﻿310 PICTORIAL MISCELLANY. 



red man. We are too apt to forget that God has not given to him 

 the learning and intelligence with which we are blest. His mode 

 of living, his ideas of honor and of a Supreme Being may not appear 

 right in our eyes, yet he is acting according to the light he has 

 received, and we are not to judge him. 



The history of the red man, as I have before said, is a fruitful sub- 

 ject for contemplation. From the moment when Columbus was 

 first welcomed to the shores of the New World, by the hospitable 

 Indian, until the present day, it is full of interest. Though their 

 origin is, and ever must be, a mystery, yet I think no one can rea- 

 sonably doubt that, at the time when this country was discovered in 

 1492, the Indian nation was in its prime and glory. They roamed 

 through the pathless forests, at pleasure, and their hunting and fish- 

 ing grounds were undisturbed. The mountains and rivers, the 

 lakes and valleys, of this wide country were all theirs. 



But the white man came among them, and their sovereignty was 

 gone. For nearly three hundred years they have been passing 

 away. The term of their existence as a distinct nation has nearly 

 expired. More than three quarters of their fairest lands have been 

 grasped by the avaricious white man, and more than twelve mil- 

 lions of their race have been swept away from the face of the earth. 

 A very small band now remains, and very soon these will have been 

 swallowed up by the advancing tide of civilization. As I have lived 

 among these people a considerable portion of my life, I propose to 

 give my jg friends, in a series of sketches, an account of what 

 I saw o iheir habits, manners and customs, while among them, 

 with such information respecting their homes and haunts, as I can 

 find room for, to illustrate their wild, roving lives. 



Many years ago, while making a short stop at the city of St. 

 Louis, in Missouri, which you know lies upon the Mississippi river, 

 a few miles below the mouth of the Missouri, it was my good for- 

 tune to become acquainted with the captain of a small steamboat, 

 who was about ascending the Missouri river into the very heart of 

 the Indian country, a distance of more than two thousand miles. 

 Knowing that I was very fond of travelling about the world, he very 

 kindly offered me a passage on his boat, provided I was willing to 

 encounter the dangers of the long passage. This was the first 



