y, and open, if I may so say, a vista to the philosophy of
the Indian mind, and the theory of his religion.

An ample field for investigation is thus before you. And it is one full
of attractions alike for the man of science, research, learned leisure
and philosophy. But it is not alone to these, that the Red man and his
associations, present a field for study and contemplation. His history
and existence on this continent, is blended with the richest sources of
poetry and imagination. His beautiful and sonorous geographical
nomenclature alone, has clothed our hills and lakes and streams, with
the charms of poetic numbers.--The Red man himself, who once roved these
attractive scenes, with his bow and arrows, and his brow crowned with
the highest honors of the war path and the chase, was a being of NOBLE
MOULD. He felt the true sentiment of independence. He was capable of
high deeds of courage, disinterestedness and virtue. His generosity and
hospitality were unbounded. His constancy in professed friendship was
universal, and his memory of a good deed, done to him, or his kindred,
never faded. His breast was animated with a noble thirst of fame. To
acquire this, he trod the war path, he submitted to long and severe
privations. Neither fatigue, hunger or thirst were permitted to gain the
mastery over him. A stoic in endurance he was above complaint, and when
a prisoner at the stake, he triumphed over his enemy in his death song.
The history of such a people must be full of deep tragic and poetic
incidents; and their antiquities, cannot fail to illustrate it.--The
tomb that holds a man, derives all its moral interest _from_ the man,
and would be destitute of it, without him. America is the tomb of the
Red man.

A single objection, to the plan of the institution, remains to be
answered. It may be deemed too intricate and complex to secure unity in
action. The inquiries are admitted to be interesting and capable of
furnishing intellectual aliment for a literary society; but why not
establish it on plain principles, in the ordinary mode? All that is
sought, it may be said, could be accomplished without such a weight of
associated machinery. By organizing it on the basis of the several
tribes, and the several clans of each tribe; spreading over so wide an
area of territory, and adopting so many of the aboriginal peculiarities,
in terms, form of admission, and you have exposed the institution to
serious objections, and to the d