pallachian Mountains and the Gulf, had been
agriculturists and fishermen. Buccaneers, pirates, and even the regular
navies or merchant ships of Europe, drove the natives from the haunted
coast. As they fell back, fur traders and merchants followed them with
professions of regard and extortionate prices. Articles of European
manufacture--knives, hatchets, needles, bright cloths, paints, guns,
powder--could only be bought with furs. The Indian mother sighed in her
hut for the beautiful things brought by the Europeans. The warrior of
the Southwest saw with terror the conquering Iroquois, armed with the
dreaded fire-arms of the stranger. When the bow was laid aside, or
handed to the boys of the tribe, the warriors became the abject slaves
of traders. Guns meant gunpowder and lead. These could only come from
the white man. His avarice guarded the steps alike to bear-meat and
beaver-skins. Thus the Indian became a wandering hunter, helpless and
dependent. These hunters traveled great distances, sometimes with a
pack on their backs weighing from thirty to fifty pounds. Until the
middle of the eighteenth century horses had not become very common
among them, and the old Indian used to laugh at the white man, so lazy
that he could not walk. A consuming fire was preying on the vitals of
an ancient simple people. Unscrupulous traders, who boasted that they
made a thousand per cent, held them in the most abject thrall. It has
been carefully computed that these hunters worked, on an average, for
ten cents a day. The power of their old village chiefs grow weaker. No
longer the old men taught the boys their traditions, morals, or
religion. They had ceased to be pagans, without becoming Christians.

The wearied hunter had fire-water given him as an excitement to drown
the cares common to white and red. Slowly the polity, customs,
industries, morals, religion, and character of the red race were
consumed in this terrible furnace of avarice. The foundations of our
early aristocracies were laid. Byrd, in his "History of the Dividing
Line," tells us that a school of seventy-seven Indian children existed
in 1720, and that they could all read and write English; but adds, that
the jealousy of traders and land speculators, who feared it would
interfere with their business, caused it to be closed. Alas! this
people had encountered the iron nerve of Christianity, without reaping
the fruit of its intelligence or mercy.

Silver, although occasional