44 INDIAN TRIBES. [Chap. I. 



Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft 

 and melting, at once plastic and feeble. Some 

 races, like some metals, combine the greatest flexi- 

 bility with the greatest strength. But the Indian 

 is hewn out of a rock. You can rarely change the 

 form without destruction of the substance. Races 

 of inferior energy have possessed a power of expan- 

 sion and assimilation to which he is a stranger ; 

 and it is this fixed and rigid quality which has 

 proved his ruin. He will not learn the arts of civ- 

 ihzation, and he and his forest must perish together. 

 The stern, unchanging features of his mind excite 

 our admiration from their very immutabiUty ; and 

 we look with deep interest on the fate of this irre^ 

 claimable son of the wilderness, the child who 

 will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged 

 mother. And our interest increases when we dis- 

 cern in the unhappy wanderer the germs of heroic 

 virtues mingled among his vices, — a hand boun- 

 tiful to bestow as it is rapacious to seize, and 

 even in extremest famine, imparting its last morsel 

 to a fellow-sufferer ; a heart which, strong in 

 friendship as in hate, thinks it not too much to lay 

 down life for its chosen comi-ade ; a soul true to 

 its own idea of honor, and burning wdth an un- 

 quenchable thirst for greatness and renown. 



The imprisoned lion in the showman's cage dif- 

 fers not more widely from the lord of the desert, 

 than the beggarly frequenter of frontier garrisons 

 and dramshops difl'ers from the proud denizen of 

 the woods. It is in his native wilds alone that the 

 Indian must be seen and studied. Thus to depict 



