My savage friends, cries the old fat priest, you must, above all things, aim at purity.

Oh, my heart swelled when I saw them in a Christian church.  Better their own dog-feasts and bloody rites than such mockery of that other faith.

“The dog,” said an Indian, “was once a spirit; he has fallen for his sin, and was given by the Great Spirit, in this shape, to man, as his most intelligent companion.  Therefore we sacrifice it in highest honor to our friends in this world,—­to our protecting geniuses in another.”

There was religion in that thought.  The white man sacrifices his own brother, and to Mammon, yet he turns in loathing from the dog-feast.

“You say,” said the Indian of the South to the missionary, “that Christianity is pleasing to God.  How can that be?—­Those men at Savannah are Christians.”

Yes! slave-drivers and Indian traders are called Christians, and the Indian is to be deemed less like the Son of Mary than they!  Wonderful is the deceit of man’s heart!

I have not, on seeing something of them in their own haunts, found reason to change the sentiments expressed in the following lines, when a deputation of the Sacs and Foxes visited Boston in 1837, and were, by one person at least, received in a dignified and courteous manner.

GOVERNOR EVERETT RECEIVING THE INDIAN CHIEFS,

NOVEMBER, 1837.

Who says that Poesy is on the wane,
And that the Muses tune their lyres in vain? 
’Mid all the treasures of romantic story,
When thought was fresh and fancy in her glory,
Has ever Art found out a richer theme,
More dark a shadow, or more soft a gleam,
Than fall upon the scene, sketched carelessly,
In the newspaper column of to-day?

  American romance is somewhat stale. 
  Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale,
  Wampum and calumets and forests dreary,
  Once so attractive, now begins to weary. 
  Uncas and Magawisca please us still,
  Unreal, yet idealized with skill;
  But every poetaster scribbling witling,
  From the majestic oak his stylus whittling,
  Has helped to tire us, and to make us fear
  The monotone in which so much we hear
  Of “stoics of the wood,” and “men without a tear.”

  Yet Nature, ever buoyant, ever young,
  If let alone, will sing as erst she sung;
  The course of circumstance gives back again
  The Picturesque, erewhile pursued in vain;
  Shows us the fount of Romance is not wasted—­
  The lights and shades of contrast not exhausted.

  Shorn of his strength, the Samson now must sue
    For fragments from the feast his fathers gave,
  The Indian dare not claim what is his due,
    But as a boon his heritage must crave;
  His stately form shall soon be seen no more
  Through all his father’s land, th’ Atlantic shore,
  Beneath the sun, to us so kind, they melt,
  More heavily each day our rule is felt;
  The tale is old,—­we do as mortals must: 
  Might makes right here, but God and Time are just.