GRADUAL EXTINCTION OF THE RED MAN.

I have been to-day, the 23d of August, over the same spot I wandered over this day fifty years ago. What changes have supervened it is difficult to realize. This was then a dense, unsettled wilderness. The wild deer was on every hill, in every valley. Limpid streams purled rippling and gladly along pebbly beds, and fell babbling over great rocks. These alone disturbed the profound silence, where solitude brooded, and quiet was at home. These wild forests extended west to Line Creek, then the dividing line between the Indian possessions and the newly acquired territory now constituting the State of Alabama. Upon this territory of untamed wilderness there wandered then fifty thousand Indians, the remnant of the mighty nation of Muscogees, who one hundred and thirty years ago welcomed the white man at Yamactow, now Savannah, and tendered him a home in the New World. Fifty years ago he had progressed to the banks of the Ocmulgee, driving before him the aboriginal inhabitant, and appropriating his domains. Here for a time his march was stayed. But the Indian had gone forward to meet the white man coming from the Mississippi to surround him, the more surely to effect his ultimate destruction and give his home and acres to the enterprise and capacity of the white man.

Wandering through these wilds fifty years ago, I did not deem this end would be so soon accomplished. Here now is the city and the village, the farm-house and extended fields, the railroads and highways, and hundreds of thousands of busy men who had not then a being. The appurtenances of civilization everywhere greet you: many of these are worn and mossed over with the lapse of time and appear tired of the weight of wasting years. The red men, away in the West, have dwindled to a mere handful, still flying before the white man, and shrinking away from his hated civilization.

Is this cruel and sinful or the silent, mysterious operation of the laws of nature? One people succeeds another, as day comes after day, and years follow years. Upon this continent the Indian found the evidences in abundance of a preceding people, the monuments of whose existence he disregards, but which, in the earth-mounds rising up over all the land, arrest the white man’s attention and wonder. He inquires of the Indian inhabitant he is expelling from the country, Who was the architect of these, and what their signification? and is answered: We have no tradition which tells; our people found them when they came, as you find them to-day. These traditions give the history of the nations now here, and we find in every Southern tribe that they tell of an immigration from the southwest.

The Muscogee, Natchez, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, all have the history of their flying from beyond the Mississippi, and from the persécutions of superior and more warlike nations, and resting here for security, where they found none to molest them, and only these dumb evidences of another people, who once filled the land, but had passed away.

When the white man came, he found but one race upon the two continents. Their type was the same and universal, and only these mounds to witness of a former race. Ethnology has discovered no other. All the remains of man indicate the same type, and there remains not a fossil to record the existence of those who reared these earth-books, which speak so eloquently of a race passed away.

How rapidly the work of demolition goes on! Will a century hence find one of the red race upon this continent? Certainly not, if it shall accomplish so much as the century past. There is not one for every ten, then; and the tenth remaining are now surrounded on all sides, and, being pushed to the centre, must perish.

They are by nature incapable of that civilization which would enable them to organize governments and teach the science of agriculture. They were formed for the woods, and physically organized to live on flesh. The animals furnishing this were placed with them here, and the only vegetable found with them was the maize, or Indian corn. The white man was organized to feed on vegetables, and they were placed with him in his centre of creation, and he brought them here, and with himself acclimated them, as a necessity to his existence in America.

No effort can save the red man from extermination that humanity or Christianity may suggest. When deprived of his natural food furnished by the forest, he knows not nor can he be taught the means of supplying the want. The capacities of his brain will not admit of the cultivation necessary to that end. And as he has done in the presence of civilization, he will know none of its arts; and receiving or commanding none of its results, he will wilt and die.

Here, on the very spot where I am writing, is evidence in abundance of the facts here stated. Every effort to civilize and make the nomadic Indian a cultivator of the earth here has been tried, and within my memory. Missionary establishments were here, schools, churches, fields, implements, example and its blessings, all without effect. Nothing now remains to tell of these efforts but a few miserable ruins; nothing in any change of character or condition of the Indian. And here, where fifty years ago, with me, he hunted the red deer and wild turkey for the meat of his family and the clothing of himself and offspring to-day he would be a curiosity, and one never seen by half the population which appropriates and cultivates the soil over which he wandered in the chase. His beautiful woods are gone; the green corn grows where the green trees grew, and the bruised and torn face of his mother earth muddies to disgust, with her clay-freighted tears, the limpid streams by which he sat down to rest, and from which he drank to quench his thirst from weariness earned in his hunt for wild game, which grew with him, and grew for him, as nature’s provision. The deer and the Indian are gone. The church-steeple points to heaven where the wigwam stood, and the mart of commerce covers over all the space where the camp-fires burned. The quarrels of Hopothlayohola and McIntosh are history now, and the great tragedy of its conclusion in the death of McIntosh is now scarcely remembered.

