INDIAN CHILDREN. 



151 



little charge in the sweat of our brow as an 

 example and encouragement for them to labour ; 

 and promising them the produce of their own 

 industry, we find that they take great delight in 

 their gardens. Necessity may compel the adult 

 Indian to take up the spade and submit to 

 manual labour, but a child brought up in the 

 love of cultivating a garden will be naturally 

 led to the culture of the field as a means of 

 subsistence : and educated in the principles of 

 Christianity, he will become stationary to par- 

 take of the advantages and privileges of civili- 

 zation. It is through these means of instruction 

 that a change will be gradually effected in the 

 character of the North American Indian, who 

 in his present savage state thinks it beneath the 

 dignity of his independence to till the ground. 

 What we value in property, and all those cus- 

 toms which separate us from them in a state of 

 nature, they think lightly of, while they con- 

 clude that our crossing the seas to see their 

 country is more the effect of poverty than of 

 industry. To be a man, or what is synoni- 

 mous with them, to be a great and distinguished 

 character, is to be expert in surprising, torturing, 

 and scalping an enemy ; to be capable of en- 

 during severe privations ; to make a good hunter, 

 and traverse the woods with geographical accu- 



