_Metamora_ owed everything to the playing of Forrest; if it had fallen into the hands of any other actor it would no doubt have been as short-lived as the rest of the Indian dramas generally--a night or two, or a week or two at most, and then oblivion. As a literary production it was inferior to others of its class; not equal to _The Ancient Briton_, for which Mr. Forrest is said to have paid the same author one thousand dollars; or to _Fauntleroy_ or _Tancred_, dramas of Mr. Stone's, which met with but indifferent success. John Augustus Stone's history is a very sad one; in a fit of insanity he threw himself into the Schuykill, in the summer of 1834, when barely thirty years of age; after life's fitful fever sleeping quietly now under a neat monument containing the simple inscription that it was "Erected to the Memory of the Author of _Metamora_ by his friend, Edwin Forrest." With all of his faults and failings, the great tragedian was ever faithful to the men he called his friends. The Indian of Fenimore Cooper is the father of the stage Indian; and both have been described by Mr. Mark Twain as belonging to "an extinct tribe which never existed." A full list of the Indian plays more or less successful, known in other days and now quite forgotten, would be one of the curiosities of American dramatic literature. A few of them are here preserved: _Sassacus; or, The Indian Wife_, said to have been written by William Wheatley, then a leading young man at the Park Theatre, New York, where _Sassacus_ was produced on the 8th of July, 1836, Wheatley playing an Indian part, Pokota; his sister, Miss Emma Wheatley, then at the height of her popularity, playing Unca, and John R. Scott _Sassacus_. This latter gentleman, as a "red man of the woods," was always a great favorite with the gallery, and he created the titular roles in _Kairrissah_, _Oroloosa_, _Outalassie_, and other aboriginal dramas with decided credit to himself. In the course of a few years, while the stage-Indian was still the fashion, were seen in different American theatres _The Pawnee Chief_; _Onylda; or, The Pequot Maid_; _Ontiata; or, The Indian Heroine_; _Osceola_; _Oroonoka_; _Tuscalomba_; _Carabasset_; _Hiawatha_; _Narramattah_; _Miautoumah_; _Outalissi_; _Wacousta_; _Tutoona_; _Yemassie_; _Wissahickon_; _Lamorah_; _The Wigwam_; _The Manhattoes_; _Eagle Eye_; and many more, not one of which lives to tell its own tale to-day. The reaction against the Indian drama began to become apparent as early as 1846, when James Rees, a dramatist, author of _Charlotte Temple_, _The Invisible Man_, _Washington at Valley Forge_, but of no Indian plays, wrote that the Indian drama, in his opinion, "had of late become a _perfect nuisance_," the italics being his own. SCENE II. THE REVOLUTIONARY AND WAR DRAMA. "List him discourse of War, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music." _Henry V._, Act i. Sc. 1.