234 



INDIANS. 



with active and generous exertion to benefit 

 their condition, by aiding their own efforts, 

 and promoting their location in every pos- 

 sible way ; then, may we look for the solitude 

 of the remaining wilderness to be broken, 

 in the establishment of Indian villages, and 

 Indian settlements. Tribe after tribe, and 

 nation after nation, have heretofore vanished 

 away, and no wonder, — from the system of 

 exclusion and oppression that has been acted 

 upon towards them by the whites ; who have 

 treated them as outcasts, and placed them in 

 the scale of humanity, so low, and so distant, 

 as for the most part to exclude them from their 

 sympathy. But why should the North Ame- 

 rican Indian be thought incapable of that 

 moral, civil, and religious elevation, which has 

 been experienced by the South Sea Islanders, 

 the natives of Greenland, and of the Cape ? 

 There is nothing in their nature, nor is there 

 any deficiency in their intellect, that should 

 consign them to perpetual degradation, and to 

 that cold-blooded philosophy, and infidel sen- 

 timent, of ' Let them alone ; — to take mea- 

 sures to preserve the Indians, is to take measures 

 to preserve so much barbarity, helplessness, 

 and want ; and therefore do not resist the 

 order of Providence which is carrying them 

 a way ! ' 



