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LESSON XV.

The Indians.-NATIONAL REPUBLICAN, Cincinnati.

THERE are many traits of the Indian character highly interesting to the philosopher and Christian. Their unconquerable attachment to their pristine modes and habits of life, which counteracts every effort towards civilization, furnishes to the philosopher a problem too profound for solution. Their simple and unadorned religion, the same in all ages, and free from the disguise of hypocrisy, which they nave received, by tradition, from their ancestors, leads the mind to a conclusion, that they possess an unwritten revelation from God, intended for their benefit, which ought to induce us to pause before we undertake to convert them to a more refined and less explicit faith.

The religion of the Indian appears to be fitted for that state and condition, in which his Maker has been pleased to place him. He believes in one Supreme Being-with all the mighty attributes which we ascribe to God-whom he denominates the Great and Good Spirit, and worships in a devout manner, and from whom he invokes blessings on himself and friends, and curses on his enemies.

Our Maker has left none of his intelligent creatures without a witness of himself. Long before the human mind is capable of a course of metaphysical reasoning upon the connexion which exists between cause and effect, a sense of Deity is inscribed upon it. It is a revelation which the Deity has made of himself to man, and which becomes more clear and intelligible, according to the manner and degree in which it is improved. In the Indian, whose mind has never been illumined by the light of science, it appears weak and obscure.

Those moral and political improvements, which are the pride and boast of man in polished society, and which result from mental accomplishments, the savage views with a jealous sense of conscious inferiority. Neither his reason, nor his invention, appears to have been exercised for the high and noble purposes of human excellence; and, while he pertinaciously adheres to traditional prejudices and passions, he improves upon those ideas only, which he has received through the senses.

Unaided by any other light than that which he has re

ceived from the Father of lights, the Indian penetrates the dark curtain, which separates time and eternity, and believes in the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body, not only of all mankind, but of all animated nature, and a state of future existence, of endless duration. It is, therefore, their general custom to bury, with the dead, their bows, arrows, and spears, that they may be prepared to commence their course in another state.

Man is seldom degraded so low, but that he hopes, and believes, that death will not prove the extinction of his being. Is this a sentiment resulting from our fears or our passions? Or, rather, is it not the inspiration of the Almighty, which gives us this understanding, and which has been imparted to all the children of men? A firm belief in the immortality of the soul, with a devout sense of the general superintending power, essentially supreme, constitutes the fundamental article of the Indian's faith.

His reason, though never employed in high intellectual attainments and exertions, is less corrupted and perverted while he roams in his native forests than in an unrestricted intercourse with civilized man. * ** He beholds, in the rising sun, the manifestation of divine goodness, and pursues the chase with a fearless and unshaken confidence in the protection of that great and good Spirit, whose watchful care is over all his works.

Let us not, then, attribute his views of an omniscient and omnipresent Being to the effect of a sullen pride of independence, and his moral sense of right and wrong to a heartless insensibility. Deprived, by the peculiarities of his situation, of those offices of kindness and tenderness, which soften the heart, and sweeten the intercourse of life, in a civilized state, we should consider him a being doomed to suffer the evils of the strongest and most vigorous passions, without the consolation of those divine and human virtues, which dissipate our cares, and alleviate our sorrows.

It is now two hundred years since attempts have been made, and unceasingly persevered in, by the pious and benevolent, to civilize, and Christianize, the North American savage, until millions of those unfortunate beings, including many entire tribes, have become extinct. The few, who remain within the precincts of civilized society, stand as human monuments of Gothic grandeur, fearful and tremulous amidst the revolutions of time.

Neither the pride of rank, the allurements of honours,

nor the hopes of distinction, can afford to the Indian a ray of comfort, or the prospect of better days. He contem'plates the past as the returnless seasons of happiness and joy, and rushes to the wilderness as a refuge from the blandishments of art, and the pomp and show of polished society, to seek, in his native solitudes, the cheerless gloom of ruin and desolation.

LESSON XVI.

