Note 243 — Chapter VII

"Whatever may be the estimate of the Indian character in other respects, it is with me an undoubting conviction, that they are by nature a shrewd and intelligent race of men, in no wise, as regards combination of thought or quickness of apprehension, inferior to uneducated white men. This inference I deduce from having instructed Indian children.[244] I draw it from having seen the men and women in all situations calculated to try and call forth their capacities. When they examine any of our inventions, steamboats, steam-mills, and cotton factories, for instance; when they contemplate any of our institutions in operation, by some quick analysis or process of reasoning, they seem immediately to comprehend the principle or the object. No spectacle affords them more delight than a large and orderly school. They scorn instinctively to comprehend, at least they explained to me that they felt, the advantages which this order of things gave our children over theirs."—Flint's Ten Years in the Valley of the Mississippi, 1831.

Mr. Flint, an experienced and intelligent observer, takes so dark a view of the moral character of the Red Indian that his favorable opinion of their mental faculties may be looked upon as probably accurate, though differing strongly from that more generally held. On the other side of the question, among the early writers may be cited M. Bouguer, Voyage au Pérou, p. 102; Voyage d'Ulloa, tom. i., p. 335-337. "They seem to live in a perpetual infancy," is the striking expression of De la Condamine, Voyage de la Riv. Amazon, p. 52, 53. Chauvelon, Voyage à la Martinique, p. 44, 50. P. Venegas, Hist. de la Californie.