THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 549 



Indian realms, after atrocities like these, that call so loudly and so justly for revenge 

 in a country where there are no laws to punish, but where the cruel savage takes 

 vengeance in his own way, and white men fall, in the Indian's estimation, not as 

 murdered, hut executed under the common law of their land. 



Of the hundreds and thousands of such murders, as they are denominated by white 

 men, who are the only ones to tell of them in the civilized world, it should also be 

 kept in mind by the reader who passes his sentence on them that they are all com- 

 mitted on Indian ground; that the Indian hunts not, nor traps anywhere on white 

 man's soil, nor asks him for his lands, or molests the sacred graves where they have 

 deposited the bones of their fathers, their wives, and their little children. 



WHISKY AND SMALL-POX MORE DESTRUCTIVE THAN WHITE MEN- 



I have said that the principal means of the destruction of these people were the 

 system of trade and the introduction of small-pox, the infallible plague that is con- 

 sequent, sooner or later, upon the introduction of trade and whisky-selling to every 

 tribe. I would venture the assertion, from books that I have searched, and from 

 other evidence, that of the numerous tribes which have already disappeared, and of 

 those that have been traded with, quite to the Rocky Mountains, each one has had 

 this exotic disease in their turn, and in a few months have lost one half or more of their 

 numbers ; and that from living evidences and distinct traditions this appalling dis- 

 ease has several times, before our days, run like a wave through the Western tribes, 

 over the Rocky Mountains, and to the Pacific Ocean— thinning tho ranks of the poor 

 Indians to an extent which no knowledge, save that of the overlooking eye of the 

 Almighty, can justly comprehend.* 



I have travelled faithfully and far, and have closely scanned, with a hope of fairly 

 portraying the condition and customs of these unfortunate people; and if, in taking 

 leave of my readers, which I must soon do, they should censure me for any oversight, 

 or any indiscretion or error, I will take to myself these consoling reflections that 

 they will acquit me of intention to render more or less than justice to any one; and 

 also, that if, in my zeal to render a service and benefit to the Indian, I should have 

 fallen short of it, I will, at least, be acquitted of having done him an injury. And 

 in endeavoring to render them that justice, it belongs to me yet to say that the in- 

 troduction of the fatal causes of their destruction above named has been a subject 

 of close investigation with me during my travels, and I have watched on every part 

 of the frontier their destructive influences, which result in the overthrow of the sav- 

 age tribes, which, one succeeding another, are continually becoming extinct under their 

 baneful influences. And before I would expatiate upon any system for their success- 

 ful improvement and preservation, I would protrude my opinion to the world, which 

 I regret to do, that so long as the past and present system of trade and whisky-selling 

 is tolerated amon gst them, there is little hope for their improvement, nor any chance 

 for more than a temporary existence. I have closely studied the Indian character in 

 its native state, and also in its secondary form along our frontiers, civilized, as it is 

 often (but incorrectly) called. I have seen it in every phase, and although there are 

 many noble instances to the contrary, and with many of whom I am personally ac- 

 quainted, yet the greater part of those who have lingered along the frontiers, and 

 been kicked about like dogs by white men, and beaten into a sort of a civilization, 

 are very far from being what I would be glad to see them, and proud to call them, 



*The Eev. Mr. Parker in his Tour Across the Rocky Mountains, says that amongst the Indians 

 below the Falls of the Columbia at least seven-eighths, if not nine-tenths, as Dr. McLaughlin believes, 

 have been swept away by disease between the years 1829 and the time that he visited that place in 

 1836. " So many and so sudden were the deaths which occurred, that the shores were strewed with 

 the unburied dead, whole and large villages were depopulated, and some entire tribes have disap- 

 peared." This mortality, he says, " extended not only from the Cascades to the Pacific, but from very 

 far north to the coast of California." These facts, with hundreds of others, show how rapidly the 

 Indian population is destroyed, long before we become acquainted with them. 



I 



