7. We can not give a better idea of the effect of their harangues upon their own people, and at the same time a finer instance of their gratefulness, when skillfully touched, than in the address to the Wallah Wallahs by their young . chief, the MORNING STAR. In consequence of the death of several of their tribe, killed in one of their predatory excursions against the whites, they had collected in a large body, for the purpose of assailing them. The stern uncompromising hostility, with which they were animated, may be imagined from the words they chanted on approaching to the attack.

8. " Rest, brothers, rest! You will be avenged. The tears of your widows will cease to flow, when they behold the blood of your murderers, and on seeing their scalps, your children shall sing and leap for joy. Rest, brothers, in peace! Rest, we shall have blood!" The last strains of the death-song had died away. The gleaming eye, burning with the desire of revenge, the countenance, fierce even through an Indian's cloak, the leveled gun and poised arrow,-forbade promise of peace, and their superior force as little hope of successful resistance.

Our

9. At this moment of awful excitement, a mounted troop burst in between them, and its leader addressed his kindred: "Friends and relations! Three snows have only passed over our heads, since we were a poor, miserable people. enemies were numerous and powerful; we were few and weak. Our hearts were as the hearts of children. We could not fight like warriors, and were driven like deer about the plain. When the thunder rolled, and the rains poured, we had no place but the rocks, whereon we could lay our heads. 10. " Is such the case now? No! we have regained possession of the land of our fathers, in which they and their fathers' fathers lie buried; our hearts are great within us, and we are now a nation. Who has produced this change? The white man! And are we to treat him with ingratitude? The warrior with the strong arm and great heart, will never rob a friend." The result was wonderful. There was a complete

revulsion of feeling. The angry waves were quieted, and the savage, forgetting his enmity, smoked the calumets with those whom the eloquence of Morning Star alone had saved from his scalping knife.

11. View the evidences of their attachment to the customs of their fathers, and of their heroic resolution to leave their bones in the forests where they were born, and then revert to their unavailing, hopeless resistance against the march of civilization,—and though we know it is the rightful, natural course of things, yet it is a hard heart which does not feel for their fate. Turn to Red Jacket's graphic description of the fraud which purloined their territory, and shame mingles with our pity.

12. "

'Brothers, at the treaties held for the purchase of our lands, the white men, with sweet voices and smiling faces, told us they loved us, and they would not cheat us, but that the king's children on the other side of the lake, would cheat us. When we go on the other side of the lake, the king's children tell us your people will cheat us. These things puzzle our heads, and we believe that the Indians must take care of themselves, and not trust either in your people, or the king's children. Brothers, our seats were once large, and yours very small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets."

66

13. Some of the speeches of SHENANDOAH, a celebrated Oneida chief, contain the truest touches of natural eloquence. He lived to a great age; and in his last oration in council, he opened with the following sublime and beautiful sentence: 'Brothers,—I am an aged hemlock. The winds of a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I am dead at the top." Every reader who has seen a tall hemlock, with a dry and leafless top surmounting its dark green foliage, will feel the force of the simile. "I am dead at the top." His memory, and all the vigorous powers of youth, had departed forever.

14. Not less felicitous was the close of a speech made by PUSHMATAHA', a venerable chief of a western tribe, at a coun

cil held in Washington, many years since. In alluding to his extreme age, and to the probability that he might not even survive the journey back to his tribe, he said: "My children will walk through the forests, and the Great Spirit will whisper in the tree-tops, and the flowers will spring up in the trails, -but PUSHMATAIIA' will hear not, he will see the flowers no *more. He will be gone. His people will know that he is dead. The news will come to their ears, as the sound of the fall of a mighty oak in the stillness of the woods."

15. Their actions may outlive, but their oratory must survive their fate. It contains many attributes of true eloquence. With a language too barren, and minds too free for the rules of rhetoric, they still attained the power of touching the feelings, and a sublimity of style, which rivals the highest productions of their more cultivated enemies. Expression, apt and pointed,-language, strong and figurative,-comparisons, rich and bold,-descriptions, correct and picturesque,-and gestures, energetic and graceful,-were the most striking peculiarities of their oratory.

