THE unhappy descendants of those warlike ancestors, who once exercised the just rights of sovereignty over the soil we inhabit, until superiour craft in the first place, and superiour force in the second, compelled them to surrender their inheritance, and to seal the conveyance with their blood, seem peculiarly entitled to our commiseration and regard. We invaded the quietude of their forests, corrupted the simplicity of their manners, and left to their posterity all the curses of civilization, without one of its benefits. The Indian is now (if I may be allowed the expression) little more than the shadow of his departed ancestors. With an insatiable appetite for glory, and a magnanimous contempt of danger in its acquisition, their onset was terrible, and their expiring agonies breathed defiance. We have been taught to look with reverence on antiquity; but it may be made a very serious question, whether all the records of past ages can produce examples of more heroick contempt of death, than the forests of America have furnished? Ingenuity had already been taxed to its full competence to devise tortures more exquisite; yet indisputable tradition relates that the

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forests of America have exhibited the spectacle of a captive, while slowly expiring at the stake amidst the horrible variety of his torments, coolly suggesting modes of suffering more acute for his own body to endure. We are almost induced to believe, that the contempt of death influenced their physical nature, and, by removing all susceptibility from their nerves, enabled them to suffer in a manner congenial to their wishes. The descendants of these gallant souls we now behold dissipating, as civilized life invades the recesses of their forests; and one or two centuries will probably allow them little more than historical existence. A sort of chivalry in reformation is one of the distinguishing features of the present age. Every artifice has been employed to tempt the Indian from his wilderness; but the experiment has so often unsuccessfully encountered the recurrenee of former habits, that we may venture to pronounce it incompetent. Naturalists have observed of the beaver, that, when domesticated, he gives no evidence of that shrewd sagacity and calcu lating judgment, that distinguishes him in the society of his fellows; but, on the contrary, he is sluggish and inert, and dozes away a

sullen kind of existence. Thus the Indian, when he quits his native haunts, leaves all his ancient properties behind him, contracts all the vices of civilization, and returns to his comrades with the pestilence. Benevolence may delight to confer favours; but if the subject renounces them, or turns them to a purpose destructive of himself, a still further distribution is no longer a blessing, but a curse. The Indian, even in his natural state, regards rest as the completion of enjoyment. The calls of hunger can alone rouse him from his lethargy, and, when the woods have satisfied the cravings of his appetite, he relapses into his former habits of indolence. This constitutional malady is of itself an insurmountable obstacle to the advance of civilization. When the earth yields her tributes to the hands of such reluctant industry, they are not hoarded up with a provident caution to alleviate the austerity of the seasons, but bartered away for that pernicious opiate, which secures them present rest. The same propensity, that formerly prompted them to dare the terrours of their native woods, is now turned into another and a more inglorious chammel. The intoxicating draught is more easily procured, than the repast which the wilderness affords, and the manufacture of an idle broom or a basket ensures a plentiful supply. Daily experience confirms the remark, that even the descendants of savages, who were born in civilized life, and from earliest infancy have partook largely of its benefits, still maintain an obstinate struggle with destiny, rove about discontented and dejected, the miserable victim of cruel experiment, and living libels on the theories of philosophers. Let them once

more enjoy their solitary rocks, and, as civilization recedes, the energy of their nature revives.

It has already been observed, that a tendency to rest is the distinguishing trait of an Indian. Nature seems in some climates to have protected this indolence by her own munificence, spontaneously pouring her treasures in such abundance, as to supercede the necessity of labour. In the island of Otaheite missionaries have exerted themselves for ten successive years to disseminate Christianity and the arts of social life. Wearied and exhausted in an undertaking, proved by experiment to be hopeless, they propose to abandon their project, and to return to their native country. They have cultiva ted the soil, with a view to excite a spirit of emulation amongst the natives; but their reply is, that their parent has already by her bounty anticipated all the exertions of her children. Equally unsuccessful have been their efforts to promulgate the gospel. The Indians pertinaciously adhere to their preconceived habits and opinions, as the standard of right and wrong, allowing no other standard of comparison to be just. Their Deity is still a fowl, who receives their sacrifice and adoration; nor have all the efforts of the missionaries abated their reverence for one of his feathers. Our fair country. women will not relish the savage compliment paid to their sex,when they are informed, that the natives do not scruple to deprive their tender infants of existence, if they belong to their class; alledging no other reason for so doing, than the expense of their education. Still the laws are very liberal to matrimonial alliance; for every man is allowed as many wives as he pleases to have, the number be

