relate those tales, and enforce those precepts, which every
good Indian thinks necessary for the instruction of his wife and
children. This was his occupation, these were his pleasures. Who could
ask a better or nobler than the first? who desire more intense, or
purer, than the last? Far removed from all sources of disquiet,
surrounded with all that they deemed necessary to their comfort,
tenderly loving, and thence completely happy, their lives passed away
with scarcely less bliss than that of the disembodied spirits of the
good in the Happy Shades. The breast of the hunter had never felt the
pangs of remorse, for he had been a just man in all his dealings. He
had never violated the laws of his tribe, by encroaching upon the
hunting-grounds of his neighbours, or by taking that which did not of
right belong to him. No offended hunter waylaid his steps to revenge
an interference with his rights, no haughty chief came to the door of
his lodge, to say, "Chippewa, give back that which you have stolen."
No dream of the fame to be acquired by war--by the frequent slaughter
of unoffending women and children, or even of hardy warriors, his
equals in strength and valour--danced before his eyes, filling his
sleep with bloody images and sights of horror. The white man had not
yet come to fill the mind of the poor Indian with cravings for things
which were not needed till they were known; as yet, he had not been
taught that clothes and blankets were necessary to his comfort, or
that game could not be killed without guns. The skin of the buffalo,
the moose, the bear, and the deer, answered the purpose of protecting
him from the heat and the cold; and the bow and arrow well supplied
the place of the gun, especially when pointed by the steady hand and
unerring eye of an Indian hunter. Having then, no more than now,
occasion to fell large trees, the axes of stone in use among us when
white men landed on our shores answered all the simple purposes of
Indian life. Iron and powder, which, with _one_ other fatal gift, have
already led to the almost total, and will soon effect the total,
extinction of the race by furnishing us with a surer mode of
destruction, had not yet found their way into those remote and
peaceful forests, nor had the white man poured that one other fatal
gift, his wrathful phial of liquid fire[A] upon our devoted Indian
race. Our wants were then few, easily supplied, and totally
independent of white men.

[Footnote A: