the spade and submit to manual labour, but a child
brought up in the love of cultivating a garden will be naturally led to
the culture of the field as a means of subsistence: and educated in the
principles of Christianity, he will become stationary to partake of the
advantages and privileges of civilization. It is through these means of
instruction that a change will be gradually effected in the character
of the North American Indian, who in his present savage state thinks it
beneath the dignity of his independence to till the ground. What we
value in property, and all those customs which separate us from them in
a state of nature, they think lightly of, while they conclude that our
crossing the seas to see their country is more the effect of poverty
than of industry. To be a _man_, or what is synonymous with them, to be
a great and distinguished character, is to be expert in surprising,
torturing, and scalping an enemy; to be capable of enduring severe
privations; to make a good hunter, and traverse the woods with
geographical accuracy, without any other guide than the tops of the
trees, and the course of the sun. These are exploits which, in their
estimation, form the hero, and to which the expansion of their mind is
confined. Their intellectual powers are very limited, as they enter
into no abstruse meditations, or abstract ideas; but what they know in
the narrow range of supplying their wants, and combating with their
fellow men, they know thoroughly, and are thereby led to consider
themselves the standard of excellence. In their fancied superior
knowledge they are often heard to remark, when conversing with the
European, "You are almost as clever as an Indian." They must be
educated before they can be led to comprehend the benefits to be
received from civilization, or ere a hope can be cherished that their
characters will be changed under the mild influence of the Christian
religion. Man is as his principles are, and wandering under the
influence of those savage-taught habits, in which he has been nurtured,
which tend to harden the heart, and narrow all the sources of sympathy,
the character of the North American Indian is bold, fierce,
unrelenting, sanguinary, and cruel; in fact, a man-devil in war,
rejoicing in blood, exulting in the torments he is inflicting on his
victim, and then most pleased when his inflictions are most exquisite.
We should not be astonished at this character, so repugnant to the
sympathies