It may readily be discovered with what i_Democracy in America

foregoing inquiries. The question here discussed is interesting not

only to the United States, but to the whole world; it concerns, not a

nation, but all mankind. If those nations whose social condition is

democratic could only remain free as long as they are inhabitants of

the wilds, we could not but despair of the future destiny of the human

race; for democracy is rapidly acquiring a more extended sway, and the

wilds are gradually peopled with men. If it were true that laws and

manners are insufficient to maintain democratic institutions, what

refuge would remain open to the nations, except the despotism of a

single individual? I am aware that there are many worthy persons at the

present time who are not alarmed at this latter alternative, and who

are so tired of liberty as to be glad of repose, far from those storms

by which it is attended. But these individuals are ill acquainted with

the haven towards which they are bound. They are so deluded by their

recollections, as to judge the tendency of absolute power by what it

was formerly, and not by what it might become at the present time.

If absolute power were re-established amongst the democratic nations of

Europe, I am persuaded that it would assume a new form, and appear

under features unknown to our forefathers. There was a time in Europe

when the laws and the consent of the people had invested princes with

almost unlimited authority; but they scarcely ever availed themselves

of it. I do not speak of the prerogatives of the nobility, of the

authority of supreme courts of justice, of corporations and their

chartered rights, or of provincial privileges, which served to break

the blows of the sovereign authority, and to maintain a spirit of

resistance in the nation. Independently of these political

institutions—which, however opposed they might be to personal liberty,

served to keep alive the love of freedom in the mind of the public, and

which may be esteemed to have been useful in this respect—the manners

and opinions of the nation confined the royal authority within barriers

which were not less powerful, although they were less conspicuous.

Religion, the affections of the people, the benevolence of the prince,

the sense of honor, family pride, provincial prejudices, custom, and

public opinion limited the power of kings, and restrained their

authority within an invisible circle. The constitution of nations was

despotic at that time, but their manners were free. Princes had the

right, but they had neither the means nor the desire, of doing whatever

they pleased.

But what now remains of those barriers which formerly arrested the

aggressions of tyranny? Since religion has lost its empire over the

souls of men, the most prominent boundary which divided good from evil

is overthrown; the very elements of the moral world are indeterminate;

the princes and the peoples of the earth are guided by chance, and none

can define the natural limits of despotism and the bounds of license.

Long revolutions have forever destroyed the respect which surrounded

the rulers of the State; and since they have been relieved from the

burden of public esteem, princes may henceforward surrender themselves

without fear to the seductions of arbitrary power.

When kings find that the hearts of their subjects are turned towards

them, they are clement, because they are conscious of their strength,

and they are chary of the affection of their people, because the

affection of their people is the bulwark of the throne. A mutual

interchange of good-will then takes place between the prince and the

people, which resembles the gracious intercourse of domestic society.

The subjects may murmur at the sovereign’s decree, but they are grieved

to displease him; and the sovereign chastises his subjects with the

light hand of parental affection.

But when once the spell of royalty is broken in the tumult of

revolution; when successive monarchs have crossed the throne, so as

alternately to display to the people the weakness of their right and

the harshness of their power, the sovereign is no longer regarded by

any as the Father of the State, and he is feared by all as its master.

If he be weak, he is despised; if he be strong, he is detested. He

himself is full of animosity and alarm; he finds that he is as a

stranger in his own country, and he treats his subjects like conquered

enemies.

When the provinces and the towns formed so many different nations in

the midst of their common country, each of them had a will of its own,

which was opposed to the general spirit of subjection; but now that all

the parts of the same empire, after having lost their immunities, their

customs, their prejudices, their traditions, and their names, are

subjected and accustomed to the same laws, it is not more difficult to

oppress them collectively than it was formerly to oppress them singly.

Whilst the nobles enjoyed their power, and indeed long after that power

was lost, the honor of aristocracy conferred an extraordinary degree of

force upon their personal opposition. They afford instances of men who,

notwithstanding their weakness, still entertained a high opinion of

their personal value, and dared to cope single-handed with the efforts

of the public authority. But at the present day, when all ranks are

more and more confounded, when the individual disappears in the throng,

and is easily lost in the midst of a common obscurity, when the honor

of monarchy has almost lost its empire without being succeeded by

public virtue, and when nothing can enable man to rise above himself,

who shall say at what point the exigencies of power and the servility

of weakness will stop?

As long as family feeling was kept alive, the antagonist of oppression

was never alone; he looked about him, and found his clients, his

hereditary friends, and his kinsfolk. If this support was wanting, he

was sustained by his ancestors and animated by his posterity. But when

patrimonial estates are divided, and when a few years suffice to

confound the distinctions of a race, where can family feeling be found?

What force can there be in the customs of a country which has changed

and is still perpetually changing its aspect; in which every act of

tyranny has a precedent, and every crime an example; in which there is

nothing so old that its antiquity can save it from destruction, and

nothing so unparalleled that its novelty can prevent it from being

done? What resistance can be offered by manners of so pliant a make

that they have already often yielded? What strength can even public

opinion have retained, when no twenty persons are connected by a common

tie; when not a man, nor a family, nor chartered corporation, nor

class, nor free institution, has the power of representing or exerting

that opinion; and when every citizen—being equally weak, equally poor,

and equally dependent—has only his personal impotence to oppose to the

organized force of the government?

The annals of France furnish nothing analogous to the condition in

which that country might then be thrown. But it may more aptly be

assimilated to the times of old, and to those hideous eras of Roman

oppression, when the manners of the people were corrupted, their

traditions obliterated, their habits destroyed, their opinions shaken,

and freedom, expelled from the laws, could find no refuge in the land;

when nothing protected the citizens, and the citizens no longer

protected themselves; when human nature was the sport of man, and

princes wearied out the clemency of Heaven before they exhausted the

patience of their subjects. Those who hope to revive the monarchy of

Henry IV or of Louis XIV, appear to me to be afflicted with mental

blindness; and when I consider the present condition of several

European nations—a condition to which all the others tend—I am led to

believe that they will soon be left with no other alternative than

democratic liberty, or the tyranny of the Caesars. *n

[ [This prediction of the return of France to imperial despotism, and

of the true character of that despotic power, was written in 1832, and

realized to the letter in 1852.]]

And indeed it is deserving of consideration, whether men are to be

entirely emancipated or entirely enslaved; whether their rights are to

be made equal, or wholly taken away from them. If the rulers of society

were reduced either gradually to raise the crowd to their own level, or

to sink the citizens below that of humanity, would not the doubts of

many be resolved, the consciences of many be healed, and the community

prepared to make great sacrifices with little difficulty? In that case,

the gradual growth of democratic manners and institutions should be

regarded, not as the best, but as the only means of preserving freedom;

and without liking the government of democracy, it might be adopted as

the most applicable and the fairest remedy for the present ills of

society.

It is difficult to associate a people in the work of government; but it

is still more difficult to supply it with experience, and to inspire it

with the feelings which it requires in order to govern well. I grant

that the caprices of democracy are perpetual; its instruments are rude;

its laws imperfect. But if it were true that soon no just medium would

exist between the empire of democracy and the dominion of a single arm,

should we not rather incline towards the former than submit voluntarily

to the latter? And if complete equality be our fate, is it not better

to be levelled by free institutions than by despotic power?

Those who, after having read this book, should imagine that my

intention in writing it has been to propose the laws and manners of the

Anglo-Americans for the imitation of all democratic peoples, would

commit a very great mistake; they must have paid more attention to the

form than to the substance of my ideas. My aim has been to show, by the

example of America, that laws, and especially manners, may exist which

will allow a democratic people to remain free. But I am very far from

thinking that we ought to follow the example of the American democracy,

and copy the means which it has employed to attain its ends; for I am

well aware of the influence which the nature of a country and its

political precedents exercise upon a constitution; and I should regard

it as a great misfortune for mankind if liberty were to exist all over

the world under the same forms.

But I am of opinion that if we do not succeed in gradually introducing

democratic institutions into France, and if we despair of imparting to

the citizens those ideas and sentiments which first prepare them for

freedom, and afterwards allow them to enjoy it, there will be no

independence at all, either for the middling classes or the nobility,

for the poor or for the rich, but an equal tyranny over all; and I

foresee that if the peaceable empire of the majority be not founded

amongst us in time, we shall sooner or later arrive at the unlimited

authority of a single despot.

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races In The United

States—Part I

The Present And Probable Future Condition Of The Three Races Which

Inhabit The Territory Of The United States

The principal part of the task which I had imposed upon myself is now

performed. I have shown, as far as I was able, the laws and the manners

of the American democracy. Here I might stop; but the reader would

perhaps feel that I had not satisfied his expectations.

The absolute supremacy of democracy is not all that we meet with in

America; the inhabitants of the New World may be considered from more

than one point of view. In the course of this work my subject has often

led me to speak of the Indians and the Negroes; but I have never been

able to stop in order to show what place these two races occupy in the

midst of the democratic people whom I was engaged in describing. I have

mentioned in what spirit, and according to what laws, the

Anglo-American Union was formed; but I could only glance at the dangers

which menace that confederation, whilst it was equally impossible for

me to give a detailed account of its chances of duration, independently

of its laws and manners. When speaking of the united republican States,

I hazarded no conjectures upon the permanence of republican forms in

the New World, and when making frequent allusion to the commercial

activity which reigns in the Union, I was unable to inquire into the

future condition of the Americans as a commercial people.

