and superinduced upon their original barbarity the law-vices of
artificial life. It has given them a thousand superfluous wants, while it
has diminished their means of mere existence. It has driven before it the
animals of the chase, who fly from the sound of the axe and the smoke of
the settlement and seek refuge in the depths of remote forests, and yet
untrodden wilds. Thus do we often find the Indians in the frontiers to be
mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes, who have lingered in
the vicinity of settlements, and sunk into precarious and vagabond
existence. Poverty, repining and hopeless poverty--a canker on the mind
before unknown to them--corrodes their spirits and blights every free and
noble qualities of their nature. They loiter like vagrants about the
settlements among spacious dwellings, replete with elaborate comforts,
which only renders them more sensible of the comparative wretchedness of
their own condition. Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes,
but they are excluded from the banquet; plenty revels over the fields,
but they are starving in the midst of abundance. The whole wilderness
blossomed into a garden, but they feel as reptiles that infest them. How
different was their state while undisputed lords of the soil? Their wants
were few, and the means of gratification within their reach, they saw
every one among them sharing the same lot, enduring the same hardships,
feeding on the same aliments, arrayed in the same rude garment. No roof
then rose under whose sheltering wings, that was not ever open to the
homeless stranger, no smoke curled among the trees, but he was welcome to
sit down by its fire and join the hunter in his repast."

In discussing Indian character, writers have been too prone to indulge in
vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration, instead of the candid
temper of the true philosopher. They have not sufficiently considered the
peculiar circumstance in which the Indians have been placed, and the
peculiar principles under which they having been educated. No being acts