TRAITS OF INDIAN CHARACTER.

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    "I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logans  hungry, and he gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not."--Speech of au Indian Chief.

    THERE is something in the character and habits of the North Ameri savage, taken in e with the sery over which he is aced te, its vast lakes, boundless forests, majestic rivers, and trackless plains, that is, to my mind, wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern, simple, and enduring, ?tted to grapple with dif?culties and to   support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for the support of the kindly virtues; a, if we would but take the trouble to pee through that proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity which lock up his character from casual observation, we should ?nd him lio his fellow-man of civilized life by more of those sympathies and affes than are usually ascribed to him.

    It has bee of the unfortunate abines of Ameri the early periods of ization to be doubly wronged by the white men. They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by merary and frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traduced by bigoted and ied writers.

    The ists ofteed them like beasts of the forest, and the author has endeavored to justify him in his es. The former found it easier to extermihan to civilize; the latter to vilify than to discrimihe appellations of savage and pagan were deemed suf?t to san the hostilities of both; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and defamed, not because they were guilty, but because they were ignorant.

    The rights of the savage have seldom been properly appreciated or respected by the white man. In peace he has too oftehe dupe of artful traf? war he has been regarded as a ferocious animal whose life or death was a question of mere precaution and venience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile and is scious of the power to destroy.

    The same prejudices, which were indulged thus early, exist in on circulation at the present day. Certain learned societies have, it is true, with laudable diligence, endeavored to iigate and record the real characters and manners of the   Indian tribes; the Ameri gover, too, has wisely and humanely exerted itself to inculcate a friendly and forbearing spirit towards them and to protect them from fraud and injustice.* The current opinion of the Indian character, however, is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes whifest the frontiers and hang on the skirts of the settlements. These are too only posed of degee beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without beied by its civilization. That proud independence whied the main pillar of savage virtue has been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their native ce cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whion of fertility. It has eed their strength, multiplied their diseases, and superinduced upon their inal barbarity the low vices of arti?cial life. It has given them a thousand super?uous wants, whilst it has dimiheir means of mere existe has driven before it the animals of the chase, who ?y from the sound of the axe and the smoke of the settlement and seek refuge in the depths of remoter forests a untrodden wilds. Thus do we too often ?nd the Indians on our froo be the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes, who have lingered in the viity of the settlements and sunk into precarious and vagaboence. Poverty, repining and hopeless poverty, a ker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes their spirits and blights every free and noble quality of their natures. They bee drunken, i, feeble, thievish, and pusillanimous. They loiter like vagrants about the settlements, among spacious dwellings replete with elaborate forts, whily rehem sensible of the parative wretess of their own dition. Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes, but they are excluded from the ba. Plenty revels over the ?elds, but they are starving in the midst of its abundance;   the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden, but they feel as reptiles that i it.

    * The Ameri Gover has been iigable in its exertions to ameliorate the situation of the Indians, and to introduce among them the arts of civilization and civil and religious knowledge. To protect them from the frauds of the white traders no purchase of land from them by individuals is permitted, nor is any person allowed to receive lands from them as a present without the express san of gover. These precautions are strictly enforced.

    How different was their state while yet the undisputed lords of the soil! Their wants were few and the means of grati?cation within their reach. They saw every one round them sharing the same lot, enduring the same hardships, feeding on the same aliments, arrayed in the same rude garments. No roof then rose but en to the homeless stranger; no smoke curled among the trees but he was wele to sit down by its ?re and join the hunter in his repast. "For," says an old historian of New England, "their life is so void of care, and they are so loving also, that they make use of those things they enjoy as on goods, and are therein so passiohat rather than one should starve through want, they would starve all; thus they pass their time merrily, narding our pomp, but are better tent with their own, whieeem so meanly of." Such were the Indians whilst in the pride and energy of their primitive natures: they resembled those wild plants which thrive best in the shades of the forest, but shrink from the hand of cultivation and perish beh the in?uence of the sun.

    In discussing the savage character writers have been too proo indulge in vulgar prejudid passionate exaggeration, instead of the did temper of true philosophy. They have not suf?tly sidered the peculiar circumstances in which the   Indians have been placed, and the peculiar principles under which they have been educated. No being acts midly from rule than the Indian. His whole duct is regulated acc to some general maxims early implanted in his mind. The moral laws that govern him are, to be sure, but few; but then he s to them all; the white man abounds in laws ion, morals, and manners, but how many does he violate!

