Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser

From the Franklin Gazette.
CREEK INDIANS.
EXTRACT
FROM A JOURNAL WRITTEN IN
THE
CREEK NATION OF INDIANS.
(Concluded.)

The Indians have but few ideas on the subject of religion; some of them have a vague, indistinct notion of a future state; they however give themselves very little trouble or concern on that head. If you ask the generality of Indians about their religion they will tell you it is a thing they know nothing about. An intelligent one will inform you that he believes there is a great spirit above who rules the sun, moon &c. and that to those who behave in this world like good warriors, he will, after death, give a country abounding in game; but if they behave like old women, they will go to one where there is no game, or land to plant corn. This is the whole of their theology: there is no such thing as prayer or worship among them. There is no prospect of their ever becoming christians--christianity is too learned a religion for their comprehension, and the example of the whites is not calculated to make a favorable impression: and it is a melancholy fact that all the efforts of the missionaries have merely implanted among them superstitious feelings about what they do not comprehend, of which wicked men among them have availed themselves, and under the name of prophets, occasioned all the wars that have desolated their land.

There are white men to be found with the Indian tribes, exhibiting the disgusting spectacle of a retrograde from civilization, men who have abandoned their country and society, naturalized themselves among the savages, adopted their manners and habits, and become generally more vicious and degraded than the Indians themselves. But I was happy to remark that this base degeneracy, although sometimes the effect of choice, was more frequently the offspring of crime or necessity.

There is no greater reproach, and no thing they so much dread, as the stigma of cowardice--an Indian woman once called her husband a coward; he walked deliberately up to a cliff of 100 feet high, jumped from it and fell into the river; by some extraordinary good fortune he reached the shore: not satisfied with this display of his intrepidity, he immediately ascended a second time, jumped again from the cliff, fell into the Alabama, and was seen no more.

Pushmatahaw, the famous Choctaw chief having heard that a white man had called him a coward, he went to the factory, brought a barrel of gun-powder, carried it to the village where the man resided, lighted a fire brand and seating himself upon the barrel, challenged his accuser to come and seat himself also, and he would blow them both up--the challenge was declined.

There are physicians among the Indians, who have no contemptible skill in the cure of gun-shot wounds, and the bite of snakes; their methods of proceeding in these cases they keep secret. The Creeks have few mechanical ideas; they manufacture household utensils and silver ornaments for the nose and ears, but they are ill made, clumsy, and exhibit no indications of ingenuity; in this respect they are vastly inferior to the savages inhabiting the northwest part of the continent.

Many attempts have been made by the United States to civilize these people, but they have all proved abortive. Children have been taken from among them, and every effort made to give them the advantages of education; but they have returned to the forest worse savages than before. Proper persons have been sent among them to teach the arts of agriculture, and farming utensils have been furnished, but they cannot be persuaded to cultivate their fine lands. Many have been taught mechanical trades, but they return to their own country with a fixed determination never to exercise them. The United States have been accused of pursuing an unjust and ferocious policy towards them, when in fact they have been treated with parental kindness--troops are stationed to prevent intrusions upon them, trading houses established to sell them the goods at a low price--individuals prohibited from trading with, or purchasing their lands--an agent appointed to each tribe, to live among them and look after their interest, and no lands of theirs have ever been held by the United States, that were not acquired by fair treaty or purchase.

There are good traits in the character of an Indian. He is honest; theft is a crime much less common than with the whites, and traders say they are remarkably punctual in paying their debts. The persevering intrepidity displayed in various wars, their bold, unsubmissive, independent spirit scorning to yield their national independence, much less to submit like the blacks to personal slavery, are characteristics deserving the greatest respect. But they are vindictive, crafty, faithless, and ferocious as untameable, and as incapable of being moulded into the ways of enlightened men, or the duties of civilized life, as the Tiger of the desert. Nature has endowed the blacks with intellect, denied to the Indian: a negro can be taught all the arts of civilized life, and they have frequently developed a capacity to attain and practice the higher branches of knowledge. Not so the Indian--with more courage, spirit, and hardihood, he has infinitely less pliability of mind. He delights in ignorance; his prejudice against civilization is invincible, and his attachment to a wild, unrestrained, savage, barbarous manner of living, is not to be overcome. He is a rough, barren rock, unfit for the hammer of the mason, the chisel of the sculptor, or the hand of the cultivator.

Extinction is the inevitable fate of this race of men. It appears destined by the God of nature, that they should yield to the superior genius and intelligence of the whites; and although it cannot be denied that they were the original holders of this continent, and we are intruders, who have gradually dispossessed them--yet that wrong has been done--it is in vain to think of retracting; and as christians, as civilized men, we can have no regret in perceiving a race of men become extinct, after every effort has been made in vain, to wean them from their savage propensities, and make them useful to God or society, and convert them from their barbarous paganism, who have never developed a capacity for the
attainment or exercise of any of the arts that adorn human nature, and who, notwithstanding their sagacity, and occasional display of superior acuteness, are in the mass, entirely unteachable, savage, ferocious, and ignorant, and can, in comparison with the population that take their places, be considered as but one degree above the beasts of the forest.