Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/110

Rh done to the Indian, Margaret's impressions concerning our aborigines acquire a fresh interest and value. She found them in occupation of many places from which. they have since been driven by what is called the march of civilization. We may rather call it a barbarism better armed and informed than their own. She also found among their white neighbours the instinctive dislike and repulsion, which are familiar to us. Here, in Mackinaw, Margaret could not consort with them without drawing upon herself the censure of her white acquaintances.

“Indeed, I wonder why they did not give me up, as they certainly looked upon me with great distaste for it. 'Get you gone, you Indian dog!' was the felt, if not the breathed, cxpression towards the hapless owners of the soil; all their claims, all their sorrows, quite forgot in abhorrence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices the whites have taught them."

Missionary zeal seems to have been at a standstill just at this time, and the hopelessness of converting those heathen to Christianity was held to excuse further effort to that end. Margaret says:—

“Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of love and intelligence, have been civilized and made a valuable ingredient in the new State, I will not say; but this we are sure of, the French Catholics did not harm them, nor disturb their minds merely to corrupt them. The French they loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle and the college, with their niggard conceptions and unfeeling stare, have never tried the experiment.

Margaret naturally felt an especial interest in observing the character and condition of the Indian women. She says, truly enough, “The observations