Alexandria Gazette

[From the New York Courier]
TO THE INDIANS.
"Them 'tarnal critters!"-Leather Stocking.

And here you are, ye Foxes, Sacs, Sioux,
Ye Winnebagoes-devil take your names!
You know not us and why should we know you?
Oblivion soon would cover all your fames,
If we did not-the notion makes us laugh-
Inscribe in books your deathless epitaph!

Here are you led about a gaping show,
A gaze, a wonderment, a live museum,
Used by the Government, which seems to know
How to change tuum deftly into meum;
For half their value, its fair bargain makers
Made legal prize of full six million acres.

For twice four cents a rood they bought your land
And gave you likewise, blankets, paint and collars
And send you round the country, mighty grand,
With Mr. B. and eleven thousand dollars
To pay your bills, ye huge disfigured sinners,
Besides his own and other people's dinners.

How are the mighty fallen! and can these
Degenerate creatures be the true born sons
Of stern-browed chiefs, who stood like stately trees
Among a forest of unbending ones.
When in their tribes around the council fires
They told the prowess of their warrior sires?

Where is the arrow? where the lithe-some bow?
Where the fleet foot that passed the bounding deer?
Where the stout arm that dealt the certain blow?
And stopped the bison in his mad career?
Where the shrill whoop, the Long knife's soul to scare,
Which the bald eagle answered in mid air?

Sunk to a passive grunt of acquiescence
In all the propositions of your masters,
Who are no more affected by your presence
Than by their own great men who stop at Astor's;
There would be bigger crowds, just such a pushing,
To see their Webster arm in arm with Cushing.

We are gregarious-people run to people.-
To see a statesman, or an Indian squaw;
A fainting lady and a falling steed,
Are both attended with the same eclat.
The bold, the terrible, the widely curious
Will make a mob of men and women furious.

But it is come to this? that you, the brave,
Whose frames with iron sinews seemed compact,
Whose painted faces razors could not shave.
Who strength for toil and hardship never lacked,
Should now sit down on stools, or chairs, or sofas,
To be stared at and spoken to by loafers.

Go to your wilds again: desert the city.
Leave to the white man all his walled enclosures,
No more be objects of his scorn or pity,
But seek your wilds and there still free exposures.
Hie to your wigwams, and reform abuses,
And rear new broods of squealing, red papooses.

P. B.