Brothers!  I make you a short talk, and again bid you welcome to our council hall.

Not often have they been addressed with such intelligence and tact.  The few who have not approached them with sordid rapacity, but from love to them, as men, and souls to be redeemed, have most frequently been persons intellectually too narrow, too straightly bound in sects or opinions, to throw themselves into the character or position of the Indians, or impart to them anything they can make available.  The Christ shown them by these missionaries, is to them but a new and more powerful Manito; the signs of the new religion, but the fetiches that have aided the conquerors.

Here I will copy some remarks made by a discerning observer, on the methods used by the missionaries, and their natural results.

“Mr. ——­ and myself had a very interesting conversation, upon the subject of the Indians, their character, capabilities, &c.  After ten years’ experience among them, he was forced to acknowledge, that the results of the missionary efforts had produced nothing calculated to encourage.  He thought that there was an intrinsic disability in them, to rise above, or go beyond the sphere in which they had so long moved.  He said, that even those Indians who had been converted, and who had adopted the habits of civilization, were very little improved in their real character; they were as selfish, as deceitful, and as indolent, as those who were still heathens.  They had repaid the kindnesses of the missionaries with the basest ingratitude, killing their cattle and swine, and robbing them of their harvests, which they wantonly destroyed.  He had abandoned the idea of effecting any general good to the Indians.  He had conscientious scruples, as to promoting an enterprise so hopeless, as that of missions among the Indians, by sending accounts to the east, that might induce philanthropic individuals to contribute to their support.  In fact, the whole experience of his intercourse with them, seemed to have convinced him of the irremediable degradation of the race.  Their fortitude under suffering, he considered the result of physical and mental insensibility; their courage, a mere animal excitement, which they found it necessary to inflame, before daring to meet a foe.  They have no constancy of purpose; and are, in fact, but little superior to the brutes, in point of moral development.  It is not astonishing, that one looking upon the Indian character, from Mr. ——­’s point of view, should entertain such sentiments.  The object of his intercourse with them was, to make them apprehend the mysteries of a theology, which, to the most enlightened, is an abstruse, metaphysical study; and it is not singular they should prefer their pagan superstitions, which address themselves more directly to the senses.  Failing in the attempt to christianize, before civilizing them, he inferred, that, in the intrinsic degradation of their faculties, the obstacle was to be found.”