in every part of the globe. Exulting in superior strength and courage, the chief marks of preeminence among unpolished nations, he treats woman as his inferior. Marriage itself, instead of being the union of affection and interest between equals, is the unnatural alliance of a master and his slave. In barbarous nations, and among rude and uncivilized people, the functions of domestic economy fall usually to the woman's share; but among savages, her condition is so grievous and her depression so complete, that servitude is a name too mild to describe her wretched condition. A wife is no better than a beast of burden. While the husband loiters out the day in sloth, or spends it in amusement, the wife is condemned to incessant toil. Tasks are imposed upon her without pity, and received without gratitude. Polygamy being tolerated, no affection, or but little, can exist among them. The wife is taught to regard her husband as a superior, and frequently is not permitted to eat in his presence. She cultivates the earth, does all the menial labor, and carries all the burdens; while her husband, with his arms only decked in his best apparel, stalks on before. 'Tis civilization and christianity that exalt the female to her appropriate sphere; annihilate them, and woman is the object of sensuality, or a slave.

The religious tenets, rites, and ceremonies, of the American savage, for a long time have been a subject of interest, and are now but imperfectly understood. The difficulties that attend his progress through life are so numerous, and man in an uncivilized state is so frequently in situations of great perplexity, that his mind, conscious of its weakness, has recourse to other guidance and protection than what is human. Overwhelmed with calamities that oppress him, and exposed to dangers which he cannot repel, the savage has no reliance on himself. He feels his own impotence, and sees no prospect of being extricated other than by an unseen arm. Hence, in all barbarous nations, the first rites which bear any resemblance to religion have reference to evils which men suffer, or dread. The natives of this country had their good and evil spirits. Their homage, however, was principally paid to the latter. Persuaded that the good deities, prompted by the beneficence of their nature, would bestow every blessing in their power, without solicitation or acknowledgment, their only anxiety was to soothe and deprecate the wrath of those whom they regarded as the enemies of human kind. His superstition is gene. rally the offspring of fear; its effects are everywhere the same, and its efforts usually employed, not to solicit blessings, but to avert calamities.

A portion of the North American Indians had a more just conception of the Supreme Being. They denominated him the Great Spirit. They had, however, no established form of worship-no temples-no ministers consecrated to his service.

Among the Natchez and the natives of South America, the sun was the chief object of worship. Temples were erected with considerable magnificence, decorated with some ornaments, and dedicated to its service. A perpetual fire, the purest emblem of divinity, was there preserved, and

ministers appointed to watch and feed the sacred flame.

The first duty

of the great chief of the nation every morning, was an act of obeisance to the sun. This was the most refined species of superstition known or practiced, and probably the most natural. It corresponded in almost every particular with that of the Persians, the most desirable, it is usually conceded, of any people destitute of revelation.

The human mind, when least improved and invigorated by culture, shrinks from the thought of annihilation, and looks forward with hope and expectation to a future existence. This sentiment, resulting from a secret consciousness of its own dignity-from an instinctive longing after immortality, is apparently universal, and may, perhaps, be deemed natural. Upon this are founded the most exalted hopes of man, in his highest state of improvement; nor has nature withheld from this soothing consolation in that early and rude period of its progress, the most uncivilized of the American tribes. Few or none, it is believed, regard death as the extinction of being. All entertain hopes of a future and more blessed state of existence, when they shall be exempt from the calamities which embitter life in its present condition. This they conceive to be a delightful country, blessed with perpetual spring; whose forests abound with game-whose rivers swarm with fish; where famine is never felt, and plenty, without labor, ever reigns.

The views of an American savage are so beautifully expressed by Pope, in his Essay on Man, and are so true to nature, that I cannot resist the temptation of inserting them here.

Lo the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind,
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way.
Yet, simple nature to his hope has given

Beyond the cloud-topp'd hill, a humbler heaven;
Some safer world, in depths of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, nor Christians thirst for gold.
To be content 's his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

As men, in forming their first impressions concerning the invisible world, suppose they shall feel the same desires, and be engaged in the same occupation as here, they naturally ascribe eminence and distinction in that state to the same qualities and talents which are objects of esteem in this. Hence, the American savage allots the highest place in the land of spirits to the skilful hunter, the adventurous warrior, and to such as have tortured the greatest number of victims. And, as they imagine departed spirits begin their career anew in the world to which they are

hastening, in order that their friends may not enter upon it defenceless and unprovided, they bury with their bodies bows and arrows, and other weapons used in hunting and war. They deposite, also, in their tombs, the skins or stuffs of which they make their garments, Indian-corn, venison, domestic utensils, and whatever is considered necessary in their simple mode of life.

In some provinces, when a chief, or cacique, dies, his wives and slaves are put to death, in order that he may appear in another world with the same dignity as here, and be waited upon by the same attendants.

All nations, from the most refined to the most barbarous, it is believed, have their prophets, their soothsayers, their augurs, and their magicians. Even Cicero sought and obtained at Rome the office of augur.