True to his hatred of the Georgians, Hopothlayohola, in the recent war, away beyond the Mississippi, arrayed his warriors in hostility to the Confederacy, and, when numbering nearly one hundred winters, led them to battle in Arkansas, against the name of his hereditary foe, and hereditary hate McIntosh; and by that officer, commanding the Confederate troops, was defeated, and his followers dispersed. Since that time, nothing has been known of the fate of the old warrior-chief.

It had been agreed between the United States and Georgia, and the famous Yazoo Company, in order to settle the difficulties between the two latter, that the United States should purchase, at a proper time, from the Indian proprietors, all the lands east of the Chattahoochee and a line running from the west bank of that stream, starting at a place known as West Point, and terminating at what is known as Nickey Jack, on the Tennessee River. The increase of population, and the constant difficulties growing out of the too close neighborhood of the Indians, induced the completion of this agreement. Commissioners on the part of the Government were appointed to meet commissioners or delegations from the Indians, to treat for the sale of their lands within the limits of the State of Georgia. McIntosh favored the sale, Hopothlayohola opposed it. As a chief, McIntosh was second to his great antagonist in authority, and, in truth, to several other chiefs. But he was a bold man, with strong will, fearless and aggressive, and he assumed the power to sell. In the war of 1812-15, he had sided with the Americans, Hopothlayohola with the English; and leading at least half the tribe, McIntosh felt himself able to sustain his authority. The commissioners met the Indian delegation at the Indian Springs, where negotiations were commenced by a proposition placed before the chiefs, and some days given for their consideration of it. Their talks or consultations among themselves were protracted and angry, and inconclusive. Every effort was made to induce Hopothlayohola to accede to the proposition of McIntosh. The whites united in their efforts to win his consent to sell: persuasions, threats, and finally large bribes were offered, but all availed nothing. Thus distracted and divided, they consumed the time for consultation, and met the white commissioners to renew the strife, in open council with these. Each chief was followed to this council by the members of his band, sub-chiefs, and warriors. McIntosh announced his readiness to sell, and sustained his position with reasons which demonstrated him a statesman, and wise beyond his people.

“Here in the neighborhood of the whites,” he said, “we are subject to continual annoyance and wrong. These have continued long, and they have dwarfed our mighty nation to a tribe or two, and our home to one-tenth of its original dimensions. This must go on if we remain in this proximity, until we shall be lost, and there will be none to preserve our traditions. Let us sell our lands, and go to the proffered home beyond the Great River. Our young men have been there: they have seen it, and they say it is good. The game is abundant; the lands are broad, and there is no sickness there.” Turning to Hopothlayohola, who stood, with dignified and proud defiance in his manner, listening, he proceeded: “Will you go and live with your people increasing and happy about you: or will you stay and die with them here, and leave no one to follow you, or come to your grave, and weep over their great chief? Beyond the Great River the sun is as bright, and the sky is as blue, and the waters are as clear and as sweet as they are here. Our people will go with us. We will be one, and where we are altogether, there is home. To love the ground is mean; to love our people is noble. We will cling to them we will do for their good; and the ground where they are will be as dear to us as this, because they will be upon it, and with us.

“The white man is growing. He wants our lands. He will buy them now. By and by he will take them, and the little band of our people left will wander without homes, poor and despised, and be beaten like dogs. We must go to a new home, and learn like the white man to till the earth, grow cattle, and depend on these for food and life. Nohow else can many people live on the earth. This makes the white man like the leaves; the want of it makes the red men weak and few. Let us learn how to make books, how to make ploughs, and how to cultivate the ground, as the white man does, and we will grow again, and again become a great people. We will unite with the Cherokee, the Choctaw, and the Seminole, and be one people. The Great Spirit made us one people. Yes, we are all the children of one family: we are the red men of the Great Spirit, and should be one people for strength and protection. We shall have schools for our children. Each tribe shall have its council, and all shall unite in great council. They will be wise through learning as the white man is, and we shall become a great State, and send our chiefs to Congress as the white man does. We shall all read, and thus talk, as the white man does, with the mighty dead who live in books; and write and make books that our children’s children shall read and talk with, and learn the counsels of their great fathers in the spirit-land. This it is which makes the white man increase and spread over the land. In our new home he promises to protect us to send us schools and books, and teach our children to know them; and he will send us ploughs, and men to make them, and to teach our young men how to make them.

