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The New York Indians have two thousand two hundred and seventy-five head of neat cattle, nearly one third of them being milch-cows. The butter made is in proportion, being over twenty thousand pounds yearly. The number of their horses, sheep, and hogs is equally encouraging. They have, also, according to this Report, nearly seven thousand fruittrees. These the Indians had in earlier days, while still in the savage state; they must have scattered the seed soon after the white men had bearing trees. There may have been no design in it; the apples they brought back from their visits to the white settlements, when eaten, and the cores cast into the bushes around, may have sprung up unnoticed until they began to bear fruit. General Sullivan, when he made his expedition against the Iroquois during the Revolutionary war, found many fruitful orchards among them. It is well known that he cut them down to the ground. This was an act of questionable propriety. It is allowable, under such circumstances, to devastate all crops, to raze habitations, to measure the destruction by the measure of that of which it is in retaliation. The Indians had been unsparing in their warfare; it was intended to render their haunts on our frontier as untenable as possible. Whether this was

effected in any degree by the destruction of orchards may be doubted. The apple was a luxury, not a support; all other means of living having been removed, the apple-trees would have been counted as nothing.

We have looked over the tables of this Report with much gratification; they furnish proofs of the meliorated condition of the Indians that cannot be gainsaid. It is true, they apply only to a few small tribes, which stand apart from the rest of their race. They are under influences which other tribes do not feel, or feel only so remotely as not to be benefited by them. While we are satisfied that they are improving, and have all the ordinary chances of continuance as a people, we may regret that they alone are so ; that most of the other red men are deteriorating, with those chances constantly diminishing. Nevertheless, we have before us one instance that seems to contradict the general rule; that convinces us that the existence, in the same community, of the two races, the white and the red men, is compatible. This conviction may lead to such general policy as will insure a similar destiny to other tribes. We cannot bring those back which have been trans

planted. The tree, once taken up, must be cherished where it has been set down again. In our guardian kindness, we have endeavoured to fence round the Indians, in their new habitations, against the white man. Prohibitions and penalties have been set up, which, like scarecrows, do not scare any thing. The country is as open as the face of the heavens; it is almost as easy to walk into the one as to look into the other. The only effect, probably, of these restrictive laws is to keep out honest men. Men go into the Indian country as they please, and do what they please when there, only taking care not to offend the Indians themselves. If all restrictions were taken off, more men might not go in, but they would be of a different description. Good men would, at least, be mixed up with the bad. Sieves ordinarily let through the flour, and hold back the bran; these laws operate like sieves reversed; the bran passes through, leaving the better part behind.

As the Indians cannot be brought back to the white man, we would say, then let the white man go to them. Let them go in as they list, mix up with and teach them. It has been apprehended that the effect of such a freedom of intercourse would be bad. Possibly it would; but the probability is the other way. The present system does not work well; a new one might work better. This is sufficient not only to justify, but to call for, a change. If we preserve the Indians on the other side of the Mississippi as Indians, that is, if we shut out from them all the influences of civilization, they will either fall upon their own weapons, or upon ours. They will war with each other, until at last they may be led to war against us. In either case they bleed, and become exhausted; and in one case, they are probably exterminated. To avert this double evil, they must be assimilated with us as the New York Indians are now assimilated. Such an assimilation will never be effected by present causes, which mostly work the other way; others must therefore be put in operation. We can think of none so likely to be powerful and effective as an open and lawful intercourse with them. It is open enough now; let it also be lawful. In this way, the Western Indians may gradually become like the New York Indians, an agricultural people. The remnant will then, perhaps, be saved.

Mr. Schoolcraft bestows some attention, in his Report,

upon the history of the Iroquois. That part of it which is subsequent to the coming of the whites is sufficiently well known. Their preceding history is involved in shadows, and is nothing but tradition, having all the indistinctness of objects seen through such a medium. Mr. Schoolcraft regards these traditions as worthy of record. They are so, particularly when given in their Indian shape. This shape is generally so uncouth and distorted as to be thought to require modification. Such attempts may serve to render them more symmetrical, but they render them less valuable in the same proportion. Fossils are valued only while preserving the look they wore when disinterred. To polish one of these bones thus dug up, in order to make it more pleasing or less offensive to the eye, would not be a greater blunder than to remove the uncouthness and distortions of these traditions. They should be gathered up and preserved just as they are found, with all their incoherences, extravagances, and savage peculiarities. Thus presented for contemplation, they are a profound study. Mr. Schoolcraft has done more than any other man in this work of collection and preservation. His "Algic Researches" are made up of relics, which will grow in estimation as time advances. They are the best evidences of the inner man of the Indian that we have. His imagination is there exhibited in all its wildness and power; and these qualities are often displayed in a striking and terrible degree. They refer as distinctly to the great cardinal events of the early world as do the traditions of Greece and Rome, and show whence the Indians came here, though not how, or when, they came. Vast ruptures are seen in the earth's surface; the two sides agree, and would fit, could they be brought together; but when or how those sides were rent asunder, may not be known.

