Novelists have now and then clothed a few with a garb which excites your
imagination, but seldom has one been invested with qualities which you
would love, unless it were also said that through some captive taken in
distant war, he inherited a whiter skin and a paler blood.

But I am inclined to think that Indians are not alone in being
savage--not alone barbarous, heartless, and merciless.

It is said they were exterminating each other by aggressive and
devastating wars, before the white people came among them. But wars,
aggressive and exterminating wars, certainly, are not proofs of
barbarity. The bravest warrior was the most honored, and this has been
ever true of Christian nations, and those who call themselves christians
have not yet ceased to look upon him who could plan most successfully the
wholesale slaughter of human beings, as the most deserving his king's or
his country's laurels. How long since the pean died away in praise of the
Duke of Wellington? What have been the wars in which all Europe, or of
America, has been engaged, That there has been no records of her history?
For what are civilized and christian nations drenching their fields with
blood?

It is said the Indian was cruel to the captives, and inflicted
unspeakable torture upon his enemy taken in battle. But from what we know
of them, it is not to be inferred that Indian Chiefs were ever guilty of
filling dungeons with innocent victims, or slaughtering hundreds and
thousands of their own people, whose only sin was a quiet dissent from
some religious dogma. Towards their enemies they were often relentless,
and they had good reason to look upon the white man as their enemy. They
slew them in battle, plotted against them secretly, and in a few
instances comparatively, subjected individuals to torture, burned them at