Poverty, repining and hopeless
poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes
their spirits and blights every free and noble quality of their
natures. They become drunken, indolent, feeble, thievish, and
pusillanimous. They loiter like vagrants about the settlements,
among spacious dwellings replete with elaborate comforts, which
only render them sensible of the comparative wretchedness of
their own condition. Luxury spreads its ample board before their
eyes, but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over
the fields, but they are starving in the midst of its abundance;
the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden, but they feel
as reptiles that infest it.
* The American Government has been indefatigable in its exertions
to ameliorate the situation of the Indians, and to introduce
among them the arts of civilization and civil and religious
knowledge. To protect them from the frauds of the white traders
no purchase of land from them by individuals is permitted, nor is
any person allowed to receive lands from them as a present
without the express sanction of government. These precautions are
strictly enforced.
How different was their state while yet the undisputed lords of
the soil! Their wants were few and the means of gratification
within their reach.
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