XXXV.

THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

If the Indians 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 longed curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow,
unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or dispatch;
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