Authentic pictures of Indian life have another and a different value, in a literary point of view. In the history and character of the aborigines is enveloped all the distinct and characteristic poetic material to which we, as Americans, have an unquestioned right. Here is a peculiar race, of most unfathomable origin, possessed of the qualities which have always prompted poetry, and living lives which are to us as shadowy as those of the Ossianic heroes; our own, and passing away--while we take no pains to arrest their fleeting traits or to record their picturesque traditions. Yet we love poetry; are ambitious of a literature of our own, and sink back dejected when we are convicted of imitation. Why is it that we lack interest in things at home? Sismondi has a passage to this effect:-- "The literature of other countries has been frequently adopted by a young nation with a sort of fanatical admiration. The genius of those countries having been so often placed before it as the perfect model of all greatness and all beauty, every spontaneous movement has been repressed, in order to make room for the most servile imitation; and every national attempt to develop an original character has been sacrificed to the reproduction of something conformable to the model which has been always before its eyes." This is certainly true of us, since we not only adopt the English view of everything, but confine ourselves to the very subjects and imagery which have become consecrated to us by love and habit. Not to enter into the general subject of our disposition to parrotism, our neglect of Indian material in particular may be in part accounted for, by our having become acquainted with the aborigines after the most unpoetical fashion, in trying to cheat them out of their lands, or shooting them when they declined being cheated; they, in their turn, driven to the resource of the weak and the ignorant, counterplotting us, and taking, by means of blood and fire, what we would not give them in fair compensation. This has made our business relations very unpleasant; and everybody knows that when this becomes the case, it is hard for parties to do justice to each other's good or available qualities. If we had only read about the Indians, as a people living in the mountain-fastnesses of Greece, or the, broad plains of Transylvania, we should without difficulty have discovered the romantic elements of their character. But as the effect of remoteness is produced by time as well as distance, it is surely worth while to treasure up their legends for our posterity, who will justly consider us very selfish, if we throw away what will be a treasure to them, merely because we cannot or will not use it ourselves.