awk once reflected the light
of burning cabins along the Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri
Rivers, and the scalping-knives dripped with the blood of our border
settlers, as we have driven the Indians back, back, to the setting sun!

But behold the change to-day, where the church has missions, and the
red men are treated like immortal beings, with souls to be saved.

Mr. Wm. Welsh says of what he saw in Nebraska: "The blanket and bow
discarded; the spear is broken, and the hatchet and war-club lie
buried. The skin-lodge (tepee) has given place to the cottage and the
mansion. Among the Santee Sioux, on Niobrara River, in Nebraska, the
Episcopal Church has a mission, where one can see the murderous weapons
and the conjuror's charms, by aid of which the medicine-man wrought his
fiendish arts.

"That is the _pipe-stem_,--never smoked except on the war-path,--always
blackened, being associated with deeds of darkness.

"These," he says, "are laid at the feet of our Christian missionaries,
such as Bishops Whipple and Clarkson, and Rev. Mr. Hinman; where
school-houses abound, and the feet of many thousand little children,
thirsting after knowledge, are seen entering those vestibules of
science; while churches, consecrated to the Christian's God, reflect
for miles the sun's rays, tokens of a brighter light to their darkened
heathen souls!

"Dear children, thanks to our holy religion, a few faithful men, taking
their lives in their hands, have gone forth at the church's
call,--bearing precious seed,--struggled and toiled, endured severe
privations, afflictions, and trials, and saved in tears the germs of
light, truth, and hope, which to-day have ripened into a glorious
harvest of intelligence and Christian civilization! Christ said, 'It
must needs be that offenses come, but woe unto that man by whom the
offense cometh.'"

Now, if the wrongs accumulated, done to the poor, ignorant pagan
Indians for years and years since the Mayflower landed her pilgrims on
these shores, are to be redressed in this world (for there is no
repentance for nations after), and if a God of justice so require that
we atone to them, or suffer greater torments from their children, who
shall say it is not a righteous retribution?

If we find them fierce, hostile, and revengeful, if they are cruel, and
sometimes perpetrate atrocities that sicken the soul, and almost
paralyze us with horror,--burning and pillaging,--let us remember that
two hundr