ors. been absorbed among the Creeks and Choctas; and, indeed, it is certain, that not only straggling individuals, but also large portions of tribes, have united with other tribes, and so exist in a commingled state with them. It has happened that an entire conquered tribe has been compelled to submit to absorption among the conquerAnd, finally, the MOBILIAN or MUSKHOGEE-CHOCTA tribes, taken as a whole, have decidedly increased, it is believed, within the last twenty-five years. They, with the Cherokees, and the remains of several tribes of the Algonquin race, are almost all collected together, in the district of country assigned to them by the General Government, west of the States of Arkansas and Missouri. Respecting this plan, as well as touching the general policy of the government of the United States towards the Indians, I shall speak fully in another place. It is difficult to estimate, with anything like absolute precision, the number of Indians that now remain as the descendants of the tribes which once occupied the country of which we have spoken. Without pretending to reckon those who have sought refuge with tribes far in the West, we may safely put it down at one hundred and fifteen or twenty thousand souls. Of what is doing to save them from physical and moral ruin, I shall speak hereafter. The most plausible opinion respecting the origin of the Aborigines of America is, that they are of the Mongolian race; and that they came to America from Asia, either by way of the Polynesian world,* or by Behring's Straits, or by the Aleutian Islands, Mednoi Island, and the Behring .group. Facts well attested prove this to have been practicable. That the resemblance between the Aborigines of America and the Mongolian race is most striking, every one will testify who has seen both. Universally and substantially," says the American traveller, Ledyard, respecting the Mongolians, "they resemble the Aborigines of America." CHAPTER III. DISCOVERY OF THAT PART OF NORTH AMERICA WHICH IS COMPRISED IN THE LIMITS OF THE UNITED STATES.-THE EARLY AND UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS TO COLONIZE IT. As the American hemisphere had been discovered by expeditions sent out by Spain, that country claimed the erre continent, as well as the adjoining islands; and to it a pope, as the vicegerent of God, undertook to cede the whole. But other Lang's View of the Polynesian Nations. Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. iii., p. 315-18. countries having caught the spirit of distant adventure in quest of gold, these soon entered into competition with the nation whose sovereign had won the title of Most Catholic Majesty; and as all Christendom at that day bowed its neck to the spiritual dominion of the Vicar of Christ, as the Bishop of Rome claimed to be, they could not be refused a portion from the "holy father," on showing that they were entitled to it. On the ground that Spain could not justly appropriate to herself any part of the American Continent which she had not actually discovered, by coasting along it, by marking its boundaries, and by landing upon it, they created for themselves a chance of obtaining no inconsiderable share. England was the first to follow in the career of discovery. Under her auspices, the continent itself was first discovered,* June 24, 1497, by the Cabots, John and Sebastian, father and son, the latter of whom was a native of that country, and the former a merchant adventurer from Venice, but at the time residing in England, and engaged in the service of Henry VII. 'By this event, a very large and important part of the coast of North America was secured to a country which, within less than half a century, was to begin to throw off the shackles of Rome, and to become, in due time, the most powerful of all Protestant kingdoms. He who "hath made of one blood, all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation," had resolved in this manner to prepare a place to which, in ages then drawing near, those who should be persecuted for Christ's sake might flee and find protection, and thus found a great Protestant empire. And yet how near, if we may so speak, was this mighty plan to being defeated? A Spanish discoverer, a year or two before, was diverted, by some apparently trivial circumstance, from directing his course from Cuba to the very coast which the Cabots afterward sailed along. Had he done so, how different, in some momentous respects, might have been the state of the world at this day! We have here another illustration of the littleness of causes with which the very greatest of human events are often connected, and of that superintending Providence which rules in all things. Spain, however, far from at once relinquishing her pretensions to a country thus discovered by England, insisted on claiming a large part of it, and for a long time extended the name of the comparatively insignificant peninsula of Florida, with which she was compelled to be contented at last, over the whole tract reaching as far * Columbus had not at that epoch touched the continent, but had only discovered the West India Islands. of these took place on the confines of South Carolina, and seems at once to have failed. The second, which was on the River St. John's in Florida, survived but a few years. In 1565, it was attacked by the