over him of contentment, charity, and sobriety, or for the dominance
of a seemly morality. That, likewise, might be deemed idle expectancy,
which would foresee, as a result of the changed order of things, now being
prospectively considered, a season in the Indian's experience, when should
be illustrated the greater sacredness of the marriage relation, and the
happy prevalence of full domestic inter-communion, harmony, and order;
or should be honored a more gracious definition of the woman's province,
with the license to her to embrace a kindlier lot than one decreeing for
her mere slavish labour; or project a mission, to see its fruit in the
softening and refining, and in the reviving of the slumbrous chivalry,
of the man, or to leave, mayhap, some beauteous impress on the race.

It may be maintained, indeed, that the withdrawal from the Indian of
the Government's protecting arm, and the recognition of his position,
as no longer that of a needy, grovelling annuitant, but as one of equal
footing with the white before the law, would--far from bringing blessings
in their train--promote, with other evils, a pernicious development,
with calamitous reaction upon him, of the aggrandizing instinct of
the white, who would lure and entrap him into every kind of disastrous
negotiation--its outcome, in truth, a very maelstrom of artful intrigue
and shameless rapacity, looking to the absorption of the Indian's land,
and of the few worldly possessions he now has. Nay, many would foresee
for the Indian, through the consummation of his enfranchisement, naught
but gloom and sorest plight. These would invest their picture with the
sombrest hues; and, making this assume, under their pessimist delineation,
blackest Tartarean aspect, would crown it with the exhibition of the
Indian, as one sunken, at the instance of the white, in extremest depths
of human sorrow; as plunged, engulphed, and detained in a horrible slough
of degradation and misery. Such would, in short, have an era opened up,
which should mark, at once, the exaltation of the white to a revolting