ing only limited by his competency to maintain them. As a pledge of the sincerity of the friendship they profess, a loan of a wife is regarded as the highest; the rejection of which is atonable only by blood. Here a whimsical inconsistency in their predominant conceptions of justice and propriety is worthy of notice. If a friend asks the same indulgence with one of their sisters, which amongst their wives it is even dangerous to refuse, the brother is alarmed for the honour of his family, and the personal security of the guest is put in jeopardy. To account for this apparent paradox, let it be understood, that, amongst these ardent and uncultivated minds, a friend is regarded as an integral part of themselves; hence wherever it is lawful for them to have intercourse, a friend may claim the same indulgence. As Nature has branded an alliance between a brother and a sister with incest, they transfer to a friend the opprobrium which would in that case alight upon themselves, if any request, short of matrimony, was solicited. He then doffs the character of a friend, and assumes that of a brother.

Like the ancient Picts,they delight much in tatooing their bodies with every device, which their capricious fancy may represent. The minister of justice, who hears, rejects, or redresses the complaints of the inhabitants, has one half of his body, from the crown of his head to the soal of his foot, including even the eye-lash, by artificial expedient made perfectly black. The other half shines with a light and delicate copper hue. When the suppliant, without the dull formality of a writ or declaration, implores a redress of his grievances, if the mind of the judge is inauspicious, he turns to him the sable side of

his countenance. If, on the other hand, justice is propitious, the visage beams with all the benignity of copper. By a mere turn of the body the case is decided, and the parties litigant satisfied with the judgment.

On the recent arrival of a ship in the harbour of Otaheite, and while she was within twenty miles of the port, the weather being remarkably tempestuous, a canoe was discovered by the sailors braving the inclemency of the element, and with the rapidity of a water-fowl pursuing its course. It soon appeared that the ship was the object of its destination, and the sequel justified the conjecture. It bore an important dispatch from his majesty the emperour of Otaheite, written with his own hand in plain English, informing the captain that affairs of deep _moment prevented his personal attendance; that the day was dedicated to some ritual observance of theirs, and that, for the purpose of augmenting its festivity, he solicited the donation of a rum-bottle. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the request was immediately complied with, and that, although the couriers in their return underwent trying vicissitudes, the bottle and its contents were preserved. His majesty, under the patronage of the emissaries, is expert in the art of writing, and indites not only in his native tongue, but likewise in English, with a propriety that would put many of our countrymen to the blush. Probably he did not dream at the time that he indited the letter, of which the following is an exact transcript, that the pages of the Anthology would ever be blazoned by that specimen of the literature of Otaheite. We will previously to its transcription remark, that the gentleman, who, on his return from that country,

So long then as the Indian nations preserve their identity, we entertain the opinion, that the project of their reformation to social life will be idle and abortive. If any one asks how this obstacle is to be surmounted, we answer with confidence, by breaking up and confounding this identity altogether. By an intermarriage with the whites, a posterity would arise in whom the discordant manners of social and savage life would harmoniously mingle. This likewise is a fact attested by experiment. Those who are not unaptly styled the lords of Virginia, amongst whom may be reckoned some of the most splendid characters that adorned our revolution, comprize in an eminent degree, the heroism without the ferocity of the wilderness, and to this day boast of their Indian ancestors. Of all the holds on the heart of man, matrimony is the strongest. In the instance we

have mentioned, the Indian, having a perpetual representative of social life before his eyes, the partaker of his joys and sorrows,might find his love the ascendant of his ferocity; and those strong habits, which no force is competent to relax, the hand of affection might loosen and dissolve. At all events, the children would follow the bent of maternal inclination, and wonder at the passion of their fathers for the forest. In what manner an intermixture of blood operates, so as to alter habits and desires, is a secret hidden so deep in the dark recesses of nature, that it never will be discovered, until we can ascertain how the soul forms an alliance with the body.

We are confident, men of enlarged and expanded minds will not censure the freedom of these strictures, believing, as we do, that Christianity comprizes views of the present and a future state of existence too sublime and pure to be comprehended by the being, who sees his deity in every cloud, and hears him only in the tempest.' Such premature conversion in the earlier ages of Christianity, when the lips professed what the mind could not comprehend, has stained centuries with blood, brought reproach upon its name, and furnished matter of triumph for the infidel alone. Our religion is a system that was opened with the world we inhabit, and is to continue to the end of it, gradually unfolding, until all the race of Adam are comprehended in its blessings. The stream of time, although its surface is turbulent and threatening, has, even in our day, washed away the mummery of Rome, one great obstacle to Christianity, and we can but regard the fears of the immortal Burke, that all religion will go