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Elias Boudinot (1740-1821) A Star in the West... (1st ed., Trenton, NJ, 1815) |
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Age of Revelation (1790) | Second Advent (1815) | Biographical Info.
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A STAR IN THE WEST; OR, A HUMBLE ATTEMPT TO DISCOVER THE LONG LOST TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL, PREPARATORY TO THEIR RETURN TO THEIR BELOVED CITY, JERUSALEM. BY ELIAS BOUDINOT, L. L. D.,
TRENTON, N. J. PUBLISHED BY D. FENTON, S. HUTCHINSON, AND J. DUNHAM. George Sherman, Printer. 1816. |
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BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the thirteenth day of January in the fortieth year of the Independence of the United States of America, Daniel Fenton, Silvester Huchinson, and Johnson Dunham, of the said District, have deposited in this Office the Title of a Book the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words following, to wit: "A Star in the West; or a humble attempt to discover the long lost Ten Tribes of Israel, preparatory to their return to their beloved city, Jerusalem. By Elias Boudinot, L.L. D." In conformity to the act of Congress of the United States, entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned;" and also, to the act entitled "An act supplementary to the act entitled 'An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving and etching historical and other prints."
ROBERT BOGGS, CONTENTS. 22 INTRODUCTION, CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. 303 APPENDIX, T H E P R E F A C E. For more than two centuries, have the aborigines of America engaged the avarice and contempt of those who are commonly called the enlightened nations of the old world. These natives of this wilderness have been always considered by them as savages and barbarians, and therefore have given them little concern, further than to defraud them of their lands, drive them from the fertile countries on the sea shores, engage them in their wars, and indeed destroy them by thousands with ardent spirits and fatal disorders unknown to them before. But these enlightened nations have seldom troubled themselves to enquire into their origin, their real circumstances or their future hopes. Great pains have been taken by traders and others to promote among them every European vice, which has been enforced both by precept and example. Some exertions indeed, have been made of late years by private societies and individuals, to counteract these unchristian practices, by endeavouring to teach them the things that belong to their everlasting peace; but this was not attempted till they were disgusted and soured with the general character and conduct of white men, by which they concluded, that no one bearing their name or appearance, could be actuated by any other principles, than those of misleading, deceiving and betraying them, for the sake of their lands and peltry. Wherever honest and upright intentions have prevailed to convince their judgments and engage their confidence, though these have, comparatively, been few and feeble, they have generally succeeded, notwithstanding the opposition they often met with from those, who from the worst motives, have thought themselves greatly benefited by their ignorance, humiliation and misery, and who feared that by their reformation, these opposers might be despoiled of their unjust gain. Blessed be God, that there is yet hope that the day of their visitation is near -- that the day-star from on high, begins to appear, giving joyful hopes that the sun of righteousness will soon arise upon them, with healing under his wings. -- There is a possibility, that these unhappy children of misfortune, may yet be proved to be the descendants of Jacob and the long lost tribes of Israel. And if so, that though cast off for their heinous transgressions, they have not been altogether foresaken; and will hereafter appear to have been, in all their dispersions and wanderings, the subjects of God's divine protection and gracious care. The following pages are an humble attempt to investigate this important subject, which has been the object of the writer's attention for a long time. If he has cast but a mite into the common treasury, he hopes it will not be despised. If it shall lead abler and wiser heads to engage as labourers in the master's vineyard, though it should be at the eleventh hour, he will rejoice, so that God alone may at last receive all the glory. -- He claims no merit in this labour, but that of integrity, attention and industry, in searching after the truth, and preserving the facts which have come to his knowledge, that others may have all the aid he can afford them in the further pursuit of this interesting investigation. Yet though he is not entitled to any credit, but as a register of facts, yet he has been much gratified since the completion of this work, to find that he is not alone in his sentiments on this unpopular subject. The following publication taken out of the Analectic Magazine for February last, is written so much in the style and on the same principles of the following compilation, that the writer of it could not withstand