistance and rebuke of one of the most jealous sentinels of sense which we possess--the eye. The prejudices of this sense, require that the natural barriers should be maintained, and hence it becomes necessary that the race in subjection, should be sufficiently numerous to enable it to carry out the great object of every distinct community, though, perchance, it may happen to be an inferior one. In process of time, the beneficial and blessing effects of labour would be felt and understood by the most ignorant and savage of the race. Perhaps, not in one generation, or in two, but after the fifth and seventh, as it is written, "of those who keep my commandments." They would soon discover that, though compelled to toil, their toils neither enfeebled their strength nor impaired their happiness--that, on the contrary, they still resulted in their increasing strength, health, and comfort;--that their food, which before was precarious, depending on the caprices of the seasons, or the uncertainties of the chase, was now equally plentiful, wholesome and certain. They would also perceive that, instead of the sterility which is usually the destiny of all wandering tribes, and one of the processes by which they perish--the fecundity of their people was wonderfully increased. These discoveries--if time be allowed to make them--would tacitly reconcile them to that inferior position of their race, which is proper and inevitable, so long as their intellectual inferiority shall continue. And what would have been the effect upon our Indians--decidedly the noblest race of aborigines that the world has ever known--if, instead of buying their scalps at prices varying from five to fifty pounds each, we had conquered and subjected them? Will any one pretend to say that they would not have increased with the restraints and enforced toils of our superior genius?--that they would not, by this time, have formed a highly valuable and noble integral in the formation of our national strength and character? Perhaps their civilization would have been comparatively easy--the Hebrews required four hundred years--the Britons and Saxons, possibly, half that time after the Norman Conquest. Differing in colour from their conquerors, though I suspect, with a

natural genius superior to that of the ancient Britons, at the time of the Roman invasion under Julius Cæsar, the struggle between the two races must have continued for some longer time, but the union would have been finally effected, and then, as in the case of the Englishman, we should have possessed a race, in their progeny, which, in moral and physical structure, might have challenged competition with the world."

        "Ay, but the difficulty would have been in the conquest."

        "True, that would have been the difficulty. The American colonists were few in number and feeble in resource. The nations from which they emerged put forth none of their strength in sending them forth. Never were colonies so inadequately provided--so completely left to themselves; and hence the peculiar injustice and insolence of the subsequent exactions of the British, by which they required their colonies to support their schemes of aggrandizement and expenditure by submitting to extreme taxation. Do you suppose, if the early colonists had been powerful, that they would have ever deigned to treat for lands with the roving hordes of savages whom they found on the continent? Never! Their purchases and treaties were not for lands, but tolerance. They bought permission to remain without molestation. The amount professedly given for land, was simply a tribute paid to the superior strength of the Indian, precisely as we paid it to Algiers and the Musselmens, until we grew strong enough to whip them into respect. If, instead of a few ships and a few hundred men, timidly making their approaches along the shores of Manhattan, Penobscot and Ocracocke, some famous leader, like Æneas, had brought his entire people--suppose them to be the persecuted Irish--what a wondrous difference would have taken place. The Indians would have been subjected--would have sunk into their proper position of humility and dependence; and, by this time, might have united with their conquerors, producing, perhaps, along the great ridge of the Alleghany, the very noblest specimens of humanity, in mental and bodily stature, that the world has ever witnessed. The Indians were taught to be insolent by the fears and feebleness of the whites. They were flattered by fine words, by rich presents, and abundance of deference, until the ignorant savage, but a single degree above the

brute--who, until then, had never been sure of his porridge for more than a day ahead--took airs upon himself, and became one of the most conceited and arrogant lords in creation. The colonists grew wiser as they grew stronger; but the evil was already done, and we are reaping some of the bitter fruits, at this day, of seed unwisely sown in that. It may be that we shall yet see the experiment tried fairly."

        "Ah, indeed--where?"

        "In Mexico--by the Texians. Let the vain, capricious, ignorant, and dastardly wretches who now occupy and spoil the face and fortunes of the former country, persevere in pressing war upon those sturdy adventurers, and their doom is written. I fear it may be the sword--I hope it may be the milder fate of bondage and subjection. Such a fate would save, and raise them finally to a far higher condition than they have ever before enjoyed. Thirty thousand Texians, each with his horse and rifle, would soon make themselves masters of the city of Montezuma, and then may you see the experiment tried upon a scale sufficiently extensive to make it a fair one. But your Indian student, drawn from

                       "Susquehannah's farthest springs,"
and sent to Cambridge, would present you with some such moral picture as that of the prisoner described by Sterne. His chief employment, day by day, would consist in notching upon his stick, the undeviating record of his daily suffering. It would be to him an experiment almost as full of torture, as that of the Scottish Boot, the Spanish Thumb-screw--or any of those happy devices of ancient days, for impressing pleasant principles upon the mind, by impressing unpleasant feelings upon the thews, joints and sinews. I wish that some one of our writers, familiar with mental analysis, would make this poem of Freneau, the subject of a story. I think it would yield admirable material. To develope the thoughts and feelings of an Indian boy, taken from his people, ere yet he has formed such a knowledge of them, or of others, as to have begun to discuss or to compare their differences--follow him to a college such as that of Princeton or Cambridge--watch him within its walls--amid the crowd, but not of it--looking only within himself,

