difficult matter to hatch up a
cause of war with the United States. That war seems to have been brooded
over many years: it had been the subject of innumerable war messages to
the various tribes, a large number of whom had favored his views. And
when it broke out in the spring of 1832, the suddenness of the movement,
the great cruelties of the onset, and the comparatively defenceless
state of the frontier, gave it all its alarming power. As soon as the
army could be got to the frontiers, and the Indian force brought to
action, the contest was over. The battle of the Badaxe annihilated his
forces, and he was carried a prisoner to Washington. But he was more to
be respected and pitied than blamed. His errors were the result of
ignorance, and none of the cruelties of the war were directly chargeable
to him. He was honest in his belief--honest in the opinion that the
country east of the Mississippi had been unjustly wrested from him; and
there is no doubt but the trespasses and injuries received from the
reckless frontier emigrants were of a character that provoked
retaliation. He has been compared, in some things, to Pontiac. Like him,
he sought to restore his people to a position and rights, which he did
not perceive were inevitably lost. He possessed a degree of intellectual
vigor and decision of character far beyond the mass, and may be regarded
as one of the principal minds of the Indians of the first half of the
19th century.

_15th_. A letter of this date from Council Bluffs, describes a most
shocking and tragic death of a Sioux girl, of only fourteen years of
age, who was sacrificed to the spirit of corn, by the Pawnees, on the
22d of February last. For this purpose she was placed on a foot-rest,
between two trees, about two feet apart, and raised above the ground,
just high enough to have a torturing fire built under her feet. Here she
was held by two warriors, who mounted the rest beside her, and who
applied lighted splinters under her arms. At a given signal a hundred
arrows were let fly, and her whole body was pierced. These were
immediately withdrawn, and her flesh cut from her bones in small pieces,
which were put into baskets, and carried into the corn-field, where the
grain was being planted, and the blood squeezed out in each hill.

CHEROKEE EMIGRATION.--A letter from Gen. Scott of this date, to the
Governor of Georgia, states that, of the two parties of Cherokees, or
those who are for and against the trea