viction of our own barbarism in the midst of boasted refinement. When you speak of your own tolerance and of his debasing superstition, he reverts to the scenes which crimson the pages of your early provincial history with the innocent blood of those who suf fered for witchcraft at Salem, under the sanction of the pious yet deluded Cotton Mather and Noyes.* When we speak of tender mercies he will show you the Statute which until lately permitted you to immure a citizen for debt, within the walls of a prison, and prevent the means of discharging it—of scourges and stripes in your armies and navies,―of selling the persons of the poor,-of the indiscriminate incarceration of the accused and condemned,-read to him in the charter of your rights that all men are born free and equal, and you are reminded of thousands of fellow creatures born in the same land and speaking the same language who are held in absolute bondage; and when you descant on the perfection of your constitution and wholesome laws, moral restraints, and religious privileges,-you are asked to account for the evils that walk at noon day in your principal cities, -for your riots and incendiarisms, when in the midst of the conflagration of Temples dedicated to the Deity, peaceable and unoffending citizens are immolated to the madness and violence of an implacable mob; he does not account by the common process for these anomalies, that "they arise from the imperfection of all human institutions," but he draws out the stern and inflexible rule which the white man applies to himself. Happily the corruption that sometimes festers in the seats of public councils and among men in high places, are veiled from his searching enquiry and comparison. But enough is disclosed if not to justify the Indian's self-avengement, yet to show, that neither necessity,-nor sovereign right,-nor voluntary abandonment-can divest that title. which can be supported, not by the nicely woven technical conceits of common law, or international policy, but as his own free soil from the hand of nature, the best and highest, of all assurances, declared and established, according to the eternal principles of natural justice and right. We have endeavored to shew that if the Indian has been actuated by a retaliatory spirit, the white man has been not less successful in his exhibitions of natural depravity, and while as a state we have endeavored to atone for the neglect, and oppression, and injustice of generations past, there still remains a debt to be discharged to the remnants of a noble race. * Bancroft's Hist. U.S. and Marshall's Life of Washington, 1 vol. What then are the remedies that can be applied for their amelioration? At this time there are gathered together in the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minesota, upwards of 160,000 Indiaus, comprising many thousands of the Algonquins, of whom 80,000 are in a state capable of improvement, they have receded before the tide of population, and the aggressions of their pale-faced neighbors, and as time advances and new governments are organized to embrace the territory they occupy, again for like reasons are they to yield to the necessity of parting with their domain, and seeking other homes, "They waste us; ay, like April snow "Till they shall fill the land, and we not so however if we cultivate among them the means our system of political economy recommends, with the aid of moral and religious instruction, in a word, it is but to give them your precious rights, privileges and enjoyments, and the work is accomplished. But is it feasi ble?, is the hackneyed phrase "he is an Indian, he will be an Indian still," to be "as a lion in the way?" The memorials of Caupolica,-of Red Jacket,-Pontiac-Osceola,-Tecumseh and hundreds who have required only a place in civilized society, to class them with the proudest spirits of any age, or clime, are evidences of their susceptibility of the warmest affections and the noblest deeds that can shed lustre and honor upon society. There is at this time a memorial before the House of Congress, the object of which is to induce the General Government to locate the Indians in a collective body, with a government of their own, when after they are secured in their lands, they may make such improve. ments as shall serve to attach them to their homes, and it is recommended not only for its practicability, but for the soundest interests of our country, and it has for its object The concentration of the Indians with a view to the annual distribution of their annuities with consequent reduction of expenses; A treaty with them that they are never again to be removed, with a certainty that they will sanction such treaty; An accommodation to their social principles, to live in larger bodies, and with an improvement of all their domestic enjoyments; Bryant. The reunion of all the northern tribes whose language is so nearly identified, securing every sociol blessing and preventing the evils of war; The adoption of our form of government, with all its attendant advantages. The last is the principle and most interesting feature in this plan, which altho untried, for many reasons