to make a merit of necessity by seeming to yield with grace, what they knew that they had not the power to retain. Such a bargain might appease the conscience of a gentleman of the green bag,

worn and hackneyed" in the arts and frauds of his profession; but in Heaven's chancery, my S......., there can be little doubt that it has been long since set aside on the ground of dues... Poor wretches! No wonder that they so implacably vindictive against the white ple; no wonder that the rage of resentment is handed. down from generation to generation; no wonder that they refuse to associate and mix permanently with their unjust and cruel invaders and exterminators; no wonder that in the unabating spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, as well as they are able; that they triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge; that they dance, sing and rejoice, as the victim shrieks. and faints amid the flames, when they imagine all the crimes of their oppressors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over the scene, smiling, with ferocious delight, at the grateful spectacle, and feasting on the precious odour as it arises, from the burning blood of the white man.

Yet the people, here, affect to wonder that the Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization; or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse to adopt the manners of the white men. Go, Virginian; erase from the Indian nation, the tradition of their wrongs; make them forget, if you can, that once, this charming country was their's ; that over these fields and through these forests,

their beloved forefathers, once, in careless gaiety, pursued their sports and hunted their game; that every returning day found them the sole, the peaceful, the happy proprietors of this extensive and beautiful domain : make them forget too, if you can, that in the midst of all this innocence, simplicity and bliss.......the white man came, and lo!....the animated chase, the feast, the dance, the song of fearless, thoughtless joy were over; that ever since, they have been made to drink of the bitter cup of humiliation; treated like dogs; their lives, their liberties, the sport of the white men; their country and the graves of their fathers torn from them, in cruel succession: until, driven from river to river, from forest to forest, and through a period of two hundred years, rolled back, nation upon nation, they find themselves fugitives, vagrants and strangers in their own. country, and look forward to the certain period when their descendants will be totally extinguished by wars; driven, at the point of the bayonet into the western ocean, or reduced to a fate still more deplorable and horrid, the condition of slaves; go, administer the cup of oblivion to recollections and anticipations like these, and, then, you will cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be civilized. But until then, surely it is no. thing wonderful that a nation even yet bleeding afresh, from the memory of ancient wrongs, perpetually agonized by new outrages, and goaded into desperation and madness at the prospect of the certain ruin, which awaits their descendants, should hate the authors of their miseries, of their desolation, their destruction; should hate their

manners, hate their colour, their language, their name and every thing that belongs to them..... No ; never, until time shall wear out the history of their sorrows and their sufferings, will the Indian be brought to love the white man, and to imitate his manners.

Great God! To reflect, my S......., that the authors of all these wrongs were our own countrymen, our forefathers, professors of the meek and benevolent religion of Jesus! O! it was impious....it was unmanly....poor and pitiful! Gracious Heaven! what had these poor people done? The simple inhabitants of these peaceful plains, what wrong, what injury, had they offered to the English? my soul melts with pity and shame.

As for the present inhabitants, it must be granted that they are comparatively innocent unless, indeed, they, also, have encroached under the guise of treaties, which they themselves have previously contrived to render expedient or necessa ry to the Indians. Whether this has been the case or not, I am too much a stranger to the interior transactions of this country to decide. But it seems to me that were I a president of the United States, I would glory in going to the Indians, throwing myself on my knees before them. and saying to them, " Indians, friends, brothers, "O! forgive my country men! Deeply have our "forefathers wronged you; and they have forc"ed us to continue the wrong. Reflect brothers; "it was not our fault that we were born in your 66 country; but now, we have no other home; we "have no where else to rest our feet. Will you

not, then, permit us to remain? Can you not

forgive even us, innocent as we are? If you can, O! come to our bosoms; be, indeed, our "brothers, and since there is room enough for us "all, give us a home in your land and let us be "children of the same affectionate family." I believe that a magnanimity of sentiment like this, followed up by a correspondent greatness of conduct on the part of the people of the United States, would go farther to bury the tomahawk' and produce a fraternization with the Indians, than all the presents, treaties and missionaries that can be employed; dashed and defeated as these latter means always are, by a claim of right's on the part of the white people which the Indians know to be false and baseless. Let me not be told that the Indians are too dark and fierce to be affected by generous and noble sentiments. I will not believe it. Magnanimity can never be lost on a nation which has produced an Alknomook, a Logan and a Pocahuntas.

The repetition of the name of this amiable princess, brings me back to the point from which I digressed. I wonder that the Virginians, fond as they are of anniversaries, have instituted no festival or order in honor to her memory. For my own part, I have little doubt, from the histories which we have of the first attempts at colonizing their country, that Pocahuntas deserves to be considered as the patron deity of the enterprize. When it is remembered how long the colony struggled to get a footing'; how often sickness or famine, neglect at home, mismanagement here and the hostilities of the natives, brought it to the brink of ruin; through what a tedious lapse

of time, it, alternately, languished and revived, sunk and rose, sometimes hanging, like Addison's lamp, "quivering at a point," then suddenly shooting up into a sickly and short-lived flame; in one word, when we recollect how near and how often it verged towards total extinction, maugre the patronage of Pocahuntas, there is the strongest reason to believe that, but for her patronage, the anniversary cannon of the fourth of July, would never have resounded throughout the United States.

Is it not probable, that this sensible and amiable woman, perceiving the superiority of the Europeans, foreseeing the probability of the subjugation of her countrymen, and anxious as well to soften their destiny, as to save the needless effusion of human blood, desired, by her marriage with Mr. Rolfe, to hasten the abolition of all distinction between Indians and white men ; to bind their interests and affections by the nearest and most endearing ties, and to make them regard themselves, as one people, the children of the same great family? If such were her wise and benevolent views, and I have no doubt but they were, how poorly were they backed by the British court? No wonder at the resentment and indignation with which she saw them neglected; no wonder at the bitterness of the disappointment and vexation which she expressed to Captain Smith, in London, arising as well from the cold reception which she, herself, had met, as from the contemptuous and insulting point of view in which she found that her nation was regarded. Unfortunate Princess! She deserved a happier