“This was our condition when the pale-faces landed upon the eastern shores of this great island. Every nation has its destiny. We now behold our once extensive domains reduced to a few acres; our territory, which once required the fleetest moons to traverse, is now spanned by the human voice. Yes, the Chiefs under our ancient form of government have reduced our possessions, so that now when we put the seed of the melon into the earth, it sprouts, and its tender vine trails along the ground, until it trespasses upon the lands of the PALE-FACES.”

When Colonel McKenney was writing his Indian history, he addressed a letter of inquiry to General Cass, asking whether he ever knew an instance of Indian war or massacre, that was not provoked by the white man’s aggression. To this letter he received the following laconic reply:

Dear Colonel:—

Never! Never! NEVER!

Yours truly,
Lewis Cass.

[[273]]

General Houston, in speeches lately made at Washington and at Boston, has made the same statement; and this, any one thoroughly acquainted with Indian history, will confirm. Had there been nothing more to rouse Indian ferocity, it was enough to see his favorite hunting-grounds devastated, and the desecration of the graves of his fathers. We will not enter into the merits of the question, whether it would have been right to permit so wide an extent of country, capable of supporting millions, to remain in the possession of so few. It is an important question; but when we judge the Indian, we are to look upon the invasion as it appeared to him. In his eyes, the invaders were thieves and robbers,—yes, barbarians and savages. Their mode of warfare, and their system of destroying, were more inhuman and terrible than any thing he had ever witnessed or imagined.

To expect them to yield their territory without a struggle, and a desperate struggle, was an expectation which only an idiot could entertain; and to expect them to lay aside their wild, roving habits, and easy, careless life, for one of toil and drudgery, with none of the advantages of civilization and Christianity apparent to them, was quite as ridiculous. They were every where obliged to yield to the LAW OF FORCE, with only now and then a glimpse of the LAW OF KINDNESS. The good John Robinson, of Plymouth memory, even in his day “began to doubt whether there was not wanting that tenderness for the life of man, made after God’s own image, which was so necessary;” and says, “It would have been happy if the early Colonists had converted some, before they killed any.”

So early as 1623, it sometimes occurred that “Indians, calling in a friendly manner, were seized and put in irons.” “The General Court of Massachusetts once [[274]]offered one hundred pounds each for ten Indian scalps; and forty white warriors went forth to win the prize, and returned with ten scalps stretched on poles, and received the one thousand pounds!”

The Indian had no other law than an “eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;” but there was, probably, not one among the early Colonists, who had not the Gospel of Christ, as well as the Ten Commandments.

For myself, I have wondered that the fire of revenge and hatred should ever have gone out in a single Indian bosom; that he should have been willing to receive the missionary and school-teacher from among a people who had so forfeited their title to Christian, and practised so contrary to their professions. But whoever will take the trouble to wander among the peaceful valleys of Cattaraugus and Alleghany, will be convinced that the natural and artificial passions of Indians may be lulled, and the gall and wormwood which wrong and oppression have engendered in their hearts, may be converted into the sweetest milk of human kindness. They have learned to distinguish between the possessor and the professor; they have learned to value the good gifts it is in our power to bestow, and are willing to sit at our feet and learn wisdom.

It has become an annual custom among the Senecas to hold a national picnic, to which the people are all invited. The ceremonies are conducted as at similar festivals among other people, and I would like to have had the world, the unthinking, and still inexcusable ignorant world, look upon a scene which was represented not long since in the forest by North American Indians.