PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.* THERE are many traits of the Indian character, highly interesting to the philosopher and Christian. Their unconquerable attachment to the pristine modes and habits of life, which counteracts every effort towards civilization, furnishes to the philosopher a problem, too profound for solution. Their simple and unadorned religion, the same in all ages, and free from the disguise of hypocrisy, which they have received from their ancestors, leads the mind to a conclusion, that they possess an unwritten revelation from GOD, intended for their benefit, and which ought to induce us to pause before we undertake to convert them to a more refined and less explicit faith. The religion of the Indian appears to be fitted for that state and condition, in which his Maker hath been pleased to place him. He believes in one Supreme Being, with all the mighty attributes which we ascribe to GOD; whom he denominates the Great and Good Spirit, and worships in a devout manner, and from whom he invokes blessings on himself and friends, and curses on his enemies. Our Maker hath left none of his intelligent creatures without a witness of himself. Long before the human mind is capable of a course of metaphysical reasoning, upon the connection. which exists between cause and effect, a sense of Diety * First published in a Western Periodical, A. D. 1823. is inscribed upon it. It is a revelation, which the Deity has made of himself to man, and which becomes more clear and intelligible, according to the manner and degree in which it is improved. In the Indian, whose mind has never been illumined by the light of science, it appears weak and obscure. Those moral and political improvements, which are the pride and boast of man in polished society, and which result from mental accomplishments, the Savage views with a jealous sense of conscious Inferiority. Neither his reason, nor his invention, appears to have been exercised for the high and noble purposes of human excellence: and while he pertinaciously adheres to traditional prejudices and passions, he improves upon those ideas only, which he has received through the senses. Unaided by any other light than that which he has received from the FATHER OF LIGHTS, the Indian penetrates the dark curtain which separates Time and Eternity, and believes in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, not only of all mankind, but of all animated nature, and a state of future existence of endless duration. It is, therefore, their general custom to bury with the dead their bows, arrows, spears, &c., that they may be prepared to commence their course in another state. Man is seldom degraded so low, but that he hopes and believes, that death will not prove the extinction of his being. Is this a sentiment resulting from our fears, or our passions? Or, rather, is it not the inspiration of the ALMIGHTY, which gives us this understanding; and which has been imparted to all the children of men? A firm belief in the immortality of the soul, with a devout sense of a general superintending power, essentially supreme, constitutes the fundamental articles of the Indian faith. His reason, though never employed in high intellectual attainments and exertions, is less corrupted and perverted, while he roams in his native forests, than in an unrestricted intercourse with civilized man. The moral sense, or con * science, makes part of our constitution, and its dictates are never more clear and certain, than when called forth by the genuine and undisguised voice of nature. We are, therefore, never more unjust in our denunciations, than when we assert, that both those sentiments, the existence of a GoD and a state of future existence, are nothing more in the rude and uncultivated Savage, than the dictates of nature; that without a priest, a temple, sacrifice, or altar, the Indian is sunk under the thickest gloom of ignorance and moral despondency.' He beholds in the. rising sun the manifestation of divine goodness, and pursues the chase with a fearless and unshaken confidence in the protection of that Great and Good Spirit, whose watchful care is ever over all his works. Let us not, then, attribute his views of an Omniscient and Omnipresent Being, to the effect of a sullen pride of independence, and his moral sense of right and wrong, to a heartless insensibility. Deprived by the peculiarities of his situation, of those offices of kindness and tenderness, which soften the heart, and sweeten the intercourse of life in a civilized state, we should consider him as a being doomed to suffer the evils of the strongest and most vigorous passions, without the consolation of those Divine and human virtues, which dissipate our cares and alleviate our sorrows. 6 It is now two hundred years and more, since attempts have been made, and unceasingly persevered in, by the pious and benevolent, to civilize and christianize the North American Savage; until millions of those unfortunate beings, including many entire tribes, have become extinct. The few who remain within the precincts of civilized society, stand as human monuments of Gothic grandeur, fearful and * This must not be taken in its most enlarged sense.-ED. To know how keenly this fact is felt by themselves, we have only to recur to our motto-"The Red Men are melting like snow before the sun." VOL. 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