These topics are collaterally connected with my subject without forming

a part of it; they are American without being democratic; and to

portray democracy has been my principal aim. It was therefore necessary

to postpone these questions, which I now take up as the proper

termination of my work.

The territory now occupied or claimed by the American Union spreads

from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific Ocean. On the

east and west its limits are those of the continent itself. On the

south it advances nearly to the tropic, and it extends upwards to the

icy regions of the North. The human beings who are scattered over this

space do not form, as in Europe, so many branches of the same stock.

Three races, naturally distinct, and, I might almost say, hostile to

each other, are discoverable amongst them at the first glance. Almost

insurmountable barriers had been raised between them by education and

by law, as well as by their origin and outward characteristics; but

fortune has brought them together on the same soil, where, although

they are mixed, they do not amalgamate, and each race fulfils its

destiny apart.

Amongst these widely differing families of men, the first which

attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power and in

enjoyment, is the white or European, the man pre-eminent; and in

subordinate grades, the negro and the Indian. These two unhappy races

have nothing in common; neither birth, nor features, nor language, nor

habits. Their only resemblance lies in their misfortunes. Both of them

occupy an inferior rank in the country they inhabit; both suffer from

tyranny; and if their wrongs are not the same, they originate, at any

rate, with the same authors.

If we reasoned from what passes in the world, we should almost say that

the European is to the other races of mankind, what man is to the lower

animals;—he makes them subservient to his use; and when he cannot

subdue, he destroys them. Oppression has, at one stroke, deprived the

descendants of the Africans of almost all the privileges of humanity.

The negro of the United States has lost all remembrance of his country;

the language which his forefathers spoke is never heard around him; he

abjured their religion and forgot their customs when he ceased to

belong to Africa, without acquiring any claim to European privileges.

But he remains half way between the two communities; sold by the one,

repulsed by the other; finding not a spot in the universe to call by

the name of country, except the faint image of a home which the shelter

of his master’s roof affords.

The negro has no family; woman is merely the temporary companion of his

pleasures, and his children are upon an equality with himself from the

moment of their birth. Am I to call it a proof of God’s mercy or a

visitation of his wrath, that man in certain states appears to be

insensible to his extreme wretchedness, and almost affects, with a

depraved taste, the cause of his misfortunes? The negro, who is plunged

in this abyss of evils, scarcely feels his own calamitous situation.

Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him the

thoughts and desires of a slave; he admires his tyrants more than he

hates them, and finds his joy and his pride in the servile imitation of

those who oppress him: his understanding is degraded to the level of

his soul.

The negro enters upon slavery as soon as he is born: nay, he may have

been purchased in the womb, and have begun his slavery before he began

his existence. Equally devoid of wants and of enjoyment, and useless to

himself, he learns, with his first notions of existence, that he is the

property of another, who has an interest in preserving his life, and

that the care of it does not devolve upon himself; even the power of

thought appears to him a useless gift of Providence, and he quietly

enjoys the privileges of his debasement. If he becomes free,

independence is often felt by him to be a heavier burden than slavery;

for having learned, in the course of his life, to submit to everything

except reason, he is too much unacquainted with her dictates to obey

them. A thousand new desires beset him, and he is destitute of the

knowledge and energy necessary to resist them: these are masters which

it is necessary to contend with, and he has learnt only to submit and

obey. In short, he sinks to such a depth of wretchedness, that while

servitude brutalizes, liberty destroys him.

Oppression has been no less fatal to the Indian than to the negro race,

but its effects are different. Before the arrival of white men in the

New World, the inhabitants of North America lived quietly in their

woods, enduring the vicissitudes and practising the virtues and vices

common to savage nations. The Europeans, having dispersed the Indian

tribes and driven them into the deserts, condemned them to a wandering

life full of inexpressible sufferings.

Savage nations are only controlled by opinion and by custom. When the

North American Indians had lost the sentiment of attachment to their

country; when their families were dispersed, their traditions obscured,

and the chain of their recollections broken; when all their habits were

changed, and their wants increased beyond measure, European tyranny

rendered them more disorderly and less civilized than they were before.

The moral and physical condition of these tribes continually grew

worse, and they became more barbarous as they became more wretched.

Nevertheless, the Europeans have not been able to metamorphose the

character of the Indians; and though they have had power to destroy

them, they have never been able to make them submit to the rules of

civilized society.

The lot of the negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while

that of the Indian lies on the uttermost verge of liberty; and slavery

does not produce more fatal effects upon the first, than independence

upon the second. The negro has lost all property in his own person, and

he cannot dispose of his existence without committing a sort of fraud:

but the savage is his own master as soon as he is able to act; parental

authority is scarcely known to him; he has never bent his will to that

of any of his kind, nor learned the difference between voluntary

obedience and a shameful subjection; and the very name of law is

unknown to him. To be free, with him, signifies to escape from all the

shackles of society. As he delights in this barbarous independence, and

would rather perish than sacrifice the least part of it, civilization

has little power over him.

The negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate himself

amongst men who repulse him; he conforms to the tastes of his

oppressors, adopts their opinions, and hopes by imitating them to form

a part of their community. Having been told from infancy that his race

is naturally inferior to that of the whites, he assents to the

proposition and is ashamed of his own nature. In each of his features

he discovers a trace of slavery, and, if it were in his power, he would

willingly rid himself of everything that makes him what he is.

The Indian, on the contrary, has his imagination inflated with the

pretended nobility of his origin, and lives and dies in the midst of

these dreams of pride. Far from desiring to conform his habits to ours,

he loves his savage life as the distinguishing mark of his race, and he

repels every advance to civilization, less perhaps from the hatred

which he entertains for it, than from a dread of resembling the

Europeans. *a While he has nothing to oppose to our perfection in the

arts but the resources of the desert, to our tactics nothing but

undisciplined courage; whilst our well-digested plans are met by the

spontaneous instincts of savage life, who can wonder if he fails in

this unequal contest?

[ The native of North America retains his opinions and the most

insignificant of his habits with a degree of tenacity which has no

parallel in history. For more than two hundred years the wandering

tribes of North America have had daily intercourse with the whites, and

they have never derived from them either a custom or an idea. Yet the

Europeans have exercised a powerful influence over the savages: they

have made them more licentious, but not more European. In the summer of

1831 I happened to be beyond Lake Michigan, at a place called Green

Bay, which serves as the extreme frontier between the United States and

the Indians on the north-western side. Here I became acquainted with an

American officer, Major H., who, after talking to me at length on the

inflexibility of the Indian character, related the following fact:—“I

formerly knew a young Indian,” said he, “who had been educated at a

college in New England, where he had greatly distinguished himself, and

had acquired the external appearance of a member of civilized society.

When the war broke out between ourselves and the English in 1810, I saw

this young man again; he was serving in our army, at the head of the

warriors of his tribe, for the Indians were admitted amongst the ranks

of the Americans, upon condition that they would abstain from their

horrible custom of scalping their victims. On the evening of the battle

of . . ., C. came and sat himself down by the fire of our bivouac. I

asked him what had been his fortune that day: he related his exploits;

and growing warm and animated by the recollection of them, he concluded

by suddenly opening the breast of his coat, saying, ‘You must not

betray me—see here!’ And I actually beheld,” said the Major, “between

his body and his shirt, the skin and hair of an English head, still

dripping with gore.”]

The negro, who earnestly desires to mingle his race with that of the

European, cannot effect if; while the Indian, who might succeed to a

certain extent, disdains to make the attempt. The servility of the one

dooms him to slavery, the pride of the other to death.

I remember that while I was travelling through the forests which still

cover the State of Alabama, I arrived one day at the log house of a

pioneer. I did not wish to penetrate into the dwelling of the American,

but retired to rest myself for a while on the margin of a spring, which

was not far off, in the woods. While I was in this place (which was in

the neighborhood of the Creek territory), an Indian woman appeared,

followed by a negress, and holding by the hand a little white girl of

five or six years old, whom I took to be the daughter of the pioneer. A

sort of barbarous luxury set off the costume of the Indian; rings of

metal were hanging from her nostrils and ears; her hair, which was

adorned with glass beads, fell loosely upon her shoulders; and I saw

that she was not married, for she still wore that necklace of shells

which the bride always deposits on the nuptial couch. The negress was

clad in squalid European garments. They all three came and seated

themselves upon the banks of the fountain; and the young Indian, taking

the child in her arms, lavished upon her such fond caresses as mothers

give; while the negress endeavored by various little artifices to

attract the attention of the young Creole.

The child displayed in her slightest gestures a consciousness of

superiority which formed a strange contrast with her infantine

weakness; as if she received the attentions of her companions with a

sort of condescension. The negress was seated on the ground before her

mistress, watching her smallest desires, and apparently divided between

strong affection for the child and servile fear; whilst the savage

displayed, in the midst of her tenderness, an air of freedom and of

pride which was almost ferocious. I had approached the group, and I

contemplated them in silence; but my curiosity was probably displeasing

to the Indian woman, for she suddenly rose, pushed the child roughly

from her, and giving me an angry look plunged into the thicket. I had

often chanced to see individuals met together in the same place, who

belonged to the three races of men which people North America. I had

perceived from many different results the preponderance of the whites.

