The position of these tribes is, therefore, one of great strength. Let us now consider that their minds must be full of bitter remembrances towards our people. The story of Philip, Sassacus, and Logan may not have descended in their traditions to the present day, but the general story of their race is familiar to them all. When Keokuck replied to Governor Everett in the State-house in Boston, in 1837, he said he had been told by the old men of his tribe, that the ancestors of the Indians once owned and occupied the lands to the shores of the Atlantic. It must be a familiar fact to the Indians, from the Mississippi to the borders of the Pacific, that they were lords of this continent, and that the white man has dispossessed them of their inheritance. They must not only know this general truth, but they must also know and deeply feel the violence and injustice of that process by which their nations have been wasted, and the inheritance, which God, and nature, and their ancestors had bequeathed to them, was wrenched from their hands. The particular experience of many of them must also contribute to increase their store of bitter recollections. The fate of Tecumseh is familiar to many of them, for those still live who fought by his side. The story of the Everglades, and the doom of Osceola, must be often repeated by those who participated in the scenes of the late Florida war. The bloodhounds, imported from Cuba to hunt them down in the thickets, will be introduced to give effective coloring to the picture of suffering, to embitter the feeling of indignation, and, if need be, to rouse the soul to acts of retribution. While, therefore, the tribes are now placed by treaty within the Indian territory, and are adopting, by degrees, the arts of civilization, under the auspices of the United States, it must be remembered that they are there not willingly, and that they have carried with them the long accumulated remembrances of their painful history. “I yield,” said Weatherford to General Jackson, “by necessity, not by choice. My warriors are dead; my people slain; it is vain to resist; but if I had an army, I would still be in the field against you.” It is with such a feeling that many of the tribes have retired to their present abodes; and can we doubt that there is many a daring and independent soul among them, that would rejoice in the opportunity to balance the heavy reckoning which stands summed up in their minds against us?