James Buchanan, formerly his Britannic Majesty’s Consul for the State of New York, has some excellent observations on the evidences of general capacity among the Indians, in the first volume of his Sketches of their History and Customs. After describing the hospitable and polite reception which he met with from the children of the celebrated Mohawk Indian Chief, Captain Brandt, he observes:—“My thus becoming acquainted with this young lady and her brother, fully establishes in my mind all I was anxious to prove by the education of a young Indian: and many such instances might be adduced which would evince that wisdom, science, and exaltation of character, are not the exclusive property of any colour, tribe, or nation. The bravery, political sagacity, and knowledge of government, manifested by the negroes who now govern in St. Domingo, (not to mention other well known instances,) are calculated to allay the doubts which used to prevail as to the capacity of the African. But between the Indian of North America, and the African, there is a remarkable difference. The former never can be bowed to become the slave of man, to pay tribute, or to submit, by any hope of reward to live in vassalage. Free, like the son of Ishmael, he will die rather than yield his liberty; and he is, therefore, hunted down by the people who _boast of civilisation and christianity, and who, while they value their own freedom, do not hesitate to extend their lands and property by the merciless destruction of the unoffending proprietor_. But let not those who still claim the British name, nor the citizens of the United States deceive themselves in the belief that because the poor Indians, whose lands they possess, and whose rivers they navigate, have no powerful voice to blazon their wrongs, and hold them up to the abhorence of mankind, they will always rest unavenged; or that the civilization, which is pompously carried on, but which is in fact a slow consuming system of extinction, will avert the retributive justice which God will assuredly render. The poor Indians confess that for their crimes they are now placed by the Great Spirit under the feet of the white men, and in the midst of their sufferings, they pathetically warn their cruel oppressors that the time may come when the Lord will have pity on them, and in turn punish the Europeans. Truly the ways of the Almighty are wonderful! The apparent prosperity of the wicked are among the most unaccountable features of the will of our creator, and would be utterly without a solution had we not the Bible to guide us into a right understanding of his designs. However the Deist may scoff, or the philosopher doubt, yet therein we see that, though the wrath of God may be long delayed, the punishment of iniquity will assuredly come to pass. The reaction of crime and punishment is to be seen in the history of all nations. Let the European oppressors of the Indian savage, as he is called, look to it