92 NARRATIVE, Ac 



action- It has always been found, however, unaccompanied by 

 one of its most constant concomitants, in civilised life — namely, 

 the desire of wealth. 



The workings of this principle may, indeed, be looked upon 

 as the chief motive of Indian emigration, and as causing tribe 

 to secede from tribe, and leading to that multiplication of petty 

 nations, each with some peculiarities of language, which marks 

 the face of the northern regions. Did we possess any thing 

 like a clear and connected tradition of these migrations, even 

 for a few hundred years, we should perhaps have cause to blush 

 that so many blunders had been committed in assigning so 

 many primitive stocks, when, in fact, there is great reason to 

 believe, that the primitive stocks are few. 



Tradition does not reach far, where there is neither pen nor pen- 

 cil to perpetuate the memory of events. People who are con- 

 stantly and habitually concerned, how they shall subsist, and 

 what they shall wear, will soon forget, in the realities before 

 them, occurrences which can no longer produce fear or excite 

 hope. And w r ere it otherwise, — were they as prone to reflect 

 as they are to act, the very misery in which they live, would 

 take away the pleasure of historical reminiscence. Oral history 

 is very uncertain at best. Every repetition varies the language 

 at least, and it must be a very stoical people, indeed, who, in 

 repeating their own story, do not add to the coloring, if not the 

 number of circumstances, which serve to give pleasure or to flatter 

 pride. Unfortunately such appears to have been the state of the 

 northwestern Indians, as far as we know anything of them, that 

 they could not, in strict truth, repeat very little of their history, 

 without giving pain, or exciting feelings, often of pity, and often of 

 humiliation. The few T favorable points would naturally grow 

 by the process of repetition, out of all proportion. And fiction 

 would often be called on, to supply lapses. Hence it is, per- 

 haps, that in looking over our printed materials for Indian his- 

 tory, we are so apt to find that every tribe arrogates to itself 

 the honor of being original, great, brave, magnanimous, above 