But in the picture which I have just been describing there was

something peculiarly touching; a bond of affection here united the

oppressors with the oppressed, and the effort of nature to bring them

together rendered still more striking the immense distance placed

between them by prejudice and by law.

The Present And Probable Future Condition Of The Indian Tribes Which

Inhabit The Territory Possessed By The Union

Gradual disappearance of the native tribes—Manner in which it takes

place—Miseries accompanying the forced migrations of the Indians—The

savages of North America had only two ways of escaping destruction; war

or civilization—They are no longer able to make war—Reasons why they

refused to become civilized when it was in their power, and why they

cannot become so now that they desire it—Instance of the Creeks and

Cherokees—Policy of the particular States towards these Indians—Policy

of the Federal Government.

None of the Indian tribes which formerly inhabited the territory of New

England—the Naragansetts, the Mohicans, the Pecots—have any existence

but in the recollection of man. The Lenapes, who received William Penn,

a hundred and fifty years ago, upon the banks of the Delaware, have

disappeared; and I myself met with the last of the Iroquois, who were

begging alms. The nations I have mentioned formerly covered the country

to the sea-coast; but a traveller at the present day must penetrate

more than a hundred leagues into the interior of the continent to find

an Indian. Not only have these wild tribes receded, but they are

destroyed; *b and as they give way or perish, an immense and increasing

people fills their place. There is no instance upon record of so

prodigious a growth, or so rapid a destruction: the manner in which the

latter change takes place is not difficult to describe.

[ In the thirteen original States there are only 6,273 Indians

remaining. (See Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No. 117, p. 90.)

[The decrease in now far greater, and is verging on extinction. See

page 360 of this volume.]]

When the Indians were the sole inhabitants of the wilds from whence

they have since been expelled, their wants were few. Their arms were of

their own manufacture, their only drink was the water of the brook, and

their clothes consisted of the skins of animals, whose flesh furnished

them with food.

The Europeans introduced amongst the savages of North America

fire-arms, ardent spirits, and iron: they taught them to exchange for

manufactured stuffs, the rough garments which had previously satisfied

their untutored simplicity. Having acquired new tastes, without the

arts by which they could be gratified, the Indians were obliged to have

recourse to the workmanship of the whites; but in return for their

productions the savage had nothing to offer except the rich furs which

still abounded in his woods. Hence the chase became necessary, not

merely to provide for his subsistence, but in order to procure the only

objects of barter which he could furnish to Europe. *c Whilst the wants

of the natives were thus increasing, their resources continued to

diminish.

[ Messrs. Clarke and Cass, in their Report to Congress on February 4,

1829, p. 23, expressed themselves thus:—“The time when the Indians

generally could supply themselves with food and clothing, without any

of the articles of civilized life, has long since passed away. The more

remote tribes, beyond the Mississippi, who live where immense herds of

buffalo are yet to be found and who follow those animals in their

periodical migrations, could more easily than any others recur to the

habits of their ancestors, and live without the white man or any of his

manufactures. But the buffalo is constantly receding. The smaller

animals, the bear, the deer, the beaver, the otter, the muskrat, etc.,

principally minister to the comfort and support of the Indians; and

these cannot be taken without guns, ammunition, and traps. Among the

Northwestern Indians particularly, the labor of supplying a family with

food is excessive. Day after day is spent by the hunter without

success, and during this interval his family must subsist upon bark or

roots, or perish. Want and misery are around them and among them. Many

die every winter from actual starvation.”

The Indians will not live as Europeans live, and yet they can neither

subsist without them, nor exactly after the fashion of their fathers.

This is demonstrated by a fact which I likewise give upon official

authority. Some Indians of a tribe on the banks of Lake Superior had

killed a European; the American government interdicted all traffic with

the tribe to which the guilty parties belonged, until they were

delivered up to justice. This measure had the desired effect.]

From the moment when a European settlement is formed in the

neighborhood of the territory occupied by the Indians, the beasts of

chase take the alarm. *d Thousands of savages, wandering in the forests

and destitute of any fixed dwelling, did not disturb them; but as soon

as the continuous sounds of European labor are heard in their

neighborhood, they begin to flee away, and retire to the West, where

their instinct teaches them that they will find deserts of immeasurable

extent. “The buffalo is constantly receding,” say Messrs. Clarke and

Cass in their Report of the year 1829; “a few years since they

approached the base of the Alleghany; and a few years hence they may

even be rare upon the immense plains which extend to the base of the

Rocky Mountains.” I have been assured that this effect of the approach

of the whites is often felt at two hundred leagues’ distance from their

frontier. Their influence is thus exerted over tribes whose name is

unknown to them; and who suffer the evils of usurpation long before

they are acquainted with the authors of their distress. *e

[ “Five years ago,” (says Volney in his “Tableau des Etats-Unis,” p.

370) “in going from Vincennes to Kaskaskia, a territory which now forms

part of the State of Illinois, but which at the time I mention was

completely wild (1797), you could not cross a prairie without seeing

herds of from four to five hundred buffaloes. There are now none

remaining; they swam across the Mississippi to escape from the hunters,

and more particularly from the bells of the American cows.”]

[ The truth of what I here advance may be easily proved by consulting

the tabular statement of Indian tribes inhabiting the United States and

their territories. (Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No. 117, pp.

90-105.) It is there shown that the tribes in the centre of America are

rapidly decreasing, although the Europeans are still at a considerable

distance from them.]

Bold adventurers soon penetrate into the country the Indians have

deserted, and when they have advanced about fifteen or twenty leagues

from the extreme frontiers of the whites, they begin to build

habitations for civilized beings in the midst of the wilderness. This

is done without difficulty, as the territory of a hunting-nation is

ill-defined; it is the common property of the tribe, and belongs to no

one in particular, so that individual interests are not concerned in

the protection of any part of it.

A few European families, settled in different situations at a

considerable distance from each other, soon drive away the wild animals

which remain between their places of abode. The Indians, who had

previously lived in a sort of abundance, then find it difficult to

subsist, and still more difficult to procure the articles of barter

which they stand in need of.

To drive away their game is to deprive them of the means of existence,

as effectually as if the fields of our agriculturists were stricken

with barrenness; and they are reduced, like famished wolves, to prowl

through the forsaken woods in quest of prey. Their instinctive love of

their country attaches them to the soil which gave them birth, *f even

after it has ceased to yield anything but misery and death. At length

they are compelled to acquiesce, and to depart: they follow the traces

of the elk, the buffalo, and the beaver, and are guided by these wild

animals in the choice of their future country. Properly speaking,

therefore, it is not the Europeans who drive away the native

inhabitants of America; it is famine which compels them to recede; a

happy distinction which had escaped the casuists of former times, and

for which we are indebted to modern discovery!

[ “The Indians,” say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their Report to

Congress, p. 15, “are attached to their country by the same feelings

which bind us to ours; and, besides, there are certain superstitious

notions connected with the alienation of what the Great Spirit gave to

their ancestors, which operate strongly upon the tribes who have made

few or no cessions, but which are gradually weakened as our intercourse

with them is extended. ‘We will not sell the spot which contains the

bones of our fathers,’ is almost always the first answer to a

proposition for a sale.”]

It is impossible to conceive the extent of the sufferings which attend

these forced emigrations. They are undertaken by a people already

exhausted and reduced; and the countries to which the newcomers betake

themselves are inhabited by other tribes which receive them with

jealous hostility. Hunger is in the rear; war awaits them, and misery

besets them on all sides. In the hope of escaping from such a host of

enemies, they separate, and each individual endeavors to procure the

means of supporting his existence in solitude and secrecy, living in

the immensity of the desert like an outcast in civilized society. The

social tie, which distress had long since weakened, is then dissolved;

they have lost their country, and their people soon desert them: their

very families are obliterated; the names they bore in common are

forgotten, their language perishes, and all traces of their origin

disappear. Their nation has ceased to exist, except in the recollection

of the antiquaries of America and a few of the learned of Europe.

I should be sorry to have my reader suppose that I am coloring the

picture too highly; I saw with my own eyes several of the cases of

misery which I have been describing; and I was the witness of

sufferings which I have not the power to portray.

At the end of the year 1831, whilst I was on the left bank of the

Mississippi at a place named by Europeans, Memphis, there arrived a

numerous band of Choctaws (or Chactas, as they are called by the French

in Louisiana). These savages had left their country, and were

endeavoring to gain the right bank of the Mississippi, where they hoped

to find an asylum which had been promised them by the American

government. It was then the middle of winter, and the cold was

unusually severe; the snow had frozen hard upon the ground, and the

river was drifting huge masses of ice. The Indians had their families

with them; and they brought in their train the wounded and sick, with

children newly born, and old men upon the verge of death. They

possessed neither tents nor wagons, but only their arms and some

provisions. I saw them embark to pass the mighty river, and never will

that solemn spectacle fade from my remembrance. No cry, no sob was

heard amongst the assembled crowd; all were silent. Their calamities

were of ancient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. The

Indians had all stepped into the bark which was to carry them across,

but their dogs remained upon the bank. As soon as these animals

perceived that their masters were finally leaving the shore, they set

up a dismal howl, and, plunging all together into the icy waters of the

Mississippi, they swam after the boat.