“The plough will make us corn for bread, for the strength of the body; the books will be food for the head, to make us wise and strong in council. Let us sell and go away, and if we suffer for a time, it will be better for our children. You see it so with the white man; shall we not learn from him, and be like him?”

When he had concluded his talk, it was greeted in their own peculiar manner by his followers as good. Hopothlayohola, the great red chief, turning from McIntosh as if disdaining him, addressed the commissioners of the Government:

“Our great father, your head chief at Washington, sent us a talk by you, which is pleasant to hear, because it promises the red man much his friendship, his protection, and his help; but in return for this he asks of us much more than we are willing to give even for all his promises. The white man’s promises, like him, are white, and bring hope to the red man; but they always end in darkness and death to him.

“The Great Spirit has not given to the red man, as He has to the white man, the power to look into the dark, and see what to-morrow has in its hand; but He has given him the sense to know what experience teaches him. Look around, and remember! Away when time was young, all this broad land was the red man’s, and there was none to make him afraid. The woods were wide and wild, and the red deer, and the bear, and the wild turkey were everywhere, and all were his. He was great, and, with abundance, was happy. From the salt sea to the Great River the land was his: the Great Spirit had given it to him. He made the woods for the red man, the deer, the bear, and the turkey; and for these He made the red man. He made the white man for the fields, and taught him how to make ploughs, to have cattle and horses, and how to make books, because the white man needed these. He did not make these a necessity to the red man.

“Away beyond the mighty waters of the dreary sea, He gave the white man a home, with everything he wanted, and He gave him a mind which was for him, and only him. The red man is satisfied with the gifts to him of the Great Spirit; and he did not know there was a white man who had other gifts for his different nature, until he came in his winged canoes across the great water, and our fathers met him at Yamacrow. The Great Spirit gave him a country, and He gave the red man a country. Why did he leave his own and come to take the red man’s? Did the Great Spirit tell him to do this? He gave him His word in a book: do you find it there? Then read it for us, that we may hear. If He did, then He is not just. We see Him in the sun, and moon, and stars. We hear Him in the thunder, and feel Him in the mighty winds; but He made no book for the red man to tell Him his will, but we see in all His works justice. The sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the ground keep their places, and never leave them to crowd upon one another. They stay where He placed them, and come not to trouble or to take from one another what He had given. Only the white man does this. A few a little handful came in their canoe to the land of the red man, as spirits come out of the water. The red man gave them his hand. He gave them meat, and corn, and a home, and welcomed them to come and live with him. And the flying canoes came again and again, and many came in them, and at last they brought their great chief, with his long knife by his side, and his red coat, and he asked for more land. Our chiefs and warriors met him, and sold him another portion of our lands; and his white squaws came with him, and they made houses and homes near our people. They made fields, and had horses and herds, and grew faster than our people, and drove away the deer and the turkeys deeper into the woods. And then they wanted more land, and our chiefs and warriors sold them more land, and now again another piece, until now we have but a little of our all. And you come again with the same story on your forked tongues, and wish to buy the last we have of all we had, and offer us a home away beyond the Great River, and money, and tell us we shall there have a home forever, free from the white man’s claims, and in which we shall dwell in peace, with no one to make us afraid.

“Our traditions tell us that our fathers fled before the powerful red men who dwell beyond the Great River, and who robbed us of our homes and made them their own, as you, the white men, have done. Have you bought the home of our fathers from these red men? or have you taken it? that you bid us take it from you, and go back, and make a new home where the fathers of our fathers sleep in death? If you have not, will they not hunt us away again, as you have? How shall we know you will not come and make us sell to you, for the white man, the homes you promise shall always be ours and a home for our children’s children?

