is there is authority, and chapter and verse may be cited in
support of it. But we have a right to ask that he shall not transcend the
bounds of reason and possibility, and represent his red men as moved by
motives and guided by sentiments which are wholly inconsistent with the
inexorable facts of the case. We confess to being a little more than
skeptical as to the Indian of poetry and romance: like the German's camel,
he is evolved from the depth of the writer's own consciousness. The poet
takes the most delicate sentiments and the finest emotions of civilization
and cultivation, and grafts them upon the best qualities of savage life;
which is as if a painter should represent an oak-tree bearing roses. The
life of the North-American Indian, like that of all men who stand upon the
base-line of civilization, is a constant struggle, and often a losing
struggle, for mere subsistence. The sting of animal wants is his chief
motive of action, and the full gratification of animal wants his highest
ideal of happiness. The "noble savage," as sketched by poets, weary of the
hollowness, the insincerity, and the meanness of artificial life, is
really a very ignoble creature, when seen in the "open daylight" of truth.
He is selfish, sensual, cruel, indolent, and impassive. The highest graces
of character, the sweetest emotions, the finest sensibilities,--which make
up the novelist's stock in trade,--are not and cannot be the growth of a
so-called state of Nature, which is an essentially unnatural state. We no
more believe that Logan ever made the speech reported by Jefferson, in so
many words, than we believe that Chatham ever made the speech in reply to
Walpole which begins with, "The atrocious crime of being a young man";
though we have no doubt that the reporters in both cases had something
fine and good to start from. We accept with acquiescence, nay, with
admiration, such characters as Magua, Chingachgook, Susquesus, Tamenund,
and Canonchet; but when we come to Uncas, in "The Last of the Mohicans,"
we pause and shake our heads with incredulous doubt. That a young Indian
chief should fall in love with a handsome quadroon like Cora Munro--for
she was neither more nor less than that--is natural enough; but that he
should manifest his passion with such delicacy and refinement is
impossible. We include under one and the same name all the affinities and
attractions of sex, but the appetite of the savage differs from the love
of the educ