Dahcotah | Page 3

we stand
towards him becomes thorny, and we begin dimly to remember certain
duties belonging to our Christian profession, which we have sadly
neglected with regard to the sons of the forest, whom we have driven
before us just as fast as we have required or desired their lands. A few
efforts have been made, not only to bring the poetry of their history into
notice, but to do them substantial good; the public heart, however, has
never responded to the feelings of those who, from living in contact
with the Indians, have felt this interest in them. To most Americans, the
red man is, to this day, just what he was to the first settlers of the
country--a being with soul enough to be blameable for doing wrong,
but not enough to claim Christian brotherhood, or to make it very sinful
to shoot him like a dog, upon the slightest provocation or alarm. While
this feeling continues, we shall not look to him for poetry; and the only
imaginative writing in which he is likely to be generally used as
material, will be kindred to that known by the appropriate title of

"Pirate Literature." Mr. Cooper and Miss Sedgwick are, perhaps, alone
among our writers in their attempts to do the Indian justice, while
making him the poetical machine in fiction.
Missionaries, however, as well as others who have lived among the
aborigines for purely benevolent purposes, have discovered in them
capabilities and docility which may put to the blush many of the whites
who despise and hate them. Not only in individual cases, but in more
extended instances, the Indian has been found susceptible of religious
and moral instruction; his heart has warmed to kindness, like any other
man's; he has been able to perceive the benefits of regular industry; his
head has proved as clear in the apprehension of the distinction between
right and wrong as that of the more highly cultivated moralist; and he
receives the fundamental truths of the gospel with an avidity, and
applies them--at least to the lives and characters of his neighbors--with
a keenness, which show him to be not far behind the rest of mankind in
sensibility and acuteness. Without referring to the testimony of the
elder missionaries, which is abundant, I remember a most touching
account, by Rev. George Duffield, jr., of piety in an Indian wigwam,
which I would gladly transfer to these pages did their limits admit. It
could be proved by overwhelming testimony, that the Indian is as
susceptible of good as his white brother. But it is not necessary in this
place to urge his claim to our attention on the ground of his moral and
religious capabilities. Setting them aside, he has many qualifications
for the heroic character as Ajax, or even Achilles. He is as brave,
daring, and ruthless; as passionate, as revengeful, as superstitious, as
haughty. He will obey his medicine man, though with fury in his heart
and injurious words upon his lips; he will fight to the death for a wife,
whom he will afterwards treat with the most sovereign neglect. He
understands and accepts the laws of spoil, and carries them out with the
most chivalric precision; his torture of prisoners does not exceed those
which formed part of the "triumphs" of old; his plan of scalping is far
neater and more expeditious than that of dragging a dead enemy thrice
round the camp by the heels. He loves splendor, and gets all he can of it;
and there is little essential difference, in this regard, between gold and
red paint, between diamonds and wampum. He has great ancestral
pride--a feeling much in esteem for its ennobling powers; and the totem
has all the meaning and use of any other armorial bearing. In the

endurance of fatigue, hunger, thirst, and exposure, the forest hero has
no superior; in military affairs he fully adopts the orthodox maxim that
all stratagems are lawful in war. In short, nothing is wanting but a
Homer to build our Iliad material into "lofty rhyme," or a Scott to
weave it into border romance; and as we are encouraged to look for
Scotts and Homers at some future day, it is manifestly our duty to be
recording fleeting traditions and describing peculiar customs, before the
waves of time shall have swept over the retreating footsteps of the
"salvage man," and left us nothing but lake and forest, mountains and
cataracts, out of which to make our poetry and romance.
The Indians themselves are full of poetry. Their legends embody poetic
fancy of the highest and most adventurous flight; their religious
ceremonies refer to things unseen with a directness which shows how
bold and vivid are their conceptions of the imaginative. The
war-song--the death-song--the song of victory--the cradle-chant--the
lament