I sincerely believe that all these peoples may produce, and, perhaps, already have produced, persons remarkable for piety and pure morals; but I do not expect ever to see among them learned theologians, great statesmen, able military leaders, profound mathematicians, or distinguished artists;--any of those superior minds, whose number and perpetual succession are the cause of power in a preponderating race; much less those rare geniuses whose meteor-like appearance is productive of permanent good only when their countrymen are so constituted as to be able to understand them, and to advance under their direction. We cannot, therefore, call Christianity a promoter of civilization in the narrow and purely material sense of some writers. Many of my readers, while admitting my observations in the main to be correct, will object that the modifying influence of religion upon the manners must produce a corresponding modification of the institutions, and finally in the whole social system. The propagators of the gospel, they will say, are almost always--though not necessarily--from a nation superior in civilization to the one they visit. In their personal intercourse, therefore, with their neophytes, the latter cannot but acquire new notions of material well-being. Even the political system may be greatly influenced by the relations between instructor and pupil. The missionary, while he provides for the spiritual welfare of his flock, will not either neglect their material wants. By his teaching and example, the savage will learn how to provide against famine, by tilling the soil. This improvement in his condition once effected, he will soon be led to build himself a better dwelling, and to practise some of the simpler useful arts. Gradually, and by careful training, he may acquire sufficient taste for things purely intellectual, to learn the alphabet, or even, as in the case of the Cherokees, to invent one himself. In course of time, if the missionaries' labors are crowned with success, they may, perhaps, so firmly implant their manners and mode of living among this formerly savage tribe, that the traveller will find among them well-cultivated fields, numerous flocks, and, like these same Cherokees, and the Creeks on the southern banks of the Arkansas, black slaves to work on their plantations. Let us see how far facts correspond with this plausible argument. I shall select the two nations which are cited as being the furthest advanced in European civilization, and their example will, it seems to me, demonstrate beyond a doubt, how impossible it is for any race to pursue a career in which their own nature has not placed them. The Cherokees and Creeks are said to be the remnants or descendants of the Alleghanian Race, the supposed builders of those great monuments of which we still find traces in the Mississippi Valley. If this be the case, these two nations may lay claim to a natural superiority over the other tribes of North America.