had lost the sentiment of attachment to their
country; when their families were dispersed, their traditions obscured,
and the chain of their recollections broken; when all their habits were
changed, and their wants increased beyond measure, European tyranny
rendered them more disorderly and less civilized than they were before.
The moral and physical condition of these tribes continually grew
worse, and they became more barbarous as they became more wretched.
Nevertheless, the Europeans have not been able to metamorphose the
character of the Indians; and though they have had power to destroy
them, they have never been able to make them submit to the rules of
civilized society.

The lot of the negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while
that of the Indian lies on the uttermost verge of liberty; and slavery
does not produce more fatal effects upon the first, than independence
upon the second. The negro has lost all property in his own person, and
he cannot dispose of his existence without committing a sort of fraud:
but the savage is his own master as soon as he is able to act; parental
authority is scarcely known to him; he has never bent his will to
that of any of his kind, nor learned the difference between voluntary
obedience and a shameful subjection; and the very name of law is unknown
to him. To be free, with him, signifies to escape from all the shackles
of society. As he delights in this barbarous independence, and would
rather perish than sacrifice the least part of it, civilization has
little power over him.

The negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate himself
amongst men who repulse him; he conforms to the tastes of his
oppressors, adopts their opinions, and hopes by imitating them to form a
part of their community. Having been told from infancy that his race is
naturally inferior to that of the whites, he assents to the proposition
and is ashamed of his own nature. In each of his features he discovers
a trace of slavery, and, if it were in his power, he would willingly rid
himself of everything that makes him what he is.

The Indian, on the contrary, has his imagination inflated with the
pretended nobility of his origin, and lives and dies in the midst of
these dreams of pride. Far from desiring to conform his habits to ours,
he loves his savage life as the distinguishing mark of his race, and he
repels every advance to civilization, less perhaps from the hatred which
he entertai