Mr. Schoolcraft has also bestowed particular attention upon the "American antiquities," as they are termed. He examined the mounds, carvings, and other works found in the Iroquois country, and has given delineations of most of them. These may not be important at this time, but they should be preserved, and made matter of public record. We cannot always estimate the value of these remains at the time they are discovered. Our author says, "There appear to be three eras in the aboriginal occupancy of the contiThe first era he makes to refer to "the aboriginal

nent."

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migration from other parts of the globe." The "vestiges and proofs " under this head he justly deems exceedingly limited; but he adds, "The departments of physiology and philology, which have heretofore constituted the principal topics of research, are still attractive, and are by no means a closed field." He has looked a good deal into these departments, and can form some judgment of their promise in these respects. We are glad to see that he is not discouraged, and hope that his further labors will be better rewarded than the past have been. We have a doubt whether all the attention that has thus far been applied to this object has not been thrown away, unless it be counted something to ascertain that nothing could be done. The races that are supposed to have migrated from the Eastern to the Western hemisphere were of a character to leave no traces of their footsteps upon the face of nature that would outlive a generation; we therefore look in vain through all the arctic regions for any physiological trace of these movements. The north gives up nothing; it is not until we come into the milder regions, that we see any thing to arrest the eye. Mounds, barrows, and other structures there appear, but they suggest nothing Asiatic. They bespeak little, but that little has no more reference to Asia than to Africa.

Language has been looked to for an answer. It is true that language speaks, but no American language, we believe, has as yet been made to utter an intelligible Asiatic phrase. Points of resemblance have been discovered, which, however, prove no identity. As well might a Roman nose, when found among us, prove that we came from Romulus. Such accidental resemblances may probably be found between nearly all languages; some of the Indian and African languages may thus far agree. If this agreement would not be an argument in favor of identity, in spite of the woolly head and the jet complexion, it would be none if these physical characteristics were out of the way. Such resemblances have been found between some of the Indian dialects and the Hebrew, and theorists have thence inferred that the "lost tribes of Israel" have been found in this hemisphere. Such theorists have the accommodating vision of Polonius.

Unwritten languages are changeable, so as to have no fixed form. The dialects of America may well serve as

clews to local migrations, particularly those of a recent date; such clews have been found, and have led to many plausible conjectures as to affinities. But when we attempt to run back with a language to another hemisphere, the trace will soon be lost in uncertainty and obscurity. An effort to trace back the genealogy of the first wolf we meet with in our forests to the shaggy nurse of Rome's founders would hardly be more hopeless and bootless. But this applies to words; there may be intellectual impressions that endure with time, and survive all changes of place. Such are some of the traditions found among the Indians, and which Mr. Schoolcraft has preserved. They refer to events that affected the whole earth, and the remembrance of which must have been ineffaceably stamped into the minds of all living beings. No people have yet been discovered, who appear to be without this stamp, more or less discernible. The most prominent of this kind of events is the flood. Tradition after tradition is met with among the Indians of this continent which bears this deep stamp. What are we allowed to infer from this? Not that Indians sprung from any one quarter of the globe; much less, that they came from the loins of any one people of Asia. All the descendants of Noah knew of this stupendous event, and, wherever they were, there was the remembrance of it. Hence, these traditions only show a connection with the post-diluvians; they do not give any clew to Mr. Schoolcraft's first inquiry, as to "the aboriginal migration from other parts of the globe."

The second head of inquiry is much more promising, referring to the "migrations, wars, affinities, and general ethnological characteristics, prior to the discovery of the continent." The latter part of this phrase might be stretched back to any age, however remote; we do not presume, however, that our author intended his inquiries should endeavour to grope beyond all light. The objects of these investigations he states to be, "the grouping of languages, the similarity and dissimilarity of arts, modes of defence, and means of subsistence." These are tangible objects, and may well employ much time and much talent; they hold out much encouragement of success. While we would deride all vain and presumptuous attempts, such as we have referred to, inquiries like these command our approbation; we would cheer them on, for they can hardly fail to produce useful results.

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