THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 761 



fleet and an army of mounted and mailed soldiers under his command, and the gold 

 and jewels and blood of Mexico Ms idols. 



History has well recorded the more than savage cruelties and massacres, and rob- 

 beries of this civilized expedition, in which the second growth of spontaneous civili- 

 zation was crushed, and smothered, and strangled into a degraded and sickening 

 amalgamation of conquered and subjugated, with selfish and fiendish conquerors. 



An Indian city (rich and beautiful) was sacked and robbed of its gold; 100,000 of 

 its inhabitants were slain ; its king (Montezuma) was deceived, dethroned, and mur- 

 dered ; its palaces destroyed, its religion trodden under foot, and its sacred temples 

 thrown down ! and yet the thirst for gold, for plunder, and for massacre was not 

 satisfied'; there was another sun of Indian civilization above the horizon and another 

 mine of gold ; it was Peru. 



Piaarro (from the same civilized school) was the merciless wretch for this. Like 

 Cortes in Mexico, with a fleet and an army of mailed soldiers, with fire-arms and 

 sabers in hand, he cut and slaughtered his way throu gh the defenseless ranks of the 

 unoffending Peruvians, on their own ground, with the most disgraceful breach of 

 profl'ered faith known to history robbed the city of its gold, imprisoned and mur- 

 dered its monarch the inca, and with the blades of his swords taught to 150,000 

 peaceable and civilized Indians, as Cortes'had taught in Mexico, their first lesson of 

 the "blessings" of European civilization. 



The " El Dorado " was yet an idea, still unsolved ; the plundered heaps of gold were 

 yet too small, and the river of Indian blood must again be flooded ! Civilization re- 

 quired another glorification, and De Soto was the ready cavalier for that. A knight 

 Castilian was he, blood-snuffing, and mad for gold ; and soon after the scenes of blood 

 related, his little fleet anchored, and disembarked his cavalry legion on the sandy 

 coast of Florida. His men were in coats of mail, and his horses also, which were of 

 the noblest Castilian breed; and his cannons were drawn by horses covered with 

 polished steel and helmets plated with gold ! 



In helmet of gold himself, and sword in hand, he mounted his milk-white steed, 

 and facing the west, where he dreamed of native cities, and wagon-loads of gold to 

 be drawn back by his splendid troupe of Castilian chargers, and entered the swamps 

 and everglades of Florida! Poor fool, that he could have known what was before 

 him! He penetrated the impassable and interminable swamps and lagoons, and 

 dragged his heavy cannons through them. And after wading the swamps, and 

 through the blood of the poor savages, the cruelty and butchery of which has no 

 parallel in the pages of history,* he at last arrived on the bank of the Mississippi 

 in which his body found a grave, and his visioned cities and mines of gold were 

 never reached. 



After such examples of white man's injustice and cruelties, such illustrations of "glo. 

 rious civilization," the news of which, of course, spread like the waves of a rising 

 flood over and through every tribe, from ocean to ocean, both in South and North 

 America, is it wonderful that the American Indians should be suspicious of white 

 man and his fair promises, his civilization, his faith, and his proffered religion ? And 

 is it not wonderful, under their traditions, taught to their children, of such civilized 

 barbarities and treacherous massacres, that these poor people should everywhere, in 

 first interviews (as abundance of history informs us), receive white men with open 

 arms, with hospitality and welcome, in their humble wigwams? 



Reader, listen to a few of these, which are truths, and tell me if it is not a wonder; 

 and after that I will name other civilized transactions ; and then I will ask you, 

 who is the savage, which the brute ? 



Columbus has already told us "that the caciques of Hispaniola embraced him in 

 their arms, shed tears for his misfortunes, and placed upon his head coronets of gold.'; 

 This is not iconderful, for it was natural; man has been everywhere made not a brute, 



*Soe Irving's "Life of De Soto." 



