It has been the conclusion of historians generally, and of travellers and students almost universally, that the North American Indians were entirely destitute of la belle passion—that “of the marvellous passion which originates in a higher development of the powers of the human heart, and is founded upon a cultivation of the affections between the sexes, they were entirely ignorant.” I shall not attempt to refute learned historians or philosophers, neither will I assert a different opinion. Yet there are many among the wise and thinking who say this cannot be. In reading very extensively, and conversing with those who have lived many years a forest life, I have learned many things which might be cited to prove a more pleasant theory, but they may possibly be only exceptions to the rule, and I shall therefore merely relate the facts, leaving my readers to theorize for themselves. In the contents of this chapter I have not confined myself to the Iroquois, but roamed among all the northern nations, and have by no means appropriated all that has been written and said on the subject. It is the impression among all people this side of the Mediterranean, that the women of Turkey all live in harems; but our Minister, who has just returned from a four years’ sojourn in Constantinople, says he has never found in that city a respectable Turk who had more than one wife! This is the law of God, and to disobey it wars against nature. Among the Indians, polygamy was sometimes practised, but was by no means common, and was ever disgraceful. It is insisted, too, by their aged people, that before they were corrupted by their conquerors, there was scarcely any thing among them which Christian principle would condemn as vice. To excel in oratory certainly requires a very superior development, and in this no people excelled the Iroquois. Love, in all its purity, dwells very little among even Christian people, and something far worse than polygamy prevails in the most cultivated circles among civilized nations. There is not so much of nature’s nobility among the peasantry of Europe as among the forest Indians; yet their capability of love and the domestic affections is not disputed, and it is this alone which renders life endurable; were it not for this they would be desperadoes whom all the fetters of despotism could not trammel or subdue. But they are dwellers in one place, whilst the Indian is a rover, quite independent of home and domestic comfort.