The ejectment of the Indians very often takes place at the present day,

in a regular, and, as it were, a legal manner. When the European

population begins to approach the limit of the desert inhabited by a

savage tribe, the government of the United States usually dispatches

envoys to them, who assemble the Indians in a large plain, and having

first eaten and drunk with them, accost them in the following manner:

“What have you to do in the land of your fathers? Before long, you must

dig up their bones in order to live. In what respect is the country you

inhabit better than another? Are there no woods, marshes, or prairies,

except where you dwell? And can you live nowhere but under your own

sun? Beyond those mountains which you see at the horizon, beyond the

lake which bounds your territory on the west, there lie vast countries

where beasts of chase are found in great abundance; sell your lands to

us, and go to live happily in those solitudes.” After holding this

language, they spread before the eyes of the Indians firearms, woollen

garments, kegs of brandy, glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel,

earrings, and looking-glasses. *g If, when they have beheld all these

riches, they still hesitate, it is insinuated that they have not the

means of refusing their required consent, and that the government

itself will not long have the power of protecting them in their rights.

What are they to do? Half convinced, and half compelled, they go to

inhabit new deserts, where the importunate whites will not let them

remain ten years in tranquillity. In this manner do the Americans

obtain, at a very low price, whole provinces, which the richest

sovereigns of Europe could not purchase. *h

[ See, in the Legislative Documents of Congress (Doc. 117), the

narrative of what takes place on these occasions. This curious passage

is from the above-mentioned report, made to Congress by Messrs. Clarke

and Cass in February, 1829. Mr. Cass is now the Secretary of War.

“The Indians,” says the report, “reach the treaty-ground poor and

almost naked. Large quantities of goods are taken there by the traders,

and are seen and examined by the Indians. The women and children become

importunate to have their wants supplied, and their influence is soon

exerted to induce a sale. Their improvidence is habitual and

unconquerable. The gratification of his immediate wants and desires is

the ruling passion of an Indian. The expectation of future advantages

seldom produces much effect. The experience of the past is lost, and

the prospects of the future disregarded. It would be utterly hopeless

to demand a cession of land, unless the means were at hand of

gratifying their immediate wants; and when their condition and

circumstances are fairly considered, it ought not to surprise us that

they are so anxious to relieve themselves.”]

[ On May 19, 1830, Mr. Edward Everett affirmed before the House of

Representatives, that the Americans had already acquired by treaty, to

the east and west of the Mississippi, 230,000,000 of acres. In 1808 the

Osages gave up 48,000,000 acres for an annual payment of $1,000. In

1818 the Quapaws yielded up 29,000,000 acres for $4,000. They reserved

for themselves a territory of 1,000,000 acres for a hunting-ground. A

solemn oath was taken that it should be respected: but before long it

was invaded like the rest. Mr. Bell, in his Report of the Committee on

Indian Affairs, February 24, 1830, has these words:—“To pay an Indian

tribe what their ancient hunting-grounds are worth to them, after the

game is fled or destroyed, as a mode of appropriating wild lands

claimed by Indians, has been found more convenient, and certainly it is

more agreeable to the forms of justice, as well as more merciful, than

to assert the possession of them by the sword. Thus the practice of

buying Indian titles is but the substitute which humanity and

expediency have imposed, in place of the sword, in arriving at the

actual enjoyment of property claimed by the right of discovery, and

sanctioned by the natural superiority allowed to the claims of

civilized communities over those of savage tribes. Up to the present

time so invariable has been the operation of certain causes, first in

diminishing the value of forest lands to the Indians, and secondly in

disposing them to sell readily, that the plan of buying their right of

occupancy has never threatened to retard, in any perceptible degree,

the prosperity of any of the States.” (Legislative Documents, 21st

Congress, No. 227, p. 6.)]

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races—Part II

These are great evils; and it must be added that they appear to me to

be irremediable. I believe that the Indian nations of North America are

doomed to perish; and that whenever the Europeans shall be established

on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, that race of men will be no more.

*i The Indians had only the two alternatives of war or civilization; in

other words, they must either have destroyed the Europeans or become

their equals.

[ This seems, indeed, to be the opinion of almost all American

statesmen. “Judging of the future by the past,” says Mr. Cass, “we

cannot err in anticipating a progressive diminution of their numbers,

and their eventual extinction, unless our border should become

stationary, and they be removed beyond it, or unless some radical

change should take place in the principles of our intercourse with

them, which it is easier to hope for than to expect.”]

At the first settlement of the colonies they might have found it

possible, by uniting their forces, to deliver themselves from the small

bodies of strangers who landed on their continent. *j They several

times attempted to do it, and were on the point of succeeding; but the

disproportion of their resources, at the present day, when compared

with those of the whites, is too great to allow such an enterprise to

be thought of. Nevertheless, there do arise from time to time among the

Indians men of penetration, who foresee the final destiny which awaits

the native population, and who exert themselves to unite all the tribes

in common hostility to the Europeans; but their efforts are unavailing.

Those tribes which are in the neighborhood of the whites, are too much

weakened to offer an effectual resistance; whilst the others, giving

way to that childish carelessness of the morrow which characterizes

savage life, wait for the near approach of danger before they prepare

to meet it; some are unable, the others are unwilling, to exert

themselves.

[ Amongst other warlike enterprises, there was one of the Wampanaogs,

and other confederate tribes, under Metacom in 1675, against the

colonists of New England; the English were also engaged in war in

Virginia in 1622.]

It is easy to foresee that the Indians will never conform to

civilization; or that it will be too late, whenever they may be

inclined to make the experiment.

Civilization is the result of a long social process which takes place

in the same spot, and is handed down from one generation to another,

each one profiting by the experience of the last. Of all nations, those

submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live

by the chase. Pastoral tribes, indeed, often change their place of

abode; but they follow a regular order in their migrations, and often

return again to their old stations, whilst the dwelling of the hunter

varies with that of the animals he pursues.

Several attempts have been made to diffuse knowledge amongst the

Indians, without controlling their wandering propensities; by the

Jesuits in Canada, and by the Puritans in New England; *k but none of

these endeavors were crowned by any lasting success. Civilization began

in the cabin, but it soon retired to expire in the woods. The great

error of these legislators of the Indians was their not understanding

that, in order to succeed in civilizing a people, it is first necessary

to fix it; which cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the

soil; the Indians ought in the first place to have been accustomed to

agriculture. But not only are they destitute of this indispensable

preliminary to civilization, they would even have great difficulty in

acquiring it. Men who have once abandoned themselves to the restless

and adventurous life of the hunter, feel an insurmountable disgust for

the constant and regular labor which tillage requires. We see this

proved in the bosom of our own society; but it is far more visible

among peoples whose partiality for the chase is a part of their

national character.

[ See the “Histoire de la Nouvelle France,” by Charlevoix, and the work

entitled “Lettres edifiantes.”]

Independently of this general difficulty, there is another, which

applies peculiarly to the Indians; they consider labor not merely as an

evil, but as a disgrace; so that their pride prevents them from

becoming civilized, as much as their indolence. *l

[ “In all the tribes,” says Volney, in his “Tableau des Etats-Unis,” p.

423, “there still exists a generation of old warriors, who cannot

forbear, when they see their countrymen using the hoe, from exclaiming

against the degradation of ancient manners, and asserting that the

savages owe their decline to these innovations; adding, that they have

only to return to their primitive habits in order to recover their

power and their glory.”]

There is no Indian so wretched as not to retain under his hut of bark a

lofty idea of his personal worth; he considers the cares of industry

and labor as degrading occupations; he compares the husbandman to the

ox which traces the furrow; and even in our most ingenious handicraft,

he can see nothing but the labor of slaves. Not that he is devoid of

admiration for the power and intellectual greatness of the whites; but

although the result of our efforts surprises him, he contemns the means

by which we obtain it; and while he acknowledges our ascendancy, he

still believes in his superiority. War and hunting are the only

pursuits which appear to him worthy to be the occupations of a man. *m

The Indian, in the dreary solitude of his woods, cherishes the same

ideas, the same opinions as the noble of the Middle Ages in his castle,

and he only requires to become a conqueror to complete the resemblance;

thus, however strange it may seem, it is in the forests of the New

World, and not amongst the Europeans who people its coasts, that the

ancient prejudices of Europe are still in existence.

[ The following description occurs in an official document: “Until a

young man has been engaged with an enemy, and has performed some acts

of valor, he gains no consideration, but is regarded nearly as a woman.

In their great war-dances all the warriors in succession strike the

post, as it is called, and recount their exploits. On these occasions

their auditory consists of the kinsmen, friends, and comrades of the

narrator. The profound impression which his discourse produces on them

is manifested by the silent attention it receives, and by the loud

shouts which hail its termination. The young man who finds himself at

such a meeting without anything to recount is very unhappy; and

instances have sometimes occurred of young warriors, whose passions had

been thus inflamed, quitting the war-dance suddenly, and going off

alone to seek for trophies which they might exhibit, and adventures

which they might be allowed to relate.”]

More than once, in the course of this work, I have endeavored to

explain the prodigious influence which the social condition appears to

exercise upon the laws and the manners of men; and I beg to add a few

words on the same subject.

When I perceive the resemblance which exists between the political

institutions of our ancestors, the Germans, and of the wandering tribes

of North America; between the customs described by Tacitus, and those

of which I have sometimes been a witness, I cannot help thinking that

the same cause has brought about the same results in both hemispheres;

and that in the midst of the apparent diversity of human affairs, a

certain number of primary facts may be discovered, from which all the

others are derived. In what we usually call the German institutions,

then, I am inclined only to perceive barbarian habits; and the opinions

of savages in what we style feudal principles.

However strongly the vices and prejudices of the North American Indians

may be opposed to their becoming agricultural and civilized, necessity

sometimes obliges them to it. Several of the Southern nations, and

amongst others the Cherokees and the Creeks, *n were surrounded by

Europeans, who had landed on the shores of the Atlantic; and who,

either descending the Ohio or proceeding up the Mississippi, arrived

simultaneously upon their borders. These tribes have not been driven

from place to place, like their Northern brethren; but they have been

gradually enclosed within narrow limits, like the game within the

thicket, before the huntsmen plunge into the interior. The Indians who

were thus placed between civilization and death, found themselves

obliged to live by ignominious labor like the whites. They took to

agriculture, and without entirely forsaking their old habits or

manners, sacrificed only as much as was necessary to their existence.

[ These nations are now swallowed up in the States of Georgia,

Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. There were formerly in the South

four great nations (remnants of which still exist), the Choctaws, the

Chickasaws, the Creeks, and the Cherokees. The remnants of these four

nations amounted, in 1830, to about 75,000 individuals. It is computed

that there are now remaining in the territory occupied or claimed by

the Anglo-American Union about 300,000 Indians. (See Proceedings of the

Indian Board in the City of New York.) The official documents supplied

to Congress make the number amount to 313,130. The reader who is

curious to know the names and numerical strength of all the tribes

which inhabit the Anglo-American territory should consult the documents

I refer to. (Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No. 117, pp.

90-105.) [In the Census of 1870 it is stated that the Indian population

of the United States is only 25,731, of whom 7,241 are in California.]]

The Cherokees went further; they created a written language;

established a permanent form of government; and as everything proceeds

rapidly in the New World, before they had all of them clothes, they set

up a newspaper. *o

[ I brought back with me to France one or two copies of this singular

publication.]

The growth of European habits has been remarkably accelerated among

these Indians by the mixed race which has sprung up. *p Deriving

intelligence from their father’s side, without entirely losing the

savage customs of the mother, the half-blood forms the natural link

between civilization and barbarism. Wherever this race has multiplied

the savage state has become modified, and a great change has taken

place in the manners of the people. *q

[ See in the Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs, 21st Congress,

No. 227, p. 23, the reasons for the multiplication of Indians of mixed

blood among the Cherokees. The principal cause dates from the War of

Independence. Many Anglo-Americans of Georgia, having taken the side of

England, were obliged to retreat among the Indians, where they

married.]

[ Unhappily the mixed race has been less numerous and less influential

in North America than in any other country. The American continent was

peopled by two great nations of Europe, the French and the English. The

former were not slow in connecting themselves with the daughters of the

natives, but there was an unfortunate affinity between the Indian

character and their own: instead of giving the tastes and habits of

civilized life to the savages, the French too often grew passionately

fond of the state of wild freedom they found them in. They became the

most dangerous of the inhabitants of the desert, and won the friendship

of the Indian by exaggerating his vices and his virtues. M. de

Senonville, the governor of Canada, wrote thus to Louis XIV in 1685:

“It has long been believed that in order to civilize the savages we

ought to draw them nearer to us. But there is every reason to suppose

we have been mistaken. Those which have been brought into contact with

us have not become French, and the French who have lived among them are

changed into savages, affecting to dress and live like them.” (“History

of New France,” by Charlevoix, vol. ii., p. 345.) The Englishman, on

the contrary, continuing obstinately attached to the customs and the

most insignificant habits of his forefathers, has remained in the midst

of the American solitudes just what he was in the bosom of European

cities; he would not allow of any communication with savages whom he

despised, and avoided with care the union of his race with theirs. Thus

while the French exercised no salutary influence over the Indians, the

English have always remained alien from them.]

The success of the Cherokees proves that the Indians are capable of

civilization, but it does not prove that they will succeed in it. This

difficulty which the Indians find in submitting to civilization

proceeds from the influence of a general cause, which it is almost

impossible for them to escape. An attentive survey of history

demonstrates that, in general, barbarous nations have raised themselves

to civilization by degrees, and by their own efforts. Whenever they

derive knowledge from a foreign people, they stood towards it in the

relation of conquerors, and not of a conquered nation. When the

conquered nation is enlightened, and the conquerors are half savage, as

in the case of the invasion of Rome by the Northern nations or that of

China by the Mongols, the power which victory bestows upon the

barbarian is sufficient to keep up his importance among civilized men,

and permit him to rank as their equal, until he becomes their rival:

the one has might on his side, the other has intelligence; the former

admires the knowledge and the arts of the conquered, the latter envies

the power of the conquerors. The barbarians at length admit civilized

man into their palaces, and he in turn opens his schools to the

barbarians. But when the side on which the physical force lies, also

possesses an intellectual preponderance, the conquered party seldom

become civilized; it retreats, or is destroyed. It may therefore be

said, in a general way, that savages go forth in arms to seek

knowledge, but that they do not receive it when it comes to them.

If the Indian tribes which now inhabit the heart of the continent could

summon up energy enough to attempt to civilize themselves, they might

possibly succeed. Superior already to the barbarous nations which

surround them, they would gradually gain strength and experience, and

when the Europeans should appear upon their borders, they would be in a

state, if not to maintain their independence, at least to assert their

right to the soil, and to incorporate themselves with the conquerors.

But it is the misfortune of Indians to be brought into contact with a

civilized people, which is also (it must be owned) the most avaricious

nation on the globe, whilst they are still semi-barbarian: to find

despots in their instructors, and to receive knowledge from the hand of

oppression. Living in the freedom of the woods, the North American

Indian was destitute, but he had no feeling of inferiority towards

anyone; as soon, however, as he desires to penetrate into the social

scale of the whites, he takes the lowest rank in society, for he

enters, ignorant and poor, within the pale of science and wealth. After

having led a life of agitation, beset with evils and dangers, but at

the same time filled with proud emotions, *r he is obliged to submit to

a wearisome, obscure, and degraded state; and to gain the bread which

nourishes him by hard and ignoble labor; such are in his eyes the only

results of which civilization can boast: and even this much he is not

sure to obtain.

[ There is in the adventurous life of the hunter a certain irresistible

charm, which seizes the heart of man and carries him away in spite of

reason and experience. This is plainly shown by the memoirs of Tanner.

Tanner is a European who was carried away at the age of six by the

Indians, and has remained thirty years with them in the woods. Nothing

can be conceived more appalling that the miseries which he describes.

He tells us of tribes without a chief, families without a nation to

call their own, men in a state of isolation, wrecks of powerful tribes

wandering at random amid the ice and snow and desolate solitudes of

Canada. Hunger and cold pursue them; every day their life is in

jeopardy. Amongst these men, manners have lost their empire, traditions

are without power. They become more and more savage. Tanner shared in

all these miseries; he was aware of his European origin; he was not

kept away from the whites by force; on the contrary, he came every year

to trade with them, entered their dwellings, and witnessed their

enjoyments; he knew that whenever he chose to return to civilized life

he was perfectly able to do so—and he remained thirty years in the

deserts. When he came into civilized society he declared that the rude

existence which he described, had a secret charm for him which he was

unable to define: he returned to it again and again: at length he

abandoned it with poignant regret; and when he was at length fixed

among the whites, several of his children refused to share his tranquil

and easy situation. I saw Tanner myself at the lower end of Lake

Superior; he seemed to me to be more like a savage than a civilized

being. His book is written without either taste or order; but he gives,

even unconsciously, a lively picture of the prejudices, the passions,

the vices, and, above all, of the destitution in which he lived.]

When the Indians undertake to imitate their European neighbors, and to

till the earth like the settlers, they are immediately exposed to a

very formidable competition. The white man is skilled in the craft of

agriculture; the Indian is a rough beginner in an art with which he is

unacquainted. The former reaps abundant crops without difficulty, the

latter meets with a thousand obstacles in raising the fruits of the

earth.

The European is placed amongst a population whose wants he knows and

partakes. The savage is isolated in the midst of a hostile people, with

whose manners, language, and laws he is imperfectly acquainted, but

without whose assistance he cannot live. He can only procure the

materials of comfort by bartering his commodities against the goods of

the European, for the assistance of his countrymen is wholly

insufficient to supply his wants. When the Indian wishes to sell the

produce of his labor, he cannot always meet with a purchaser, whilst

the European readily finds a market; and the former can only produce at

a considerable cost that which the latter vends at a very low rate.

Thus the Indian has no sooner escaped those evils to which barbarous

nations are exposed, than he is subjected to the still greater miseries

of civilized communities; and he finds is scarcely less difficult to

live in the midst of our abundance, than in the depth of his own

wilderness.

He has not yet lost the habits of his erratic life; the traditions of

his fathers and his passion for the chase are still alive within him.

The wild enjoyments which formerly animated him in the woods, painfully

excite his troubled imagination; and his former privations appear to be

less keen, his former perils less appalling. He contrasts the

independence which he possessed amongst his equals with the servile

position which he occupies in civilized society. On the other hand, the

solitudes which were so long his free home are still at hand; a few

hours’ march will bring him back to them once more. The whites offer

him a sum, which seems to him to be considerable, for the ground which

he has begun to clear. This money of the Europeans may possibly furnish

him with the means of a happy and peaceful subsistence in remoter

regions; and he quits the plough, resumes his native arms, and returns

to the wilderness forever. *s The condition of the Creeks and

Cherokees, to which I have already alluded, sufficiently corroborates

the truth of this deplorable picture.

