Читать книгу A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner. U.S. Interpreter at the Saut de Ste. Marie онлайн

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In relation to the other branch of this part of our subject, namely, the practicability of benefiting the Indians by our instructions, a few words may suffice. More than two hundred years have passed, during all which time it has been believed that systematic and thorough exertions were making to promote the civilization and conversion of the Indians. The entire failure of all these attempts ought to convince us, not that the Indians are irreclaimable, but that we ourselves, while we have built up with one hand, have pulled down with the other. Our professions have been loud, our philanthropic exertions may have been great, but our selfish regard to our own interest and convenience has been greater, and to this we ought to attribute the steady decline, the rapid deterioration of the Indians. We may be told of their constitutional indolence, their Asiatic temperament, destining them to be forever stationary, or retrogradent; but while remaining monuments and vestiges, as well as historical records of unquestionable authority, assure us that a few centuries ago they were, though rude, still a great, a prosperous, and a happy people; we ought not to forget that injustice and oppression have been most active among the causes which have brought them down to their present deplorable state. Their reckless indolence, their shameless profligacy, their total self-abandonment, have been the necessary consequences of the degradation and hopelessness of their condition.[4]