Page images
PDF
EPUB

awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much which may be urged to excuse their own atrocities; much in their characters, which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? Two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams, and the fires of their councils rose in every valley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the Lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rung through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunter's trace, and the dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrunk from no dangers, and they feared no hardships.

If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. But where are they? Where are the villages and warriors, and youth? The sachems and the tribes ? The hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No,-nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker,

which hath eaten into their heart-cores-a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated- -a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission; but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them,-no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know, and feel, that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant nor unseen. is to the general burial-ground of their race.

It

THE CHARACTER AND EXTIRPATION OF THE INDIANS.

ROLL back the tide of time; how powerfully to us applies the promise: "I will give thee the heathen for an inheritance." Not many generations ago, where you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, the council fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy* lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but He had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in every thing around. He beheld him in the star that sunk in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his midday throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine, that defied a thousand whirlwinds ; in the timid warbler that never left its

* Sedgy-overgrown with narrow flags.

native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent, in humble, though blind adoration.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted for ever from its face a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there a stricken few remain, but how unlike their bold, untameable progenitors; The Indian, of falcon glance, and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them for ever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged,

They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.

THE HUMA.*

FLY on, nor touch thy wing, bright bird,
Too near our shaded earth,
Or the warbling, now so sweetly heard,
May lose its note of mirth.
Fly on, nor seek a place of rest

In the home of "care-worn things;"
"Twould dim the light of thy shining crest,
And thy brightly burnished wings,
To dip them where the waters glide
That flow from a troubled earthly tide.

The fields of upper air are thine,
Thy place where stars shine free;
I would thy home, bright one, were mine,
Above life's stormy sea.

I would never wander, bird, like thee,
So near this place again;

With wing and spirit once light and free,

They should wear no more the chain
With which they are bound and fettered here,
For ever struggling for skies more clear.

There are many things like thee, bright bird;
Hopes as thy plumage gay;

"A bird peculiar to the East. It is supposed to fly constantly in the air, and never touch the ground."

« PreviousContinue »