We must deal with races according to their faculty, and credit them according to their faculty. If we fail, we fail in wisdom--and in prudence, which is a valuable attribute of wisdom. Expect not grapes from thistles! Expect no virtue--unless it relates to his own selfishness or his own tribe--from an Indian, or from very many other men! It must not be forgotten, however, that Indians are people who, to say the least of them, are fashioned in the likeness of men. Here, as elsewhere, Nature sticks to her old plan, and will not budge an inch. In the chart of the Indian's nature are mapped out the same feelings, instincts, passions, the same organs and dimensions as belong to the highest race, or the highest race of the mixed races. She will have no nonsense about her red children, nor about her black. There they are, as she (for purposes of her own, not particularly clear) intended them to be--men, alive, oh!--not descendants of Monboddo's ape, nor of Du Chaillu's gorilla, but men proper and absolute! with their duties, responsibilities, and destinies. Seeing, therefore, that the Indian (our American Indian, with whom we have now to do) has all the faculties--however defaced and blurred by long centuries of bloody crimes, which they regard _not_ as crimes, but as virtues--seeing that these red, thriftless, bloody-minded Indians have all the human faculties intact--although, it may be, not so bright as those of some of our own people who call themselves Americans--is it not possible that by fair and manly dealing with them, by a just trade, and conscientious regard for the sanctity of treaty rights and obligations--that you, whom it may more particularly concern, might so win their good will as to make them friends instead of enemies? The devil that lies at the bottom of all savage natures is easily roused, not at all so easily laid again, and as easily kept in his own place. Indians are not incapable of friendship, nor of good faith, although the best require a great deal of looking after--and close looking, too! But what I want to urge is this: that if you always appeal to the worst passions of the redskin, rob him of his rights and property, cheat him by false promises, deceive him at all hands, and then mock him when he knocks at your door for credit or charity, that he and his may live, you cannot much wonder if, obeying his traditions, his religion, and the dictates of his savage nature--now maddened into fury and reckless of consequences--he indulges in the frightful havoc, the relentless murders and burnings, which have so lately marked his trail in Minnesota.