My Boyhood and Touth 



protected themselves from the weather; how 

 they were influenced by new doctrines and old 

 ones seen in new lights in preaching, lecturing, 

 debating, bringing up their children, etc., and 

 how they regarded the Indians, those first 

 settlers and owners of the ground that was being 

 made into farms. 



I well remember my father's discussing with 

 a Scotch neighbor, a Mr. George Mair, the 

 Indian question as to the rightful ownership 

 of the soil. Mr. Mair remarked one day that it 

 was pitiful to see how the unfortunate Indians, 

 children of Nature, living on the natural pro- 

 ducts of the soil, hunting, fishing, and even 

 cultivating small corn-fields on the most fertile 

 spots, were now being robbed of their lands and 

 pushed ruthlessly back into narrower and nar- 

 rower limits by alien races who were cutting 

 off their means of livelihood. Father replied 

 that surely it could never have been the inten- 

 tion of God to allow Indians to rove and hunt 

 over so fertile a country and hold it forever in 

 unproductive wildness, while Scotch and Irish 



t 218 ] 



