“But whence and why are we thus doomed? Why must we be crushed by the arm of civilization, or the requiem of our race be chanted by the waves of the Pacific, which is destined to ingulf us? Say ye, on whom the sunlight of civilization has constantly shone—into whose lap Fortune has poured her brimful horn, so that you are enjoying the highest and best spiritual and temporal blessings of this world, say, if some being from fairy land, or some distant planet, should come to you in such a manner as to cause you to deem them children of greater light and superior wisdom to yourselves, and you should open to them the hospitality of your dwellings and the fruits of your labor, and they should by dint of their superior wisdom dazzle and amaze you, so as, for what to them were toys and rattles, they should gain freer admission and fuller welcome, till, finally, they should claim the right to your possessions, and of hunting you, like wild beasts, from your long and hitherto undisputed domain, how ready would you be to be taught of them? How cordially would you open your minds to the conviction that they meant not to deceive you further and still more fatally in their proffers of pretended kindness? “How much of the kindliness of friendship for them, and of esteem for their manners and customs would you feel? Would not ‘the milk of human kindness’ in your breasts be turned to the gall of hatred towards them? And have not we, the original and undisputed possessors of this country, been treated worse than you would be, should any supposed case be transferred to reality. “But I will leave the consideration of this point for the present, by saying, what I believe every person who hears me will assent to, that the manner in which the white people have habitually dealt with the Indians, makes them wonder that their hatred has not burned with tenfold fury against them, rather than that they have not laid aside their own peculiar notions and habits, and adopted those of their civilized neighbors. “For instances of those natural endowments, which, by cultivation, give to the children of civilization their great names and far-reaching fame, call to mind Philip of Mount Hope, whose consummate talents and skill made him the white man’s terror, by the display of those talents and that skill for the white man’s destruction. “Call to mind Tecumseh, by an undeserved association with whose name one of the great men of your nation has obtained more of greatness than he ever merited, either for his deeds or his character. Call to mind Red Jacket, formerly your neighbor, with some of you a friend and familiar, and to be a friend and familiar with whom none of you feel it a disgrace.