less oppression of Mitas and Repartimientos. Since then it was not possible that the savage races could be perpetuated and the civilized settlements flourish, we see neither matter of regret nor commiseration in the course which events have taken. Somewhere in the course of the work before us, it is in substance said, that if the governments in New England had taken the proper measures, the Indians would have existed there to the present day. We profess ourselves unable to comprehend the advantage of such a result. It is a very plain alternative of an Indian and a civilized population. For ourselves, we like our neighbors and fellow citizens so well, and have derived from history and observation such ideas of the Indian character, that we are thankful our forefathers took no effectual steps (supposing there were any such) to perpetuate it. At the same time, however, the truth ought to be told. Our fathers really omitted nothing which seemed practicable for promoting the welfare of the Indians. At one period there were thirty Indian churches within a small circuit of Boston,* all built by private or public charity,—some served by pious white men,-some by natives, on whose education no pains had been spared; while an uncommonly vigilant police watched over the rights and property of their race. If this was not all that could be asked of men, who had their own children, their own community, their own interests to work hard for, we are much deceived; and in short we regard the disappearance of the natives in New England as full and final proof, that their preservation, within the limits of a white population, is impracticable.

We beg leave then to repeat, that the commiseration, of which we have been speaking, seems founded on a figure of speech, badly applied to real life. Men have talked of the melancholy vanishing of the native tribes, as if but for the Europeans, the successive tribes would not have vanished; and forgetting that the hunting ground of fifty savage families would feed and does feed a large city of civilized christians. Had the Indians been murdered to make way for these strangers, it would have been a deed of undying infamy; and such deeds, we know, were done in many parts of the continent of America. But among the alleviations, which providence has connected with our mortal nature, is this, that it provides a way for happy improve*Neal's history of New England.

ments, without cruel substitutions. It is not necessary to kill a bad man unless the case be extreme ;-he will die. It is not necessary to exterminate a savage tribe ;-place the germ of civilization in their soil-and such is its living principle, such the vis conservatrix of the arts of civilized life, that it will strike root, shoot up, and spread. Place a settlement of civilized men on a barbarous shore, and extend to them reasonable political muniments, and they will be sure, in the course of ages, to supersede the barbarous population, and by necessity; for if barbarity were more enduring, more permanent, more conducive to the increase and stability of population, more congenial to the human nature, as it would in this case be proved to be, then it would be better than civilization.

One more remark and we close this portion of our reflections. The inconsiderateness of the commiseration of the supposed disastrous lot of the natives is in nothing more apparent, than in the suggestions made for the benefit of the savage tribes, which still subsist. We lament that they have vanished we would take measures to preserve the present stock. But what is it we would preserve? Their languages. that first great bond and symbol of national identity, curious as many of their languages are in their structure, and perhaps the only historical monument of their ancient emigrations, affinities, and fortunes? Would we preserve these? O no. It is recommended at once, to hasten these into oblivion. Dr Morse, in his appendix, expressly says, 'as fast as possible, let Indians forget their own languages, in which nothing is written, and nothing of course can be preserved, and learn ours, which will at once open to them the whole field of useful knowledge.' Is it their mode of life, tenure of property in common, their manners,—that which makes them in all externals to be what they are is it these, which we deplore as lost, and would fix and perpetuate where they still exist? No. The whole drift of Dr Morse's speculations on the subject is to gather the Indians all into convenient settlements, wean them from the chace, teach them individually to hold a farm in fee, and plough and dig it. Is it their national faith, the religion of their fathers, their traditions, that we would cherish and perpetuate among them? Far from it. Their religious conceptions are notoriously of the grossest and most degrading kind, their traditions mere bloody recollections of prisoners scalped and tomahawked.

Is there any thing left then that we wish in fact to preserve? Nothing, in the last analysis, but the copper color; and why a civilized, christianized person, speaking our language, subsisting by regular labor, is any the better for being copper colored, we cannot see. But some will not leave them even this. Dr Morse quotes a respectable Frenchman, who strongly recommends intermarriages, and is evidently not unfriendly himself to the suggestion; and the advantages are that it will ameliorate the manners of the natives, and the offspring be nearly white. All this may be well, but what becomes meantime of the Indians. The very efficacy of this course is to hasten their disappearance. This the shrewder natives themselves understand. They know that their identity consists in their manners, languages, mode of life, and religion. They know that to change these, to make them speak English, live on farms, and practise the civilized arts would be most directly to annihilate them as Indians! If this is the tendency of their civilization, and if, on a large scale of benevolence, we wish the promotion and extension, not of Indian virtue, Indian piety, and Indian knowledge, but generally of virtue, piety, and knowledge, what is the best course to be pursued in our land? If, when the pilgrims were about embarking for New England, the English government had wished to do a grand work of benevolence-to spread knowledge, virtue, and piety throughout the then savage continent of North America; whether would it have been the more prudent and promising course, to secure the Indians on the soil by inalienable reservations, and then penetrate their land with missions; or do what was actually done prohibit all violence and cruelty, and leave civilization and christianity to spread and be propagated by the multiplication of civilized and christian men.

