informer. Above all other things, let the moral character of every white man, wishing to enter into the Indian country, be subjected to the severest scrutiny.

5. A sufficient military force must be employed along the Mexican boundary to prevent the incursions of foreign hostile Indians. The predatory character of these Indians has long been a matter of serious complaint. Old feuds and jealousies exist, particularly between the Osages and some of the Mexican Indians, which may break out into open hostility at any moment. The difficulty is much increased by the confusion which at present reigns in Mexican affairs, rendering negotiation with that government, if practicable, of little avail.

6. Earnest and judicious efforts must be adopted and perseveringly pursued for the civilizing and christianizing of the Indians. Here the main dependance is to be placed. No human means, aside from the gospel of Jesus Christ, are adequate to arrest the tendency of the Indians to degeneracy and extinction. The committee of congress say with great justice that a preference ought to be given to educated Indian youth, in all the employments of which they are capable, as traders, interpreters, schoolmasters, farmers, mechanics, etc.; and that the course of their education should be so directed as to render them capable of those employments. Why educate the Indians. unless their education can be turned to some practical use? And why educate them for a practical use, and yet refuse to employ them? The case has occurred that the educated Indian returns from the school, raised above, and unfitted for, the society of his tribe, yet not high enough for that of the whites. His tribe furnishes no situation in which his education can be useful or profitable. He can turn it to no account any where else; and a life of dissipation is the usual and the fatal consequence of a life of idleness. Every place of profit, every object of laudable effort should be within his reach.

An appropriation of $10,000 per annum has been given by congress, for a few years, for the benefit of the Indians, and called the Civilization Fund. The disposition of it, in 1834, was as follows; to the Baptist General Convention $2,000; to the American Board for Foreign Missions, $2,200; to the Roman Catholic church, $1,300; to the Methodist Episcopal missions $400; to the Protestant Episcopal $500, etc. Of the funds provided by treaties for the purposes of education, $17,000

were devoted to the support of pupils, belonging to various tribes, at the Choctaw academy in Kentucky. In addition, $24,000 were devoted to kindred objects, $12,500 of the sum being appropriated by the Choctaws to the support of schools in their own nation. The Choctaw academy in Kentucky contains 156 pupils; this number will be increased by fifteen Chickasaws, as the chiefs of that tribe have recently requested that their school-money might be expended in this institution. The buildings and school-apparatus are valued at $8,000. The academy is represented as being in a highly prosperous condition.

The American Baptist Board have established missions among the Shawnees, Delawares, Otoes, Omahaws, Pawnees, Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws,-all in the Indian or Western territory. The number of church members is between one and two hundred. The number of missionary laborers is about twenty. An alphabet has been invented for the Shawnees, Chippewas, and Delawares, and elementary books compiled. Mr. McCoy has issued proposals for publishing a semi-monthly periodical at the Shawnee station.

The Methodists have established missions among three or four of the tribes. The Pittsburgh Society are about commencing one among the Ioways.

Pro

The following missions have been established by the American Board. Among the western Cherokees are three stations and eighteen laborers. The number of native church members is about 100. Four schools contain about 175 children. posals have recently been made to employ itinerant teachers for instructing the people, in the art of reading their own language, according to the method adopted among the eastern Cherokees. The mission among the western Choctaws includes five stations and sixteen laborers, all near Red river, or Little river, a northern branch, and not far from the south-western corner of the Arkansas Territory. The three churches contain 200 members. Ten or twelve schools are in successful operation. A considerable number of tracts and school books in the Choctaw language have been printed, or are in a state of preparation. Mr. Byington has about completed his Choctaw dictionary and grammar. Among the 2,500 western Creeks, a station has been established, with three laborers, about seven miles from fort Gibson, near the junction of the Verdigris with the Arkansas.

Mr. Fleming is attempting to reduce the language to writing. An elementary book of 100 pages has been prepared. Four stations have been formed among the Osages, with sixteen laborers. A printing establishment for the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Osage languages, is to be immediately commenced at the Union station. An elementary book of 126 pages has been printed. Missions are to be immediately commenced among the four bands of the Pawnees, the Sioux, Sacs, Foxes,

etc.

