154 



INDIAN EDUCATION. 



by catching young birds or animals, that they 

 may disjoint their limbs to make them struggle 

 in a lingering death. And a child is often seen 

 twisting the neck of a young duck or goose, 

 under the laughing encouragements of the 

 mother for hours together., before it is strangled. 

 At one moment he satisfies the cravings of na- 

 ture from the breast of his mother, and instantly 

 rewards the boon with a violent blow perhaps on 

 the very breast on which he has been hanging. 

 Nor does the mother dare resent the injury by 

 an appeal to the father. He would at once say 

 that punishment would daunt the spirit of the 

 boy. Hence the Indian never suffers his child 

 to be corrected. We see then the secret spring 

 of his character. He is a murderer by habit, 

 engendered from his earliest age ; and the 

 scalping knife and the tomahawk, and the un- 

 forgiving pursuit of his own enemy, or his 

 fathers enemy, till he has drenched his hands 

 in, and satiated his revenge with his blood, is 

 but the necessary issue of a principle on which 

 his education has been formed. The training 

 of the child forms the maturity of the man. 



Our Sunday school is generally attended by 

 nearly fifty scholars, including adults, indepen- s 

 dent of the Indian children ; and the con- 

 gregation consists upon an average of from one 



