256 INDIANS. 



The conception of Indian character is almost im- 

 possible to a man who has passed the greater portion of 

 his life surrounded by the influences of a cultivated, re- 

 fined, and moral society. As well undertake to give to a 

 pure and innocent maiden a realising sense of the depths of 

 degradation to which some of her sex have fallen. The 

 truth is simply too shocking, and the revolted mind takes 

 refuge in disbelief as the less painful horn of the dilemma. 



As a first step towards an understanding of his 

 character, we must get at his standpoint of morality. 

 As a child, he is not brought up. Like Topsy, ' he 

 growed.' From the dawn of intelligence his own will 

 is his law. There is no right and no wrong to him. No 

 softening stories of good little boys are poured into his 

 attentive ears at a mother's knee. No dread of punish- 

 ment restrains him from any act that boyish fun or fury 

 may prompt. No lessons, inculcating the beauty and 

 sure reward of goodness, or the hideousness and certain 

 punishment of vice, are ever wasted on him. 



The men by whom he is surrounded, and to whom he 

 looks as models for his future life, are great and re- 

 nowned just in proportion to their ferocity, to the scalps 

 they have taken, or the thefts they have committed. His 

 earliest boyish memory is probably a dance of rejoicing 

 over the scalps of strangers, all of whom he is taught to 

 regard as enemies. The lessons of his mother awaken 

 only a desire to take his place as soon as possible in fight 

 and foray. The instruction of his father is only such as 

 is calculated to fit him best to act a prominent part in 

 the chase, in theft, and in murder. 



Imagine a white boy growing up with such surround- 

 ings. The most humane of Christian gentlemen will 

 exclaim, ' There is a fit subject for the penitentiary or 

 the gallows ; ' and yet that same Christian gentleman be- 

 lieves the Indian boy to grow up and develope into the 

 ' noble red man,' endowed with all the virtues. 