Spaniards, under Melendez, that nation claiming the country in right of discovery, in consequence of Ponce de Leon having landed upon it in 1512; and as religious bigotry was added to national jealousy in the assailants, they put almost all the Huguenots to death in the most cruel manner," not as Frenchmen," they alleged, "but as Lutherans." For this atrocity the Spaniards were severely punished three years afterward, when Dominic de Gourgues, a Gascon, having captured two of their forts, hanged his prisoners upon trees, not far from the spot where his countrymen had suffered, and placed over their bodies this inscription: “I do not this as unto Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers." north as the Chesapeake Bay, if not farther. | southern coast of North America. The first France, on the other hand, was not likely, under so intelligent and ambitious a monarch as Francis I., to remain an inactive spectator of maritime discoveries made by the nations on both sides of her. Under her auspices, Verrazzani, in 1524, and Cartier ten years afterward, made voyages in search of new lands, so that soon she, too, had claims in America to prosecute. As the result of the former of those two enterprises, she claimed the coast lying to the south of North Carolina, and extending, as was truly asserted, beyond the farthest point reached by the Cabots. Still more important were the results of Cartier's voyage. Having gone up the River St. Lawrence as far as the island on which Montreal now stands, he and Roberval made an ineffectual attempt to found a colony, composed of thieves, murderers, debtors, and other inmates of the prisons in France, on the spot now occupied by Quebec. Two other unsuccessful attempts at colonization in America were made by France, the one-in 1598, under the Marquis de la Roche; the other in 1600, under Chauvin. At length, in 1605, a French colony was permanently established, under De Monts, a Protestant, at the place now called Annapolis, in Nova Scotia, but not un-led, universally failed. til after having made an abortive attempt within the boundaries of the present State of Maine. Quebec was founded in 1608, under the conduct of Champlain, who be came the father of all the French settlements in North America. From that point the French colonists penetrated farther and farther up the St. Lawrence, until at length parties of their hunters and trappers, ac-are in absolute ignorance of the fate of the companied by Jesuit missionaries, reached the great lakes, passed beyond them, and descending the Valley of the Mississippi, established themselves at Fort Du Quesne, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and various other places. Thus the greater part of the immense Central Valley of North America fell, for a time, into the hands of the French. Nor was it only in the North that that nation sought to plant colonies. The failure of the French Protestants in all their efforts to secure for themselves mere toleration from their own government, naturally suggested the idea of expatriation, as the sole means that remained to them of procuring liberty to worship God according to his own Word. Even the Prince of Condé, though of royal blood, nobly proposed to set the example of withdrawing from France, rather than be the occasion, by remaining in it, of perpetual civil war with the obstinate partisans of Rome; and in 1562, under the auspices of the brave and good Coligny, to whom, also, the idea of expatriation was familiar, two attempts were made by the Huguenots to establish themselves on the With a view to encourage the colonization of those parts of North America that were claimed by England, several patents were granted by the crown of that country before the close of the sixteenth century. The enterprises, however, to which these The most famous was that made in North Carolina, under a patent to Sir Walter Raleigh and others; it was continued from 1584 to 1588; but even the splendid talents and energy of its chief could not save his colony from final ruin. Though the details of this unsuccessful enterprise fill many a page in the history of the United States, strange to say, we few remaining colonists that were left on the banks of the Roanoke; the most probable conjecture being that they were massacred by the natives, though some affirm that they were incorporated into one of the Indian tribes. Two monuments of that memorable expedition remain to this day; first, the name of Virginia, given to the entire coast by the courtier, in honour of his royal mistress, though afterward restricted to a single province; and, next, the use of tobacco in Europe, Sir Walter having successfully laboured to make it an article of commerce between the two continents. Some of the voyages made from England to America in that century for the mere purpose of traffic were not unprofitable to the adventurers, but it was not until the following that any attempt at colonization met with success. In this no one who loves to mark the hand of God in the affairs of men, and who has studied well the history of those times, can fail to be struck with the display it presents of the Divine wisdom and goodness. For be it observed, that England was not yet ripe for the work of colonization, and could not then have planted the noble provinces of which she was to be