The Arkansas Advocate

THE INDIANS.

Those political philanthropists, who have such large floods of tears to shed at the laudable attempts of the President to colonize the Southern Indians, on the west of the Mississippi, in pursuance of the original plan of Mr. Jefferson, will doubtless have their sluices of grief opened afresh at the following quotations from the annals of New England:

Cotton Mather says, "not only English, but Indians have been debauched by those who call themselves Christians, who have put their bottles to them and made them drink also,"

The same author says, "that in the depth of winter a descent was made upon them, (the Indians,) and the day was wonderfully carried against the tawny infidels. Their city was laid in ashes. Above twenty of their chief captains were killed; a proportionable desolation cut off the inferior savages; mortal sickness and horrid famine pursued the remainders of 'em, so that we can hardly tell where any of 'em are left alive upon the face of the earth."

The same author, in giving an account of the storming of an Indian fort says, "but the wigwams or houses which filled the fort, consisting chiefly of combustible mats, we set fire to them, and presently retiring out of the fort, on every side surrounded it. The fire, by the advantages of the wind, carried all over it, and such terrible confusion, overwhelmed the savages, that many of them were broiled into death by the revenging flames: many of them climbing on the tops of the pallisadoes were a fair mark for the mortiferous bullets there; and many of them that had the resolution to issue forth, were slain by the English who stood ready to bid them welcome."?

Of taking of another fort, the same author says, "On the Lord's day, they got up to the fort, undiscovered, where, to their sorrowful disappointment, they found no more of the enemy, (Indians) than one and twenty, wherefore they took and slew TWENTY."

How different the policy which the present administration propose to pursue with these children of the forest? They propose to move them to a rich, fertile region, teach them the civilizing arts, and prepare the way for eventually receiving them as American citizens. How different this from the course pursued by our pilgrim fathers! And yet there are men among us so blinded by political prejudice, and excited by hatred to our rulers, as to hold up the pilgrims as models for imitation, while they denounce the present administration and their friends as monsters in cruelty. Why do we not hear these consistent gentlemen mourning over the destruction, the cruel destruction of the Pequods, in Connecticut? The case of George Peters, the Indian hung in Oneida county for the murder of his squaw; or the case of the Indian executed in Madison county for a similar offence? Where were all their sympathies when Soonongise was convicted in Erie county?

Why have their tears been reserved for the Southern Indians?

The answer is plain. The question in relation to the South-western Indians is attempted to be made a political one. Hinc illæ lachrymæ!