A History Of The People Of The United States From The Revolution To The Civil War Vol 8 Of 8 PDF Download

Excerpt from A History of the People of the United States, Vol. 1 of 8: From the Revolution to the Civil War The opinion which many careful and just-minded persons of our time have formed touching the Indians of whom the settlers in the border-land then stood in constant dread, is a singular mixture of truth and romance. Time and absence have softened all that is vile and repulsive in his character, and left in full relief all that is good and alluring. We are in no danger of being tomahawked. We are not terrified by his war-whoop. An Indian in his paint and feathers is now a much rarer show than a Bengal tiger or a white bear from the Polar sea. Of the fifty millions of human beings scattered over the land, not five millions have ever in their lives looked upon an Indian. We are therefore much more disposed to pity than to hate. But, one hundred years ago, there were to be found, from Cape Ann to Georgia, few men who had not many times in their lives seen numbers of Indians, while thou sands could be found scattered through every State, whose cattle had been driven off, and whose homes had been laid in ashes by the braves of the Six Nations, who had fought with them from behind trees and rocks, and carried the scars of wounds received in hand-to-hand encounters. In every city were to be seen women who had fled at the dead of night from their burning cabins who had, perhaps, wit nessed the destruction of Schenectady or were by a merciful Providence Spared in the massacre of the Minisink; whose hus bands had gone down in the universal slaughter of Wyoming; or whose children had, on that terrible day when Brant came into Orange county, stood in the door of the school-house when the master was dragged out, when their playmates were scalped, when their aprons were marked with the black mark which, like the blood upon the door-posts, a second time staid the hand of the Angel of Death. The Opinion which such men and women held of the noble red man was, we may be sure, very different from those current among the present generation, and formed on no better authority than the novels of Cooper, and the lives of such warriors as Red Jacket and Brant. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.