They were, but yesterday, the occupants and owners of the fair forests
and fertile prairies of Minnesota--a brave, hospitable and generous
people,--barbarians, indeed, but noble in their barbarism. They may
be fitly called the Iroquois of the West. In form and features, in
language and traditions, they are distinct from all other Indian tribes.
When first visited by white men, and for many years afterwards, the
Falls of St. Anthony (by them called the Ha-Ha) was the center of their
country. They cultivated tobacco, and hunted the elk, the beaver and
the bison. They were open-hearted, truthful and brave. In their wars
with other tribes they seldom slew women or children, and rarely
sacrificed the lives of their prisoners.

For many years their chiefs and head men successfully resisted the
attempts to introduce spirituous liquors among them. More than a century
ago an English trader was killed at Mendota, because he persisted,
after repeated warnings by the chiefs, in dealing out _mini-wakan_
(Devil-water) to the Dakota braves.

With open arms and generous hospitality they welcomed the first white
men to their land; and were ever faithful in their friendship, till
years of wrong and robbery, and want and insult, drove them to desperation
and to war. They were barbarians, and their warfare was barbarous,
but not more barbarous than the warfare of our Saxon and Celtic ancestors.
They were ignorant and superstitious, but their condition closely resembled
the condition of our British forefathers at the beginning of the Christian
era. Macaulay says of Britain, "Her inhabitants, when first they became
known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of
the Sandwich Islands." And again, "While the German princes who reigned
at Paris, Toledo, Arles and Ravenna listened with reverence to the
instructions of Bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and took part