Astonished with occurrences of which it is unable to comprehend the cause alarmed at events of which it cannot discover the issue or the consequences, the human mind has recourse to other means of discovering them than the exercise of its own sagacity. Hence, superstition becomes a regular system, and divination a religious act. Priests, as the ministers of Heaven, pretend to deliver its oracles. Among savage nations they are the soothsayers, augurs, and magicians, who possess the sacred art of disclosing to man what is concealed from other eyes.

Among such uncultivated nations, a curiosity to discover what is future and unknown, is cherished also by a different principle, and derives strength from another alliance. Diseases, among savages, are few and violent. Impatience under what they suffer, and their solicitude for the recovery of health, inspires them with extraordinary reverence for such as pretend to understand the nature of maladies. These ignorant pretenders, in most cases, are strangers to the human frame, and unacquainted with the cause or cure of disease; they resort, therefore, to superstition for aid, which, mingled with some portion of craft, supplies what is wanting in science. The credulity, and love of the marvellous, natural to uninformed men, favors the deception, and hence the success of impostors. Among savages, their first physicians are a kind of augur, or wizard, who boasts of his knowledge, and pretends to discern the future. Superstition in its earliest form, we have observed, originated from a desire to be delivered from present distress, and not from the evils which await us in a future world; it would, therefore, seem that superstition originally was grafted on medicine, and not on religion. The conjuror, the sorcerer, or the prophet-which means the same thing-thus becomes an important personage. Long before man had acquired a knowledge of Deity that inspired him with reverence, we observe him stretching out a presumptuous hand, to draw aside the veil with which Providence kindly conceals its purposes from our view.

To discern and to worship a superintending power, is an evidence of the maturity of man's understanding; a vain, foolish, inconsiderate desire to pry into futurity, is the error of its infancy, and a proof of its weakness. From this weakness proceeds the faith of savages in dreams and

omens; and the same remark will apply with equal force to man pretending to be civilized.

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Eloquence in council, and bravery in war," for more than two centuries have been attributed to the savage, and the inquiry has scarcely been made," whether these things are so."

Of the latter we have spoken already, and said as much, perhaps, as the occasion requires. Montesquieu very justly remarks, that fear is the first law of our nature. Courage and bravery cannot, then, be instinctive; but, like other human acquisitions, depend for their existence upon circumstances. The savage warrior may or may not be brave; that he is so, at times, all admit; that he is also, at other times, a great coward, is equally true; and, upon the whole, that he is less brave or courageous than the regular soldier, bred to arms in the ranks of civilized life, is too apparent to require an argument.

In relation to Indian eloquence, a diversity of opinion must and will, for a long time, exist among those whose opportunities enable them to decide correctly, and whose, judgment is not perverted by the force of that current, which has so long and so uniformly flowed in a particular channel. Travellers, in the early settlement of this country, with a view to magnify their own exploits, indulged themselves in great latitude of expression, when speaking of the eloquence and bravery of savage Their reports were published and republished, until a chạnnel was formed in the public mind, and the Indian was thus exalted "above all Grecian, above all Roman fame."

warriors.

Mr. Jefferson assisted, many years ago, in giving currency to this opinion, by publishing a speech said to have been written by the celebrated Logan, a chief of the six nations, to Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia. Had such a speech been delivered as is written down for him by his friends in civilized life, it would have tended, in a great measure, to confirm the opinion so often expressed, in relation to Indian eloquence. Considering it, however, as the handywork of others, and in part of Mr. Jefferson, whose pen, like the touch of Midas, converted everything, not into gold, but into eloquence; or, as one of those celebrated speeches put into the mouth of some distinguished warrior of antiquity, by Livy or Tacitus, it loses half its charms.

The speech above alluded to, unlike any Indian speech ever in fact delivered, we insert:

"I appeal to any white man to say, if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him no meat—if he ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not? During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the

veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge: I have sought it-I have killed many-I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear-Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

The same ideas were put into verse by Campbell, in his Gertrude of Wyoming, and may, perhaps, with the same propriety, be imputed to Logan :

"He left of all my tribe

Nor man, nor child, nor thing of living birth;

No, not the dog that watched my household hearth
Escaped that night of blood, upon our plains.

All perished. I alone am left on earth;

To whom nor relative nor blood remains

No, not a kindred drop that runs in human veins."

Erskine, the celebrated English barrister, afterward chancellor, has also contributed much to foster this delusion. Upon the trial of Stockdale, in the court of king's bench, for a libel growing out of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, when speaking of the British conduct in India, and of their efforts to support an authority "which Heaven never gave,' remarks: I have not been considering this subject through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself, among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them, in my youth, from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure-' who is it that caused this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being that gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend them!' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated men all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control when it is in vain to look for affection."

We have quoted the whole passage, because it purports not only to contain a speech, but exhibits also the action of a savage warrior on the occasion alluded to. It will be recollected, however, that the above are mere fancy pieces, emanating from the fertile imagination of Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Erskine, and not from the brain of those distinguished per