the advantage that might be derived from inserting a copy of the publication in this little tract. * -- He was rejoiced to know that such despised sufferers, however degraded, had found compassion in other breasts besides his own. Had these unfortunate out-casts from society, been favoured from the first discovery of their country by Europeans, with inquisitive, learned and disinterested historians, who would have represented them and their cause fully and fairly to posterity, they would have been considered in a very different point of light, from that in which they now appear. That some of their established customs and especially their manner of carrying on war, must appear exceedingly barbarous, and even brutal at the present day, to civilized people, the writer cannot doubt, yet if compared with the conduct of the civilized nations of Europe, Asia and Africa, in ten thousand instances, the balance would be greatly in their favour. † Indeed it is an extraordinary fact, that in all the wars of this country between the English and French -- Spaniards and Americans, every one in their turn, have uniformily exerted every nerve to engage the Indians to take part with them, and to fight in their own way, on their side. And those who make the greatest cry against their barbarity * This is done by express permission of the editor of that work, who very politely consented thereto. † Plutarch in his Morals, I vol. 96, says that the Lacedemoians murdered their children who were deformed or had a bad constitution. The Romans were allowed by Romulus to destroy all their female children, except the eldest. Human sacrifices were offered up in almost all the eastern countries. Children were burnt alive by their own parents, and offered to Baal, Moloch, and other pretended deities. Mr. Hume says in his Essay on Political Science; "the most illustrious period of the Roman history considered, in a political view, is that between the beginning of the first and the end of the last punic war; yet at this very time, the horrid practice of poisoning was so common, that during part of a season, a praetor punished capitally, for this crime, above three thousand persons in a part of (enlightened) Italy, and found informations of this nature still multiplying. and inhumanity in carrying on war, are the most forward to furnish them with tomahawks, scalping knives, muskets, powder and ball, to increase their detestable mode of warfare. Nay, they have employed every mean[s] in their power, by rum, feasts, harangues, and every provocative, to rouse their unbridled passions, increase their thirst for blood, and force them on to the destruction of their fellow men. They have forgotten the conclusive adage, "qui facit per alium facit per se."* Must not such people be answerable to the great judge of all the earth for this conduct. I shall not further detain the reader, but give him the publication in the writer's own words. TRAITS OF INDIAN CHARACTER. "In the present times, when popular feeling is gradually becoming hardened by war, and selfish by the frequent jeopardy of life or property, it is certainly an inauspicious moment to speak in behalf of a race of beings, whose very existence has been pronounced detrimental to public security. But it is good at all times to raise the voice of truth, however feeble; to endeavor if possible to mitigate the fury of passion and prejudice, and to turn aside the bloody hand of violence. Little interest, however, can probably be awakened at present, in favor of the misguided tribes of Indians that have been drawn into the present war. The rights of the savage have seldom been deeply appreciated by the white man -- in peace he is the dupe of mercenary rapacity; in war he is regarded as a ferocious animal, whose death is a question of mere precaution and convenience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when* He who does a thing by another, does it by himself his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity -- and little mercy is to be expected from him who feels the sting of the reptile, and is conscious of the power to destroy. "It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of this country, to be doubly wronged by the white men -- first, driven from their native soil by the sword of the invader, and then darkly shadowed by the pen of the historian. The former has treated them like beasts of the forest; the latter has written volumes to justify him in his outrages. The former found it easier to exterminate than to civilize; the latter to abuse than to discriminate. The hideous appellations of savage and pagan, were sufficient to sanction the deadly hostilities of both; and the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and dishonored, not because they were guilty, but because they were ignorant. "The same prejudices seem to exist, in common circulation, at the present day. We form our opinions of the Indian character from the miserable hordes that infest our frontiers. These, however, are degenerate beings, enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its arts of living. The independence of thought and action, that formed the main pillar of their character, has been completely prostrated, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are debased by conscious inferiority, and their native courage completely daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbours. Society has advanced upon them like a many-headed monster, breathing every variety of misery. Before it, went forth pestilence, famine and the sword; and in its train came the slow, but exterminating curse of trade. What the former did not sweep away, the latter has gradually blighted. It has increased their wants, without increasing the means of gratification. It has increased their wants, without increasing the means of gratification. It has enervated their strength, multiplied their diseases, blasted the powers of their minds, and superinduced on their original barbarity the low vices of civilization. Poverty, repining and hopeless poverty -- a canker of the mind unknown to sylvan life -- corrodes their very hearts. -- They loiter like vagrants through the settlements, among spacious habitations replete with artificial comforts, which only render them sensible of the comparative wretchedness of their own condition. Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes, but they are expelled from the banquet. The forest which once furnished them with ample means of subsistence has been levelled to the ground -- waving fields of grain have sprung up in its place; but they have no participation in the harvest; plenty revels around them, but they are starving amidst its stores; the whole wilderness blossoms like a garden, but they feel like the reptiles that infest it. "How different was their case while yet the undisputed lords of the soil. Their wants were few, and the means of gratifying them within their reach. They saw every one around them sharing the same lot, enduring the same hardships, living in the same cabins, feeding on the same aliments, arrayed in the same rude garments. No roof then rose, but what was open to the houseless stranger; no smoke curled among the trees, but he was welcome to sit down by its fire, and join the hunter in his repast. "For," says an old historian of New-England, "their life is so void of care, and they are so loving also, that they make use of those things they enjoy as common goods, and are therein so compassionate that rather than one should starve through want, they would starve through want, they would starve all: thus do they pass their time merrily, not regarding our pomp, but are better content with their own, which some men esteem so meanly of." Such were the Indians while in the pride and energy of primitive simplicity: they resemble those wild plants that thrive best in the shades of the forest, but which shrink from the hand of cultivation, and perish beneath the influence of the sun. "In the general mode of estimating the savage character, we may perceive a vast degree of vulgar prejudice, and passionate exaggeration, without any of the temperate discussion of true philosophy. No allowance is made for the differences of circumstances, and the operations of principles under which they have been educated. Virtue and vice, though radically the same, yet differ widely in their influence on human conduct, according to the habits and maxims of the society in which the individual is reared. No being acts more rigidly from rule than the Indian. His whole conduct is regulated according to some general maxims early implanted in his mind. The moral laws that govern him, to be sure, are but few, but then he conforms to them all. The white man abounds in laws of religion, morals, and manners; but how many does he violate? "A common cause of accusation against the Indians is, the faithlessness of their friendships, and their sudden provocations to hostility. But we do not make allowance for their peculiar modes of thinking and feeling, and the principles by which they are governed. Besides, the friendship of the whites towards the poor Indians, was ever cold, distrustful, oppressive, and insulting. In the intercourse with our frontiers they are seldom treated with confidence, and are frequently subject to injury and encroachment. The solitary savage feels silently but acutely; his sensibilities are not diffused over so wide a surface as those of the white man, but they run in steadier and deeper channels. His pride, his affections, his superstitions, are all directed towards fewer objects, but the wounds inflicted on them are proportionately severe, and furnish motives of hostility which we cannot sufficiently appreciate. Where a community is also limited in number, and forms, as in an Indian tribe, one great patriarchal family, the injury of the individual is the injury of the whole; and as their body politic is small, the sentiment of vengeance is almost instantaneously diffused. One council fire is sufficient to decide the measure. Eloquence and superstition combine to inflame their minds. The orator awakens all their martial ardour, and they are wrought up to a kind of religious desperation, by the visions of the prophet and dreamer. "An instance of one of these sudden exasperations, arising from a motive peculiar to the Indian character, is extant in an old record of the early settlement of Massachusetts. The planters of Plymouth had defaced the monuments of the dead at Passonagessit, and had plundered the grave of the sachem's mother of some skins with which it had been piously decorated. Every man knows the hallowed reverence which the Indians entertain for the sepulchres of their kindred. Even now, tribes that have passed generations, exiled from the abodes of their ancestors, when by chance they have been travelling, on some mission, to our seat of government, have been known to turn aside from the highway for many miles distance, and guided by wonderful accurate tradition, have sought some tumulus, buried perhaps in woods, where the bones of their tribe were anciently deposited; and there have passed some time in silent lamentation over the ashes of their forefathers. Influenced by this sublime and holy feeling, the sachem, whose mother's tomb had been violated, in the moment of indignation, gathered his men together, and addressed them in the following beautifully simple and pathetic harangue -- an harangue which has remained unquoted for nearly two hundred years --- a pure specimen of Indian eloquence, and an affecting monument of filial piety in a savage. "When last the glorious light of all the sky was underneath this globe, and birds grew silent, I began to settle, as my custom is, to take repose. Before mine eyes were fast closed, methought I saw a vision, at which my spirit was much troubled, and, trembling at that doleful sight, a spirit cried aloud -- behold my son, whom I have cherished; see the breasts that gave thee suck, the hands that lapped thee warm and fed thee oft! canst thou forget to take revenge of those wild people, who have defaced my monument in a despiteful manner, disdaining our antiquities and honorable customs. See now, the sachem's grave lies like the common people, defaced by an ignoble race. Thy mother doth complain, and implores thy aid against this thievish people, who have newly intruded in our land. If this be suffered I shall not rest quiet in my everlasting habitation. -- This said, the spirit vanished, and I, all in a sweat, not able scarce to speak, began to get some strength and recollect my spirits that were fled, and determined to demand your counsel, and solicit your assistance." "Another cause of violent outcry against the Indians, is their inhumanity to the vanquished. This originally arose partly from political and partly from superstitious motives. Where hostile tribes are scanty in their numbers, the death of several warriors completely paralyzes their power; and many an instance occurs in Indian history, where a hostile tribe, that had long been formidable to its neighbour, has been broken up and driven away, by the capture and massacre of its principal fighting men. This is a strong temptation to the victor to be merciless, not so much to gratify any cruelty of revenge, as to provide for future security. But they had other motives, originating in a superstitious idea, common to barbarous nations, and even prevalent among the Greeks and Romans -- that the manes of their deceased friends, slain in battle, were soothed by the blood of the captives. But those that are not thus sacrificed are adopted into their families, and treated with confidence and affection of relatives and friends; nay, so hospitable and tender is their entertainment, that they will often prefer to remain with their adopted brethren, rather then return to the home and the friends of their youth. "The inhumanity of the Indians towards prisoners has been heightened since the intrusion of the whites. We have exasperated what was formerly a compliance with policy and superstition into a gratification of vengeance. They cannot but be sensible that we are the usurpers of their ancient dominion, the cause of their degradation, and the gradual destroyers of their race. They go forth to battle, smarting with injuries and indignities which they have individually suffered from the injustice and the arrogance of white men, and they are driven to madness and despair, by the wide-spreading desolation and the overwhelming ruin of our warfare. We set them an example of violence, by burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence; and then wonder that savages will not show moderation and magnanimity towards men, who have left them nothing but mere existence and wretchedness. "It is a common thing to exclaim against new forms of cruelty, while, reconciled by custom, we wink at long established atrocities. What right does the generosity of our conduct give us to rail exclusively at Indian warfare. With all the doctrines of christianity, and the advantages of cultivated morals, to govern and direct us, what horrid crimes disgrace the victories of christian armies. Towns laid in ashes; cities given up to the sword; enormities perpetrated, at which manhood blushes, and history drops the pen. Well may we exclaim at the outrages of the scalping knife; but where, in the records of Indian barbarity, can we point to a violated female? "We stigmatize the Indians also as cowardly and treacherous, because they use stratagem in warfare, in preference to open force; but in this they are fully authorized by their rude code of honor. They are early taught that stratagem is praiseworthy; the bravest warrior thinks it no disgrace to lurk in silence and take every