ey loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with
his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle and the college, with
their niggard concessions and unfeeling stare, have never tried the
experiment. It has not been tried. Our people and our government have
sinned alike against the first-born of the soil, and if they are the
fated agents of a new era, they have done nothing--have invoked no god
to keep them sinless while they do the hest of fate.
Worst of all, when they invoke the holy power only to mask their
iniquity; when the felon trader, who, all the week, has been besotting
and degrading the Indian with rum mixed with red pepper, and damaged
tobacco, kneels with him on Sunday before a common altar, to tell the
rosary which recalls the thought of him crucified for love of suffering
men, and to listen to sermons in praise of "purity"!!
My savage friends, cries the old fat priest, you must, above all things,
aim at _purity_.
Oh, my heart swelled when I saw them in a Christian church. Better their
own dog-feasts and bloody rites than such mockery of that other faith.
"The dog," said an Indian, "was once a spirit; he has fallen for his
sin, and was given by the Great Spirit, in this shape, to man, as his
most intelligent companion. Therefore we sacrifice it in highest honor
to our friends in this world,--to our protecting geniuses in another."
There was religion in that thought. The white man sacrifices his own
brother, and to Mammon, yet he turns in loathing from the dog-feast.
"You say," said the Indian of the South to the missionary, "that
Christianity is pleasing to God. How can that be?--Those men at Savannah
are Christians."
Yes! slave-drivers and Indian traders are called Christians, and the
Indian is to be deemed less like the Son of Mary than they! Wonderful is
the deceit of man's heart!
I have not, on seeing something of them in their own haunts, found
reason to change the sentiments expressed in the following lines, when a
deputation of the Sacs and Foxes visited Boston in 1837, and were, by
one person at least, received in a dignified and courteous manner.
GOVERNOR EVERETT RECEIVING THE INDIAN CHIEFS,
NOVEMBER, 1837.
Who says that Poesy is on the wane,
And that the Muses tune their lyres in vain?
'Mid all the treasures of romantic story,
When thought was fresh and fancy in her glory,
Has ever Art found out a richer theme,
More dark a shadow, or more soft a g
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