of
indifference to any class of the people of the United States. Apart from
all considerations of justice and duty, a purely selfish regard to our
own well-being would compel attention to the subject. The irreversible
laws of God's moral government, and the well-attested maxims of political
and social economy, leave us in no doubt that the suffering, neglect, and
wrong of one part of the community must affect all others. A common
responsibility rests upon each and all to relieve suffering, enlighten
ignorance, and redress wrong, and the penalty of neglect in this respect
no nation has ever escaped.

It is only within a comparatively recent period that the term Indian
Civilization could be appropriately used in this country. Very little
real progress bad been made in this direction, up to the time when
Commissioner Lang in 1844 visited the tribes now most advanced. So
little had been done, that public opinion had acquiesced in the
assumption that the Indians were not susceptible of civilization and
progress. The few experiments had not been calculated to assure a
superficial observer.

The unsupported efforts of Elliot in New England were counteracted by the
imprisonment, and in some instances the massacre of his "praying
Indians," by white men under the exasperation of war with hostile tribes.
The salutary influence of the Moravians and Friends in Pennsylvania was
greatly weakened by the dreadful massacre of the unarmed and blameless
converts of Gnadenhutten. But since the first visit of Commissioner
Lang, thirty-three years ago, the progress of education, civilization,
and conversion to Christianity, has been of a most encouraging nature,
and if Indian civilization was ever a doubtful problem, it has been
practically solved.

The nomadic habits and warlike propensities of the native tribes are
indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their
elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those
Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and
who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had
conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed
from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the
Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons
of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where
ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims,