uccessful, unless they
are surrounded by a cordon of military posts, and the whites are stayed,
by physical force, from entering their territories for any purpose
whatever.

It is to this intercourse that the Indian wars, which have so frequently
caused the blood of the white and the red man to flow in torrents, upon
our frontier, are mainly to be attributed. It has been asserted, even by
those who claim to be the grave historians of this unfortunate people,
that these wars are almost without exception, the result of that cruelty
and insatiable thirst for blood which belong to the Indian character.
One of these writers, the Rev. Timothy Flint, in his "Indian Wars of the
West," says, "We affirm an undoubting belief, from no unfrequent, nor
inconsiderable means of observation, that aggression has commenced, in
the account current of mutual crime, as a hundred to one, on the part of
the Indians." We do not question the sincerity of this belief, but we do
question, entirely, the correctness of the conclusion to which the
writer brings his mind: we affirm without hesitation, that it is a
conclusion that cannot be sustained by testimony. If the individual
making it, had looked less superficially at the case, and had gone to
the primary causes that have produced the bloody collisions between his
countrymen and the Indians, he could never have made so great a mistake
as the one he has committed in the paragraph quoted above. If kindness,
good faith and honesty of dealing, had marked our social, political and
commercial intercourse with the Indians, few, if any of these bloody
wars would have occurred; and these people, instead of being debased by
our intercourse with them, would have been improved and elevated in the
scale of civilization. The history of the early settlement of
Pennsylvania and its illustrious founder, affords the strongest
testimony on this point. The justice, benevolence and kindness which
marked the conduct of Penn towards the Indians, shielded his infant
colony from aggression, and won for him personally, a generous
affection, that would have been creditable to any race of people.

Upon this point it has been well and forcibly remarked by a
philanthropic writer,[17] of our country, that,

"The American Indian is sometimes regarded as a being who is prone to
all that is revolting and cruel. He is cherished in excited
imaginations, as a demoniac phantasm, delighting in bloodshed, without
a spark of generou