At the
same time a comprehensive system of interrogatories was distributed,
intended to bring out the true state and condition of the Indian tribes
from gentlemen of experience, in all parts of the Union.
These interrogatories are founded on a series of some thirty years'
personal observations on Indian society and manners, which were made
while living in their midst on the frontiers, and on the data preserved
in his well-filled portfolios and journals; and the comprehensive
character of the queries, consequently, evince a complete mastery of his
subject, such as no one could have been at all prepared to furnish, who
had had less full and favorable advantages. In these queries he views
the Indian race, not only as tribes having every claim on our sympathy
and humanity, but as one of the races of the human family, scattered by
an inscrutable Providence, whose origin and destiny is one of the most
interesting problems of American history, philosophy, and Christianity.
The first part of this work, in an elaborate quarto volume, was
published in the autumn of 1850, with illustrations from the pencil of
Capt.
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