Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/323

Rh around them small faithful companies of Indian proselytes, yet it was evidently rather through the effect of their individual character, than from any inherent power in the doctrines which they preached. When they died their flocks dispersed.

Sometimes white men of peculiar character have taken to themselves Indian wives, and have endeavoured to make cultivated women of them; but in vain. The squaw continued to be the squaw; uncleanly, with unkemped hair, loving the dimness of the kitchen more than the light of the drawing-room, the ample envelopment of the woollen blanket rather than tight-lacing and silken garments. The faithful wife and tender mother she may become, stedfast to home and the care of her family as long as her husband lives and the children are small; but when the children are grown up, and if the husband be dead, then will she vanish from her home. When the birds warble of spring and the forest and the streams murmur of renovated life, she will return to the wigwams of her people in the forest or by the river, to seek by their fires for freedom and peace. This wild life must assuredly have a great fascination.

Of all the tribes of North American Indians now existing, the Cherokees and Choctas are the only ones which have received Christianity and civilisation. When the Europeans first visited these tribes they were living in small villages in the highland district of Tenesee, Georgia, and Alabama; they were peaceful and pursued agriculture. They were drawn from their homes by fair means and foul, and obtained land west of the Mississippi, in the western part of the state of Missouri, and there it is said they have become a large and flourishing community, greatly augmenting in number and assimilating to the manners and customs of Europeans. They are employed in agriculture and the breeding of cattle, they build regular houses, and have of late years reduced