'White man, there is eternal war between me and thee! I quit not the land of my fathers, but with my life. In those woods, where I bent my youthful bow, I will still hunt the deer; over yonder waters I will still glide, unrestrained, in my bark canoe. By those dashing waterfalls I will still lay up my winter's store of food; on these fertile meadows I will still plant my corn.

Stranger! the land is mine. I understand not these paper rights. I gave not my consent, when, as thou sayest, these broad regions were purchased, for a few baubles, of my fathers. They could sell what was theirs; they could sell no more. How could my father sell that which the Great Spirit sent me into the world to live upon? They knew not what they did.

The stranger came, a timid suppliant, — few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bear-skin, and warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land, to raise corn for his women and children; and now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchment over the whole, and says, It is mine.

6

Stranger! there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There is poison in the white man's cup; the white man's dog barks at the red man's heels.

'If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I fly? Shall I go to the south, and dwell among the graves of the Pequots ? Shall I wander to the west? the fierce Mohawk,- the man-eater, is my foe. Shall I fly to the east? the great water is before me. No, stranger; here I have lived, and here will I die; and if here thou abidest, there is eternal war between me and thee.

'Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction: for that alone I thank thee. And now take heed to thy steps: the red man is thy foe. When thou goest forth by day, my bullet shall whistle past thee; when thou liest down at night, my knife is at thy throat. The noon-day sun shall not discover thy enemy; and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror; and I will reap in blood: thou shalt sow the earth with corn; and I will strew it with ashes thou shalt go forth with the sickle; and I will follow after with the scalping-knife: thou shalt build; and I will burn: till the white man or the Indian perish from the land.'

EXERCISE LXXX.

MIGRATION OF THE CREEK INDIANS.

Anon.

When visiting the State of Alabama, in the year 1833, I felt a desire to see a Creek town. Accordingly, after going over creeks and swamps, upon logs and the trunks of trees, and following the Indian trail, I came to an Indian settlement on the banks of a stream. The settlement, more or less thick, extended about half a mile. The Indians were better dressed there, than those I had seen at Fort Mitchell. Some of them had guns. None but the children were so naked as the Uchees, whom I had seen, and who are considered the vagabonds of the tribe; and these are, perhaps, thus made vagabonds, because they are, more than the others, in the vicinity of the whites and their whisky. Around this settlement, which is on excellent land, there are some traces of rude agriculture. The huts were, in general, miserable things, covered with bark thrown over rails.

On this expedition, I had, for a companion, a good Creek scholar, from beyond Fort Gibson,— perhaps near the setting of the sun, I may say, as a retort on his assertion that I came from its rising. He lives in the Missouri territory, at the junction of the Verdigris and Arkansaw rivers, and has been, and is now engaged with General McIntosh, -son of the McIntosh whom the Creeks killed, in transporting such Creeks over the Mississippi, as can be persuaded to go with him. McIntosh is here now, holding a talk with the chiefs, at the Big Warrior river.

This companion of mine is a shrewd, half-tamed man. He speaks a little of all the Indian tongues, and 'palavers them well.' He is now engaged in drumming up a recruit of five hundred Creeks, whom he, under the command of McIntosh, is to take to the Missouri territory. He is girt by some eight or ten tin canteens, full of whisky; and his mode of enlistment is somewhat after this manner. Laden with whisky, he visits the Indian settlements, to 'palaver a little;' and as there are two parties, one for, but the majority opposed to emigration, he makes his peace with all by means of whisky.

Whisky is an argument no Indian can long resist. Give him but a taste of that, and he is your servant or your slave.

It is a potent spell, that bewitches his senses, and fastens him hand and feet. A taste of this whisky, and a promise of more, added to the liberality of the Federal government, in providing the Indian with food, rifles, and powder, in the new regions, induce him to emigrate ; and he then commences his long line of march toward the Pacific.