    A frequent ground of accusation against the Indians is their disregard of treaties, and the treachery and wantonness with which, in time of apparent peace, they will suddenly ?y to hostilities. The intercourse of the white men with the Indians, however, is too apt to be cold, distrustful, oppressive, and insulting. They seldom treat them with that ?dend frankness which are indispensable to real friendship, nor is suf?t caution observed not to offend against those feelings of pride or superstition which often prompt the Indian to hostility quicker than mere siderations of i. The solitary savage feels silently, but acutely. His sensibilities are not diffused over so wide a surface as those of the white man, but they run in steadier and deeper els. His pride, his affes, his superstitions, are all directed towards fewer objects, but the wounds in?icted on them are proportionably severe, and furnish motives of hostility which we ot suf?tly appreciate. Where a unity is also limited in number, and forms one great patriarchal family, as in an Indian tribe, the injury of an individual is the injury of the whole, and the se of vengeance is almost instantaneously diffused. One cil-?re is suf?t for the discussion and arra of a plan of hostilities. Here all the ?ghting-men and sages assemble. Eloquend superstition bio ihe minds of the warriors. The orator awakens their martial ardor, and they are wrought up to a kind ious desperation by the visions of the prophet and the dreamer.

    An instance of one of those sudden exasperations, arising from a motive peculiar to the Indian character, is extant in an old record of the early settlement of Massachusetts. The planters of Plymouth had defaced the mos of the dead at Passo, and had pluhe grave of the Sachems mother of some skins with which it had been decorated. The Indians are remarkable for the reverence which they eain for the sepulchres of their kiribes that have passed geions exiled from the abodes of their aors, when by ce they have been travelling in the viity, have been known to turn aside from the highway, and, guided by wonderfully accurate tradition, have crossed the try for miles to some tumulus, buried perhaps in woods, where the bones of their tribe were aly deposited, and there have passed hours in sileation. In?uenced by this sublime and holy feeling, the Sachem whose mothers tomb had been violated gathered his men together, and addressed them in the followiifully simple and pathetic harangue--a curious spe of Indian eloquend an affeg instance of ?lial piety in a savage:

    "When last the glorious light of all the sky was underh this globe and birds grew silent, I began to settle, as my  is, to take repose. Before mine eyes were fast closed methought I saw a vision, at which my spirit was much troubled; and trembling at that doleful sight, a spirit cried aloud, Behold, my son, whom I have cherished, see the breasts that gave thee suck, the hands that lapped thee warm ahee oft. st thou fet to take revenge of those wild people who have defaced my mo in a despiteful manner, disdaining our antiquities and honorable s? See, now, the Sachems grave lies like the on people, defaced by an ignoble race. Thy mother doth plain and implores thy aid against this thievish people who have newly intruded on our land. If this be suffered, I shall not rest quiet in my everlasting habitation. This said, the spirit vanished, and I, all in a sweat, not able scarce to speak, began to get   some strength and recollect my spirits that were ?ed, aermio demand your sel and assistance."

    I have adduced this ae at some length, as it tends to show how these sudden acts of hostility, which have been attributed to caprid per?dy, may often arise from deep and generous motives, which our iion to Indian character and s prevents our properly appreciating.

    Anround of violent ainst the Indians is their barbarity to the vanquished. This had its in partly in polid partly in superstition. The tribes, though sometimes called nations, were never so formidable in their numbers but that the loss of several warriors was sensibly felt; this articularly the case when they had been frequently engaged in warfare; and many an instance occurs in Indian history where a tribe that had long been formidable to its neighbors has been broken up and driven away by the capture and massacre of its principal ?ghtihere was a stroation, therefore, to the victor to be merciless, not so much to gratify any cruel revenge, as to provide for future security. The Indians had also the superstitious belief, frequent among barbarous nations and prevalent also among the as, that the manes of their friends who had fallen in battle were soothed by the blood of the captives. The prisoners, however, who are not thus sacri?ced are adopted into their families in the place of the slain, and are treated with the ?dend affe of relatives and friends; nay, so hospitable and tender is their eaihat wheernative is offered them they will often prefer to remain with their adopted brethren rather than <q>..</q>return to the home and the friends of their youth.

