DECAY OF THE SAVAGE. 535 



conquered victims, whose scalps they hung up in their wigwams as 

 trophies to their prowess ? Who has not followed them breathlessly 

 when on the trail of a flying foe, or winding serpent-like through the 

 thick brush-wood in escape from some persistent pursuer ? Assuredly 

 these men were well worthy of study ; and it is impossible to peruse 

 their history or the narrative of their adventures without a breathless 

 interest. There was poetry in their faith, in their customs, in their 

 language at once laconic and picturesque, and even in the names 

 which they bestowed on each tribe, each chief, each warrior. One can 

 hardly suppress a feeling of regret that so much wild romance should 

 have been swept from the face of the earth, unless we call to mind 

 the shadows of the picture the Indian's cruelty, perfidiousness, and 

 savage lust. Even then our humanity revolts from the treatment 

 to which he has been subjected by the " white man." Tracked and 

 hunted like wild beasts, driven back from one hunting-ground to another, 

 embruted by misery or drunkenness, incapable of labour, the poor 

 Indians have vainly struggled against the all-devouring influence of 

 a civilization without bowels, ill adapted to attract and persuade 

 them, and far less solicitous to assimilate than to destroy them. The 

 great nations which were formerly the valued allies or dreaded 

 enemies of the European settlers, the Hurons, Algonquins, the 

 Iroquois, the Natchez, the Leni-Lenapes, have entirely disappeared. 

 The wrecks of other but less important nations still exist on the 

 shores of the great northern lakes, in the Far West, at the base of 

 the Rocky Mountains, in California, in Texas, in Arkansas, and in 

 the northern provinces and deserts of Mexico. Such are the Sioux, 

 the Dacotahs, the Flatheads, the Big-Bellies, the Blackfoot, the 

 Apaches, the Comanches. The two latter people have, above all, 

 preserved a certain vitality. Their characteristics, it is said, 

 are very diverse. The Comanches are of a mild, gentle nature, 

 and eager to live on .peaceable terms with the Whites. The 

 Apaches, on the contrary, have vowed a relentless hatred against the 

 Pale Faces ; they are the terror of the hacienderos * and golcl- 



* Hacienda, a farm ; haciendero, a farm-proprietor. 