Story and Speech of Logan.-JEFFERSON.

THE principles of society, among the American Indians, forbidding all compulsion, they are to be led to duty, and to enterprise, by personal influence and persuasion. Hence, eloquence in council, bravery and address in war, become the foundations of all consequence with them. To these acquirements all their faculties are directed. Of their bravery and address in war, we have multiplied proofs, because we have been the subjects on which they were exercised.

Of their eminence in oratory, we have fewer examples, because it is displayed, chiefly, in their own councils. Some, however, we have of very superior lustre. I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero and of any more eminent orator,-if Europe has furnished more eminent,-to produce a single passage, superior to the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore, when governor of Virginia. And, as a testimony of their talents in this line, I beg leave to introduce it, first stating the incidents necessary for understanding it.

In the spring of the year 1774, a robbery was committed by some Indians on certain land adventurers on the river Ohio. The whites, in that quarter, according to their cus tom, undertook to punish this outrage in a summary way. Captain Michael Cresap, and a certain Daniel Greathouse, leading on these parties, surprised, at different times, travelling and hunting parties of the Indians, having their women and children with them, and murdered many. Among these were, unfortunately, the family of Logan, a chief, celebrated in peace and war, and long distinguished as the friend of the whites.

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This unworthy return provoked his vengeance. He accordingly signalized himself in the war which ensued. In the autumn of the same year, a decisive battle was fought at the mouth of the Great Kenhaway, between the collected forces of the Shawanese, Mingoes, and Delawares, and a detachment of the Virginia militia. The Indians were defeated, and sued for peace. Logan, however, disdained to be seen among the suppliants. But, lest the sincerity of a treaty should be distrusted, from which so distinguished a chief absented himself, he sent, by a messenger, the following speech, to be delivered to lord Dunmore.

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I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat: if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace: but do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan ?—Not one."

LESSON XVII.

Geehale-An Indian Lament.-STATESMAN, N. York.

THE blackbird is singing on Michigan's shore

As sweetly and gaily as ever before;

For he knows to his mate he, at pleasure, can hie,
And the dear little brood she is teaching to fly.

The sun looks as ruddy, and rises as bright,
And reflects o'er our mountains as beamy a light,
As it ever reflected, or ever expressed,

When my skies were the bluest, my dreams were the best.

The fox and the panther, both beasts of the night,
Retire to their dens on the gleaming of light,

And they spring with a free and a sorrowless track,
For they know that their mates are expecting them back.
Each bird, and each beast, it is blest in degree:
All nature is cheerful, all happy, but me.

I will go to my tent, and lie down in despair;
I will paint me with black, and will sever my hair;
I will sit on the shore, where the hurricane blows,
And reveal to the god of the tempest my woes;
I will weep for a season, on bitterness fed,
For my kindred are gone to the hills of the dead;
But they died not by hunger, or lingering decay;
The steel of the white man hath swept them away.

This snake-skin, that once I so sacredly wore,
I will toss, with disdain, to the storm-beaten shore ;
Its charms I no longer obey, or invoke;
Its spirit hath left me, its spell is now broke.
I will raise up my voice to the source of the light;
I will dream on the wings of the bluebird at night;
I will speak to the spirits that whisper in leaves,
And that minister balm to the bosom that grieves ;
And will take a new Manito--such as shall seem
To be kind and propitious in every dream.

Oh! then I shall banish these cankering sighs,
And tears shall no longer gush salt from my eyes;
I shall wash from my face every cloud-coloured stain,
Red-red shall, alone, on my visage remain!

I will dig up my hatchet, and bend my oak bow;
By night, and by day, I will follow the foe;

Nor lakes shall impede me, nor mountains, nor snows;~~
His blood can, alone, give my spirit repose.

They came to my cabin, when heaven was black:
I heard not their coming, I knew not their track;
But I saw, by the light of their blazing fusees,
They were people engendered beyond the big seas:
My wife, and my children,-oh spare me the tale!--
For who is there left that is kin to GEEHALE!

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