the mother-country afterward. The mass of her population continued, until far on in the sixteenth century, to be attached to Rome; her glorious Constitution was not half formed until the century that followed. The Reformation, together with the persecutions, the discussions, and the conflicts that followed in its train, were all required, in order that minds and hearts might be created for the founding of a free empire, and that the principles and the forms of the government of England might in any sense be fit for the imitation of her colonies. Though England, when she first discovered America, thought only, as other nations had done, of enriching herself from mines of the precious metals and gems; on being undeceived by time, she indulged for a while the passion that followed for trafficking with the natives. But the commercial, as well as the golden age, if we may so speak, had to pass away, before men could be found who should establish themselves on that great continent with a view to agriculture as well as commerce, and who should look to the promotion of Christianity no less than to their secular interests. To this great and benevolent end God was rapidly shaping events in the Old World. CHAPTER IV. COLONIZATION OF THE TERRITORIES NOW CON- ACCOMPLISHED. king the legislative authority, and a control over appointments; a species of double government, under which few political privileges were enjoyed by the colonists. What from the wilderness state of the country, the unfriendliness of the Aborigines, the insalubrity of the climate, the arbitrary conduct of the company, and the unfitness of most of the settlers for their task, the infant colony had to contend with many difficulties. Yet not only did it gain a permanent footing in the country, but, notwithstanding the disastrous wars with the Indians, insurrectionary attempts on the part of turbulent colonists, misunderstandings with the adjacent colony of Maryland, changes in its own charter, and other untoward circumstances, it had become a powerful province long before the establishment of American Independence. By a second charter granted in 1609, all the powers that had been reserved by the first to the king were surrendered to the company; but in 1624 that second charter was recalled, the company dissolved, and the government of the colony assumed by the crown, which continued thereafter to administer it in a general way, though the internal legislation of the colony was left, for the most part, to its own Legislature. Massachusetts was settled next in the order of time, and owed its rise to more than one original colony. The first planted within the province was that of NewPlymouth, founded on the west coast of Massachusetts Bay, in 1620; but although it spread by degrees into the adjacent district, yet it never acquired much extent. It originated in a grant of land from the THE first permanent colony planted by Plymouth Company in England, an incorthe English in America was Virginia. poration of noblemen, gentlemen, and burEven in that instance, what was projected gesses, on which King James had bestowed was a factory for trading with the natives, by charter all the territories included withrather than a fixed settlement for persons in the forty-first and forty-fifth degrees of expatriating themselves with an eye to the north latitude, from the Atlantic to the future advantage of their offspring, and Pacific Ocean. That company having looking for interests which might recon- undergone important modifications, much cile them to it as their home. It was more numerous settlements were made founded in 1607, by a Company of noble- under its auspices, in 1628 at Salem, and men, gentlemen, and merchants in London, in 1630 at Boston, from which two points by whom it was regarded as an affair of colonization spread extensively into the business, prosecuted with a view to pecu- surrounding country, and the province soon niary profit, not from any regard to the became populous and powerful. A colony welfare of the colonists. These, consist- was planted in New-Hampshire in 1631, ing of forty-eight gentlemen, twelve labour- and some settlements had been made in ers, and a few mechanics, reached the Maine a year or two earlier; but for a Chesapeake Bay in April, 1607, and having long time the progress of all these was landed, on the 13th of May, on a peninsula slow. In 1636, the celebrated Roger in the James River, there they planted their Williams, being banished from Massachufirst settlement, and called it James Town. setts, retired to Narragansett Bay, and by There had been bestowed upon the com- founding there, in 1638, the city of Provpany by royal charter a zone of land, ex-idence, led to the plantation of a new tending from the thirty-fourth to the thirty- province, now forming the State of Rhode eighth degree of north latitude, and from Island. In 1635, the Řev. Thomas Hooker the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, together and John Haynes having led a colony into with ample powers for administering the Connecticut, settled at the spot where the affairs of the colony, but reserving to the city of Hartford now stands, and rescued B the Valley of Connecticut from the Dutch, who, having invaded it from their province of New Netherlands, had erected the fort called Good Hope on the right