“We love the land where we were born and where we have buried our fathers and our kindred. It is the Great Spirit which teaches us to love the land, the wigwam, the stream, the trees where we hunted and played from our childhood, where we have buried out of sight our ancestors for generations. Who says it is mean to love the land, to keep in our hearts these graves, as we keep the Great Spirit? It is noble to love the land, where the corn grows, and which was given to us by the Great Spirit. We will sell no more; we know we are passing away; the leaves fall from the trees, and we fall like these; some will stay to be the last. The snow melts from the hills, but there is some left for the last; we are left for the last, like the withered leaf and little spot of snow. Leave to us the little we have, let us die where our fathers have died, and let us sleep where our kindred sleep; and when the last is gone, then take our lands, and with your plough tear up the mould upon our graves, and plant your corn above us. There will be none to weep at the deed, none to tell the traditions of our people, or sing the death-song above their graves none to listen to the wrongs and oppressions the red man bore from his white brother, who came from the home the Great Spirit gave him, to take from the red man the home the Great Spirit gave him. We are few and weak, you are many and strong, and you can kill us and take our homes; but the Great Spirit has given us courage to fight for our homes, if we may not live in them and we will do it and this is our talk, our last talk.”

He folded back the blanket he had thrown from his shoulders, and, followed by his band, he stalked majestically away. They had broken up their camp and returned to their homes upon the Tallapoosa.

Unawed by the defection of the Tuscahatchees, the band attached to Hopothlayohola, McIntosh went on to complete the treaty. This chief, because he had been the friend of the United States in the then recent war, assumed to be the principal chief of the nation, as he held the commission of a brigadier-general from the United States; a commission, however, which only gave him command with his own people. This assumption was denied by Hopothlayohola, chief of the Tuscahatchees, Tuskega, and other chiefs of the nation, who insisted upon the ancient usages, and the power attaching through these to the recognized head-chief of the nation. Strong representations and protests against the treaty were sent to Washington, and serious complications were threatened, very nearly producing collision between the State of Georgia and the General Government. The hostility to McIntosh and his party culminated in a conspiracy for his assassination. Fifty warriors were selected, headed by a chief for the purpose. These received their orders, which were that on a day designated they should concentrate at a given spot, and at night proceed to the house of McIntosh, in secret, and surrounding it at or near daylight, call him up, and as he came forth, all were to fire upon him. His brother, his son, and son-in-law, Rolla and Chillie McIntosh, and Hawkins, were all doomed to die, and by the hands of this executory band. That there might be no mistake as to the day, each warrior was furnished with a bundle of sticks of wood, each of these represented a day the whole, the number of days intervening between the time of receiving them, and the day of execution. Every night upon the going down of the sun one of these was to be thrown away the last one, on the night of concentration and assassination. It was death to betray the trust reposed, or to be absent from the point of rendezvous at the time appointed.

The secret was faithfully kept every one was present. The house of McIntosh stood immediately upon the bank of the Chattahoochee River, at the point or place now known as McIntosh’s Reserve. It was approached and surrounded under the cover of night, and so stealthily as to give no warning even to the watch-dogs. McIntosh and his son Chillie were the only victims in the house, the two others were away. Hawkins was at his own home, Rolla McIntosh no one knew where. Hopothlayohola had accompanied this band, but not in the character of chief. The command was delegated to another. This chief knocked at the door, and commanded McIntosh to come out and meet his doom. The Reverend Francis Flornoy, a Baptist preacher, was spending the night with the chief, and was in a room with Chillie. The chief McIntosh knew his fate, and, repairing to the apartment of his guest and son, told them he was about to die, and directing his son to escape from the rear of the house, and across the river, said he would meet his fate as a warrior. Taking his rifle, he went to the front door, and throwing it open, fired upon the array of warriors as he gave the war-whoop, and, in an instant after, fell dead; pierced with twenty balls. Chillie, at this moment, sprang from the window, leaped into the river, and made his escape, though fired at repeatedly. A detachment was immediately sent to execute Hawkins at his home, which was successful in effecting it.

Soon after this tragic occurrence, the McIntosh party, consisting of fully one-half the nation, emigrated to the lands granted them west of the State of Arkansas, and made there a home. The remainder of the Creeks retired to the district of country between the Chattahoochee and Line Creek, only to learn that to remain upon this circumscribed territory was certain destruction.

