complete homogeneity. The Red Skins,—with whom alone we shall concern
ourselves,—were formerly distributed over all the upper portion of the American
Continent; that is, over the territory of Canada and the United States and the
northern districts of Mexico. In the sixteenth century they numbered, it is said, a
million and a half of souls. The “advance of civilisation,”—in other words, the
greed and cruelty of the white man,—have reduced them now to a few thousand
families. A few years more, and American rifles, brandy, poverty, and disease
will have virtually effected the extermination of a race, which has assuredly
merited the respect and recognition we are generally prone to render to courage
and endurance. True it is that our estimate of the Red Skins must not be taken
entirely from the imaginative pages of Chateaubriand and Fenimore Cooper. The
Deerskins, the Hawkeyes, and the Leatherstockings of the novelist are ideal
creations, the like of which have never been found in the wildernesses of the
West. Yet we cannot deny to the Indians a character of true nobility and
exceptional manliness. Their scorn of death and pain, their stoical composure
under tortures, the mere description of which makes the blood of ordinary men
run cold, their disdain of the allurements of civilisation, their stern refusal of
foreign supremacy, their haughty pride, even their cold and calculated ferocity,
are so many traits which raise them to a higher platform than that occupied by
most savage races.
A hundred times in song, and romance, and drama have been portrayed the
manners of this remarkable people, their subtle stratagems in war and the chase,
the perseverance with which they hunt down their prey or enemy, their
astuteness, their impassiveness, their brooding revenge. Who has not eagerly
followed them in their unwearied wanderings across the rolling prairies, and
through the interminable forests? Who has not listened eagerly, when seated
round the watch-fire, with the calumet to their lips, they have meditated on the
chances of peace and war,—chief after chief rising, with regal attitude and
deliberate eloquence to take his part in the stern debate? Who has not watched
them in their furious battle-charges, brandishing the dreadful tomahawk, and
carrying off the scalps of their defeated enemies to hang up in their wigwams as
the trophies of their prowess? Who has not breathlessly tracked them in their
pursuit of a flying foe, or in their skilful escape through the thick brushwood
from the pressure of some persistent antagonist? Assuredly this was a race well
worthy of attentive study; and their history, or the narrative of their adventures,
none can peruse without interest. There was a strain of poetry in their faith, in
their customs, in their language at once laconic and picturesque, even in the
names full of meaning which they bestowed on each tribe, and chief, and