would be glad to see him. He left me, requesting me to remain until his return; and being gone some half hour, he came back, saying, in substance, It is very strange! The President, I think, is singularly scrupulous. He recognized you just now with great pleasure as Colonel Freeman's successor; and then sent for me to say he could not nominate you, - giving as his reason, that you had been active and useful in defending his administration, and if, with the knowledge the public had of this fact, he should appoint you to office, it might be interpreted as a compensation to you, out of the public money, for those services.' He went on to say, that Mr. Monroe was anxious for my appointment to some suitable office in the government, provided a situation could be found that would not devolve upon him the duty, for the reasons stated, of conferring it upon me. "I introduce this little anecdote to show how sensitive was this good man, and how constantly alive to his fame; and also, that it may serve as a contrast to the practice which was destined in a few short years to take the place of it, of an exactly opposite character. "Another anecdote illustrative of this sensibility in Mr. Monroe to his reputation. It is known that his entire devotion to the public service left him but little time to attend to his private affairs. He became embarrassed, greatly so; but was perhaps never more so than during the term of his Presidency. He owned, by bequest, I believe, a valuable estate in Virginia, - known as the Albemarle estate. It was his great object, if possible, to save this, and pass it down to his descendants. But the pressing nature of his finances forced from him, at last, a reluctant offer of this property for sale. Some time after the appearance of the advertisement, he was waited upon by a gentleman, who said to him, 'Sir, I am just from Virginia, and from your estate in Albemarle. My object in going there was to examine it, with a view to its purchase. I have done this, and have also learned from your agent your terms. I am here to say, that I am ready, when you shall have made out the title-deeds, to pay you the stipulated price.' "Mr. Monroe replied, 'Colonel O I cannot sell that estate - to you. My necessities, I know, are great; and these alone prompted me to advertise that property for sale, - but Colonel O- interrupting him, asked, with surprise, 'Why not sell to me?' For no other reason than one, and that is, you were a contractor during the war; and you received your contracts from me as secretary of war. You were faithful, I know, and fulfilled your trust like an honest man, and made money. And now, were I to sell you my estate, I might incur the suspicion of having, by these contracts, purposely placed it in your power to buy it.' All remonstrance on the part of Colonel O- proved in vain. Mr. Monroe held to his first decision, preferring to bear the weight of heavy embarrassments, to the liability of incurring the suspicion that he had converted his trust, as secretary of war, into an instrument of pecuniary gain and personal emolument. "Such instances of purity in public life are refreshing. They will appear to the reader of the present day, perhaps, as fables; and the patriotic Monroe may, probably, be considered, when contemplated through the medium of modern times, as fastidious." Vol. 1., pp. 41-43. The greater part of this volume is occupied with the narrative of an excursion made, in the year 1827, among various Indian tribes, from Lake Superior to Georgia. The story abounds in graphic descriptions of natural scenery, in detailed sketches of Indian habits and character, and in all the minute tracery of forest and savage life. Without stilt like phrase or rhetorical artifice, the author tells us, as he might have told his own family on his return, just what he saw and heard, said and did. And without any affectation of philanthropy, without a particle of that maudlin sentimentality which seems to us a philological rather than a moral attainment, he manifests everywhere a prompt and hearty sympathy with the noble though fallen race whose servant he made himself, and a keen and true moral discernment as to their relations, rights, and wrongs. In all his transactions with them, he appears as their apologist, defender, and patron, and seems to have sown along his whole path among them claims upon their personal gratitude and affection. We had marked several extracts from this volume; but we should hardly do justice to the work in quoting single incidents of travel apart from those connectives of time, place, and circumstance, whence they derive so much of their interest and point. The second volume consists of discourses which the author has delivered, in the prosecution of the work of love to which his latter years have been consecrated. With regard to the origin of the Indian races, Colonel M'Kenney supposes them to be of Tartar descent, and to have found their way to this country across Behring's Straits. He does not ascribe to the present races the construction of - No. 133. VOL. LXIII.. 42 the fortifications and other remarkable monuments which still baffle antiquarian acumen; but supposes them to have been built by an earlier Asiatic race, identical with the Mexicans or Peruvians, which was vanquished and exterminated by the fiercer and less civilized ancestors of the modern tribes. His grounds for this hypothesis are a similarity between the mounds and circumvallations in our territory and those found in both Mexico and Peru; a general resemblance in relics disinterred from the mounds in the three countries respectively; traditions favoring this theory; and the occasional digging up in our soil of skulls belonging to a manifestly extinct race. On these obscure points, without the profession or parade of learning, our author reasons with great good sense and discrimination; and we cannot but pay the more deference to his conclusions, from his having omitted that entire and copious class of arguments by which our antiquaries are wont to illustrate their own erudition much more than the questions at issue. We have neither room nor disposition to enter upon these questions here; and setting aside both our author's speculations and our own, we transfer to our pages a rare morceau of Indian cosmogony or anthropogony, which