A few efforts have been made, not only to bring the poetry of
their history into notice, but to do them substantial good; the public
heart, however, has never responded to the feelings of those who, from
living in contact with the Indians, have felt this interest in them. To
most Americans, the red man is, to this day, just what he was to the
first settlers of the country--a being with soul enough to be blameable
for doing wrong, but not enough to claim Christian brotherhood, or to
make it _very_ sinful to shoot him like a dog, upon the slightest
provocation or alarm. While this feeling continues, we shall not look
to him for poetry; and the only imaginative writing in which he is
likely to be generally used as material, will be kindred to that known
by the appropriate title of "Pirate Literature." Mr. Cooper and Miss
Sedgwick are, perhaps, alone among our writers in their attempts to do
the Indian justice, while making him the poetical machine in fiction.
Missionaries, however, as well as others who have lived among the
aborigines for purely benevolent purposes, have discovered in them
capabilities and docility which may put to the blush many of the whites
who despise and hate them.
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