ly models to guide
judgment or please philosophy. In general, these attempts have held up
high principles of thought and action in a people, against truth,
observation, and common sense. High heroic action, in the Indian, is
the result of personal education in endurance, supported by pride of
character; and if he can ever be said to rejoice in suffering, it is in
the spirit of a taunt to his enemy. This error had been so long
prevalent, that when, in 1839, the author submitted a veritable
collection of legends and myths from the Indian wigwams, which
reflected the Indian life as it is, it was difficult, and almost
impossible, to excite interest in the theme, in the trade. He went to
England and the continent, in hopes of better success. But, although
philanthropists and men of letters and science appreciated the subject,
as historical elements in the history of the human mind, the
booksellers of London, Paris, Leipsic, and Frankfort-on-the-Main, to
whose notice the subject was brought, exhibited very nearly the same
nonchalant tone; and had it not been for the attractive poetic form in
which one of our most popular and successful bards has clothed some of
these wild myths, the period of their reproduction is likely to have
been still further postponed.

In now submitting so large a body of matter, respecting the mental
garniture of a people whose fate and fortunes have excited so much
interest, the surprise is not that we know so little of their mental
traits, but that, with so little research and inquiry, we should know
anything at all. They have only been regarded as the geologist regards
boulders, being not only out of place, but with not half the sure
guides and principles of determining where they came from, and where
the undisturbed original strata remain. The wonder is not that, as
boulder-tribes, they have not adopted our industry and Christianity,
and stoutly resisted civilization, in all its phases, but that, in
spite of such vital truths, held up by all the Colonies and States, and
by every family of them, they have not long since died out and become
extinguished. No English colony could live three or four centuries, in
any isolated part of the world, without the plough, the school-book,
and the Bible; it would die out, of idleness and ignorance. If one
century has kicked the Indian in America harder than another, it is
because the kicks of labor, art, and knowledge are always the hardest,
and in the precise