powerful
agency, at work in modifying their original character. What the primary
effects of this cause were likely to be, we may observe in the white
emigrants, who have sought a home among the forests and upon the plains
of the west: whatever they may have been before their migration, they
soon become meditative, abstracted, and taciturn. These, and especially
the last, are the peculiar characteristics of the Indian; his
taciturnity, indeed, amounts to austerity, sometimes impressing the
observer with the idea of affectation. The dispersion, which must have
been the effect of unlimited choice in lands--the mode of life pursued
by those who depended upon the chase for subsistence--the gradual
estrangement produced among the separate tribes, by the necessity of
wide hunting-grounds--the vast expanse of territory at command--causes
operating so long, as to produce a fixed and corresponding nature--are
the sources, to which we may trace almost all the Indian's distinctive
traits.

"Isolation," Carlyle says, "is the sum total of wretchedness to man;"
and, doubtless, the idea which he means to convey is just. "But," in the
words of De Quincey, "no man can be truly _great_, without at least
chequering his life with solitude." Separation from his kind, of course,
deprives a man of the humanizing influences, which are the consequences
of association; but it may, at the same time, strengthen some of the
noblest qualities of human nature. Thus, we are authorized to ascribe to
this agency, a portion of the Indian's fortitude under hardships and
suffering, his contempt for mere meanness, and above all, the proud
elevation of his character. The standards of comparison, which were
furnished by his experience, were few, and, of course, derived from the
ideas of barbarians; but all such as were in any way modified by the
solitude of his existence, were rendered impressive, solemn, and
exalted.

In the vast solitudes of Asia, whence the Indian races migrated to this
continent, so far as the loneliness of savage deserts and endless plains
might exert an influence, we should expect to find the same general
character. But the Asians are almost universally pastoral--the Americans
never; the wildest tribes of Tartary possess numerous useful
domesticated animals--the Americans, even in Mexico,[5] had none; the
Tartars are acquainted with the use of milk, and have been so from time
immemorial--the Indian, even at this day, has adopted it onl