in his case, the usages and courtesies of
civil life, as we understand them, but that his own peculiar laws,
customs, and manners must be studied and conformed to, if any headway
were to be made in his regard and confidence.

At no time, from the beginning to the present day and hour, has any
white man been so fuddled in his wits as to suppose that the Indian
could either act or talk like a clergyman of any recognized Christian
denomination. It was too much, therefore, to expect from him that he
should exhibit any of the fine charities and warm affections which
distinguish the Christian character. He was a redskin, implacable in his
hate, not altogether trustworthy even in his friendships, and jealous of
his reputation and the traditions of his race. Nor was he without
manhood either. A brave, bloody, mocking and defiant manhood! capable of
the endurances of the martyr, exhibiting sometimes the sublimest
self-sacrifice and courage.

Whether out of these wild and savage materials there lay anywhere, at
any time, the human or divine power to mould a civilized community, does
not appear upon the record. It is certain, however, that after all the
far-too-late attempts to transfigure these savages into the likeness of
a down-East Yankee, or, better still, into the similitude of a Western
farmer, no permanent good results are likely to ensue.

The red man and the white are separated indeed by the prodigious
distances (ethnologically speaking) not only of race and language, but
of noble tradition and glorious history. They could never amalgamate in
blood, or in the so-called natural sympathies of man. They seem to be
born enemies! as their feelings and their instincts apparently reach
them when they come into contact with each other. They cannot exist side
by side. A mightier than they holds the destinies of both in His hands.
He has tried the redskins. He has given them a good chance upon the
earth, and they have failed to do anything but kill buffalo and breed
like rats--often burrowing like rats--refusing to dig and plant the
teeming, beneficent earth which had been committed to their charge; and
preferring, generally, the life of a vagabond loafer to that of a
thrifty, careful husbandman.

I do not blame them. They are as God made them, and man left them; for,
I suppose, their forebears--somewhere afar off in Asia, perhaps, in the
dim, immemorial ages--had all passed through the various phases of the
civilization of t