o deprive them of the means of existence,
as effectually as if the fields of our agriculturists were stricken with
barrenness; and they are reduced, like famished wolves, to prowl through
the forsaken woods in quest of prey. Their instinctive love of their
country attaches them to the soil which gave them birth, *f even after
it has ceased to yield anything but misery and death. At length they
are compelled to acquiesce, and to depart: they follow the traces of the
elk, the buffalo, and the beaver, and are guided by these wild animals
in the choice of their future country. Properly speaking, therefore, it
is not the Europeans who drive away the native inhabitants of America;
it is famine which compels them to recede; a happy distinction which had
escaped the casuists of former times, and for which we are indebted to
modern discovery!

[Footnote f: "The Indians," say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their Report
to Congress, p. 15, "are attached to their country by the same feelings
which bind us to ours; and, besides, there are certain superstitious
notions connected with the alienation of what the Great Spirit gave to
their ancestors, which operate strongly upon the tribes who have made
few or no cessions, but which are gradually weakened as our intercourse
with them is extended. 'We will not sell the spot which contains
the bones of our fathers,' is almost always the first answer to a
proposition for a sale."]

It is impossible to conceive the extent of the sufferings which attend
these forced emigrations. They are undertaken by a people already
exhausted and reduced; and the countries to which the newcomers betake
themselves are inhabited by other tribes which receive them with jealous
hostility. Hunger is in the rear; war awaits them, and misery besets
them on all sides. In the hope of escaping from such a host of enemies,
they separate, and each individual endeavors to procure the means
of supporting his existence in solitude and secrecy, living in the
immensity of the desert like an outcast in civilized society. The social
tie, which distress had long since weakened, is then dissolved; they
have lost their country, and their people soon desert them: their very
families are obliterated; the names they bore in common are forgotten,
their language perishes, and all traces of their origin disappear.
Their nation has ceased to exist, except in the recollection of the
antiquaries of America and a few of the learned of Europe