they are those of the white man--food,
raiment, and lodging. The flesh affords ample provision, the skin robes
for clothing, bedding, and covering to his wig-wam, while, as a
further, utility, the hoofs are melted into glue to assist him in
fabricating his shield, arrows, and other necessary articles for savage
life. It may, therefore, be imagined that the buffalo is indispensable
to the Indian's simple existence; for, whatever may have been said and
written concerning schemes for his civilization, I am quite certain
that, from his innate indolence, love of roving, fierce passions, and
unconquerable desire for the excitement of war and hunting, nothing can
be more impossible than that any such attempts should meet with a
different result than positive defeat. Indeed, the American government,
and various religious sects, actuated by the purest philanthropy, have
dispatched agents and missionaries to the different tribes, with
unflagging perseverance, in the hope of reclaiming the red man from his
present degenerated condition; but to no purpose. He adopts the vices of
civilization with the greatest readiness, and meets with the most
accomplished tutors in the persons of the traders and trappers by whom
he is surrounded; but he can not comprehend either the temporal or
eternal happiness offered through the medium of Christianity. Ribald as
the statement may appear, I have heard an Osage declare, with much
seriousness, that "nothing could seem to him less inviting than what the
pale face called heaven, and if he was to go there he should not know
how to pass his time." With these unsophisticated notions, and the
plain, blunt questions with which the Indiana are accustomed to examine
all theological matters, it may readily be supposed that a minister of
the Gospel would find considerable difficulty in obtaining many
proselytes to the true faith.

In the vicinity of St. Louis I once witnessed a most ridiculous scene,
wherein a camp preacher, and one of the good old school, thundered forth
the evil consequences of not listening to what he was saying with
reverence, and, surrounded by Indians of various tribes, the good man,
mounted on a primitive rostrum seat, dealt liberally in the terrors of
the church, while he offered a niggardly allowance of hope even to the
best, always excepting himself. For a time the motley crowd seemed
disposed to assume a becoming deportment; but when the preacher went
into the particulars of the f