treaty of purchase; and if an Indian
nation happens to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon
its territory, they afford it brotherly assistance in transporting it to
a grave sufficiently remote from the land of its fathers.

[Footnote b: The honor of this result is, however, by no means due to
the Spaniards. If the Indian tribes had not been tillers of the ground
at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, they would unquestionably
have been destroyed in South as well as in North America.]

The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those
unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor
did they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the
Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose
with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without
shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of
morality in the eyes of the world. *c It is impossible to destroy men
with more respect for the laws of humanity.

[Footnote c: See, amongst other documents, the report made by Mr. Bell
in the name of the Committee on Indian Affairs, February 24, 1830, in
which is most logically established and most learnedly proved, that "the
fundamental principle that the Indians had no right by virtue of
their ancient possession either of will or sovereignty, has never been
abandoned either expressly or by implication." In perusing this report,
which is evidently drawn up by an experienced hand, one is astonished
at the facility with which the author gets rid of all arguments founded
upon reason and natural right, which he designates as abstract and
theoretical principles. The more I contemplate the difference between
civilized and uncivilized man with regard to the principles of justice,
the more I observe that the former contests the justice of those rights
which the latter simply violates.]

[I leave this chapter wholly unchanged, for it has always appeared to me
to be one of the most eloquent and touching parts of this book. But it
has ceased to be prophetic; the destruction of the Indian race in the
United States is already consummated. In 1870 there remained but 25,731
Indians in the whole territory of the Union, and of these by far the
largest part exist in California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Dakota, and New
Mexico and Nevada. In New England, Pennsylvania, and New York the race
is extinct; and the predictions of M. de Tocq