to the songs 'of a Saviour's dying love,' mingling with the majestic chorus of 'many waters;' he would witness to-night, an audience not less intelligent than those gathered on similar occasions, 'in the smiling villages of the East;' and a library, as yet small, in which however the last new novel is not conspicuous, but the works of Burke, Carlyle's and Headley's Cromwell, Arnold's History of Rome, and the Essays of Talfourd, Stephens and Channing.

Though the citizens of the most Northern village in the Valley of the Mississippi, you show to the world that extremes are often in close proximity; that the dwellers on the borders of an Indian country can commune with the noblest and best of minds, through their works, and appreciate, as well as any in the world, the voice of a living ministry, and the truths of the Sacred Writings."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS IN GENERAL.

BEING desirous of doing all that I can towards bettering the condition of my brethren, I here subjoin four letters, originally addressed to the "Saturday Evening Post" of Philadelphia, on the subject of Indian Civilization, the plan which I have presented before different Legislatures, and recently in a Memorial presented in both Houses of Congress for their action.

I am happy to say that there is a universal approval of this plan throughout the Union; and it is my design to request the General Government of this country that they may sooner or later take these Indians under their care, and have the credit of dealing justly with her long abused red races. If Congress does not do any thing in the present first session of the thirty-first Congress, I shall go again—and just as often as they meet I shall press this subject before them, until something is done. The remarks here penned may be also applied in the

case of our Nation, who are now becoming demoralized yearly by alcoholic drinks.

I desire the reasons here given to be weighed by all impartial readers, and if any lack of soundness in our arguments be found, let it not be laid to the weakness of the cause we advocate, but to the writer's deficiency for such a work.

MR. EDITOR,-Your readers will have noticed by the papers throughout the Union, the plan I have presented before the American public of my endeavors to save a remnant of the scattered Indian tribes of the Northwest.

I will endeavor to give a short outline, in three or four letters, of the matter as follows:

1. Why the Indians have not improved, and why they have decreased in numbers when coming in contact with the Europeans, since the first commencement of their intercourse until the present.

2. The fears I entertain that they never will hold a peaceable possession of any great portion of the West.

3. The plan I advocate, and its practicability.

4. The benefit it must be to the American Government, and to the Indians.

I. In this letter: Why they have not improved, and why they have decreased in numbers.

To give a statement of all the disadvantages they have had to encounter would not be in accordance with my present object, nor with the necessity imposed on me with reference to your columns; yet I will mention a few. In their intercourse with the frontier settlers they meet the worst classes of pale faces. They soon adopt their foolish ways and their vices, and their minds being thus poisoned and preoccupied, the morality and education which the better classes would teach them are forestalled. This is not to be wondered at when it is generally known that the frontier settlers are made up of wild, adventurous spirits, willing to raise themselves by the downfall of the Indian race. These are traders, spirit-sellers, horse thieves, counterfeiters and scapegallowses, who neither fear God nor regard the laws of When the Indians come in contact with such men, as representatives of the American people, what else could be expected of them? It is not strange, that, seeing as he does the gross immorality of the whites whom he meets, and the struggle between the pale face for wrong and the red man for right, which begins when they first meet, and ends not until one dies, that he refuses to follow the footsteps of the white man in the

man.

attainment of science. The majority having never been in the society of the good, religious and refined, they know but little of the advantages of civilization.

There has been another class of men who have kept pace with the frontier, whose fathers and friends were killed in the wars in the more Easterly States some years ago by the Indians; these having such implacable hatred against the poor Indians, do all they can to enrage one race against the other, and if possible involve the two in war, that they may engage in their favorite work of depredation.

II. Their love of Adventurous Life.

Their fathers having been Nimrods, in a literal sense, they have followed in their footsteps.

Not that I would have you suppose that there is no such thing as teaching the American Indian the peaceful arts of agriculture, for he has already proved himself teachable. The suddenness with which the American people have come upon them, has prevented them from gradually acquiring the arts of civilized life; and leaving local employment, they have hunted for a living, and thus perpetuated that independent, roaming disposition which was their early education.

III. The agitation of mind they experience in the be lief that Government will want their lands and they be removed to the West.