Note 1 — Chapter I · NATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER.

Again, the same historian tells us that the few who remained “stood like sullen dogs to be killed rather than implore mercy; and the soldiers, on entering the swamps, found many sitting together in groups, when they approached; and resting their guns on the boughs of trees within a few yards of them, literally filled their bodies with bullets.”1 But they were Indians, and it was pronounced a pious work. “When the Gauls invaded Italy, and the Roman senators, in their purple robes and chairs of state, sat unmoved in the presence of barbarian conquerors, disdaining to flee and equally disdaining to supplicate mercy, it is applauded as noble—as dying like statesmen and philosophers. But when the Indian, with far more to lose, and infinitely greater provocation, sits upon the green mound, beneath the canopy of heaven, and refuses to ask mercy of civilized fiends, he is stigmatized as dogged, spiritless, and sullen.” “What a different name has greatness, clothed in the garb of Christian princes and sitting beneath spacious domes, gorgeous with man’s devices; and greatness, in the simple garb of nature, destitute, and alone in the wilderness!”