The whites soon populated the acquired territory, and the Chattahoochee was no barrier to their aggressions upon the helpless Indian beyond. Feuds grew up: this led to killings, and in the winter of 1835-6 active hostilities commenced. This war was of short duration. Before the nation was divided, Hopothlayohola was opposed to war. In his communication with General Jessup, he told him: “My strength is gone; my warriors are few, and I am opposed to war. But had I the men, I would fight you. I am your enemy I shall ever be; but to fight you would only be the destruction of my people. We are in your power, and you can do with us as you will.” But the chiefs of the lower towns would not yield, and made the fight. In a short time this was concluded by the capture of their leading chief, Nehemathla. He was decoyed by treachery into the power of General Jessup, who detained him as a prisoner, and almost immediately his band surrendered.

Nehemathla was an Onchee chief. This was the remnant of a tribe absorbed into the nation of the Creeks or Muscogees, and was probably one of those inferior bands inhabiting the land when this nation came from the West and took possession of the country. Their language they preserved, and it is remarkable it was never acquired by white or red man, unless he was reared from infancy among the tribe. It was guttural entirely, and spoken with the mouth open, and no word or sound ever required it to be closed for its pronunciation. They had dwindled to a handful at the time of his capture, but more obstinately determined to remain and die upon their parental domain, than any other portion of the nation.

Nehemathla was more than eighty years of age at the time of his capture. When brought into the presence of General Jessup, he expected nothing short of death. The General told him of his crimes, upbraided him with bad faith to his great father, General Jackson, and drawing his sword, told him he deserved to die.

The chief, seeing the sword lifted, snatched the turban from his head, and fiercely and defiantly looking the General in the face, as the wind waved about his brow and head the long locks white as snow, said firmly and aloud: “Strike, and let me sleep here with my father and my children! Strike, I am the last of my race! The Great Spirit gave me seven sons three of them died at Emucfaw, two at Talladega, and two at Aletosee. General Jackson killed them all, and you call him my great father! When did a father wash his hands in his children’s blood? When did a father rob his children of their homes? When did a father drive his children in anger into the wilderness, where they will find an enemy who claim it as the gift of the Great Spirit, and who will fight to retain it? Strike, and let me die no time, no place like this! The mother of my sons, their sisters, perished for food, when I with my sons was fighting for our homes. I am alone; and not afraid to die! Strike: eighty winters are on my head they are heavier than your sword! They weigh me to the earth! Strike, and let me go to my squaw, my sons, and my daughters, and let me forget my wrongs! Strike, and let my grave be here, where all I have is in the ground! Strike: I would sleep where I was born all around me are the graves of my people, let mine be among them; and when the Great Spirit shall come, let Him find us all together, here with our fathers of a thousand winters, who first built their wigwams here, and who first taught their children to be more cautious than the panther more watchful than the turkey!”

“I will not strike you,” said the General. “No, I will not strike my foe, a prisoner; but here is my hand in friendship.”

“No,” said the chief; “you have put your sword in its pocket, put your hand in its pocket; do not let it reach out to blind me, or to take my home. I am the white man’s enemy; his friendship I fear more than his anger. It is more fatal to the red man. It takes away his home, and forces him living to go away and grieve for his country, and the graves of his fathers, and to starve in a strange land. In his anger he kills, and its mercy shuts his eyes and his heart away from the wrongs and the miseries of his people. I have lived and I will die the white man’s enemy. I have done you all the harm in my power. If I could, I would do you more. My tongue is not forked like yours, my heart has no lies to make it speak to deceive. Strike, and let me go to the happy hunting-grounds where all my people are.”

He sat down upon the ground, and, in a low, monotonous, melancholy tone, chanted the death-song.

“Who-ah-who-allée! wait for me, I am coming. Who-ah-who-allée! prepare the feast, the great warrior’s feast. Who-ah-who-allée! let my boys and my braves come down to welcome me. Who-ah-who-allée! those who went before me, tell them the old warrior is coming. Who-ah-who-allée! the white man has come, he treads on their graves, and the graves of their fathers. Who-ah-who-allée! the last of the Onchee is coming, prepare his bow is broken, his arrows are all gone. Who-ah-who-allée!” Concluding his song with one shrill whoop, he dropped his head and lifted up his hands then prone upon the earth he threw himself, kissed it, rose up, and seemed prepared for the fate he surely expected.

Nehemathla spoke English fluently, and all his conversation was in that language. He was informed that there was no intention of taking his life, but that he would be kept a close prisoner, until his people could be conquered and collected when they would be sent to join their brethren, who had gone with the Cussetas and Cowetas and Broken Arrows, beyond the Great River of the West. Tamely and sullenly he submitted to his confinement, until the period approached, when all were collected and in detachments forwarded to their future homes.

