With a sparse and scattered
Indian population, the country teeming with buffalo, deer, and game, was
a scene of plenty. The Indian has vanished from its banks with the game
that he pursued. The valley numbers as many states now as it did white
men then; a busy, enterprising, adventurous, population, numbering its
millions, has swept away the unprogressive and unassimilating red man.
The languages of the Illinois, the Quapaw, the Tonica, the Natchez, the
Ouma, are heard no more by the banks of the great water; no calumet now
throws round the traveller its charmed power; the white banner of France
floated long to the breeze, but with the flag of England and the
standard of Spain all disappeared we may say within a century. For fifty
years one single flag met the eye, and appealed to the heart of the
inhabitants of the shores of the Mississippi.[45] Two now divide it: let
us hope that the altered flag may soon resume its original form, and
meet the heart's warm response at the month as at the source of the
Mississippi.
[Footnote 45: In allusion to the Rebellion.]
* * * * *
=_John Gorham Palfrey, 1796-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 532.)
From the "History of New England."
=_149._= HAPPINESS OF WINTHROP'S CLOSING YEARS.
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