while all others are looking into him, or trying to do so--surrounded by active, sharp-witted lads of the Anglo-Norman race; undergoing an hourly repeated series of moral spasms, as he hears them wantonly or thoughtlessly dwell upon the wild and ignorant people from whom he is chosen;--listening, though without seeming to listen, to their crude speculations upon the great problem which is to be solved only by seeing how well he can endure his spasms, and what use he will make of his philosophy if he survives it--then, when the toils of study and the tedious restraints and troubles of prayer and recitation are got over, to behold and describe the joy with which the happy wretch flings by his fetters, when he is dismissed from those walls which have witnessed his tortures--even supposing him to remain (which is very unlikely,) until his course of study is pronounced to be complete! With what curious pleasure will he stop in the shadow of the first deep forest, to tear from his limbs those garments which make him seem unlike his people! How quick will be the beating at his heart as he endeavours to dispose about his shoulders the blanket robe in the manner in which it is worn by the chief warrior of his tribe! With what keen effort--should he have had any previous knowledge of his kindred--will he seek to compel his memory to restore every, the slightest, custom or peculiarity which distinguished them when his eyes were first withdrawn from the parental tribe; and how closely will he imitate their indomitable pride and lofty, cold, superiority of look and gesture, as, at evening, he enters the native hamlet, and takes his seat in silence at the door of the Council House, waiting, without a word, for the summons of the Elders!"

        "Quite a picture. I think with you, that, in good hands, such a subject would prove a very noble one."

        "But the story would not finish here. Supposing all this to have taken place, just as we are told it did--supposing the boy to have graduated at college, and to have flung away the distinction--to have returned, as has been described, to his savage costume--to the homes and habits of his people;--it is not so clear that he will fling away all the lessons of wisdom, all the knowledge of facts, which he will have acquired from the tuition of the superior race. A natural instinct, which is above all lessons, must be complied

with; but this done--and when the first tumults of his blood have subsided, which led him to defeat the more immediate object of his social training--there will be a gradual resumption of the educational influence in his mind, and his intellectual habits will begin to exercise themselves anew. They will be provoked necessarily to this exercise by what he beholds around him. He will begin to perceive, in its true aspects, the wretchedness of that hunter-state, which, surveyed at a distance, appeared only the embodiment of stoical heroism and the most elevated pride. He will see and lament the squalid poverty of his people; which, his first lessons in civilization must have shown him, is due only to the mode of life and pursuits in which they are engaged. Their beastly intoxication will offend his tastes--their superstition and ignorance--the circumscribed limits of their capacity for judging of things and relations beyond the life of the bird or beast of prey--will awaken in him a sense of shame when he feels that they are his kindred. The insecurity of their liberties will awaken his fears, for he will instantly see that the great body of the people in every aboriginal nation are the veriest slaves in the world; and the degrading exhibitions which they make in their fifth and drunkenness, which reduce the man to a loathesomeness of aspect which is never reached by the vilest beast which he hunts or scourges, will be beheld by the Indian student in very lively contrast with all that has met his eyes during that novitiate among the white sages, the processes of which have been to him so humiliating and painful. His memory reverts to that period with feelings of reconciliation. The torture is over, and the remembrance of former pain, endured with manly fortitude, is comparatively a pleasure. A necessary reaction in his mind takes place; and, agreeably to the laws of nature, what will, and what should follow, but that he will seek to become the tutor and the reformer of his people? They themselves will tacitly raise him to this position, for the man of the forest will defer even to the negro who has been educated by the white man. He will try to teach them habits of greater method and industry--he will overthrow the altars of their false gods--he will seek to bind the wandering tribes together under one head and in one nation--he will prescribe uniform laws of government.

He will succeed in some things--he will fail in others; he will offend the pride of the self-conceited and the mulish--the priest-hood will be the first to declare against him--and he will be murdered most probably, as was Romulus, and afterwards deified. If he escapes this fate, he will yet, most likely, perish from mortification under failure, or, in consequence of those mental strifes which spring from that divided allegiance between the feelings belonging to his savage, and those which have had their origin in his christian schools--those natural strifes between the acquisitions of civilization on the one hand, and those instinct tendencies of the blood which distinguish his connection with the inferior race. In this conflict, he will, at length, when the enthusiasm of his youthful zeal has become chilled by frequent and unexpected defeat, falter, and finally fail. But will there be nothing done for his people? Who can say? I believe that no seed falls without profit by the wayside. Even if the truth produces no immediate fruits, it forms a moral manure which fertilizes the otherwise barren heart, in preparation for the more favourable season. The Indian student may fail, as his teachers did, in realizing the object for which he has striven; and this sort of failure, is, by the way, one of the most ordinary of human allotment. The desires of man's heart, by an especial Providence, that always wills him to act for the future, generally aim at something far beyond his own powers of performance. But the labour has not been taken in vain, in the progress of successive ages, which has achieved even a small part of its legitimate purposes. The Indian student has done for his people much more than the white man achieves ordinarily for his generation, if he has only secured to their use a single truth which they knew not before--if he has overthrown only one of their false gods--if he has smitten off the snaky head of only one of their superstitious prejudices. If he has added to their fields of corn a field of millet, he has induced one farther physical step towards moral improvement. Nay, if there be no other result, the very deference which they will have paid him, as the elèvé of the white man, will be a something gained of no little importance, towards inducing their more ready, though still tardy, adoption of the laws and guidance of the superior race."