In intellectual activity the red man did not occupy so low a scale as has often been assigned him. He was barbarous in his habits, but was so from choice: it suited his wild, untrammelled nature. He understood the arts of politeness when he chose to exercise them. He could plan, he was an incomparable tactician and a fair strategist; he was a natural logician; his tools and implements were admirably adapted to the purpose designed; he fashioned boats that have not been surpassed in their kind; he was remarkably quick in learning the use of firearms, and soon equalled the best white hunters as a marksman. A rude sense of honor was highly developed in the Indian; he had a nice perception of public propriety; he bowed his will to the force of custom,--these characteristics doing much to counteract the anarchical tendency of his extreme democracy. He understood the value of form and color, as witness his rock-carvings, his rude paintings, the decorations on his finely tanned leather, and his often graceful body markings. It was because the savage saw little in civilized ideas to attract him, that he either remained obdurate in the face of missionary endeavors, or simulated an interest he could not feel. 5. Relations of the Indians and Colonists. Sidenotes: The Indians and the colonists. Indians as foes. The colonists from Europe met the Red Indian in a threefold capacity,--as a neighbor, as a customer and trader, and as a foe opposed to encroachments upon his hunting grounds. At first the whites were regarded by the aborigines as of supernatural origin, and hospitality, veneration, and confidence were displayed toward the new-comers. But the morality of the Europeans was soon made painfully evident to them. When the early Spaniards, and afterwards the English, kidnapped tribesmen to sell them into slavery or to use them as captive guides for future expeditions, or even murdered the natives on slight provocation, distrust and hatred naturally succeeded the sentiment of awe. Like many savage races, like the earlier Romans, the Indian looked upon the member of every tribe with which he had not made a formal peace as a public enemy; hence he felt justified in wreaking his vengeance on the race whenever he failed to find individual offenders. He was exceptionally cruel, his mode of warfare was skulking, he could not easily be got at in the forest fastnesses which he alone knew well, and his strokes fell heaviest on women and children; so that whites came to fear and unspeakably to loathe the savage, and often added greatly to the bitterness of the struggle by retaliation in kind. The white borderers themselves were frequently brutal, reckless, and lawless; and under such conditions clashing was inevitable. Sidenote: The fur-trade, and inter-tribal barter.