17. These orations, the accurate mirrors of their character, their bravery, immovable stoicism, and their native grandeur, hightened as they are in expressiveness by the melancholy accompaniment of approaching extermination, will be as enduring as the swan-like music of Attica and Roman eloquence, which was the funeral song of the liberties of those republics.

LESSON LXVII.

EXPLANATORY NOTE.-1. In the spring of 1832, several tribes of Indians on the north-western frontier, commenced a war upon the whites, on account of attempts to drive them from their lands which had been sold to the United States, without the consent of all concerned. The party opposed, headed by BLACK HAWK, determined not to remove.

The Indians, however, were defeated after a battle of upward of three hours. Black Hawk escaped, but afterward voluntarily gave himself up a prisoner of war, at Prairie Du Chien, Aug. 27, 1832, on which occasion he delivered the following speech, which, though it does not breathe the Christian spirit of forgiveness, yet bespeaks a nobleness which, under the circumstances, could hardly be expected from an untutored Indian.

SPEECH OF BLACK HAWK.

1. You have taken me prisoner with all my warriors. I am much grieved, for I expected, if I did not defeat you, to hold out much longer, and give you more trouble before I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into ambush, but your last general* understands Indian fighting. I determined to rush on you, and fight you face to face; I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in winter.

2. My warriors fell around me; it began to look dismal. I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on BLACK HAWK. His heart is dead, and no longer beats quick in his bosom. He is now a prisoner to the white men; they will do with him as they wish. But he can stand torture, and is not afraid of death. He is no coward. BLACK HAWK is an

INDIAN.

3. He has done nothing, for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, against white men who came, year after year, to cheat them, and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians, and drive them from their homes. But the Indians are not deceitful. The white men speak bad of the Indian, and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies; Indians do not steal.

4. An Indian who is as bad as the white men, could not live in our nation; he would be put to death, and be eaten up by wolves. The white men are bad schoolmasters; they carry false looks, and deal in false actions; they smile in the face of the poor Indian to cheat him; they shake him by the hand to gain his confidence, to make him drunk, and to deceive him. We told them to let us alone, and keep away from us; but they

* General Atkinson.

followed on, and beset our

among us, like the snake.

our father.*

paths, and they coiled themselves

They poisoned us by their touch. 5. We were not safe. We lived in danger. We were becoming like them, hypocrites and liars,-all talkers and no workers. We looked up to the GREAT SPIRIT. We went to We were encouraged. His great council gave us fair words and big promises, but we obtained no satisfaction, -things were growing worse. There were no deer in the forest. The opossum and beaver were fled; the springs were drying up, and our people were without victuals to keep them from starving.

6. We called a great council, and made a large fire. The spirit of our fathers arose and spoke to us to avenge our wrongs or die. We all spoke before the council-fire. It was warm and pleasant. We set up the war-whoop, and dug up the tomahawk; our knives were ready, and the heart of BLACK HAWK swelled high in his bosom, when he led his warriors to battle. He is satisfied. He will go to the world of spirits contented. He has done his duty. His father will meet him there, and commend him.

7. BLACK HAWK is a true Indian, and disdains to cry like a woman. He feels for his wife, his children, and his friends. But he does not care for himself. He cares for the nation and the Indians. They will suffer. He laments their fate. The white men do not scalp the heads; but they do worse, they poison the heart; it is not pure with them. His countrymen will not be scalped, but they will, in a few years, become like the white men, so that you can not trust them; and there must. be, as in the white settlements, nearly as many officers as men, to take care of them, and keep them in order.

8. Farewell, my nation! BLACK HAWK tried to save you, and avenge your wrongs. He drank the blood of some of the whites. He has been taken prisoner, and his plans are stopped. He can do no more! He is near his end. His sun is setting, and he will rise no more. Farewell to BLACK HAWK!

"Father" here refers to the PRESIDENT of the United States; and "his council," to the CONGRESS.