somewhat cold in his affections, haughty and reserved toward his
friends, merciless to his enemies, fond of strife, and averse to
industry and the pursuits of peace. Some magnanimous traits are
occasionally allowed to him; and poetry and romance have sometimes
thrown a glamour about his character, which popular opinion, not without
reason, energetically repudiates and resents. The truth is that the
circumstances under which the red and white races have encountered in
North America have been such as necessarily to give rise to a wholly
false impression in regard to the character of the aborigines. The
European colonists, superior in civilization and in the arts of war,
landed on the coast with the deliberate intention of taking possession
of the country and displacing the natives. The Indians were at once
thrown on the defensive. From the very beginning they fought, not merely
for their land, but for their lives; for it was from their land that
they drew the means of living. All wars between the whites and the
Indians, whatever the color or pretence on either side, have been on
both sides wars of extermination. They have been carried on as such wars
always have been and always will be carried on. On the side of the
stronger there have been constant encroachments, effected now by menace
and now by cajolery, but always prefaced by the display and the
insolence of superior power. On the side of the weaker there have been
alternations of sullen acquiescence and of fierce and fruitless
resistance. It is not surprising that under such circumstances the
character of each party has been presented to the other in the most
forbidding light.

The Indians must be judged, like every other people, not by the traits
which they display in the fury of a desperate warfare, but by their
ordinary demeanor in time of peace, and especially by the character of
their social and domestic life. On this point the testimony of