bank of the river. Three years thereafter, the colony of New-Haven was planted by two Puritan Nonconformists, the Rev. John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, who had first retired to Holland on account of their religious principles, and then left that country for Boston, in 1637. Thus, with the exception of Vermont, which originated in a settlement of much later date, drawn chiefly from Massachusetts and NewHampshire, we see the foundation of all the New-England States laid within twenty years from the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth. Meanwhile, Maryland, so called in honour of Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. of France, and wife of Charles I., had been colonized. The territory forming the present state of that name, though included in the first charter of Virginia, upon that being cancelled and the company being dissolved, reverted to the king, and he, to gratify his feelings of personal regard, bestowed the absolute proprietorship of the whole upon Sir Charles Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, and his legal heirs in succession. Never was there a more liberal charter. The statutes of the colony were to be made with the concurrence of the colonists, thus securing to the people a legislative government of their own. Sir Charles was a Roman Catholic, but his colony was founded on principles of the fullest toleration; and though he died before the charter in his favour had passed the great seal of the kingdom, yet all the royal engagements being made good to his son Cecil, who succeeded to the title and estates, the latter sent out a colony of about two hundred persons, most of whom were Roman Catholics, and many of them gentlemen, accompanied by his brother Leonard. Maryland, though subjected to many vicissitudes, proved prosperous upon the whole. Though the Roman Catholics formed at first the decided majority, the Protestants became by far the more numerous body in the end, and, with shame be it said, enacted laws depriving the Roman Catholics of all political influence in the colony, and tending to prevent their increase. The first colony in the State of NewYork was that planted by the Dutch, about the year 1614, on the southern point, it is supposed, of the island where the city of New-York now stands. The illustrious English navigator Hudson, having been in the employment of the Dutch at the time of his discovering the river that bears his name, Holland claimed the country bordering upon it, and gradually formed settlements there, the first of which was situate on an island immediately below the present city of Albany. Hudson being supposed to have been the first European that sailed up the Delaware, the Dutch claimed the banks of that river also. But their progress as colonists in America was slow. Though Holland was nominally a republic, yet she did not abound in the materials proper for making good colonists.. The country presenting but a limited scope for agriculture, the people were mostly engaged in trade or in the arts. Pursuing in the New World the same selfish principles which made the Dutch mercantile aristocracy the worst enemies of their country in the Old, the New Netherlands colonists were allowed little or no share in the government, and accordingly, notwithstanding the greatest natural advantages, the progress of the colony was very slow. New Amsterdam, which,. in consequence of such advantages, might have been expected even to outstrip the mother-city, as she has since done under the name of New-York, remained but an inconsiderable village. The vicinity of New-England provoked comparisons that could not fail to make the Dutch colonists discontented with their institutions. At length, in 1664, the English took possession of all the Dutch colonies in North America, which by that time, in addition to their settlements on the Hudson, extended to the eastern part of New-Jersey, Staten Island, and the western extremity of Long Island, besides a detached settlement on the banks of the Delaware, with a population not exceeding in all ten thousand souls. New Netherlands was granted by Charles II. to his brother the Duke of York, from whom the colony and its capital took the name of New-York. voice of the people was now, for the first time, heard in its Legislature; it began thenceforth to advance rapidly in population, and, notwithstanding occasional seasons of trial and depression, gave early promise of what it was one day to become. The New-Jersey was likewise granted to the Duke of York, who, in 1664, handed it over to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, both proprietors of Carolina. Difficulties, however, having arisen between the colonists and the lords superior with regard to the quit-rents payable by the former, that province was gladly surrendered by the latter, upon certain conditions, to the crown, and was for some time attached to New-York, within twenty years after all the Dutch possessions had fallen into the hands of the English. West Jersey was afterward purchased by a company of Friends, or Quakers, and a few years later, in 1680, William Penn, previous to his undertaking to plant a colony on a larger scale in Pennsylvania, purchased East Jersey, with the view of making it an asylum for his persecuted co-religionists. Finally, East and