burgh with a fund appropriated for the education of the Indian youth; and that if the red chiefs would send some of their children to that place, they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the learning of the whites. One of the Indian orators answered by expressing the deep sense entertained of the kindness of this offer: "For we know," said he," that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in these colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced that you mean to do us good by your proposal, and we thank you heartily but you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. have had some experience of it. Several of our young men were formerly brought up at the colleges in your northern provinces. They were instructed in all your sciences: but when they came back to us, they were bad runners; ignorant of every means of living in the woods; unable to bear either cold or hunger; knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy; spoke our language imperfectly; were neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor councillors: they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to shew.

Y

We

you our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them."*

It has been the common practice with many, in imitation of De Pauw, to stigmatize the Indians for their ignorance of arts and manufactures, and to conclude that, as they have remained so long without copying the improvements of the white population in their neighbourhood, there is little, if any, chance of their being now brought within the pale of civilization. This impression originates from the prejudice so often entertained with respect to that illfated race. Had the conduct of the whites been more liberal and considerate towards the Indian, he would, no doubt, long ago have been led to adopt many of their improvements: but his simple habits and few wants in a great measure rendered unnecessary the exertion of his industry with regard to objects which are considered indispensable in more civilized life. To this, as well as to the conduct of the Europeans themselves, must be ascribed the little advancement he has made in adopting their manners and customs. At the same time, any person who will impartially notice the various articles which the Indians, both male and female, are in the habit of manufacturing for their own

* Dr. Franklin's Essays. Remarks on the North American Savages.

immediate use, will not feel disposed to pronounce them deficient in handicraft skill and ingenuity.

Their instruments of war and of the chase, their bows and arrows and spears, are skilfully constructed, and well adapted for what is required of them. The skins of various animals used by them for their clothing and bedding are, in many cases, dressed and prepared for the purpose with more skill than has been attained by the European manufacturer. Several of the tribes (chiefly towards the Missisippi) seem, from the earliest periods, to have made a sort of coarse but warm clothing, woven from the wool and hair of the buffalo; and, before the introduction, by the traders, of metal utensils for cooking and other purposes, the Indians

in the habit of making vessels of clay and pottery. Their baskets and various other articles manufactured from the bark of the birch tree, ingeniously contrived, and beautifully ornamented with porcupine quills stained with the finest colours, evidently shew their taste and skill in such employments. The many ingenious devices followed by the Indian in pursuit of his game, and the address with which he takes the numerous sorts of fish with which the American rivers abound, have for ages been copied by his white brethren. His singular skill in traversing in a direct line his immense native forests, and his accuracy in delineating maps of the country, have often been the subject of sur

prise to the Europeans.* The knowledge possessed by the Indian of the use of many valuable medicinal plants has been generally admitted: he taught the Europeans also the art of extracting sugar from the maple-tree-a practice almost universally followed in many extensive regions of North America. Nor must it be forgotten, that without the Indian snow-shoe and the Indian canoe, the trader or the traveller, in the interior of that continent, would be totally unable to prosecute his voyages at the seasons during which it might be important for him to undertake them. The invention of the barkcanoe is of itself sufficient to redeem the Indian from the charge of want of handicraft skill and ingenuity. The superior mechanical knowledge of the Europeans has never induced them to reject that conveyance, or enabled them to improve it; although, from its lightness and elegance, it has more the appearance of a toy for amusement than a vehicle for transporting weighty articles of commerce. It can be conveyed without difficulty through almost impervious forests, over rugged portages, and along rapid and dangerous rivers, with expedition and safety: and, though liable to be broken by the slightest shock, it is constructed

I was informed by Mr. Hunter, that the Indians can march at night in a direct line through the forests, when they cannot see even a star to guide them, merely by feeling the bark of the trees as they move along.

of such simple materials, that the neighbouring forest seldom fails to furnish the bark, the gum, and the fibres necessary for its immediate repair. The extraordinary skill and boldness with which the Indian navigates his canoe can only be credited by those who have witnessed it, or whom he has taught to follow his example.

But there is no point in which the vanity of the white man is more conspicuous than in his lamentation that the Indian cannot be induced to relinquish his hunter-state, and follow, like him, the pursuits of agriculture. It is the common cry among us that the savage must now at length be taught to till the ground, to sow, and to reap; we all the while forgetting that it was this same savage who actually taught the European emigrant how to cultivate the American soil, to clear the stubborn forest by degrees, and to grow that valuable grain, the maize, or Indian corn; and that the farmers even of the present day, throughout all the new settlementsin the wooded parts, at least, of North America— do little more than follow the agricultural lessons taught to their progenitors by the Indians. It is evident that, from the earliest periods, almost all the natives of those countries in North America, where the climate and soil permitted it, raised abundance of that species of corn; and they probably did not relinquish so beneficial a practice, until their habits and modes of life came to be