7 i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" In February, 1812, the people of Winnebah (Gold Coast) seized tbeir com- 

 mandant, Mr. Mereditb," and so maltreated him that he died. The town and 

 fort were destroyed by the English. "For many years afterward, English ves- 

 sels passing Winnebah were in the habit of pouring a broadside into the town, 

 to inspire the natives with an idea of the severe vengeance which would be ex- 

 acted for the spilling of European blood." l 



Or, instead of these sepai'ate testimonies, take the opinion of one 

 who collected many testimonies. Referring to the kind treatment ex- 

 perienced by Encisco from the natives of Cartagena (on the coast of 

 New Granada), who a few years before had been cruelly treated by 

 the Spaniards, Washington Irving says : 



" "When we recall the bloody and indiscriminate vengeance wreaked upon 

 this people by Ojida and his followers for their justifiable resistance of invasion, 

 and compare it with their placable and considerate spirit when an opportunity 

 for revenge presented itself, we confess we feel a momentary doubt whether the 

 arbitrary appellation of savage is always applied to the right party." a 



The reasonableness of this doubt will scarcely be questioned, after 

 reading of the diabolical cruelties committed by the invading Euro- 

 peans in America ; as, for instance, in St. Domingo, where the French 

 made the natives kneel in rows along the edge of a deep trench and shot 

 them batch after batch, until the trench was full, or, as an easier 

 method, tied numbers of them together, took them out to sea, and 

 tumbled them overboard ; and where the Spaniards treated so horribly 

 the enslaved natives, that these killed themselves wholesale: the vari- 

 ous modes of suicide being shown in Spanish drawings. 



Does the Englishman say that these, and hosts of like demoniacal 

 misdeeds, are the misdeeds of other civilized races in other times ; and 

 that they are attributable to that corrupted religion which he repudi- 

 ates ? If so, he may be reminded that sundry of the above facts are 

 facts against ourselves. He may be reminded, too, that the piirer re- 

 ligion he professes has not prevented a kindred treatment of the North 

 American Indians by our own race. And he may be put to the blush 

 by accounts of barbarities going on in our own colonies at the present 

 time. Without detailing these, however, it will suffice to recall the 

 most recent notorious case that of the kidnappings and murders in 

 the South Seas. Here we find repeated the typical relations ; betray- 

 als of many natives and merciless sacrifices of their lives ; eventual 

 retaliation by the natives to a small extent ; a consequent charge against 

 the natives of atrocious murder ; and then a wholesale massacre of 

 them, innocent and guilty together. 



See, then, how the bias of patriotism indirectly produces erroneous 

 views of the effects of an institution. Blinded by national self-love 

 to the badness of our conduct toward inferior races, while remem- 



1 Cruiekshank, " Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa," vol. i., p. 100. 



2 "Companions of Columbus," p. 115. 



