If the following pages shall afford the public any means of judging of the Red Race, with greater accuracy, he hopes they may lead to our treating them with greater kindness and a more enlarged spirit of justice. The change which has been wrought in his own mind, by the facts he has witnessed, has been accompanied by a still more important one, as to their intellectual capacities and moral susceptibilities, and their consequent claims on the philanthropy of the age. As a class of men, it is thought their native speakers, without letters or education, possess a higher scope of thought and illustration, than the _corresponding class_ in civilized life. This may be accounted for, perhaps, from obvious external causes, without impugning the actual native capacity of the lower, although educated classes of civilized life. Still, it is a very striking fact, and one which has very often forced itself on the attention of the author. The old idea that the Indian mind is not susceptible of a high, or an advantageous developement, rests upon questionable data. The two principal causes, which have prolonged their continuance in a state of barbarism, on this continent, for so long a period, are a false religion, and false views of government. The first has kept back social prosperity and impeded the rise of virtue. With respect to government, during all the time we have had them for neighbours, they may be said to have had no government at all. Personal independence, has kept the petty chiefs from forming confederacies for the common good. Individuals have surrendered no part of their original private rights, to secure the observance of the rest. There has been no public social organization, expressed or implied. The consequence has been that the law of private redress and revenge prevailed. In the only two cases where this system was departed from, in North America, namely that of the Azteek empire, and of the Iroquois confederacy, there was no lack of vigour to improve. The results were a constantly increasing power, and extending degree of knowledge up to the respective eras of their conquest. It was not want of mental capacity, so much as the non-existence of moral power, and of the doctrines of truth and virtue, that kept them back; and left our own wandering tribes, particularly, with the bow and the spear in their hands. He believes, that their errors, in these particulars, may be pointed out, without drawing conclusions adverse to their political or social prosperity, under better auspices, and without attributing such failures to mental imbecility.