INDIANS OF UTAH. 



The females of the bereaved family observe the season of mourning with the most 

 bitter lamentations, and for months after the deatli of a husband they greet the « arl\ 

 morning with loud and piteous cries. But the warrior scorns to weep, and prefers to 

 manifest his bereavement by cutting and carving his flesh, which he sometimes in- 

 dulges to such an extent as to endanger his own life. 



They have no literature, and can scarcely be said to have a history of their own 

 tribes or families. The few traditions that have descended to them are too vague, indis- 

 tinct, and disconnected to be relied on as a history beyond the first preceding genera- 

 tion. 



They are firm believers in charms, legerdemain, and necromancy, and in the man- 

 agement of their sick these superstitious devices constitute their principal treatment, 

 which their patients submit to with the most unbounded faith. 



Each band has its medicine-man, whom they treat witli great respect mid par- 

 tiality. 



Among all the tribes of this region there is the same indisposition to habits of 

 industry, indolence being the rule and industry the exception, and nothing but tin- 

 keenest impulses of necessity can impel them to action. 



But this characteristic they, I believe, only possess in common with all the infe- 

 rior tribes of our species, and, with a view to their civilization, is an item worthy of 

 much consideration-. Intellectually they appear to be as well endowed as most of the 

 native tribes of this continent ; yet there seems to be a want of some of those higher 

 intellectual endowments which render our own race progressive and so eminently fit 

 us for the enjoyment of an enlightened government. The discussion of this subject 

 involves a comparison of the races and invites an inquiry into the causes of the dispar- 

 ity that now exists between them, whether that disparity arises out of mental or phys- 

 ical inequality, or both; to what extent that inequality is capable of retarding then- 

 progress in the advancement of civilization, arts, and science. It appears to be the 

 opinion of a large number of our modern philanthropists that all beings possessing the 

 human form were originally endowed with an equality that ever forbids the idea of 

 inferiority. 



With an eye single to this similarity in physical form, they seem to overlook the 

 mental inequality, or attribute it to a want of culture ; and hence the misguided zeal 

 for the improvement of many of the colored races, whose mental inferiority is a fixed 

 and demonstrable fact, which must ever and inevirabK -define their position in the scale 

 of political importance, and renders the idea of their future elevation to an equality 

 with the Caucasian race utterly preposterous, and can only exist in the misguided wan- 

 derings of a perverted imagination. They have shown from their earliest generations 

 their incapacity for any except the most simple forms of government, such as would 

 assimilate them to some species of the gregarious animals, whom they approximate to in 

 this respect and imitate as much as they do the higher orders of their own species. 



The conclusions, then, to which we must arrive by this course ©£ reasoning are 

 obvious. 



First. That by becoming the constant recipients of our care and sympathy their 

 condition is temporarily ameliorated, but only so during the application of that care 

 and sympathy. 