advantage of his foe. He triumphs in the superior craft and sagacity by which he has been enabled to surprise and massacre an enemy. Indeed, man is naturally more prone to subtlety than open valor, owing to his physical weakness in comparison with other animals. They are endowed with natural weapons of defence; with horns, with tusks, with hoofs and talons; but man has to depend on his superior sagacity. In all his encounters, therefore, with these, his proper enemies, he has to resort to stratagem; and when he perversely turns his hostility against his fellow man, he continues the same subtle mode of warfare. "The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy, with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by cunning. That chivalric kind of courage which teaches us to despise the suggestions of prudence, and to rush in the face of certain danger, is the offspring of society, and produced by education. It is honorable, because in fact it is the triumph of lofty sentiment over an instinctive repugnance to pain, and over those selfish yearnings after personal ease and security which society has condemned as ignoble. It is an emotion kept up by pride, and the fear of shame; and thus the dread of real evils is overcome by the superior dread of an evil that exists but in the mind. This may be instanced in the case of a young British officer of great pride, but delicate nerves, who was going for the first time to battle. Being agitated by the novelty and awful peril of the scene, he was accosted by another officer of a rough and boisterous character -- "What, sir," cried he, "do you tremble?" "Yes sir," replied the officer, "and if you were half as much afraid as I am you would run away." This young officer signalized himself on many occasions by his gallantry, though, had he been brought up in a savage life, or even in a humbler and less responsible situation, it is more than probable he could never have ventured into open action. "Besides we must consider how much the quality of open and desperate courage is cherished and stimulated by society. It has been the throne of many a spirit-stirring song, and chivalric story. The minstrel has sung of it to the loftiest strain of his lyre -- the poet has delighted to shed around it all the splendours of fiction -- and even the historian has forgotten the sober gravity of narration, and burst forth into enthusiasm and rhapsody in its praise. Triumphs and gorgeous pageants have been its reward -- monuments, where art has exhausted its skill, and opulence its treasures, have been erected to perpetuate a nation's gratitude and admiration. Thus artificially excited, courage has arisen to an extraordinary and factitious degree of heroism; and, arrayed in all the glorious "pomp and circumstance" of war, this turbulent quality has even been able to eclipse many of those quiet, but invaluable virtues, which silently ennoble the human character, and swell the tide of human happiness. "But if courage intrinsically consist in the defiance of danger and pain, the life of the Indian is a continual exhibition of it. He lives in a perpetual state of hostility and risk. -- Peril and adventure are congenial to his nature, or, rather, seem necessary to arouse his faculties and give an interest to existence. Surrounded by hostile tribes, he is always equipped for fight, with his weapons in his hands. He traverses vast wildernesses, exposed to the hazards of lonely sickness, of lurking enemies, or pining famine. Stormy lakes present no obstacle to his wanderings; in his light canoe of bark, he sports like a feather on their waves, and darts with the swiftness of an arrow down the roaring rapids of the rivers. -- Trackless wastes of snow, rugged mountains, the gloom of swamps and morasses, where poisonous reptiles curl among the rank vegetation, are fearlessly encountered by this wanderer of the wilderness. He gains his food by the hardships and dangers of the chase; he wraps himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther, and the buffalo, and sleeps among the thunders of the cataract. "No hero of ancient or modern days can surpass the Indian in his lofty contempt of death, and the fortitude with which he sustains all the varied torments with which it is frequently inflicted. Indeed we here behold him rising superior to the white man, merely in consequence of his peculiar education. The latter rushes to glorious death at the cannon's mouth; the former coolly contemplates its approach, and triumphantly endures it, amid the torments of the knife and the protracted agonies of fire. He even takes a savage delight in taunting his persecutors, and provoking their ingenuity of torture; and as the devouring flames prey on his very vitals, and the flesh shrinks from his sinews, he raises his last song of triumph, breathing the defiance of an unconquered heart, and invoking the spirits of his fathers to witness that he dies without a groan. "Notwithstanding all the obloquy with which the early historians of the colonies have overshadowed the characters of the unfortunate natives, some bright gleams will occasionally break through, that throw a degree of melancholy lustre on their memories. Facts are occasionally to be met with, in their rude