walls of brass. They could not read or write, and their leisure was
passed in idle gossip, or in deliberations on infernal schemes against
the white man to revenge themselves for their wrongs.

It was not a wise thing to do, I think; although, no doubt, it was
humane enough, as we understand humanity. Did not the 'dragons of the
prime tear other in their slime,' and so thin out the horrible race,
until Nature herself put the final claws of annihilation upon them? Why,
in mercy, then, do we try to prevent the inevitable? War is a great
clearer of the atmosphere; and one of our poets, Coleridge, I believe,
says that 'Carnage is God's daughter'! a bold figure of rhetoric, not
without its apparently sufficient apologies. Why not let the Sioux and
Chippewas, or any other of the wild, irreclaimable brood, fight their
bloodiest, and do their prettiest to help Nature, who seems bent on the
extermination of all inferior races? They have got to die, any
way!--that is a great consolation!--and if the philanthropists at
Washington had only left them to themselves, they would have died by
mutual slaughter--great numbers of them--long ago, and saved said
philanthropists from the crime of killing them, which they are now
doing, by inches!--a far more cruel way of dying.

I was much pleased, when last summer they were upbraided for doing a
little war against the Chips, in spite of Washington, with the sarcastic
reply of a chief, who said: 'Our Great Father, we know, has always told
us it was wrong to make war; yet now he himself is making war, and
killing a great many. Will you explain this to us? We do not understand
it!' This was a hit, a palpable hit, let who will reconcile it.

Mr. Heard gives us the following brief statement of the manner in which
treaties are made with the Indians; and I earnestly call the attention
of the Government and all just citizens to its statements. He says:

'The traders, knowing for years before, that the whites will
purchase lands, sell the Indians goods on credit, expecting to
realize their pay from the consideration to be paid by the
Government. They thus become interested instruments to obtain the
consent of the Indians to the treaty. And by reason of their
familiarity with the language, and the associations of half-breed
relatives, are possessed of great facilities to accomplish their
object. The persons deputed by the Government to effect a treaty
a