West Jersey being united as one province under the direct control of the crown, obtained a Legislature of its own, and enjoyed a gradual and steady prosperity down to the Revolution by which the colonies were severed from England. Sir George Carteret. Their grand object was gain, yet the celebrated John Locke, at once a philosopher and a Christian, was engaged to make " Constitutions," or a form of government, for an empire that was to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The result of the philosophical lawgiver's labours was such as the world had never seen the like of before. The proprietors were to form a close corporation; the territory was to be partitioned out into counties of vast extent, each of which was to have an Earl or Landgrave, and two Bar Pennsylvania, as is indicated by its name, was founded by the distinguished philanthropist we have just mentioned, but he was not the first to colonize it. This was done by a mixture of Swedes, Dutch, and English, who had for years before oc-ons or Caciques, who, as lords of manors, cupied the right bank of the Delaware, both were to have judicial authority within their above the point where Philadelphia now respective estates. Tenants of ten acres stands, and many miles below. The char- were to be attached as serfs to the soil, to ter obtained by William Penn from Charles be subject to the jurisdiction of their lords II. dates from 1681. On the 27th of Octo- without appeal, and their children were to ber in the following year, the father of the continue in the same degradation forever! new colony having landed on his vast do- The possession of at least fifty acres of main in America, immediately set about land was to be required in order to the enthe framing of a constitution, and began to joyment of the elective franchise; and of found a capital, which was destined to be- five hundred acres in order to a man's be come one of the finest cities in the Western ing eligible as a member of the colonial hemisphere. The government, like that Parliament or Legislature. These "Conestablished by the Quakers in New-Jersey, stitutions," into the farther details of which was altogether popular. The people were we cannot enter, were attempted to be into have their own Legislature, whose acts, troduced, but were soon rejected in North however, were not to conflict with the just Carolina; and after a few years' struggle, claims of the proprietor, and were to be were thrown aside also in South Carolina, subject to the approval of the crown alone. which had been separated from the NorThe colony soon became prosperous. The thern province. The colonists adopted for true principles of peace, principles that themselves forms of government analo form so conspicuous a part of the Quaker gous to those of the other colonies; the doctrines, distinguished every transaction proprietary company was after a while in which the Aborigines were concerned. dissolved; the Carolinas fell under the diIt is the glory of Pennsylvania that it nev-rect control of the crown, but were gover did an act of injustice to the Indians. erned by their own legislatures. Their The territory belonging to the State of prosperity was slow, having been frequentDelaware was claimed by Penn and his ly interrupted by serious wars with the successors, as included in the domain de-native tribes, particularly the Tuscaroras, scribed in their charter, and for a time which, as it was the most powerful, was formed a part of Pennsylvania, under the for a long time also the most hostile. title of the Three Lower Counties. But Last of all the original thirteen provinthe mixed population of Swedes, Dutch, ces, in the order of time, came Georgia, and English by which it was occupied, which was settled as late as 1732, by the were never reconciled to this arrange- brave and humane Oglethorpe. The colment, and having at last obtained a gov-onists were of mixed origin, but the Engernment of its own, Delaware became a separate province. lish race predominated. Although it had difficulties to encounter almost from the first, yet, notwithstanding wars with the Spaniards in Florida, hostile attacks from the Indians, and internal divisions, Georgia acquired, by degrees, a considerable amount of strength. The settlement of the two Carolinas began with straggling emigrants from Virginia, who sought to better their fortunes in regions farther south, and were afterward joined by others from New-England, and also from Europe. At length, in 1663, Such is a brief notice of the thirteen the entire region lying between the thirty-original North American provinces, which, sixth degree of north latitude and the Riv-by the Revolution of 1775-1783, were transer St. John's in Florida, was granted to a formed into as many states. They all proprietary company in England, which touch more or less on the Atlantic, and was invested with most extraordinary pow-stretch to a greater or less distance into ers. The proprietors, eight in number, the interior. Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylwere Lord Ashley Cooper, better known vania, and North Carolina are the largest; as the Earl of Shaftesbury, Clarendon, Rhode Island and Delaware are the smallMonk, Lord Craven, Sir John Colleton, est. Lord John and Sir William Berkeley, and | In 1803, the French colony of Louisiana, |