we commend to the admirers of the "Vestiges," as a parallel theory, resting on no less solid a posteriori grounds, and presenting a no less beautiful union of poetical fancy with profound philosophy, than that which finds literal truth in the words of Job, when he said to the worm, "Thou art ny mother and my sister." "The government had made arrangements, somewhere about the year 1825, for introducing among the Seminoles of Florida the school system, and a sum of money was appropriated for that object. It was resisted by NEA-MATHLA, a chief, at that time, of distinction, and exercising over that tribe great authority. After several ineffectual attempts to apply the government bounty under that form, a council was held, when Nea-Mathla rose and addressed Governor Duval, ex officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs, as follows: "Father, It is not my wish to have my red children made white children of. When the Great Spirit made man, he made him as he is, and under three marks. He assigned to each color, at the creation, the duties of each; and it was never intended that they should mingle. man. Father, This was the way in which the Great Spirit made He stood upon a high place. Then taking into his hand some dust, he mixed it, and dried it, and then blew upon it, sending it from his hand in front of him, when there stood up before him a white man! "The Great Spirit was sorry. He saw that what he had made was not what he aimed at. The man was white! He looked feeble and sickly. When the Great Spirit, looking at him, said, "White man, I have given you life. You are not what I want. I could send you where you came from; but no, — I will not take away your life. Stand aside." The Great Spirit mixed up the dust again, and drying it, blew upon it again, — and there stood before him a black man! "The Great Spirit was grieved. He saw, now, this man was black and ugly; so he bade him stand aside; when, mixing up the dust again, he blew upon it, and there stood before him A RED MAN! The Great Spirit smiled. At this moment, all looked up and saw an opening in the heavens, and through it descended, slowly, three boxes. They came down, at last, and rested on the ground; when the Great Spirit spoke, saying, “I have given life to you all. The red man, alone, is my favorite; but you shall all live. You must, however, fulfil, each of you, the duties that are suited to you. These three boxes contain the tools you are to use in getting what is necessary to support you." So saying, he called to him the white man. "White man," said the Great Spirit, "you are not my favorite, but I made you first. Open these boxes, and look, and choose which you will take. They contain the implements you are all three to use through life." "The white man opened the boxes, looked in, and said, “ I'll take this." It was full of pens, and ink, and paper, and all the things you white people use. He looked at the black man, say. ing, "I made you next, but I cannot allow you to have the second choice"; then, turning to the red man, he smiled, and spoke, saying, "Come, my favorite, and make a choice." The red man looked into the two remaining boxes, and said "I'll take this." That was full of beaver-traps, bows and arrows, and all the kind of things the Indians use. Then the Great Spirit said to the negro, "You can take this"; and that was full of hoes and axes, plainly showing that the black man was made to labor for both the white and red man. "Father, — Thus did the Great Spirit make man, and in this way did he provide the instruments for him to labor with. It is not his will that our red children shall use the articles that came down in the box which the white man chose, any more than it is proper for the white man to take of the implements that were prepared by the Great Spirit for the use of his red children.' "The result was, the means provided for the support of schools were rejected, and have never been employed to this day."Vol. 11., pp. 15-17. The second discourse treats of the "claims of the Indians upon our national regard, arising from past services and sufferings, and from unanswerable evidence of endowments, and capacity to receive and enjoy the benefits of civilization." That the early indebtedness of the Colonists to the placable dispositions and friendly offices of the Indian tribes should have been so soon overlooked, and so unrighteously recompensed, in the very lifetime of Pocahontas and Massasoit, presents an enigma, for the solution of which the civil and domestic history of the Colonies furnishes no adequate materials. We are disposed to think that religious bigotry bore a large agency in the seemingly gratuitous suspicion and hostility with which the Indians began to be regarded, before any aggressive movements on their part authorized alarm. The origin of these tribes was then a vexed question among theologians, as now among antiquaries. The celebrated Joseph Mede was gravely consulted on this point, and replied by propounding and defending, in an elaborate and profoundly learned essay, the following theory. The name and faith of Christ having been rapidly diffused in the Eastern continent, Satan began to despair of the permanence of his empire in Asia, and determined to found a kingdom in the New World, where the abhorred symbols of the Christian worship should never meet his eye; or, as Mede more classically expresses the thought, "ubi nec Pelopidarum nomen, nec facta audiHe accordingly convened somewhere among the steppes of Tartary a body of his most devoted servants, and led them to the previously uninhabited glades and forests of America, marking out by his own diabolical ingenuity a more practicable path than unaided mortals could have found, defending their passage across the straits, and going before them by some visible sign of his presence, corresponding to the pillar of alternate cloud and fire that preceded the Israelites in the desert. The grounds of this theory are ample and satisfying. The reasoning of the author of the "Vestiges " is not one whit more conclusive. In the first place, the Peruvian and Mexican divinities, which Mr. Mede had seen, strikingly resembled the Devil in face and form. Then, again, it had been found impossible, either by strong water or fire-arms, to convert any of the Indians to Christianity. ret." |