Of the attempts which have been made to civilize¹ the American Indians.

The Indians of America owe very few obligations to the white people that have settled among them. The latter have endeavoured to exterminate² the former, and by violence or fraud, to get possession of their territories. They have slaughtered³ a great part of the American Aborigines in open war, endeavoured to enslave the rest, and multiplied so rapidly, and spread themselves so regularly over the face of the transatlantic world, as to render the Indian mode of procuring⁴ subsistence exceedingly precarious⁵. “While the diminution⁶ of their supplies” observes a writer in the Edinburgh Review “was thus sowing the seeds of decay, the lessons which they learnt from their new neighbours, drunkenness and other excesses, with several diseases which they imported, tended to accelerate their utter extinction⁷. It appeared indeed quite obvious, that if the Indians did not, by imitating the whites learn new habits and occupations, their race in a few years would be completely destroyed.”

“From these considerations a duty devolved upon the European settlers, which several bodies of men in the United States, seem to have felt extremely[53] urgent. They were called upon to contribute as much as lay in their power towards the alleviation⁸ of the sufferings which their own increased prosperity was daily entailing¹⁰ upon the original and rightful proprietors¹¹ of the country. They were called upon to prevent, if possible, the utter extinction of a race, which their own progress in wealth and in numbers, was constantly depriving of the means of subsistence. Accordingly, various plans were adopted with this view, sometimes by the government, sometimes by individuals, and public bodies. Pensions were granted to certain tribes, whose hunting had been destroyed by the clearing of the forests. Such a relief, unaccompanied by any change in their character and habits, was at best but temporary, and, in the end, rather did evil than good; for the same people who

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