    The cruelty of the Indians towards their prisoners has beeened sihe ization of the whites. What was formerly a pliah polid superstition has been   exasperated into a grati?cation of vengeahey ot but be sensible that the white mehe usurpers of their a dominion, the cause of their degradation, and the gradual destroyers of their race. They go forth to battle smarting with injuries and indignities which they have individually suffered, and they are driven to madness and despair by the wide-spreading desolation and the overwhelming ruin of European warfare. The whites have too frequently set them an example of violence by burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence, ahey wohat savages do not show moderation and magnanimity towards those who have left them nothing but mere existend wretess.

    We stigmatize the Indians, also, as cowardly and treacherous, because they use stratagem in warfare in prefereo open force; but in this they are fully justi?ed by their rude code of honor. They are early taught that stratagem is praiseworthy; the bravest warrior thinks it no disgrace to lurk in silence, and take every advantage of his foe: he triumphs in the superior craft and sagacity by which he has been eo surprise aroy an enemy. Indeed, man is naturally more proo subtilty than open valor, owing to his physical weakness in parison with other animals. They are endowed with natural ons of defence, with horns, with tusks, with hoofs, and talons; but man has to depend on his superiacity. In all his enters with these, his proper enemies, he resorts tem; and when he perversely turns his hostility against his fellow-ma ?rst tihe same subtle mode of warfare.

    The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by stratagem. That chivalrous ce whiduces us to despise the suggestions of prudend to rush in the face of certain danger is the offspring of society and produced by education. It is honorable, because it is in fact the triumph of   lofty se over an instinctive repugo pain, and over those yearnings after personal ease and security which society has ned as ig is kept alive by pride and the fear of shame; and thus the dread of real evil is overe by the superior dread of an evil which exists but in the imagination. It has been cherished and stimulated also by various means. It has beeheme of spirit-stirring song and chivalrous story. The poet and minstrel have delighted to shed round it the splendors of ?, and even the historian has fotten the sravity of narration and broken forth ihusiasm and rhapsody in its praise. Triumphs and geous pageants have been its reward: mos, on which art has exhausted its skill and opules treasures, have beeed to perpetuate a nations gratitude and admiration. Thus arti?cially excited, ce has risen to araordinary and factitious degree of heroism, and, arrayed in all the glorious &quot;pomp and circumstance of war,&quot; this turbulent quality has even been able to eclipse many of those quiet but invaluable virtues which silently enhe human character and swell the tide of human happiness.

    But if ce intrinsically sists in the de?ance of dangbbr>?</abbr>er and pain, the life of the Indian is a tinual exhibition of it.

    He lives in a state of perpetual hostility and risk. Peril and adventure are genial to his nature, or rather seem necessary to arouse his faculties and to give an io his existence.

    Surrounded by hostile tribes, whose mode of warfare is by ambush and surprisal, he is alrepared fht and lives with his ons in his hands. As the ship careers in fearful singlehrough thbbr>.９９lｉｂ?</abbr>e solitudes of o, as the bird mingles among clouds and storms, and wings its way, a mere speck, across the pathless ?elds of air, so the Indian holds his course, silent, solitary, but undauhrough the boundless bosom of the wilderness. His expeditions may vie in distand danger with the pilgrimage of the devotee or the crusade of the knight-errant. He traverses vast forests exposed to the hazards of lonely siess, of   lurking enemies, and pining famiormy lakes, those great inland seas, are no obstacles to his wanderings: in his light oe of bark he sports like a feather on their waves, and darts with the swiftness of an arrow down the r rapids of the rivers. His very subsistence is snatched from the midst of toil and peril. He gains his food by the hardships and dangers of the chase: he s himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther, and the buffalo, and sleeps among the thunders of the cataract.

    No hero of a or modern days  surpass the Indian in his lofty pt of death and the fortitude with which he sustains his cruelest af?i. Indeed, we here behold him rising superior to the white man in sequence of his peculiar education. The latter rushes to glorious death at the outh; the former calmly plates its approach, and triumphantly e amidst the varied torments of surrounding foes and the protracted agonies of ?re. He even takes a pride in taunting his persecutors and provoking their iy of torture; and as the dev ?ames prey on his very vitals and the ?esh shrinks from the sinews, he raises his last song of triumph, breathing the de?ance of an unquered heart and invoking the spirits of his fathers to withat he dies without a groan.

