defined jurisdiction over Indians
as oppressed as themselves. But the characteristics of the North
American Indians are still visible; they still exhibit the
contradictory traits of Indian character--cruelty and kindness, shyness
and self-possession; enduring the greatest trials without a murmur, and
suffering oppression without complaint; delighting as much as their
northern brethren in tawdry exhibitions, in traditions of the
marvelous, they seem to carry hidden in their inmost soul an idea that
the time will come when they may take vengeance of the despoilers of
their race. They have the Indian's love of adventure and want of
courage. They delight rather in a successful stratagem than in open
hostility, and deem no act of treachery dishonorable by which they can
gain an advantage. Still, they have less romance in their composition
than the unenslaved northern Indians, into whose souls the iron of
despotism has never entered.

THE AZTECS AND THEIR HISTORIANS.

The great difference between what is recorded of the North American
Indian and the Aztec is owing less to any difference in themselves than
to the character of the historians who have written of them. The
northern writers were not carried away by the romance of Indian life;
they were matter-of-fact men, and they drew only matter-of-fact
pictures. Spanish historians, and all early Spanish writers upon New
Spain, except the two brigands, Cortez and Diaz, were priests. With
them, truth was not an essential part of history. By the law of all
countries, the Conquistadors had outlawed themselves by levying
unlicensed war; but as they bore a painting of the Virgin Mary on one
of their standards and the cross on the other, it would be impiety to
place their conduct in its true light. Las Casas was an exception, and
endured persecution for speaking the truth. "He had powerful enemies,"
was all that his apologist dare say, "because he spake the truth." And
if we add to this the sevenfold censorship already described, my reader
will agree with me that it is absurd to place confidence in records
over which the Inquisition exercised a surveillance.

The fabled Aztec empire has almost passed from the traditions of the
Mexican Indians. The name of only one of their chiefs, Montezuma,
remains among them, and this name is affixed to almost every thing that
has an ancient look and is in a dilapidated condition. In my wanderings
among them, I never rejected their proffers of