“Call to mind Osceola, the victim of the white man’s treachery and cruelty, whom neither his enemy’s arm nor cunning could conquer on the battle field, and who at last was consumed in ‘durance vile,’ by the corroding of his own spirit. In ‘durance vile,’ I say. Blot the fact from the record of that damning baseness, of that violation of all law, of all humanity, which that page of your nation’s history which contains an account of it must ever be! Blot out the fact, I say, before you rise up to call an Indian treacherous or cruel. “For an instance of active pity, of deep rational active pity, and the attendant intellectual qualities, I ask you to call to mind the story surpassing romance of Pocahontas; she who threw herself between a supposed inimical stranger and the deadly club which had been raised by the stern edict of her father, and by appealing to the affections of that father, savage though he was, overcame the fell intent which caused him to pronounce the white man’s doom. In her bosom burned purely and rationally the flame of love, in accordance with the dictates of which she offered herself at the Hymenial altar, to take the nuptial ties with a son of Christian England. The offspring of this marriage have been with pride claimed as sons and citizens of the noble and venerable State of Virginia. “Ye who love prayer, hover in your imagination around the cot of Brown, and listen to the strong supplications, as they arise from the fervent heart of Catharine, and then tell me whether ‘—the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind,’ is not capable, by cultivation, of rationally comprehending the true God, whose pavilion is the clouds, and who yet giveth grace to the humble. “The ill-starred Cherokees stand forth in colors of living light, redeeming the Indian character from the foul aspersions, that it is not susceptible of civilization and Christianization. John Ross stands before the American people, in a character both of intellect and heart, which many a white man in high places might envy, and yet never be able to attain! A scholar, a patriot, an honest and honorable man; standing up before the ‘powers that be,’ in the eyes of Heaven and men, now demanding, now supplicating of those powers, a regard for the rights of humanity, of justice, of law—and still a scholar, a patriot, an honest and honorable man; though an Indian blood coursing in his veins, and an Indian color giving hue to his complexion, dooms him, and his children and kin, to be hunted at the point of the bayonet by those powers, for their home, and possessions, and country, to the ‘terra incognita beyond the Mississippi.’