l other objections to the theory.[3]

But, as has been said, the scope of our work includes none of these
discussions; and we shall, therefore, pass to the Indian character,
abstracted from all antecedents. That this has been, and is, much
misunderstood, is the first thought which occurs to one who has an
opportunity personally to observe the savage. Nor is it justly a matter
of surprise. The native of this continent has been the subject of
curious and unsatisfactory speculation, since the discovery of the
country by Columbus: by the very _want_ of those things, which
constitute the attraction of other nations, he became at once, and has
continued, the object of a mysterious interest. The absence of dates and
facts, to mark the course of his migration, remits us to conjecture, or
the scarcely more reliable resource of tradition--the want of history
has made him a character of romance. The mere name of Indian gives the
impression of a shadowy image, looming, dim but gigantic, through a
darkness which nothing else can penetrate. This mystery not only
interests, but also disarms, the mind; and we are apt to see, in the
character, around which it hovers, only those qualities which give depth
to the attraction. The creations of poetry and romance are usually
extremes; and they are, perhaps, necessarily so, when the nature of the
subject furnishes no standard, by which to temper the conception.

"The efforts of a poet's imagination are, more or less, under the
control of his opinions:" but opinions of men are founded upon their
history; and there is, properly, _no_ historical Indian character. The
consequence has been, that poets and novelists have constructed their
savage personages according to a hypothetical standard, of either the
virtues or vices, belonging, potentially, to the savage state. The same
rule, applied to portraiture of civilized men, would at once be declared
false and pernicious; and the only reason why it is not equally so, in
its application to the Indian, is, because the separation between him
and us is so broad, that our conceptions of his character can exert
little or no influence upon our intercourse with mankind.

Sympathy for what are called the Indian's misfortunes, has, also,
induced the class of writers, from whom, almost exclusively, our notions
of his character are derived, to represent him in his most genial
phases, and even to palliate his most ferocious acts, by reference to
the injustic