cannot always meet with a purchaser, whilst the
European readily finds a market; and the former can only produce at a
considerable cost that which the latter vends at a very low rate. Thus
the Indian has no sooner escaped those evils to which barbarous nations
are exposed, than he is subjected to the still greater miseries of
civilized communities; and he finds is scarcely less difficult to live
in the midst of our abundance, than in the depth of his own wilderness.

He has not yet lost the habits of his erratic life; the traditions of
his fathers and his passion for the chase are still alive within him.
The wild enjoyments which formerly animated him in the woods, painfully
excite his troubled imagination; and his former privations appear to
be less keen, his former perils less appalling. He contrasts the
independence which he possessed amongst his equals with the servile
position which he occupies in civilized society. On the other hand,
the solitudes which were so long his free home are still at hand; a few
hours' march will bring him back to them once more. The whites offer him
a sum, which seems to him to be considerable, for the ground which he
has begun to clear. This money of the Europeans may possibly furnish him
with the means of a happy and peaceful subsistence in remoter regions;
and he quits the plough, resumes his native arms, and returns to the
wilderness forever. *s The condition of the Creeks and Cherokees, to
which I have already alluded, sufficiently corroborates the truth of
this deplorable picture.

[Footnote s: The destructive influence of highly civilized nations
upon others which are less so, has been exemplified by the Europeans
themselves. About a century ago the French founded the town of Vincennes
up on the Wabash, in the middle of the desert; and they lived there
in great plenty until the arrival of the American settlers, who first
ruined the previous inhabitants by their competition, and afterwards
purchased their lands at a very low rate. At the time when M. de Volney,
from whom I borrow these details, passed through Vincennes, the number
of the French was reduced to a hundred individuals, most of whom were
about to pass over to Louisiana or to Canada. These French settlers were
worthy people, but idle and uninstructed: they had contracted many of
the habits of savages. The Americans, who were perhaps their inferiors,
in a moral point of view, were immeasurably superior to them in
intelli