I hear nothing but pleasant
words. The raven is not waiting for his prey, I hear no eagle
cry--'Come, let us go. The feast is ready--the Indian has killed his
brother.'"
When nearly a whole month had been consumed in these negotiations, a
treaty of limits was signed, which will long be remembered in the Indian
reminiscences. This was on the 19th of August (1825), _vide_ Indian
Treaties, p. 371. It was a pleasing sight to see the explorer of the
Columbia in 1806, and the writer of the proclamation of the army that
invaded Canada in 1812, uniting in a task boding so much good to the
tribes whose passions and trespasses on each other's lands keep them
perpetually at war.
'Tis war alone that gluts the Indian's mind,
As eating meats, inflames the tiger kind.
HETH.
At the close of the treaty, an experiment was made on the moral sense of
the Indians, with regard to intoxicating liquors, which was evidently of
too refined a character for their just appreciation. It had been said by
the tribes that the true reason for the Commissioners of the United
States government speaking against the use of ardent spirits by the
Indians, and refusing to give them, was not a sense of its bad effects,
so much, as the fear of the expense.
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