CAUSE F0R INDIAN RESENTMENT.

You say you have bought the country. Bought it? Yes; of whom? Of the poor,
trembling natives, who knew that refusal would be vain; and who strove to
make a merit of necessity, by seeming to yield with a grace what they knew
they had not the power to retain.

Alas, the poor Indians! No wonder that they continue so implacably
vindictive against the white people. No wonder that the rage of resentment
is handed down from generation to generation. No wonder that they refuse to
associate and mix permanently with their unjust and cruel invaders and
exterminators. No wonder that, in the unabating spite and frenzy of
conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, as well as they are able;
that they triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge; that they dance,
sing, and rejoice, as the victim shrinks and faints amid the flames, when
they imagine all the crimes of their oppressors collected on his head, and
fancy the spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over the scene,
smiling with ferocious delight at the grateful spectacle: and feasting on
the precious odor as it arises from the burning blood of the white man. Yet
the people here affect to wonder that the Indians are so very unsusceptible
of civilization; or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse to
adopt the manners of the white man.

Go, Virginians, erase from the Indian nation the tradition of their wrongs.
Make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was theirs;
that over these fields and through these forests their beloved forefathers
once, in careless gayety, pursued their sports and hunted their game; that
every returning day found them the sole, the peaceful, and happy
proprietors of this extensive and beautiful domain. Go, administer the cup
of oblivion to recollections like these, and then you will cease to