542 



American Indians. 



the miserable remnants of different people who were formerly in the 

 peaceable possession of the land, but are now driven back by war 

 into almost inaccessible defiles, where spoliation can pursue them 

 no further. 



" This desert of the west, such as I have just described it, seem to 

 defy the industry of civilized man. Some lands, more advantageously 

 situated upon the banks of rivers, might, perhaps, be successfully re- 

 duced to cultivation, others might be turned into pastures as fertile as 

 those of the East ; but it is to be feared that this immense region forms 

 a limit between civilization and barbarism, and that bands of male- 

 factors, organized like the Caravanes of the Arabs, may here practise 

 their depredations with impunity. This country will, perhaps, one day 

 be the cradle of a new people, composed of the ancient savage races, 

 and of that class of adventurers, fugitives, and exitles, that society has 

 cast forth from its bosom : a heterogeneous and dangerous population, 

 which the American Union has collected like a portentous cloud upon 

 its frontiers, and whose force and irritation it is constantly increasing, 

 by transporting entire tribes of Indians from the banks of the Missis- 

 sippi, where they were born, into the solitudes of the west, which are 

 assigned as their place of exile. These savages carry with them an 

 implacable hatred towards the whites, for having, they say, unjustly 

 driven them from their country, far from the tombs of their fathers, in 

 order to take possession of their inheritance. Should some of these 

 tribes hereafter form themselves into hordes, similar to the wandering 

 people, partly shepherds, and partly warriors, who traverse with their 

 flocks the plains of Upper Asia, is there not reason to fear, that in 

 process of time, they with others may organize themselves into bands 

 of pillagers and assassins, having the fleet horses of the prairies to 

 carry them, with the desert as the scene of their outrages, and inac- 

 cessible rocks to secure their lives and plunder ? 



" We beheld, on the 31st of May, one of the most remarkable 

 curiosities of the desert ; it is called the Chimney : it is a cone, 

 seventy-five yards high, and about a league in circumference. It is 

 situate upon a table-land, and has on its summit a column of petrified 

 clay, a hundred and twenty feet high, by from twenty to forty feet 

 broad, which has procured for it the above name. It is visible at 

 thirty miles' distance. Upon a nearer approach, an enormous rent 



