ORIGINAL.

[Communicated.]

ON THE CAUSES OF THE DEPOPULATION OF THE AMERICAN

INDIANS.

XERXES possessed, in an uncommon degree, the orientalcharacteristics. His imagination was constantly breaking out into the most extravagant personifications. He reproved mount Athos for its obdurate resistance to his progress, and gave the Hellespont lashes for its rebellious destruction of his bridge. At the grand review of his forces in the vicinity of Abydos, he shed tears, when he reflected that, of the countless multitude before him, not one, perhaps, would attain the age of thirty years. Few persons would have been so intensely affected as actually to have wept over this sight, and it would hardly be believed that an American could so far have overcome his accidental phlegm as to have exhibited any tokens of extraordinary sympathy. But we are non-conformists to the doctrine, that the powers of man are to be estimated from the region which he inhabits, or the atmosphere he inhales. Who could not feel like Xerxes, when he looks around upon the population of the world?-Among all the innumerable people who are scattered over its surface, none claim greater attention from the American philanthropist than the aboriginal inhabitants of his own country. To develop the causes of their rapid disappearance, since the seizure and settlement of their territory by Europeans, is peculiarly the province of the people of the United States-both because we are the only persons near enough to give the subject an accurate investigation, and because we are, in some measure, accountable for the depopulation of the Indian communities.

The writers who have hitherto speculated on this subject are generally prone to lay great stress upon the destructive operation of ardent spirits-attributing extravagant conse

quences to this comparatively insignificant cause, and passing over the acknowledged laws of society by which the population of a country must always be regulated. That distilled liquor is injurious to health, the most limited experience can testify. Of the number of those whom we daily see staggering around us, many were originally blessed with sound constitutions, which have been gradually debilitated and wasted away by a long course of habitual inebriation. The vacuity which is left in society by the death of these wretched creatures, is not, however, commonly taken into the account, when we are estimating the numerical diminution of civilized men; and, indeed, a cause of destruction, which is not reducible to any steady rate of operation, cannot be fairly brought into view, in accounting for the depopulation of any community.

If we look attentively into the laws of our nature, we shall find that this propensity to attribute the disappearance of the aborigines to their inordinate fondness for intoxicating liquors, has a very plausible foundation in fact; and that, after every allowance is made for former exaggeration, there will still remain a sufficiency of blame to be laid at the door of the distiller. We may safely go so far as to assert, that ardent spirits have committed greater ravages among the Indians than among the same number of civilized men;-the reasons lie upon the very surface of the subject; and perhaps we might spare ourselves the trouble of making a formal exposition of them here, did not the ordinary pursuits of our countrymen prevent them from turning their attention to such speculations.

By the frequent use of poisonous potations, Mithridates is said to have become insensible to the most powerful poisons. The extreme hazard of such an experiment is a sufficient preventive to its repetition; and we can never expect, therefore, to know how far habit may enable the constitution to withstand the attacks of such drugs: but something analogous to the case of the king of Pontus may be found in all communities where ardent spirits have been long known and

habitually used. We will not join with Cyrus in calling these absolutely poisons;* but we believe their frequent use may so much hebetate the constitution as to render their malignant qualities, to some extent, inoperative. Every one must here recur to his own experience. In the circle of our own acquaintance, there is generally some individual who arrogates to himself the possession of a very strong head;—an accomplishment, which is not the gift of nature, but the gradual result of long devotion to the pleasures of the bottle. But to those who might be induced to rely so much upon this facility of our nature as to adopt the advice of Falstaff,-" to forswear thin potations and addict themselves to sack,"--we must observe, that the above reasoning is to be understood with many qualifications. No constitution can long maintain its vigour under the repeated drenchings of habitual intoxication.

When distilled liquor was first introduced among the aborigines, they had never tasted any other artificial drink than a comparatively innocuous beverage of their own rude manufactured; an its effects, therefore, instead of being divided and protracted through the whole progress of their lives, fell in one overwhelming crush upon the vigour of their constitutions. Without a doubt, then, the diminution of their number, in the first stages of depopulation, was rightly attributed to the pestiferous influence of rum and brandy; but since the present generation has grown up in the habitual use of these noxious liquors, and since, in despite of this circumstance, the number of Indians still continues to dwindle away, it behoves us to search after some other cause of destruction more steady in its effects.

We do not deny that even now the ravages of drunkenness are more extensive among the natives than among the European settlers. Happily for the latter, the laws of God have made it sinful, and the customs of man have made it disgraceful, to indulge in habitual intoxication; but the Indians are not restrained by any obligations, either of conscience or

* Xen. Cyrop.

of honour. They swallow every drop they can beg or purchase; and the only restriction they experience as a counterbalance to the fear and shame of civilized men, is occasioned by their aversion to labour and their paucity of funds. Beings who are withheld from destructive pleasures only by the precarious restraints of physical necessity, will much oftener find the means and opportunities of indulgence, than such as are governed by the steadfast principles of moral obligation.

But although we admit that ardent spirits destroy a greater proportion of the aborigines than of their white neighbours, we are yet far from conceding, that the depopulation of their territory is materially ascribable to this cause. If their disappearance is not the effect of something more radical than an attachment to "strong drink," why are they running in a continued stream of emigration towards the west-abandoning the land of their forefathers to live in hopeless temperance beyond the haunts of civilization?-That necessity must be very cogent which can thus drive men from the gratification of a predominant desire: and it will be found, we apprehend, that both the "foreign emigration" and domestic depopulation of the aborigines, are attributable to one and the same

cause.

After exhausting all the resources of argument and declamation in pointing out the fatality of drunkenness, we must at last appeal to those steady principles of society by which the depopulation of all nations is unavoidably regulated.

In so far as the present discussion is concerned, we shall have occasion to notice only two of the great causes of depopulation: one of these is, a diminution in the quantity of that kind of provision which has been customarily used: the other is, an increase in the expensiveness of living, occasioned by the introduction of more costly food. The Chinese subsist chiefly upon fish, and the Persians upon melons: but should the fish no longer continue to swim in the rivers of China, or should the melon no longer be able to extract nourishment from the soil of Persia, it is easy to see that the inhabitants

of each of these countries must suffer a very serious numerical diminution. As the commonalty are by far the most numerous class of population, and as they are barely able to support themselves, by the ordinary supply of that kind of provision to which they have been accustomed, the moment such a supply is unattainable, the prospect of marriage is removed from their view. With few exceptions, it may be laid down as an axiom, that no man will burden himself with the weight of a family, until he knows he shall be able to sus

tain it.

The same observations may be applied to the other division of the subject. Should any revolution in the manners of the Chinese, or of the Persians, make animal food a necessary constituent of their diet, a decrease of population would be the inevitable effect: for although the supply of ordinary food may still continue to be afforded, yet flesh has become an article of domestic necessity; and no man will be likely to marry unless he has a prospect of being able to support his family in the use of this new species of sustentation. It is in vain to allege that the old kind of diet is sufficient for all the purposes of actual necessity. The laws of fashion, though mutable, are imperious. "Men will not marry (to use the language of Dr. Paley) to sink their place or condition in society, or to forego those indulgences, which their own habits, or what they observe among their equals, have rendered necessary to their satisfaction."

We have confined our view to the article of food, in order to illustrate the principles of population as simply and as briefly as possible: but it is evident that the same reasoning is applicable to dress, to drink, to houses, to furniture, and, in short, to every thing connected with the comfortableness of living. As all general principles, however, require to be somewhat modified, when reduced to specific application, it may not be amiss to see how far the depopulation of the aborigi nes is regulated by the laws we have been endeavouring to expound.