272 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



tribes of native Americans, who have continued w^andering savages from the 

 beginning to the end of their existence. 



The aspect of America is still more deplorable than that of Africa. Sur- 

 rounded for centuries by European knowledge, enterprise, and energy, and incited 

 to improvement by the example of European institutions, many of the natives of 

 that continent remain, at the present time, the same miserable, wandering, house- 

 less and lawless savages as their ancestors were, when Columbus first set foot upon 

 their soil. Partial exceptions to this description may be found in some of the 

 southern districts of North America; but the numbers who have adopted the 

 modes of civilised life are so small, and the progress made by them so limited, that 

 speaking of the race, we do not exaggerate in saying, that they remain to the 

 present hour enveloped in all their primitive savageness, and that they have 

 profited extremely little by the introduction amongst them of arts, sciences and 

 philosophy. The same observations have occurred to a writer in the Edinburgh 

 Review. The following remarks on the native American character appeared in 

 that work in an article on "Howison's Upper Canada," in June 1822.— "From 

 all that we learn," says the reviewer, "of the state of the aborigines of this 

 great continent from this volume, and from every other source of information, it 

 is evident that they are making no advances towards civilisation. It is certainly a 

 striking and mysterious fact, that a race of men should thus have continued for 

 ages stationary in a state of the rudest barbarism. That tendency to improvement, 

 a principle that has been thought more than perhaps any other to distinguish man 

 from the lower animals, would seem to be totally wanting in them. Generation 

 after generation passes away, and no traces of advancement distinguish the last 

 from the first. The mighty wilderness they inhabit may be traversed from end 

 to end, and hardly a vestige be discovered that marks the hand of man. It might 

 naturally have been expected, that in the course of ages, some superior genius 

 would have arisen among them to inspire his countrymen with a desire to cultivate 

 the arts of peace, and establish some durable civil institutions ; or that, at least 

 during the long period since the Europeans have been settled amongst them, and 

 taught them, by such striking examples, the benefits of industry and social order, 

 they would have been tempted to endeavor to participate in blessings thus provi- 

 dentially brought within their reach. But all has been unavailing ; and it now 

 seems certain that the North American Indians, like the bears and wolves, are 

 destined to flee at the approach of civilised man, and to fall before his renovating 

 hand, and disappear from the face of the earth along with those ancient forests 

 which alone afford them sustenance and shelter." 