Let no one do us the injustice to think, that in these remarks we disparage the exertions making so successfully to establish colonies of civilization, in the western wilderness. The establishments at Brainerd and Eliot, and in the Arkansas territory are admirable in their plan, and must be the means of incalculable good. After what we have said, it is superfluous to add, that we do not look to these schools and establishments as likely to effect what would be in fact a contradiction in terms, the establishment of communities of men in their physical descent Indians, but possessed of our arts and refinements and

language. Could this be done, it would be entailing the disadvantage of a physical inferiority, a degraded color, on men otherwise equal to their white neighbors. But these establishments will perform far more practicable and benevolent services. In the change of races, in the process now going on upon the frontiers, of substituting the white for the native population, much suffering, vice, and misery are undoubtedly produced. The lawless character of the pioneers of civilization, the base self-interest of the private traders and hunters, to stimulate the passion of the Indians for intoxicating liquors, the languishing existence of the tribes, who have lost the scanty and imperfect virtues of barbarity, and acquired only the vices of civilization, must cause, on the frontiers, and among the Indians near them, much misery in the power of these establishments to relieve. The rescue and education particularly of the children of these unhappy tribes is certainly an eminent work of charity, and as it is not to be expected that those, who have been trained to all the arts of civilized life, will return to the forests for husbands and wives, intermarriages between the educated natives and whites will take place, and thus the absorption of the former in the mass of the latter be hastened.

We should regard the erection of the institutions in question. as highly propitious, were it only as calculated, by degrees, to furnish the government with persons well prepared to discharge, conscientiously and faithfully, toward the natives the duties of agents, overseers, interpreters, and whatever other function is required. We have no doubt every thing has been done that the government could do, to protect the interest of the Indians; but in general civil governments can command only money and force. But gold and the sword, though efficacious agents, often leave much to desiderate, in the manner of operation. The instrumentality of the members of these establishments, whose sole object is to protect, benefit, and serve the natives-factors of benevolence, who come not to cheapen beaver and buffaloe, but to teach the ignorant and serve the friendless-soldiers of the cross, bound on no expedition of violence-must be most benign. Hitherto in the nature of things, the Indian has hardly known the white man, but in a form scarcely improved above his own, that of a skilful, thrifty savage. The twilight of civilization between them and us has been at least New Series, No. 13.

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as near to darkness as to light; and much of the good, it might have been in their power to receive from us, has been obstructed by the prejudices they have imbibed against us, from the sorry samples of white men which they witness. The missionary colonies will present them the character of their powerful white neighbors, under a new and genial aspect. The establishments already founded, and others in contemplation, will form the nucleus of settlements of a kind scarce ever witnessed in the world, surely not on our western frontier. If the secular spirit can be kept out, with the increase of these establishments, and they continue to apply their resources as they multiply, with the zeal, disinterestedness, and singleness of view, which are too apt to be confined to infant establishments, they will prove blessings to the western country. The first furrows turned up in that wilderness of humanity will be planted with good seed; and we shall see the fruits of it in a milder and softer character in the population of the new states, which spring up in the valley of the Missouri and of the Mississippi.

There is another feature in the missionary establishments of the present day, which distinguishes them most advantageously from many of the older missions. We mean the union of the arts of civilized life with moral and religious instruction. Dr Morse proposes to call education families' what have hitherto been called mission families.' But if mission has gotten to be too exclusively a theological term, education is too nice and polite a term; and if a change is to be made-of which we see no need-civilization appears to us the most expressive. This includes all the stages of the proeess, from instruction in the first arts of life, to communicating the last religious truths. Our missionaries have abandoned, if they ever pursued, the inverted course of former times, by which purely doctrinal instruction was addressed to a rude savage, wholly ignorant of the meaning of the abstract ideas which it involved, and unprepared for the views which it opened. All the establishments are now provided with persons capable of performing the duties of farmers and mechanics, as well as with instructers and pastors. We beg leave respectfully to suggest, that this principle might be acted on much farther. We observe that the first step taken at the missionary establishments in the way of promoting the objects of the mission, is to build a school-house, send for the children, and begin to