We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. We worship that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favours we receive; to love each other, and to be united ;—we never quarrel about religion.

"Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all; but he has made a great difference between his white and red children. He has given us a different complexion, and different customs. To you he has given the arts; to these he has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since he has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that he has given us a different religion according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right: he knows what is best for his children: we are satisfied.

"Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion, or take it from you; we only want to enjoy our own.

"Brother, you say you have not come to get our land or our money, but to enlighten our minds. I will now tell you that I have been at your meetings, and saw you collecting money from the meeting. I cannot tell what this money was intended for, but suppose it was your minister; and, if we should conform to your way of thinking, perhaps you may want some from us.

"Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbours; we are acquainted with them: we will wait a little while, and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again what you have said.

As

"Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk; and this is all we have to say at present. we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey, and return you safe to your friends."

The Missionary, hastily rising from his seat, refused to shake hands with them, saying "there was no fellowship between the religion of God and the works of the devil." The Indians smiled and retired in a peaceable manner.* Which of these parties best knew the real nature of religion? At all events the missionary was awfully deficient in the spirit of his own, and in the art of winning men to embrace it.

Winterbottom's America.

CHAPTER XXV.

TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS BY THE UNITED
STATES, CONTINUED.

THE Friends have for many years had, schools for the education of the children in different States, and persons employed to engage the Indians in agriculture and manual arts, but they, as well as the missionaries, complain that their efforts have been rendered abortive by the continual removals of the red people by the government.

Scarcely was the war over, and American independence proclaimed, when a great strife began betwixt the Republicans and the Indians, for the Indian lands -a strife which extended from the Canadian lakes to the gulph of Florida, and has continued more or less to this moment. Under the British government, the boundaries of the American states had never been well defined. The Americans appointed commissioners to determine them, and appear to have resolved that all Indian claims within the boundaries of the St. Lawrence, the great chain of lakes, and the Mississippi, should be extinguished. They certainly em

braced a compact and most magnificent expanse of territory. It was true that the Indians, the ancient and rightful possessors of the soil, had yet large tracts within these lines of demarcation; but, then, what was the power of the Indians to that of the United States? They could be compelled to evacuate their lands, and it was resolved that they should. It is totally beyond the limits of my work to follow out the progress of this most unequal and iniquitous strife ; whoever wishes to see it fully and very fairly portrayed may do so in a work by an American-"Drake's Book of the North American Indians." I can here only simply state, that a more painful and interesting struggle never went on between the overwhelming numbers of the white men, armed with all the powers of science, but unrestrained by the genuine sentiments of religion, and the sons of the forest in their native simplicity. The Americans tell us that this apparently hard and arbitrary measure will eventually prove the most merciful. That the Indians cannot live by the side of white men; they are always quarrelling with and murdering them; and that is but too true; and the Indians in strains of the most indignant and pathetic eloquence, tell us the reason why. It is because the white invaders are eternally encroaching on their bounds, destroying their deer and their fish, and murdering the Indians too without ceremony. It is this recklessness of law and conscience, and the ever-rolling tide of white population westward, which raised up Tecumsch, and his companions, to combine the northern tribes in resistance. Brant assured the American commissioners, that unless they made the Ohio and the Muskingum their boundaries, there

could be no peace with the Indians. These are the causes that called forth Black-Hauk from the Ouisconsin, with the Winnebagoes, the Sacs, and Foxes; that roused the Little-Turtle, with his Miamies, and many other chiefs and tribes, to inflict bloody retribution on their oppressors, but finally to be compelled themselves only the sooner to yield up their native lands. These are the causes that, operating to the most southern point of the United States, armed the great nations of the Seninoles, the Creeks, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees; and have made famous the exterminating campaigns of General Jackson, the bloody spots of Fort Mimms, Autossee, Tippecanoe, Talladega, Horse-shoe-bend, and other places of wholesale carnage. At Horse-shoe-bend, General Jackson says "determined to exterminate them, I detached General Coffee with the mounted and nearly the whole of the Indian force, early in the morning (March 27, 1814), to cross the river about two miles below their encampment, and to surround the Bend, so that none of them should escape by crossing the river."

"At this place," says Drake, "the disconsolate tribes of the South had made a last great stand; and had a tolerably fortified camp. It was said they were 1000 strong." They were attacked on all sides; the fighting was kept up five hours; five hundred and fiftyseven were left dead on the peninsula, and a great number killed by the horsemen, in crossing the river. It is believed that not more than twenty escaped! "We continued," says the brave General Jackson, "to destroy many of them who had concealed themselves under the banks of the river, until we were prevented by the night!"