My companion said that the lands to which the Creeks and Cherokees are carried, are in general good, abounding in game and innumerable, droves of buffaloes. Hostile Indians, it is true, surround them. But with the patronage of the general government, and their own military organization, they assume such a front as alarms the Pawnee, and other wild tribes, and keeps them in order. He had no doubt that they are happier there, than in Alabama, harassed as they are by the cunning, cupidity, and cruelty of many of the whites; but he candidly confessed that, in the course of a few years, no laws, no treaties, no matter how solemn, could withstand the torrent of white emigration; and that, when they were thus pressed upon, they must again be swept onward towards the Pacific, and at last perish there.

I do not lay claim to more philanthropy than other people possess. But, to every reflecting mind, there must be much in the conduct of the whites towards the Indians, to make us almost ashamed of our species, and of our color. If justice, not tempered with mercy, is the avenging sword, what dire calamity awaits our countrymen! what punishment is preparing for them! How has our civilization degraded the noble sons of the forest! How have our arts, our inventions, ruined their constitutions, poisoned their lives, and transformed them into brutes, mere brutes!

But yesterday, I saw the stout frame of an athletic Indian wallowing in the sand, thrown there by the strong drink of the white man, which he had given his last bit of silver to purchase, when neither he, nor his wife, nor children, had had an ounce of food, for thirty hours; and, as I was informed, an Indian, too, who had fought with Jackson, in his Seminole † campaign, and who bore a conspicuous part in one of his achievements, there defending the white man; but little knowing that, at the same time, he was riveting the chains of his own slavery. The victim of intemperance and of white colonization, was an old chief, his beard grey with age, though † Pronounced, Seminólay.

his long hair was as dark as ever. When, in his sober moments, he thinks of the past, and compares that time when his services were courted, and he was feared, to the present time, when he is an outcast, and trampled under foot; no wonder the revolting comparison drives him to steep all in forgetfulness.

The same sky is over his head. The wind rustles, as the surges on the beach, through the same forests! The scene, and the scenery, their associations, are the same. The same warriors are about him! But all, in fact, is changed. His warriors are not the iron-nerved, skin-clad heroes, whom he once led to battle; but calico-wrapped men, whom a barrel of whisky can vanquish, or buy. The oaks, the pines, the soil, are not his: he is pursued by the white man. This is not his home. He is not to die here, and to be buried with his fathers.

EXERCISE LXXXI.

THE DEPARTED TRIBES. - I. M'Lellan, Jr.

They are fading, - they are fading,
In solemn gloom away,

Like vapors on the mountain,

At dawning of the day.

They are falling, they are falling,
Like leaves in autumn time,

When in the wood the cheerless breeze
Sighs forth its hollow chime!

They are dying, they are dying,
Like those who feel at heart
That pale consumption's finger
Is beckoning to depart.

I look upon the mountain top
Lo! all their fires are out!
I tread the hollow valleys -
All silent is their shout!

Along the green marge of the lake,

And from the sandy shore,

A solemn voice doth seem to say,
The old tribes are no more!

Their very names are half forgot,
Their ancient graves unknown;
And dim oblivion's shadow

Around them wide is thrown.

EXERCISE LXXXII.

OSEOLA.- Anon.

This memorable individual, the head war-chief of his tribe, and the bitter foe of the whites, fell a victim to stratagem, and became the captive of his enemies. He died a prisoner in Fort Moultrie, where he was visited by Mr. Catlin, whose researches among the Indian tribes are so extensively known.

Oseola was a friendless and vagabond boy, cast upon the world without any of the extrinsic aids to advancement, which usually urge the hero in his ambitious career. Unlettered and unguided, he rose, - among a strange people, to the highest post of trust and honor. He proved, in the possession of all the virtues which savage morality inculcates, that, under the discipline of enlightened philosophy, he would have been equal to the government of a great and civilized nation, rather than the control of a weak and barbarous tribe.

When the lapse of time shall have warranted the blending of fiction with the incidents of the struggle which he made for his hut and hunting-grounds, his history will form themes for romance and song, perhaps the most stirring, in Indian life and warfare.

The following is an extract from a letter of Mr. Catlin, written a few weeks before Oseola's death.

'From the time I have spent with this chief, and the familiar interviews I have had with him in conversation, I have