    Notwithstanding the obloquy with which the early historians have overshadowed the characters of the unfortuives, some bright gleams occasionally break through which throw a degree of melancholy lustre on their memories. Facts are occasionally to be met with in the rude annals of the eastern provinces which, though recorded with the c of prejudid bigotry, yet speak for themselves, and will be dwelt on with applause and sympathy when prejudice shall have passed away.

    In one of the homely narratives of the Indian wars in New England there is a toug at of the desolation carried into the   tribe of the Pequod Indians. Humanity shrinks from the cold-blooded detail of indiscrimichery. In one place we read of the surprisal of an Indian fort in the night, when the wigwams were ed in ?ames and the miserable inhabitants shot down and slain in attempting to escape, &quot;all beiched and ended in the course of an hour.&quot; After a series of similar transas &quot;our soldiers,&quot; as the historian piously observes, &quot;being resolved by Gods assistao make a ?nal destru of them,&quot; the unhappy savages being hunted from their homes and fortresses and pursued with ?re and sword, a sty but gallant band, the sad remnant of the Pequod warriors, with their wives and children te in a s.

    Burning with indignation and rendered sullen by despair, with hearts bursting with grief at the destru of their tribe, and spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat, they refused to ask their lives at the hands of an insulting foe, and preferred death to submission.

    As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat, so as to render escape impracticable. Thus situated, their enemy &quot;plied them with shot all the time, by which means many were killed and buried in the mire.&quot; In the darkness and fog that preceded the dawn of day some few broke through the besiegers and escaped into the woods; &quot;the rest were left to the querors, of which many were killed in the s, like sullen dogs who would rather, in their self-willedness and madness, sit still and be shot through or cut to pieces&quot; than implore for mercy. When the day broke upon this handful of forlorn but dauntless spirits, the soldiers, we are told, entering the s, &quot;saw several heaps of them sitting close together, upon whom they discharged their pieces, laden with ten or twelve pistol bullets at a time, putting the muzzles of the pieces uhe boughs, within a few yards of them; so as, besides those that were found dead, many more were killed and sunk into the mire, and never   were minded more by friend or foe.&quot;

    any ohis plain unvarale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed to he hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature?

    When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes aed with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this mahey suffered death without resistance or even supplication. Such duct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indian it was reviled as obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstance! How different is virtue clothed in purple ahroned in state, from virtue naked aute and perishing obscurely in a wilderness!

    But I forbear to dwell on these gloomy pictures. The eastern tribes have long since disappeared; the forests that sheltered them have been laid low, and scary traces remain of them ihickly-settled States of New England, excepting here and there the Indian name of a village or a stream. And such must, sooner or later, be the fate of those other tribes which skirt the frontiers, and have occasionally been inveigled from their forests to mingle in the wars of white men. In a little while, and they will go the way that their brethren have gone before.

    The few hordes which still linger about the shores of Huron and Superior and the tributary streams of the Mississippi will share the fate of those tribes that once spread over Massachusetts and ecticut and lorded it along the proud banks of the Hudson, of that gigantic race said to have existed on the borders of the Susquehanna, and of those various nations that ?ourished about the Potomad the Rappahannod that peopled the forests of the vast valley of Shenandoah. They will vanish like a vapor from the face of the earth; their very history will be lost in fetfulness; and &quot;the places that now know them will know them   no more forever.&quot; Or if, perce, some dubious memorial of them should survive, it may be in the romantic dreams of the poet, to people in imagination his glades and groves, like the fauns and satyrs and sylvaies of antiquity. But should he venture upon the dark story of their wrongs and wretess, should he tell how they were invaded, corrupted, despoiled, driven from their native abodes and the sepulchres of their fathers, hunted like wild beasts about the earth, a down with violend butchery to the grave, posterity will either turn with horror and incredulity from the tale or blush with indignation at the inhumanity of their forefathers. &quot;We are driven back,&quot; said an old warrior, &quot;until we  retreat no farther--our hatchets are broken, our bows are snapped, our ?res are nearly extinguished; a little longer and the white man will cease to persecute us, for we shall cease to exist!&quot;

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