[ The destructive influence of highly civilized nations upon others

which are less so, has been exemplified by the Europeans themselves.

About a century ago the French founded the town of Vincennes up on the

Wabash, in the middle of the desert; and they lived there in great

plenty until the arrival of the American settlers, who first ruined the

previous inhabitants by their competition, and afterwards purchased

their lands at a very low rate. At the time when M. de Volney, from

whom I borrow these details, passed through Vincennes, the number of

the French was reduced to a hundred individuals, most of whom were

about to pass over to Louisiana or to Canada. These French settlers

were worthy people, but idle and uninstructed: they had contracted many

of the habits of savages. The Americans, who were perhaps their

inferiors, in a moral point of view, were immeasurably superior to them

in intelligence: they were industrious, well informed, rich, and

accustomed to govern their own community.

I myself saw in Canada, where the intellectual difference between the

two races is less striking, that the English are the masters of

commerce and manufacture in the Canadian country, that they spread on

all sides, and confine the French within limits which scarcely suffice

to contain them. In like manner, in Louisiana, almost all activity in

commerce and manufacture centres in the hands of the Anglo-Americans.

But the case of Texas is still more striking: the State of Texas is a

part of Mexico, and lies upon the frontier between that country and the

United States. In the course of the last few years the Anglo-Americans

have penetrated into this province, which is still thinly peopled; they

purchase land, they produce the commodities of the country, and

supplant the original population. It may easily be foreseen that if

Mexico takes no steps to check this change, the province of Texas will

very shortly cease to belong to that government.

If the different degrees—comparatively so slight—which exist in

European civilization produce results of such magnitude, the

consequences which must ensue from the collision of the most perfect

European civilization with Indian savages may readily be conceived.]

The Indians, in the little which they have done, have unquestionably

displayed as much natural genius as the peoples of Europe in their most

important designs; but nations as well as men require time to learn,

whatever may be their intelligence and their zeal. Whilst the savages

were engaged in the work of civilization, the Europeans continued to

surround them on every side, and to confine them within narrower

limits; the two races gradually met, and they are now in immediate

juxtaposition to each other. The Indian is already superior to his

barbarous parent, but he is still very far below his white neighbor.

With their resources and acquired knowledge, the Europeans soon

appropriated to themselves most of the advantages which the natives

might have derived from the possession of the soil; they have settled

in the country, they have purchased land at a very low rate or have

occupied it by force, and the Indians have been ruined by a competition

which they had not the means of resisting. They were isolated in their

own country, and their race only constituted a colony of troublesome

aliens in the midst of a numerous and domineering people. *t

[ See in the Legislative Documents (21st Congress, No. 89) instances of

excesses of every kind committed by the whites upon the territory of

the Indians, either in taking possession of a part of their lands,

until compelled to retire by the troops of Congress, or carrying off

their cattle, burning their houses, cutting down their corn, and doing

violence to their persons. It appears, nevertheless, from all these

documents that the claims of the natives are constantly protected by

the government from the abuse of force. The Union has a representative

agent continually employed to reside among the Indians; and the report

of the Cherokee agent, which is among the documents I have referred to,

is almost always favorable to the Indians. “The intrusion of whites,”

he says, “upon the lands of the Cherokees would cause ruin to the poor,

helpless, and inoffensive inhabitants.” And he further remarks upon the

attempt of the State of Georgia to establish a division line for the

purpose of limiting the boundaries of the Cherokees, that the line

drawn having been made by the whites, and entirely upon ex parte

evidence of their several rights, was of no validity whatever.]

Washington said in one of his messages to Congress, “We are more

enlightened and more powerful than the Indian nations, we are therefore

bound in honor to treat them with kindness and even with generosity.”

But this virtuous and high-minded policy has not been followed. The

rapacity of the settlers is usually backed by the tyranny of the

government. Although the Cherokees and the Creeks are established upon

the territory which they inhabited before the settlement of the

Europeans, and although the Americans have frequently treated with them

as with foreign nations, the surrounding States have not consented to

acknowledge them as independent peoples, and attempts have been made to

subject these children of the woods to Anglo-American magistrates,

laws, and customs. *u Destitution had driven these unfortunate Indians

to civilization, and oppression now drives them back to their former

condition: many of them abandon the soil which they had begun to clear,

and return to their savage course of life.

[ In 1829 the State of Alabama divided the Creek territory into

counties, and subjected the Indian population to the power of European

magistrates.

In 1830 the State of Mississippi assimilated the Choctaws and

Chickasaws to the white population, and declared that any of them that

should take the title of chief would be punished by a fine of $1,000

and a year’s imprisonment. When these laws were enforced upon the

Choctaws, who inhabited that district, the tribe assembled, their chief

communicated to them the intentions of the whites, and read to them

some of the laws to which it was intended that they should submit; and

they unanimously declared that it was better at once to retreat again

into the wilds.]

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races—Part III

If we consider the tyrannical measures which have been adopted by the

legislatures of the Southern States, the conduct of their Governors,

and the decrees of their courts of justice, we shall be convinced that

the entire expulsion of the Indians is the final result to which the

efforts of their policy are directed. The Americans of that part of the

Union look with jealousy upon the aborigines, *v they are aware that

these tribes have not yet lost the traditions of savage life, and

before civilization has permanently fixed them to the soil, it is

intended to force them to recede by reducing them to despair. The

Creeks and Cherokees, oppressed by the several States, have appealed to

the central government, which is by no means insensible to their

misfortunes, and is sincerely desirous of saving the remnant of the

natives, and of maintaining them in the free possession of that

territory, which the Union is pledged to respect. *w But the several

States oppose so formidable a resistance to the execution of this

design, that the government is obliged to consent to the extirpation of

a few barbarous tribes in order not to endanger the safety of the

American Union.

[ The Georgians, who are so much annoyed by the proximity of the

Indians, inhabit a territory which does not at present contain more

than seven inhabitants to the square mile. In France there are one

hundred and sixty-two inhabitants to the same extent of country.]

[ In 1818 Congress appointed commissioners to visit the Arkansas

Territory, accompanied by a deputation of Creeks, Choctaws, and

Chickasaws. This expedition was commanded by Messrs. Kennerly, M’Coy,

Wash Hood, and John Bell. See the different reports of the

commissioners, and their journal, in the Documents of Congress, No. 87,

House of Representatives.]

But the federal government, which is not able to protect the Indians,

would fain mitigate the hardships of their lot; and, with this

intention, proposals have been made to transport them into more remote

regions at the public cost.

Between the thirty-third and thirty-seventh degrees of north latitude,

a vast tract of country lies, which has taken the name of Arkansas,

from the principal river that waters its extent. It is bounded on the

one side by the confines of Mexico, on the other by the Mississippi.

Numberless streams cross it in every direction; the climate is mild,

and the soil productive, but it is only inhabited by a few wandering

hordes of savages. The government of the Union wishes to transport the

broken remnants of the indigenous population of the South to the

portion of this country which is nearest to Mexico, and at a great

distance from the American settlements.

We were assured, towards the end of the year 1831, that 10,000 Indians

had already gone down to the shores of the Arkansas; and fresh

detachments were constantly following them; but Congress has been

unable to excite a unanimous determination in those whom it is disposed

to protect. Some, indeed, are willing to quit the seat of oppression,

but the most enlightened members of the community refuse to abandon

their recent dwellings and their springing crops; they are of opinion

that the work of civilization, once interrupted, will never be resumed;

they fear that those domestic habits which have been so recently

contracted, may be irrevocably lost in the midst of a country which is

still barbarous, and where nothing is prepared for the subsistence of

an agricultural people; they know that their entrance into those wilds

will be opposed by inimical hordes, and that they have lost the energy

of barbarians, without acquiring the resources of civilization to

resist their attacks. Moreover, the Indians readily discover that the

settlement which is proposed to them is merely a temporary expedient.

Who can assure them that they will at length be allowed to dwell in

peace in their new retreat? The United States pledge themselves to the

observance of the obligation; but the territory which they at present

occupy was formerly secured to them by the most solemn oaths of

Anglo-American faith. *x The American government does not indeed rob

them of their lands, but it allows perpetual incursions to be made on

them. In a few years the same white population which now flocks around

them, will track them to the solitudes of the Arkansas; they will then

be exposed to the same evils without the same remedies, and as the

limits of the earth will at last fail them, their only refuge is the

grave.

[ The fifth article of the treaty made with the Creeks in August, 1790,

is in the following words:—“The United States solemnly guarantee to the

Creek nation all their land within the limits of the United States.”

The seventh article of the treaty concluded in 1791 with the Cherokees

says:—“The United States solemnly guarantee to the Cherokee nation all

their lands not hereby ceded.” The following article declared that if

any citizen of the United States or other settler not of the Indian

race should establish himself upon the territory of the Cherokees, the

United States would withdraw their protection from that individual, and

give him up to be punished as the Cherokee nation should think fit.]

The Union treats the Indians with less cupidity and rigor than the

policy of the several States, but the two governments are alike

destitute of good faith. The States extend what they are pleased to

term the benefits of their laws to the Indians, with a belief that the

tribes will recede rather than submit; and the central government,

which promises a permanent refuge to these unhappy beings is well aware

of its inability to secure it to them. *y

[ This does not prevent them from promising in the most solemn manner

to do so. See the letter of the President addressed to the Creek

Indians, March 23, 1829 (Proceedings of the Indian Board, in the city

of New York, p. 5): “Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part

of your nation has gone, your father has provided a country large

enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it. There your

white brothers will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the

land, and you can live upon it, you and all your children, as long as

the grass grows, or the water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be

yours forever.”

The Secretary of War, in a letter written to the Cherokees, April 18,

1829, (see the same work, p. 6), declares to them that they cannot

expect to retain possession of the lands at that time occupied by them,

but gives them the most positive assurance of uninterrupted peace if

they would remove beyond the Mississippi: as if the power which could

not grant them protection then, would be able to afford it them

hereafter!]

Thus the tyranny of the States obliges the savages to retire, the

Union, by its promises and resources, facilitates their retreat; and

these measures tend to precisely the same end. *z “By the will of our

Father in Heaven, the Governor of the whole world,” said the Cherokees

in their petition to Congress, *a “the red man of America has become

small, and the white man great and renowned. When the ancestors of the

people of these United States first came to the shores of America they

found the red man strong: though he was ignorant and savage, yet he

received them kindly, and gave them dry land to rest their weary feet.

They met in peace, and shook hands in token of friendship. Whatever the

white man wanted and asked of the Indian, the latter willingly gave. At

that time the Indian was the lord, and the white man the suppliant. But

now the scene has changed. The strength of the red man has become

weakness. As his neighbors increased in numbers his power became less

and less, and now, of the many and powerful tribes who once covered

these United States, only a few are to be seen—a few whom a sweeping

pestilence has left. The northern tribes, who were once so numerous and

powerful, are now nearly extinct. Thus it has happened to the red man

of America. Shall we, who are remnants, share the same fate?”

[ To obtain a correct idea of the policy pursued by the several States

and the Union with respect to the Indians, it is necessary to consult,

1st, “The Laws of the Colonial and State Governments relating to the

Indian Inhabitants.” (See the Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, No.

319.) 2d, The Laws of the Union on the same subject, and especially

that of March 30, 1802. (See Story’s “Laws of the United States.”) 3d,

The Report of Mr. Cass, Secretary of War, relative to Indian Affairs,

November 29, 1823.]

[ December 18, 1829.]

“The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from our

fathers, who possessed it from time immemorial, as a gift from our

common Father in Heaven. They bequeathed it to us as their children,

and we have sacredly kept it, as containing the remains of our beloved

men. This right of inheritance we have never ceded nor ever forfeited.

Permit us to ask what better right can the people have to a country

than the right of inheritance and immemorial peaceable possession? We

know it is said of late by the State of Georgia and by the Executive of

the United States, that we have forfeited this right; but we think this

is said gratuitously. At what time have we made the forfeit? What great

crime have we committed, whereby we must forever be divested of our

country and rights? Was it when we were hostile to the United States,

and took part with the King of Great Britain, during the struggle for

independence? If so, why was not this forfeiture declared in the first

treaty of peace between the United States and our beloved men? Why was

not such an article as the following inserted in the treaty:—‘The

United States give peace to the Cherokees, but, for the part they took

in the late war, declare them to be but tenants at will, to be removed

when the convenience of the States, within whose chartered limits they

live, shall require it’? That was the proper time to assume such a

possession. But it was not thought of, nor would our forefathers have

agreed to any treaty whose tendency was to deprive them of their rights

and their country.”

Such is the language of the Indians: their assertions are true, their

forebodings inevitable. From whichever side we consider the destinies

of the aborigines of North America, their calamities appear to be

irremediable: if they continue barbarous, they are forced to retire; if

they attempt to civilize their manners, the contact of a more civilized

community subjects them to oppression and destitution. They perish if

they continue to wander from waste to waste, and if they attempt to

settle they still must perish; the assistance of Europeans is necessary

to instruct them, but the approach of Europeans corrupts and repels

them into savage life; they refuse to change their habits as long as

their solitudes are their own, and it is too late to change them when

they are constrained to submit.

The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds, like wild beasts;

they sacked the New World with no more temper or compassion than a city

taken by storm; but destruction must cease, and frenzy be stayed; the

remnant of the Indian population which had escaped the massacre mixed

with its conquerors, and adopted in the end their religion and their

manners. *b The conduct of the Americans of the United States towards

the aborigines is characterized, on the other hand, by a singular

attachment to the formalities of law. Provided that the Indians retain

their barbarous condition, the Americans take no part in their affairs;

they treat them as independent nations, and do not possess themselves

of their hunting grounds without a treaty of purchase; and if an Indian

nation happens to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon

its territory, they afford it brotherly assistance in transporting it

to a grave sufficiently remote from the land of its fathers.

[ The honor of this result is, however, by no means due to the

Spaniards. If the Indian tribes had not been tillers of the ground at

the time of the arrival of the Europeans, they would unquestionably

have been destroyed in South as well as in North America.]

The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those

unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor did

they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the

Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose

with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without

shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of

morality in the eyes of the world. *c It is impossible to destroy men

with more respect for the laws of humanity.

[ See, amongst other documents, the report made by Mr. Bell in the name

of the Committee on Indian Affairs, February 24, 1830, in which is most

logically established and most learnedly proved, that “the fundamental

principle that the Indians had no right by virtue of their ancient

possession either of will or sovereignty, has never been abandoned

either expressly or by implication.” In perusing this report, which is

evidently drawn up by an experienced hand, one is astonished at the

facility with which the author gets rid of all arguments founded upon

reason and natural right, which he designates as abstract and

theoretical principles. The more I contemplate the difference between

civilized and uncivilized man with regard to the principles of justice,

the more I observe that the former contests the justice of those rights

which the latter simply violates.]

[I leave this chapter wholly unchanged, for it has always appeared to

me to be one of the most eloquent and touching parts of this book. But

it has ceased to be prophetic; the destruction of the Indian race in

the United States is already consummated. In 1870 there remained but

25,731 Indians in the whole territory of the Union, and of these by far

the largest part exist in California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Dakota, and

New Mexico and Nevada. In New England, Pennsylvania, and New York the

race is extinct; and the predictions of M. de Tocqueville are

fulfilled. —Translator’s Note.]

Situation Of The Black Population In The United States, And Dangers

With Which Its Presence Threatens The Whites

Why it is more difficult to abolish slavery, and to efface all vestiges

of it amongst the moderns than it was amongst the ancients—In the

United States the prejudices of the Whites against the Blacks seem to

increase in proportion as slavery is abolished—Situation of the Negroes

in the Northern and Southern States—Why the Americans abolish

slavery—Servitude, which debases the slave, impoverishes the

master—Contrast between the left and the right bank of the Ohio—To what

attributable—The Black race, as well as slavery, recedes towards the

South—Explanation of this fact—Difficulties attendant upon the

abolition of slavery in the South—Dangers to come—General

anxiety—Foundation of a Black colony in Africa—Why the Americans of the

South increase the hardships of slavery, whilst they are distressed at

its continuance.

The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they

have lived; but the destiny of the negroes is in some measure

interwoven with that of the Europeans. These two races are attached to

each other without intermingling, and they are alike unable entirely to

separate or to combine. The most formidable of all the ills which

threaten the future existence of the Union arises from the presence of

a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause

of the present embarrassments or of the future dangers of the United

States, the observer is invariably led to consider this as a primary

fact.

The permanent evils to which mankind is subjected are usually produced

by the vehement or the increasing efforts of men; but there is one

calamity which penetrated furtively into the world, and which was at

first scarcely distinguishable amidst the ordinary abuses of power; it

originated with an individual whose name history has not preserved; it

was wafted like some accursed germ upon a portion of the soil, but it

afterwards nurtured itself, grew without effort, and spreads naturally

with the society to which it belongs. I need scarcely add that this

calamity is slavery. Christianity suppressed slavery, but the

Christians of the sixteenth century re-established it—as an exception,

indeed, to their social system, and restricted to one of the races of

mankind; but the wound thus inflicted upon humanity, though less

extensive, was at the same time rendered far more difficult of cure.

It is important to make an accurate distinction between slavery itself

and its consequences. The immediate evils which are produced by slavery

were very nearly the same in antiquity as they are amongst the moderns;

but the consequences of these evils were different. The slave, amongst

the ancients, belonged to the same race as his master, and he was often

the superior of the two in education *d and instruction. Freedom was

the only distinction between them; and when freedom was conferred they

were easily confounded together. The ancients, then, had a very simple

means of avoiding slavery and its evil consequences, which was that of

affranchisement; and they succeeded as soon as they adopted this

measure generally. Not but, in ancient States, the vestiges of

servitude subsisted for some time after servitude itself was abolished.

There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever

has been their inferior long after he is become their equal; and the

real inequality which is produced by fortune or by law is always

succeeded by an imaginary inequality which is implanted in the manners

of the people. Nevertheless, this secondary consequence of slavery was

limited to a certain term amongst the ancients, for the freedman bore

so entire a resemblance to those born free, that it soon became

impossible to distinguish him from amongst them.

