The Indian, on the contrary, free from the restraints and
refinements of polished life, and in a great degree a solitary
and independent being, obeys the impulses of his inclination or
the dictates of his judgment; and thus the attributes of his
nature, being freely indulged, grow singly great and striking.
Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every
bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling
verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study Nature
in its wildness and variety must plunge into the forest, must
explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
These reflections arose on casually looking through a volume of
early colonial history wherein are recorded, with great
bitterness, the outrages of the Indians and their wars with the
settlers New England. It is painful to perceive, even from these
partial narratives, how the footsteps of civilization may be
traced in the blood of the aborigines; how easily the colonists
were moved to hostility by the lust of conquest; how merciless
and exterminating was their warfare. The imagination shrinks at
the idea of how many intellectual beings were hunted from the
earth, how many brave and noble hearts, of Nature's sterling
coinage, were broken down and trampled in the dust.
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