Endnotes:
{207} See the map. {Transcriber's Note: Map of North America.}
{208} The native of North America retains his opinions and the most insignificant of his habits with a degree of tenacity which has no parallel in history. For more than two hundred years the wandering tribes of North America have had daily intercourse with the whites, and they have never derived from them either a custom or an idea. Yet the European have exercised a powerful influence over the savages: they have made them more licentious, but not more European. In the summer of 1831, I happened to be beyond Lake Michigan, at a place called Green Bay, which serves as the extreme frontier between the United States and the Indians on the northwestern side. Here I became acquainted with an American officer, Major H., who, after talking to me at length on the inflexibility of the Indian character, related the following fact: "I formerly knew a young Indian," said he, "who had been educated at a college in New England, where he had greatly distinguished himself, and had acquired the external appearance of a member of civilized society. When the war broke out between ourselves and the English, in 1810, I saw this young man again; he was serving in our army at the head of the warriors of his tribe; for the Indians were admitted among the ranks of the Americans, upon condition that they would abstain from their horrible custom of scalping their victims. On the evening of the battle of ——, C. came and sat himself down by the fire of our bivouac. I asked him what had been his fortune that day: he related his exploits; and growing warm and animated by the recollection of them, he concluded by suddenly opening the breast of his coat, saying, 'You must not betray me—see here!' And I actually beheld," said the major, "between his body and his shirt, the skin and hair of an English head still dripping with gore."
{209} In the thirteen original states, there are only 6,273 Indians remaining. (See Legislative Documents, 20th congress, No. 117, p. 90.)
{210} Messrs. Clarke and Cass, in their report to congress, the 4th February, 1829, p. 23, expressed themselves thus: "The time when the Indians generally could supply themselves with food and clothing, without any of the articles of civilized life, has long since passed away. The more remote tribes, beyond the Mississippi, who live where immense herds of buffalo are yet to be found, and who follow those animals in their periodical migrations, could more easily than any others recur to the habits of their ancestors, and live without the white man or any of his manufactures. But the buffalo is constantly receding. The smaller animals—the bear, the deer, the beaver, the otter, the muskrat, &c., principally minister to the comfort and support of the Indians; and these cannot be taken without guns, ammunition, and traps.
"Among the northwestern Indians particularly, the labor of supplying a family with food is excessive. Day after day is spent by the hunter without success, and during this interval his family must subsist upon bark or roots, or perish. Want and misery are around them and among them. Many die every winter from actual starvation."
The Indians will not live as Europeans live; and yet they can neither subsist without them, nor exactly after the fashion of their fathers. This is demonstrated by a fact which I likewise give upon official authority. Some Indians of a tribe on the banks of Lake Superior had killed a European; the American government interdicted all traffic with the tribe to which the guilty parties belonged, until they were delivered up to justice. This measure had the desired effect.
{211} "Five years ago," says Volney in his Tableaux des Etats Unis, p. 370, "in going from Vincennes to Kaskaskia, a territory which now forms part of the State of Illinois, but which at the time I mention was completely wild (1797), you could not cross a prairie without seeing herds of from four to five hundred buffaloes. There are now none remaining; they swam across the Mississippi to escape from the hunters, and more particularly from the bells of the American cows."
{212} The truth of what I here advance may be easily proved by consulting the tabular statement of Indian tribes inhabiting the United States, and their territories. (Legislative Documents, 20th congress, No. 117, pp. 90-105.) It is there shown that the tribes of America are rapidly decreasing, although the Europeans are at a considerable distance from them.