262 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



The inevitable conclusion is, that every variety of the 

 negro type, which comprises the inhabitants of almost 

 all central Africa, is indicative of mental inferiority ; and 

 that ferocity and stupidity are the characteristics of 

 those tribes in which the peculiar negro features are 

 found most developed. 



Now if this is a correct statement, what more could be 

 said to show most conclusively, the radical inferiority of 

 the great bulk of the African people. 



But let us not form our opinion on their configuration 

 and appearance alone, but on the fact, that while num- 

 berless European and Asiatic nations have attained to a 

 high state of civilization, they continue, with few excep- 

 tions, in nearly a primeval barbarism. 



It is in vain to contend that this is the result of the 

 unfavorable circumstances under which they have been 

 placed. The history of our own country — yea, the his- 

 tory of almost every town that has been built, and every 

 farm that has been opened in the western wilderness — 

 proves that a people naturally endowed with intelligence 

 and an enterprising spirit, contend against unfavorable 

 circumstance, until they actually create more favorable 

 ones for themselves. 



But the Africans have never shown to the world that 

 they possessed any considerable degree of enterprise or 

 invention, or any wish to distinguish themselves in the 

 arts and sciences of peace or war. 



From the remotest antiquity to the present day, a 

 portion of their race have been hewers of wood and 

 drawers of water for others, and whether under the name 

 of slave, servant, or hireling, they will so continue, so 

 long as the distinguishing color between the two races 

 shall exist; for, in all this time, they have made so little 

 progress toward the art of being their own masters in a 

 civilized state, that the only legitimate inference is, they 

 are incapable of making it — that, as a body, they are in- 

 capable of living in a civilized state, only in the condition 

 of servitude to their more highly intellectually-favored 

 fellow men. 