[ It is well known that several of the most distinguished authors of

antiquity, and amongst them Aesop and Terence, were, or had been

slaves. Slaves were not always taken from barbarous nations, and the

chances of war reduced highly civilized men to servitude.]

The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law;

amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners; and, as far as

we are concerned, the real obstacles begin where those of the ancients

left off. This arises from the circumstance that, amongst the moderns,

the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the

physical and permanent fact of color. The tradition of slavery

dishonors the race, and the peculiarity of the race perpetuates the

tradition of slavery. No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the

shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the

blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or

freedmen. Thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to

all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God

alone can obliterate the traces of its existence.

The modern slave differs from his master not only in his condition, but

in his origin. You may set the negro free, but you cannot make him

otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all; we scarcely

acknowledge the common features of mankind in this child of debasement

whom slavery has brought amongst us. His physiognomy is to our eyes

hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost

inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the

brutes. *e The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have

three prejudices to contend against, which are less easy to attack and

far less easy to conquer than the mere fact of servitude: the prejudice

of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of color.

[ To induce the whites to abandon the opinion they have conceived of

the moral and intellectual inferiority of their former slaves, the

negroes must change; but as long as this opinion subsists, to change is

impossible.]

It is difficult for us, who have had the good fortune to be born

amongst men like ourselves by nature, and equal to ourselves by law, to

conceive the irreconcilable differences which separate the negro from

the European in America. But we may derive some faint notion of them

from analogy. France was formerly a country in which numerous

distinctions of rank existed, that had been created by the legislation.

Nothing can be more fictitious than a purely legal inferiority; nothing

more contrary to the instinct of mankind than these permanent divisions

which had been established between beings evidently similar.

Nevertheless these divisions subsisted for ages; they still subsist in

many places; and on all sides they have left imaginary vestiges, which

time alone can efface. If it be so difficult to root out an inequality

which solely originates in the law, how are those distinctions to be

destroyed which seem to be based upon the immutable laws of Nature

herself? When I remember the extreme difficulty with which aristocratic

bodies, of whatever nature they may be, are commingled with the mass of

the people; and the exceeding care which they take to preserve the

ideal boundaries of their caste inviolate, I despair of seeing an

aristocracy disappear which is founded upon visible and indelible

signs. Those who hope that the Europeans will ever mix with the

negroes, appear to me to delude themselves; and I am not led to any

such conclusion by my own reason, or by the evidence of facts.

Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the most powerful, they have

maintained the blacks in a subordinate or a servile position; wherever

the negroes have been strongest they have destroyed the whites; such

has been the only retribution which has ever taken place between the

two races.

I see that in a certain portion of the territory of the United States

at the present day, the legal barrier which separated the two races is

tending to fall away, but not that which exists in the manners of the

country; slavery recedes, but the prejudice to which it has given birth

remains stationary. Whosoever has inhabited the United States must have

perceived that in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no

longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the

contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the

States which have abolished slavery, than in those where it still

exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where

servitude has never been known.

It is true, that in the North of the Union, marriages may be legally

contracted between negroes and whites; but public opinion would

stigmatize a man who should connect himself with a negress as infamous,

and it would be difficult to meet with a single instance of such a

union. The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the negroes in

almost all the States in which slavery has been abolished; but if they

come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. If oppressed, they may

bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites amongst

their judges; and although they may legally serve as jurors, prejudice

repulses them from that office. The same schools do not receive the

child of the black and of the European. In the theatres, gold cannot

procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters; in the

hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the

same Divinity as the whites, it must be at a different altar, and in

their own churches, with their own clergy. The gates of Heaven are not

closed against these unhappy beings; but their inferiority is continued

to the very confines of the other world; when the negro is defunct, his

bones are cast aside, and the distinction of condition prevails even in

the equality of death. The negro is free, but he can share neither the

rights, nor the pleasures, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the

tomb of him whose equal he has been declared to be; and he cannot meet

him upon fair terms in life or in death.

In the South, where slavery still exists, the negroes are less

carefully kept apart; they sometimes share the labor and the

recreations of the whites; the whites consent to intermix with them to

a certain extent, and although the legislation treats them more

harshly, the habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate.

In the South the master is not afraid to raise his slave to his own

standing, because he knows that he can in a moment reduce him to the

dust at pleasure. In the North the white no longer distinctly perceives

the barrier which separates him from the degraded race, and he shuns

the negro with the more pertinacity, since he fears lest they should

some day be confounded together.

Amongst the Americans of the South, nature sometimes reasserts her

rights, and restores a transient equality between the blacks and the

whites; but in the North pride restrains the most imperious of human

passions. The American of the Northern States would perhaps allow the

negress to share his licentious pleasures, if the laws of his country

did not declare that she may aspire to be the legitimate partner of his

bed; but he recoils with horror from her who might become his wife.

Thus it is, in the United States, that the prejudice which repels the

negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and

inequality is sanctioned by the manners whilst it is effaced from the

laws of the country. But if the relative position of the two races

which inhabit the United States is such as I have described, it may be

asked why the Americans have abolished slavery in the North of the

Union, why they maintain it in the South, and why they aggravate its

hardships there? The answer is easily given. It is not for the good of

the negroes, but for that of the whites, that measures are taken to

abolish slavery in the United States.

The first negroes were imported into Virginia about the year 1621. *f

In America, therefore, as well as in the rest of the globe, slavery

originated in the South. Thence it spread from one settlement to

another; but the number of slaves diminished towards the Northern

States, and the negro population was always very limited in New

England. *g

[ See Beverley’s “History of Virginia.” See also in Jefferson’s

“Memoirs” some curious details concerning the introduction of negroes

into Virginia, and the first Act which prohibited the importation of

them in 1778.]

[ The number of slaves was less considerable in the North, but the

advantages resulting from slavery were not more contested there than in

the South. In 1740, the Legislature of the State of New York declared

that the direct importation of slaves ought to be encouraged as much as

possible, and smuggling severely punished in order not to discourage

the fair trader. (Kent’s “Commentaries,” vol. ii. p. 206.) Curious

researches, by Belknap, upon slavery in New England, are to be found in

the “Historical Collection of Massachusetts,” vol. iv. p. 193. It

appears that negroes were introduced there in 1630, but that the

legislation and manners of the people were opposed to slavery from the

first; see also, in the same work, the manner in which public opinion,

and afterwards the laws, finally put an end to slavery.]

A century had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the colonies,

when the attention of the planters was struck by the extraordinary

fact, that the provinces which were comparatively destitute of slaves,

increased in population, in wealth, and in prosperity more rapidly than

those which contained the greatest number of negroes. In the former,

however, the inhabitants were obliged to cultivate the soil themselves,

or by hired laborers; in the latter they were furnished with hands for

which they paid no wages; yet although labor and expenses were on the

one side, and ease with economy on the other, the former were in

possession of the most advantageous system. This consequence seemed to

be the more difficult to explain, since the settlers, who all belonged

to the same European race, had the same habits, the same civilization,

the same laws, and their shades of difference were extremely slight.

Time, however, continued to advance, and the Anglo-Americans, spreading

beyond the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, penetrated farther and farther

into the solitudes of the West; they met with a new soil and an

unwonted climate; the obstacles which opposed them were of the most

various character; their races intermingled, the inhabitants of the

South went up towards the North, those of the North descended to the

South; but in the midst of all these causes, the same result occurred

at every step, and in general, the colonies in which there were no

slaves became more populous and more rich than those in which slavery

flourished. The more progress was made, the more was it shown that

slavery, which is so cruel to the slave, is prejudicial to the master.

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races—Part IV

But this truth was most satisfactorily demonstrated when civilization

reached the banks of the Ohio. The stream which the Indians had

distinguished by the name of Ohio, or Beautiful River, waters one of

the most magnificent valleys that has ever been made the abode of man.

Undulating lands extend upon both shores of the Ohio, whose soil

affords inexhaustible treasures to the laborer; on either bank the air

is wholesome and the climate mild, and each of them forms the extreme

frontier of a vast State: That which follows the numerous windings of

the Ohio upon the left is called Kentucky, that upon the right bears

the name of the river. These two States only differ in a single

respect; Kentucky has admitted slavery, but the State of Ohio has

prohibited the existence of slaves within its borders. *h

[ Not only is slavery prohibited in Ohio, but no free negroes are

allowed to enter the territory of that State, or to hold property in

it. See the Statutes of Ohio.]

Thus the traveller who floats down the current of the Ohio to the spot

where that river falls into the Mississippi, may be said to sail

between liberty and servitude; and a transient inspection of the

surrounding objects will convince him as to which of the two is most

favorable to mankind. Upon the left bank of the stream the population

is rare; from time to time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in

the half-desert fields; the primaeval forest recurs at every turn;

society seems to be asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a

scene of activity and of life. From the right bank, on the contrary, a

confused hum is heard which proclaims the presence of industry; the

fields are covered with abundant harvests, the elegance of the

dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborer, and man

appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and contentment which is

the reward of labor. *i

[ The activity of Ohio is not confined to individuals, but the

undertakings of the State are surprisingly great; a canal has been

established between Lake Erie and the Ohio, by means of which the

valley of the Mississippi communicates with the river of the North, and

the European commodities which arrive at New York may be forwarded by

water to New Orleans across five hundred leagues of continent.]

It may readily be discovered with what intention I undertook the