INTRODUCTION.
There are certain races who are employed evidently as the
pioneers for a superior people — who seem to have no mission
of performance, — only one of preparation, — and who simply
keep the earth, a sort of rude possession, of which they make no
use, yeilding it, by an inevitable necessity, to the conquering
people, so soon as they appear. Our red men seem to have belonged
to this category. Their modes of life were inconsistent
with length of tenure; and, even had the white man never appeared,
their duration must have still been short. They would
have preyed upon one another, tribe against tribe, in compliance
with necessity, until all were destroyed; — and there is nothing
to be deplored in this spectacle! Either they had no further
uses, or they never, of themselves, developed them; and a people
that destroy only, and never create or build, are not designed,
anywhere, to cumber God's earth long! This is the substantial
condition upon which all human securities depend. We are to
advance. We are to build, create, endow; thus showing that
we are made in the likeness of the Creator. Those who destroy
only, by laws of strict moral justice, must perish, without having
been said to live!
And yet, surveying this spectacle thro' the medium of the
picturesque, one naturally broods with sympathy over the fate
of this people. There is a solitary grandeur in their fortunes,
and the intense melancholy which they exhibit, which compels
us, in spite of philosophy, to regret the necessity under which
they perish. Their valor, their natural eloquence, their passionate
sense of freedom, the sad nobleness of their aspects, the
subtlety of their genius, — these forbid that we should regard
them with indifference; and we watch their prolonged battle for
existence and place, with that feeling of admiration with which
we behold the “great man struggling with the storms of fate.”
The conflict between rival races, one representing the highest
civilization, the other the totally opposite nature of the savage,
is always one of exquisite interest; and not an acre of our vast
country but exhibits scenes of struggle between these rivals,
which, properly delineated, would ravish from the canvass, and
thrill all passions from the stage. The thousand progresses, in
all directions, of the white pioneer; — the thousand trials of
strength, and skill, and spirit, between him and the red hunter;
— make of the face of the country one vast theatre, scene after
scene, swelling the great event, until all closes in the grand denouëment
which exhibits the dying agonies of the savage, with
the conquering civilization striding triumphantly over his neck.
Tradition will help us in process of time to large elements of
romance in the survey of these events, and the red man is destined
to a longer life in art than he ever knew in reality.
“Yet shall the genius of the place,
In days of potent song to come,
Reveal the story of the race,
Whose native genius now lies dumb.
Yes, Fancy, by Tradition led,
Shall trace the streamlet to its bed,
And well each anxious path explore,
The mighty trod in days of yore.
The rock, the vale, the mount, the dell,
Shall each become a chronicle;—
The swift Imagination borne,
To heights of faith and sight supreme,
Shall gather all the gifts of morn,
And shape the drama from the dream.”
The sketch which follows might as well be true of a thousand
histories, as of the one which it records. It is one which the
painter might crown with all the glories of his art; one which
future invention may weave into permanent song and story, for
generations, to whom the memory of the red man will be nothing
but a dream, doubtful in all its changes, and casting doubts upon
the sober history.
