SECT. II.] TEIBAL WARS. 151 



discontinued. 1 Among the so-called heroes of old Kentucky 

 and Virginia there were man-hunters, who, as regards cruelty 

 and barbarity against the aborigines, did not yield to the 

 Dutch Boers on the Cape. Even Schoolcrafb, the official his- 

 torian of the Indians of the United States, feels compelled to 

 admit thus much, though he would willingly ascribe the cruel- 

 ties of which the aborigines have been the victims to the 

 earlier expeditions of the Europeans to America, when dreams 

 of glory and thirst for gold drove the Christians into distant 

 lands, and when heathens were scarcely considered as men, and 

 were treated like beasts. It is sufficient to mention the incur- 

 sions of Velasquez, d'Ayllon, Narvaez, De Soto, Menendez, 

 Pizarro, Cortes, to point out the vast misery and the enormous 

 losses which the aborigines suffered from the whites. The 

 history of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the extermination 

 of the peaceable population of the West India islands, the 

 oppression of the Spanish governors in Yucatan (where the 

 Indians were only employed as beasts of burden), the extermina- 

 tion of the Indians in Popayan Chiquitos by mining labour, 2 

 have, by the old historians of these countries (among whom we 

 would refer the reader to Ternaux), 3 been preserved by docu- 

 mentary evidence, which fills, unquestionably, one of the 

 darkest pages of human history. 



Whilst the hostile collision of the Indians with the Europeans 

 caused their wholesale destruction, peaceful intercourse with 

 the whites was not less injurious to them. Careless of the 

 future, the aborigines of North America readily disposed of 

 large tracts of lands. 4 In most cases they were largely im- 

 posed upon, and the consequences were always distressing. To 



1 Kendall, ii, p. 62. 



The assertion of Azara (ii, p. 240), that the number of Indians in South 

 America had increased where there are no mines, and when only employed in 

 agriculture, is doubtless too general. Seemann (" E. um die Welt," i, p. 211, 

 1853), is open to the same objection, in maintaining that the number of In- 

 dians had everywhere increased where they have kept themselves pure, but 

 had diminished wherever they intermixed with the Whites and Negroes ; 

 though it must be admitted that such an intermixture may have contributed 

 to their diminution, as in proportion as intermixture progresses, the number 

 of aborigines of pure descent decreases. 



3 " Voy. Eel. et Mem. originaux," p. 312, etc. ; Eecueil, p. 46, etc. 



4 Drake, " The book of the Indians," iii, p. 14, etc., 9th edit., 1845. 