annals, which though recorded with all the colouring of prejudice and bigotry, yet speak for themselves; and will be dwelt on with applause and sympathy, when prejudice shall have passed away. "In one of the homely narratives of the Indian wars in New-England, there is a touching account of the desolation carried into the tribe of the Pequod Indians. Humanity shudders at the cold-blooded accounts given, of indiscriminate butchery on the part of the settlers. In one place we read of the surprisal of an Indian fort in the night, when the wigwams were wrapped in flames, and the miserable inhabitants shot down and slain, in attempting to escape, "all being despatched and ended in the course of an hour." After a series of similar transactions, "Our soldiers," as the historian piously observes, "being resolved by God's assistance to make a final destruction of them," the unhappy savages being hunted from their homes and fortresses, and pursued with fire and sword, a scanty but gallant band, the sad remnant of the Pequod warriors, with their wives and children, took refuge in a swamp, "Burning with indignation, and rendered sullen by despair -- with hearts bursting with grief at the destruction of their tribe, and spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignomity of their defeat, they refused to ask their lives at the hands of an insulting foe, and preferred death to submission "As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat, in such manner as to render escape impossible. Thus situated, their enemy "plied them with shot all the time, by which means many were killed and buried in the mire." In the darkness and fog that preceeds the dawn of day, some few broke through the besiegers and escaped into the woods: "the rest were left to the conquerors, of which many were killed in the swamp, like sullen dogs who would rather, in their self-willedness and madness, sit still and be shot through, or cut to pieces," than implore for mercy. When the day broke upon this handful of forlorn, but dauntless spirits, the soldiers, we are told, entering the swamp, "saw several heaps of them sitting close together, upon whom they discharged their pieces, laden with ten or twelve pistol bullets at a time; putting the muzzles of their pieces under the boughs, within a few yards of them; so as, besides those that were found dead, many more were killed and sunk into the mire, and never were minded more by friend or foe." "Can any one read this plain unvarnished tale, without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, and loftiness of spirit, that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes, and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the nobles clothed in their robes, and seated with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without an attempt at supplication or resistance. Such conduct in them was applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as obstinate and sullen. How much are we the dupes of show and circumstance! How different is virtue, arrayed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, destitute and naked, reduced to the last stage of wretchedness, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness. "Do these records of ancient excesses fill us with disgust and aversion? Let us take heed that we do not suffer ourselves to be hurried into the same iniquities. Posterity lifts up its hands with horror at past misdeeds, because the passions that urged to them are not felt, and the arguments that persuaded to them are forgotten; but we are reconciled to the present perpetration of injustice by all the selfish motives with which interest chills the heart and silences the conscience. Even at the present advanced day, when we should suppose that enlightened philosophy had expanded our minds, and true religion had warmed our hearts into philanthropy -- when we have been admonished by a sense of past transgressions, and instructed by the indignant censures of candid history -- even now, we perceive a disposition breaking out to renew the persecutions of these hapless beings. Sober-thoughted men, far from the scenes of danger, in the security of cities and populous regions, can coolly talk of "exterminating measures," and discuss the policy of extirpating thousands. If such is the talk in the cities, what is the temper displayed on the borders? The sentence of desolation has gone forth -- "the roar is up amidst the woods;" implacable wrath, goaded on by interest on all claims of justice and humanity, and to act over those scenes of sanguinary vengeance which have too often stained the pages of colonial history. "These are not the idle suggestions of fancy; they are wrung forth by recent facts, which still haunt the public mind. We need but turn to the ravaged country of the Creeks to behold a picture of exterminating warfare. "These deluded savages, either excited by private injury or private intrigue, or by both, have lately taken up the hatchet and made deadly inroads into our frontier settlements. -- Their punishment has been pitiless and terrible. Vengeance has gone like a devouring fire through their country -- the smoke of their villages yet rises to heaven, and the blood of the slaughtered Indians yet reeks upon