ts thereof, without any such distinction.
He has seen the beasts of the field drive each other out of their
pastures, because they had the power to do so; and he knew that the
white man had that power over the Indian which knowledge and superior
strength give; but it has also occurred to him that Indians are men,
not brutes, as the treatment they usually receive would lead us to
think. Nevertheless, being bred to look upon Indians with dislike and
detestation, it is not to be wondered that the whites regard them as
on a footing with the brutes that perish. Doubtless there are many who
think it granting us poor natives a great privilege to treat us with
equal humanity. The author has often been told seriously, by sober
persons, that his fellows were a link between the whites and the brute
creation, an inferior race of men to whom the Almighty had less
regard than to their neighbours, and whom he had driven from their
possessions to make room for a race more favoured. Some have gone so
far as to bid him remove and give place to that pure and excellent
people who have ever despised his brethren and evil entreated them,
both by precept and example.
Assumption of this kind never convinced WILLIAM APES of its own
justice. He is still the same unbelieving Indian that he ever was.
Nay, more, he is not satisfied that the learned and professedly
religious men who have thus addressed him, were more exclusively the
favourites of his Creator than himself, though two of them at least
have been hailed as among the first orators of the day, and spoke
with an eloquence that might have moved stocks and stones. One of
them dwells in New York and the other in Boston. As it would avail him
little to bespeak the favour of the world in behalf of their opinions
by mentioning their names, he will proceed with the matter in hand,
viz. the troubles of the Marshpee people, and his own trial.
INDIAN NULLIFICATION, &c.
It being my desire, as well as my duty as a preacher of the gospel, to
do as much good as in me lay to my red brethren, I occasionally paid
them a visit, announcing and explaining to them the word of life,
when opportunity offered. I knew that no people on earth were more
neglected; yet whenever I attempted to supply their spiritual wants,
I was opposed and obstructed by the whites around them, as was the
practice of those who dwelt about my native tribe, (the Pequods,) in
Groton, Conn. of which more will be said in anot
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