It was my fortune to be in New Orleans when the old chief and his little band arrived at that place. It was winter, and the day of their debarkation was cold and rainy. The steamer chartered to take them to Fort Smith, upon the Arkansas, from some cause did not arrive at the levee at the time appointed for their leaving, and they, with their women and children, were exposed upon the levee to all the inclemencies of rain and cold, through a protracted winter night. Many propositions were made to give them shelter, which were rejected. One warm-hearted, noble spirit, James D. Fresett, the proprietor of an extensive cotton-press, went in person to the aged chief, and implored him to take his people to shelter there. He declined, and when the importunity was again pressed upon him, impatient of persuasion, he turned abruptly to his tormentor and sternly said:

“I am the enemy of the white man. I ask, and will accept, nothing at his hands. Me and my people are children of the woods. The Great Spirit gave them to us, and He gave us the power to endure the cold and the rain. The clouds above are His, and they are shelter and warmth enough for us. He will not deceive and rob us. The white man is faithless; with two tongues he speaks: like the snake, he shows these before he bites. Never again shall the white man’s house open for me, or the white man’s roof shelter me. I have lived his enemy, and his enemy I will die.” The grunt of approval came from all the tribe, while many rough and stalwart men stood in mute admiration of the pride, the spirit, and the determination of this white-haired patriarch of a perishing people. The next day he went away to his new home, but only to die. About this time a delegation from both the Tuscahatchees or Hopothlayohola band and the McIntosh band met by private arrangement, in New Orleans, to reconcile all previous difficulties between these parties. Hopothlayohola and Tuskega, or Jim’s Boy, and Chillie McIntosh and Hawkins, constituted the delegations. I was present at the City Hotel, and witnessed the meeting. It was in silence. McIntosh and Hopothlayohola advanced with the right hand extended and met. The clasping hands was the signal for the others: they met, clasping hands, and unity was restored, the nations reconciled and reunited, and Hopothlayohola and his people invited to come in peace to their new homes.

It was evidently a union of policy, as there could be no heart-union between McIntosh and Hopothlayohola; and though the latter placed his conduct upon the broad basis of national law and national justice, yet this was inflicted upon the parent of the other, who denied the law, or the power under the law, supposing it to exist, of the other to adjudge and to execute its sentence. In the meeting of these chiefs, and their apparent reconciliation, was to be seen, a desire that the nation should reunite, and that there should be amity between the bands, or divided parties, for the national good, and for the good of all the parties or people. But there could never be between the two representative chiefs other than a political reconciliation. There was no attempt on the part of either to deceive the other. Both acted from the same high motives, while their features told the truth personally they were enemies. The son held the hand of his father’s executioner, red with the life-blood of him who gave him being a father he revered, and whose memory he cherished. The filial and hereditary hatred was in his heart. The feeling was mutual. Both knew it, and the cold, passive eye, and relaxed, inexpressive features but bespoke the subdued, not the extinguished passion. Chillie McIntosh is only one-fourth Indian in blood. Hopothlayohola is a full-blooded Indian. His features are coarse and striking. His high forehead and prominent brow indicate intellect, and his large compressed mouth and massive underjaw, terminating in a square, prominent chin, show great fixity of purpose, and resolution of will. Unquestionably he was the great man of his tribe.

Tuskega, or Jim’s Boy, was a man of herculean proportions. He was six feet eight inches in height, and in every way admirably proportioned. He was the putative son of a chief whose name he bore, and whose titles and power he inherited. But the old warrior-chief never acknowledged him as such. The old chief owned as a slave a very large mulatto man, named Jim, who was his confidant and chief adviser, and to him he ascribed the parentage of his successor, and always called him Jim’s boy. His complexion, hair, and great size but too plainly indicated his parentage. He was not a man of much mark, except for his size, and would probably never have attained distinction but through hereditary right.

In their new home these people do not increase. The efforts at civilization seem only to reach the mixed bloods, and these only in proportion to the white blood in their veins. The Indian is incapable of the white man’s civilization, as indeed all other inferior races are. He has fulfilled his destiny, and is passing away. No approximation to the pursuits or the condition of the white man operates otherwise than as a means of his destruction. It seems his contact is death to every inferior race, when not servile and subjected to his care and control.