the earth. Of this merciless ravage, an idea may be formed by a single exploit, boastfully set forth in an official letter that has darkened our public journals. * A detachment of soldiery has been sent under * Letter of gen. Coffee, dated Nov. 4, 1813. the command of one general Coffee to destroy the Tallushatches towns, where the hostile Creeks had assembled. The enterprise was executed, as the commander in chief * expresses it, in style -- but, in the name of mercy, in what style! The towns were surrounded before the break of day. The inhabitants, starting from their sleep, flew to arms, with beat of drums and hideous yellings. The soldiery pressed upon them on every side, and met with a desperate resistance -- but what was savage valour against the array and discipline of scientific warfare? The Creeks made gallant charges, but were beaten back by overwhelming numbers. Hemmed in like savage beasts surrounded by hunters, wherever they turned they met a foe, and in every foe they found a butcher. "The enemy retreated firing," says Coffee in his letter, "until they got around and in their buildings, where they made all the resistance that an overpowered soldier could do; they fought as long as one existed, but their destruction was very soon completed; our men rushed up to the doors of the houses, and in a few minutes killed the last warrior of them; the enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrors, without shrinking or complaining; not one asked to be spared, but fought so long as they could stand or sit. In consequence of their flying to their houses, and mixing with the families, our men in killing the males, without intention, killed and wounded a few of the squaws and children." "So unsparing was the carnage of the sword, that not one of the warriors escaped to carry the heart-breaking tidings to the remainder of the tribe. Such is what is termed executing hostilities in style! -- Let those who exclaim with abhorrence * Gen. Andrew Jackson. at Indian inroads -- those who are so eloquent about the bitterness of Indian recrimination -- let them turn to the horrible victory of general Coffee, and be silent "As yet our government has in some measure restrained the tide of vengeance, and inculcated lenity towards the helpless Indians who have been duped into the present war. Such temper is worthy of an enlightened government -- let it still be observed -- let sharp rebuke and signal punishment be inflicted on those who abuse their delegated power, and disgrace their victories with massacre and conflagration. The enormities of the Indian form no excuse for the enormities of white men. It has pleased heaven to give them but limited powers of mind, and feeble lights to guide their judgments; it becomes us who are blessed with higher intellects to think for them, and to set them an example of humanity. It is the nature of vengeance, if unrestrained, to be headlong in its actions, and to lay up, in a moment of passion, ample cause for an age's repentance. We may roll over these miserable beings with our chariot wheels, and crush them to the earth; but when war has done its worst -- when passion has subsided, and it is too late to pity or to save -- we shall look back with unavailing compunction at the mangled cor[p]ses of those whose cries were unheeded in the fury of our career, "Let the fate of war go as it may, the fate of those ignorant tribes that have been inveigled from their forests to mingle in the strife of white men, will inevitably the same. In the collision of two powerful nations, these intervening particles of population will be crumbled to dust, and scattered to the winds of heaven. In a little while, and they will go the way that so many tribes have gone before. The few hordes that still linger about the shores of Huron and Superiour, and the tributary streams of the Mississippi, will share the fate of those tribes that once lorded it along the proud banks of the Hudson; of that gigantic race that are said to have existed on the borders of the Susquehanna, and of those various nations that flourished about the Potowmac and the Rappahanoe, and that peopled the forests of the vast Shenandoah. They will vanish like a vapour from the face of the earth -- their very history will be lost in forgetfulness -- and "the places that now know them, will know them no more forever." "Or if perchance some dubious memorial of them should survive the lapse of time, it mat be in the romantic dreams of the poet, to populate in imagination his glades and groves, like the fauns, and satyrs, and the sylvan deities of antiquity. But should he venture upon the dark story of their wrongs and wretchedness -- should he tell how they were invaded, corrupted, despoiled -- driven from their native abodes and the sepulchres of their fathers -- hunted like wild beasts about the earth, and sent down in violence and butchery to the grave -- posterity will either turn with horror and incredulity from the tale or blush with indignation at the inhumanity of their forefathers. -- "We are driven back," said an old warrior, "until we can retreat no further -- our hatchets are broken -- our bows are snapped and the white men will cease to persecute us -- for we will cease to exist!" [ blank] |