Cruel and treacherous they were, I will allow, but do we forget the treatment they ever met with from the white man? The most righteous of battles have ever been fought for the sake of sires and wives and children, and for what else did the poor Indian fight, when driven from the home of his youth into an unknown wilderness, to become there-after a by-word and a reproach among the nations? “Indians,” said we, “we would have your lands; and if you will not be satisfied with the gewgaws we proffer, our powder and balls will teach you that power is but another name for right.” And this is the principle that has guided the white man ever since in his warfare against the aborigines of our country. I cannot believe that we shall ever be a happy and prosperous people, until the King of Kings shall have forgiven us for having, with a yoke of tyranny, almost annihilated a hundred nations.
A portion of this afternoon I whiled away on a little island, which attracted my attention by its charming variety of foliage. It is not more than one hundred feet across at the widest part, and is encircled by a yellow sand-bank, and shielded by a regiment of variegated rocks. But what could I find there to interest me, it may be inquired. My answer is this. That island, hidden in one of the bays of Horicon, is an Insect city, and more populous than was Rome in the days of her glory. There the honey-bee has his oaken tower, the wasp and humble-bee their grassy nests, the spider his den, the butterfly his hammock, the grasshopper his domain, the beetle and cricket and hornet their decayed stump, and the toiling ant her palace of sand. There they were born, there they flourish and multiply, and there they die, symbolizing the career and destiny of man. I was a “distinguished stranger” in that city, and I must confess that it gratified my ambition to be welcomed with such manifestations of regard as the inhabitants thought proper to bestow. My approach was heralded by the song of a kingly bee; and when I had thrown myself upon a mossy bank, multitudes of people gathered round, and, with their eyes intently fixed upon me, stood still, and let “expressive silence muse my praise.” To the “natives” I was emphatically a source of astonishment; and as I wished to gather instruction from the event, I wondered in my heart whether I should be a _happier_ man if my presence in a human city should create a kindred excitement. At any rate, it would be a “great excitement on a small capital.”