necessitated us to leave imperfect, respecting the Missions as well as
the men.

Of the Red Indians who first stirred the compassion of John Eliot, there
is little that is good to tell, or rather there is little good to tell of
the White man's treatment of them. Self-government by the stronger
people always falls hard on the weaker, and Mission after Mission has
been extinguished by the enmity of the surrounding Whites and the
corruption and decay of the Indians. A Moravian Mission has been
actually persecuted. Every here and there some good man has arisen and
done a good work on those immediately around him, and at the present time
there are some Indians living upon the reserves in the western part of
the continent, fairly civilized, settled, and Christianized, and only
diminishing from that law of their physical nature that forbids them to
flourish without a wilderness in which to roam.

But between the long-settled States of America and those upon the shores
of the Pacific, lies a territory where the Indian is still a wild and
savage man, and where hatred and slaughter prevail. The Government at
Washington would fain act a humane part, and set apart reserves of land
and supplies, but the agents through which the transactions are carried
on have too often proved unfaithful, and palmed off inferior goods on the
Indians, or brought up old debts against them; and in the meantime mutual
injuries work up the settlers and the Red men to such a pitch of
exasperation, that horrid cruelties are perpetrated on the one side, and
on the other the wild men are shot down as pitilessly as beasts of prey,
while the travellers and soldiers who live in daily watch and ward
against the "wily savage" learn to stigmatize all pity for him as a sort
of sentimentalism sprung from Cooper's novels.

Still, where there is peace, good men make their way, and with blessed
effect. We wish we had room for the records of the Bishopric of
Minnesota, and the details of the work among the Indians; more especially
how, when a rising was contemplated to massacre the White settlers all
along the border, a Christian Indian travelled all night to give warning;
and how, on another occasion, no less than four hundred White women and
children were saved by the interposition of four Christian Indian chiefs.
Perhaps the Church has never made so systematic an effort upon the
Indians as in Minnesota, and it is to be hoped that there may be some
success.