their
knowledge and their rights, and he will trample the long knives under
his feet."

[Footnote A: Atlantic Ocean.]

It has been already stated that, for a series of years, the several
tribes of Indians residing in the territory now forming the state of
Ohio, made violent opposition to the settlement of the whites, west of
the Alleghanies. Among the most formidable of these were the Shawanoes.
The emigrants, whether male or female, old or young, were every where
met by the torch, the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. The war-cry of
the savage was echoed from shore to shore of the beautiful Ohio, whose
waters were but too often reddened with the blood of women and
children. Many of those who escaped the perils of the river, and had
reared their log-cabins amid the cane-brakes of Kentucky, were doomed
to encounter the same ruthless foe, and fell victims to the same
unrelenting cruelty. While the feelings are shocked at these dreadful
scenes of blood and carnage, and the Indian character rises in hideous
deformity before the mind, it is not to be forgotten that there are
many mitigating circumstances to be pleaded in behalf of the
aborigines. They were an ignorant people, educated alone for war,
without the lights of civilization, without the attributes of mercy
shed abroad by the spirit of christianity. They were contending for
their homes and their hunting grounds--the tombs of their
forefathers--the graves of their children. They saw the gradual, but
certain, encroachments of the whites upon their lands; and they had the
sagacity to perceive, that unless this mighty wave of emigration was
arrested, it would overwhelm them. They fought as savage nature will
fight, with unflinching courage and unrelenting cruelty. But it was not
alone this encroachment upon their lands, which roused their savage
passions. The wanton aggressions of the whites oftentimes provoked the
fearful retaliation of the red-man. The policy of the United States
towards the Indians has generally been of a pacific and benevolent
character; but, in carrying out that policy, there have been many
signal and inexcusable failures. The laws enacted by congress for the
protection of the rights of the Indians, and to promote their comfort
and civilization, have, in a great variety of cases, remained a dead
letter upon the statute book. The agents of the government have often
proved unfaithful, and have looked much more to their own pecuniary
interests, tha