information from those whom I have questioned on this subject. But the vagueness of their replies, or their silence, has led me to believe that our exhortations have not put an end to the practice. It is more common among the northern than the southern tribes.

From the earliest period, of which we have any account, the savages of North America have been formed into distinct tribes; every one of which constitutes a small nation. These tribes, whom a common interest should have united against the Europeans, are distinguished to the west of the Mississippi by four languages, which bear no common resemblance. Each language is again divided into dialects, which are so different that it may be concluded that the separation into small tribes dates back several centuries. They, nevertheless, resemble one another in their customs, and above all by the profound ignorance, in which they obstinately continue.

These independent societies are seldom at peace; and in their wars it often happens that the most powerful, after having conquered the weaker tribe, either incorporates it with itself or exterminates it.

Some savages have pacific dispositions towards the whites. Indemnified at a small expense for the lands which they abandon, tolerated on their own territory, they observe the new-comers without interrupting their progress. The community which is forming is like a spectacle presented to their curiosity; they conceive neither jealousy nor alarms respecting it, and, for trifling indemnities, religiously observe the peace of which the calumet is the symbol. A subsidy, though annual, is only in their eyes the price of the land which they abandon. If they received it as the condition of a peace, they would consider their tributaries interested in breaking the treaty.

Others have warlike dispositions and are not so easily subdued. Those who are still scattered along the borders of the Mississippi and of the numerous streams, from which that river receives its waters, might arm twenty thousand warriors, but they are in no condition to unite their forces: they fear the Americans, who are so superior to them in numbers and skill. They were the auxiliaries of the English in the war of independence, and in that of 1812. They continue since the peace to trouble their neighbours, less indeed by constant hostilities than by frequent surprises on their extreme frontiers. If they attack with fury, it is not so much to avenge the loss of their territory, as through hatred of civilization. They are irritated at the progress of social order, as soon as they fear that it is intended to subject them to it: they detest its advantages, because they cannot reconcile them with a liberty which cannot endure control. Rather than subject themselves to the restraints inseparable from the civilized state, they fly to a distance, abandoning their native soil and the abode of their fathers. But whether they remove or whether they remain, when war is once terminated by a treaty, they lay down their arms and only resume them for the chase. To go during peace to visit their chief or their friends, with the bow or the tomahawk in the hand, would appear to them as unreasonable as to march to battle without arms.

There are with them only two principal employments-those of hunters and warriors. Some, it is true, have become shepherds: it is thus that a more regular society begins to be formed; wherever there are masters, there are servants. The chief, then, has new wants, he wishes to be better fed than on bread and milk, to be better clothed than his servants, and a simple sheep-skin will not satisfy him. It is, at this first step, that the civilization of many of the Indian tribes stops.

The aborigines have more readily adopted our vices than our virtues, and the whites afford them, indeed, more opportunities to imitate bad than good examples. Those who trade with them are seldom capable of giving them lessons of morality and good conduct. It is thus that these Indians, familiarized with some of our usages without our morals, have become the most depraved and the most miserable of men. Those, who are for the first time known by the whites, exhibit more hospitality and frankness. A very few of the tribes have begun to cultivate land, and to exercise the rudest mechanical arts. But it has been in vain attempted to teach them our religion and its mysteries. They listen to the missionaries without interest, and without assenting to their doctrine or refusing their belief. What has been narrated by the authors of "The Jesuit's Letters," what the English and other missionaries have published, has not been confirmed by the testimony of any traveller. A child six years old, educated among us, is better acquainted with the Christian religion than an Indian who has been instructed in it for ten years. The whole of the Old and New Testaments has been translated into the language of the most numerous of these nations. Two editions of the work have been printed in England; but not one Indian even knowing how to read could understand this book, in which there is scarcely a word in ten that belongs to his language. It is a useless labour, dictated by ignorance, or perhaps undertaken to deceive persons indiscreetly zealous for the conversion of the savages.

The missionaries, whom zeal still carries into these regions, are soon convinced that they have given too much credit to the narratives of those who have preceded them.

An imposter, who represented himself as a missionary, was hospitably received by the tribe of Osages. He pretended to have the gift of exorcism, and taught the people in what this power consisted. Several demoniacs presented themselves, and were delivered. Many sick then came from neighbouring tribes, with whom he had the same success; but these men, proud of their supernatural cure, became turbulent, and quarrelled with one another and with the other families. The sachem or chief of the Osages considered it prudent to send away the pretended exorcist, and, as soon as he was gone, there were no more men possessed with devils.

We may predict with confidence, that, in less than two centuries, all these nations will disappear from the two Americas. History and geography will scarce preserve their names: if a few feeble fragments of their races should still remain, they will be confounded with the whites, and there will not be seen on the same soil two rival people, one subject and conquered, the other prolonging the right of war, and perpetuating in peace the power of victory.*

The Americans hold it as a maxim of their public law respecting the Indians that it is advisable, with a view to their own happiness, to remove them to the right bank of the Mississippi; that their existence, as separate and independent tribes in the bosom of the confederacy, is incompatible with the civilized state. The Cherokees and Creeks first resisted this policy, by which it was intended to drive them from Georgia, and they have not been enticed away either by pecuniary grants or offers of a more extended territory in the western regions. The negotiation is, however, still going on.

"An attempt to remove them by force," (said Mr. Monroe, in a message to congress of the 30th of March, 1824,) "would in my opinion be unjust. In the future measures to be adopted in regard to the Indians within our limits, the United States have duties to perform and a character to sustain to which they ought not to

* Travellers have given statements of the population of all the Indian tribes, that inhabit the regions to which the United States will extend in advancing towards the great ocean. Their researches fix the number of souls at 534,656. These calculations are necessarily very uncertain.