Mr. Houston of Tennessee, after having attained the honour of being governor of his state, and having enjoyed all the consideration necessarily attached to that office, at length became tired of civilized life, and retired among the Creeks to end his days. He has resided long among them, and knows their character well; yet, in one of his statements made to the Indian board at New York, he says, that the attempts to Christianize the Indians in their present state, he was of opinion, much as he honoured the zeal that had prompted them, were fruitless, _or worse._ The supposed conversions had produced no change of habits. So degraded had become the character of this once independent people, that professions of religious belief had been made, and the ordinances of religion submitted to, "when an Indian wanted a new blanket, or a squaw a new gown."[19] Thus, according to governor Houston, the only fruits produced by the boasted labours of the missionaries, have been dissimulation and deceit; and demoralization has been the result of teaching _doctrinal_ Christianity to the children of the forest. Yet we must, in candour, acknowledge that Mr. Houston is not singular in that opinion, since we find, so far back as the year 1755, Cadwallader Calden express himself much to the same effect. "The Five Nations," he says, "are a poor and generally called barbarous people, bred under the darkest ignorance; and yet a bright and noble genius shines through these black clouds. None of the greatest Roman heroes have discovered a greater love of country, or contempt of death, than these people, called barbarous, have shown when liberty came in competition. Indeed I think our Indians have outdone the Romans in this particular. Some of the greatest of those Roman heroes have murdered themselves to avoid shame or torments; but our Indians have refused to die meanly or with little pain, when they thought their country's honour would be at stake by it; but have given their bodies willingly to the most cruel torments of their enemies, to show, as they said, that 'the Five Nations' consisted of men whose courage and resolution could not be shaken. But what, alas! have we Christians done to make them better? We have, indeed, reason to be ashamed that these infidels, by our conversation and neighbourhood, are become worse than they were before they knew us. Instead of virtue, we have only taught them vice, that they were entirely free from before that time."[20] The Rev. Timothy Flint, who was himself a missionary, in his "Ten Years' Residence in the Valley of the Mississippi," observes, page 144,--"I have surely had it in my heart to impress them with the importance of the subject (religion). I have scarcely noticed an instance in which the subject was not received either with indifference, rudeness, or jesting. Of all races of men that I have seen, they seem most incapable of religious impressions. They have, indeed, some notions of an invisible agent, but