is commended for an experiment which may prove successful, if a more effectual mode cannot be devised. That Indians who have been educated at our colleges have returned again to barbarous habits, and that they have resisted every attempt to socialize them under our State Governments, within whose limits they have hitherto removed, only proves the necessity of giving them a Government to be administered by themselves, or perfecting some plan hitherto unsuccessful of quieting them by an administration of our own. These are briefly the objects intended, the advantage of such a system to our Government would be, not only to simplify the Indian department, to remove its perplexing difficulties,-expensive agencies, and to obviate the course of judicial determinations, but above all (that which the Atlantic States have less to fear, but our western frontiers even now apprehend and are realizing) those continued incursions which want and desperation excite, so revolting in their execution and so destructive in their consequences. The game, their only subsistence provided by nature, is fast disappearing in their forests and on their mountains,† the trapper by recent The last Report on Indian affairs shews how difficult it is to improve their present condition, and recommends" the adoption at the earliest practical period of proper measures for bringing them nearer together in positions where they will be more safe and and which shall afford greater inducements as well as facilities for effecting a radical change in their condition and circumstances, agreeably to the dictates of humanity and a wise and enlightened policy."-Rep. Com. Ind. Affairs, Nov. 1849. Destitute condition of the Winnebago Indians, 1850.-From the Minnesota Pioneer, of the 15th. ult., we learn that the condition of these poor wretches is deplorable. They are represented as being nearly destitute of food in a miserable encampment, where there is no game, half-clad and half-sheltered, where they must either receive assistance from the government, starve to death, or live by pillaging. The Pioneer states that, a short time since, between one and two hundred of them made portage of their canoes around the falls of St. Anthony, floated down under the guns of Fort Snelling and glided by St. Paul in the night, within a stone's throw of the Secretary's Office, and are now on the way to their old homes below. The voice of many is, push these poor creatures, these primitive holders of the soil-westward. Civilization demands their hunting grounds and council plains. They must go westward, and westward it will be, till the last of the race find a grave in the broad bosom of the Pacific. This should not be. We enjoy their lands. The least our Congress can do, is to give them a living. + See Report on Indian Affairs, 1850, Indian Bureau. computation destroys yearly the number of 100,000 buffaloes, and the Rocky Mountains form the utmost limit, at which the Indian will brace himself to be driven no farther. The latest information from our Indian bureau shews the utter impossibility of force in removing certain tribes, and the advantages of an amicable arrangement,-and with regard to others, their readiness to receive, and self-denial to accomplish their own moral improvement. Surely we need no further inducements to commence a work of retributive justice and patriotic regard. Fellow members of the Historical Society, what nobler cause could excite our ardent affections, or demand our strongest efforts? the virtuoso may yield his contributions, and the chronicler of events enrich our archives with the records of the past; the historian, poet and rhetorician, may instruct, delight and edify; but every relique is a memento of a land we cannot justly honor as our own, and only tends to increase that fearful weight of responsibility and condemnation that now, and will forever rest upon us, until we have elevated this fellow creature to a participation in those privileges for which his physical structure,-his moral faculties and social habits so eminently befit him, and which God and nature intended should be his. The last council fire of this unhappy race is fast dying away, and its fitful gleam is an emblem of the Indian's fate, but ere it has expired and while there is hope, let us bear out to them a torch from our altar of liberty, to light them on the pathway of civilization, that in the spirit of our country's motto, “E pluribus unum,” they may, as one with us, fulfil a nation's destiny. INDEX. Aborigines of New Jersey: Paper upon, by Alofsen: S., Letter from, 7; Donation American Philosophical Soc: Donations from, 111, 159. American Association for the Advancement of Science: Donation from 112. B Bradley: Joseph P. Letter from, 109; Babbitt: Wm. M. Donation from, 16. Baldwin: Lucius D. Donations from, 16, Bartlett: John R. Donation from, 15. Boudenot: Elias. Letters to, from Wm. C Carteret: Dame Elizabeth. Lease for a Campbell: Abner. Donation from, 16. Hawks, D. D.: Rev. Francis L. Donation Hayes: David A. Donations from, 16. 112. Johnson: Jacob. J Donation from, Donations from, 112, Congar: Samuel H. Donations from, 117. 159. |