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h elaborate comforts, which only renders them more sensible of the comparative wretchedness of their own condition. Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes, but they are excluded from the banquet; plenty revels over the fields, but they are starving in the midst of abundance. The whole wilderness blossomed into a garden, but they feel as reptiles that infest them. How different was their state while undisputed lords of the soil? Their wants were few, and the means of gratification within their reach, they saw every one among them sharing the same lot, enduring the same hardships, feeding on the same aliments, arrayed in the same rude garment. No roof then rose under whose sheltering wings, that was not ever open to the homeless stranger, no smoke curled among the trees, but he was welcome to sit down by its fire and join the hunter in his repast."
In discussing Indian character, writers have been too prone to indulge in vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration, instead of the candid temper of the true philosopher. They have not sufficiently considered the peculiar circumstance in which the Indians have been placed, and the peculiar principles under which they having been educated. No being acts more rigidly from rule than the Indians, his whole conduct is regulated according to some general maxims early implanted in his mind. The moral laws which govern him are few, but he conforms to them all. The white man abounds in laws and religion, morals, and manners, but how many of them does he violate. In their intercourse with the Indians the white people were continually trampling upon their religion and their sacred rights. They were expected to look merely on while the graves of their fathers were robbed of their treasures, and the bones of their fathers were left to bleach upon the fields. And when exasperated by the brutality of their conquerors, and driven to deeds of vengence, there was very little appreciation of the motives which influenced them, and no attempt was made to palliate their cr