white woman, the Indian woman, occupies an inferior position to that
of man. It is not so much a question of power, as of privilege.

The men of these subjugated tribes, now accustomed to drunkenness and
every way degraded, bear but a faint impress of the lost grandeur of the
race. They are no longer strong, tall, or finely proportioned. Yet as
you see them stealing along a height, or striding boldly forward, they
remind you of what _was_ majestic in the red man.

On the shores of lake Superior, it is said, if you visit them at
home, you may still see a remnant of the noble blood. The
Pillagers--(Pilleurs)--a band celebrated by the old travellers, are:
still existant there.

"Still some, 'the eagles of their tribe,' may rush."

I have spoken of the hatred felt by the white man for the Indian: with
white women it seems to amount to disgust, to loathing. How I could
endure the dirt, the peculiar smell of the Indians, and their dwellings,
was a great marvel in the eyes of my lady acquaintance; indeed, I wonder
why they did not quite give me up, as they certainly looked on me with
great distaste for it. "Get you gone, you Indian dog," was the felt, if
not the breathed, expression towards the hapless owners of the soil. All
their claims, all their sorrows quite forgot, in abhorrence of their
dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices the whites have taught them.

A person who had seen them during great part of a life, expressed his
prejudices to me with such violence, that I was no longer surprised that
the Indian children threw sticks at him, as he passed. A lady said, "do
what you will for them, they will be ungrateful. The savage cannot be
washed out of them. Bring up an Indian child and see if you can attach
it to you." The next moment, she expressed, in the presence of one of
those children whom she was bringing up, loathing at the odor left by
one of her people, and one of the most respected, as he passed through
the room. When the child is grown she will consider it basely ungrateful
not to love her, as it certainly will not; and this will be cited as an
instance of the impossibility of attaching the Indian.

Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of love and intelligence from
the white man, have been civilized and made a valuable ingredient in the
new state, I will not say; but this we are sure of; the French
Catholics, at least, did not harm them, nor disturb their minds merely
to corrupt them. The French th