We believe that it is now generally conceded that there is no reasonable expectation of inducing the Indians to change their own language for the English. The mother tongue has more power in it, with those who speak it, than any other language which can be found. It is much easier for a man, who speaks their language to gain and keep their confidence, than for one who can speak only through an interpreter. In respect to the advantages of a uniform orthography in writing the Indian languages, Messrs. Kingsbury and Byington, after much experience, say: "We wish that all the missionaries sent out by the Board might adopt a uniform orthography. Some languages have more consonant sounds than others, and different ones also --and some have more vowel sounds, and nasal sounds, and diphthongal sounds than others. Perhaps all your missionaries among the Indians have adopted a uniform mode of writing. We think that it is entirely practicable from our own experience. We have taken specimens of thirteen different languages or dialects, and have found no particular difficulty in writing the same with one alphabet. In some languages we find some sounds. which we do not in others. We especially wish that all the vowel sounds might be uniformly written, and we would recommend that Mr. Pickering's Essay,* be sent to the stations among the Indians, where it has not already been sent, and a copy or two of such Indian books as have been printed according to the general principles contained in his pamphlet. An instance has

* See Essay of the Hon. John Pickering, on the adoption of a uniform Orthography for the Indian Languages of North America, inserted in the 4th volume, pp. 319-360, of the Memoirs of the American Academy. This learned scholar adopts as the basis of his proposed Indian orthography, what we call the foreign sounds of the vowels; that is, the sounds which are usually given to them by those European nations, with whom we have much intercourse by books or otherwise, and who, like ourselves, use the Roman alphabet in their

occurred, in which we felt the need of uniformity in writing the Indian languages."

But our limits admonish us to close. If our labor shall contribute, in any measure, to call the public attention to this subject, we shall be gratified. We trust that in the most praiseworthy and honorable efforts, which are making for the evangelization of other continents, the poor aborigines of our own will not be neglected. We may count up more rapid victories elsewhere, but here the claims of justice call with imperative voice. We fear that there is an increasing apathy in our community on the subject of Indian civilization. True, the number of our Indians is comparatively small, and, every year, the pestilence and the trader's whiskey are thinning their ranks. Nevertheless, THEY, of all men, have the first claim on our compassion. We may refuse to extend the cup of cold water to other famishing tribes with less peril than we may to extend it to them. We should feel for them with a brother's sympathy. We should interpose quickly between them and annihilation, the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Some of them we have driven beyond the river by means which the most hard-hearted miser ought to despise, which a generous nation should abhor, and which will affix to the latest ages of time a blot on the page of our history, that the tears of the bitterest repentance cannot wash out. Let us do what we can to repair the remorseless injuries which we have inflicted upon them. Let us watch with candid but with vigilant eye the operation of the present national policy. If it is productive of wrong and outrage, let us lift up a fearless voice of remonstrance. If it secures the present and eternal happi

own languages.

Mr. P. proposes that the general pronunciation of the common letters of our alphabet should be as follows:

A as in the English, father.

B & D as in English, French. etc.
E as in there, short e as in met.
F as in English.

G as English game.
H as an aspirate.

I as in marine, short i as in him.
K, L, M and N as in English.
O English long o as in robe, also
short o as in some.

P and R as in English.

S as in English at the beginning
of a word.
Tas in English.

U both long and short as Eng

lish oo.

V as English v, and German w.
W and Z as in English.
Y as in the English yet.

The whole essay of Mr. P. is very interesting.

ness of the Indian, let us cheer it with all encouragement and co-operation. Let our missionary societies labor under the solemn conviction that the last sands of the Indian existence may now be running.*

ARTICLE VI.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GEOLOGY AND THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF THE CREATION.

By Edward Hitchcock, Professor of Chemistry and Nat. Hist. in Amherst College.

EVERY nation in all ages has had its recorded or traditional cosmogony. And it is not a little curious, that a subject which the most improved philosophy, aided by a divine revelation, finds it so difficult to understand and illustrate, should so interest men in all stages of civilization, and be even incorporated into the unwritten poetry of the rudest tribes. Men of all religions too, and those hostile to all religion; the pagan, the Christian, the deist, and the atheist, have regarded cosmogony as a store-house of tried arguments for the support of their opposing opinions. Ever since the introduction of Christianity into the world, this has been a portion of the field of contest between its friends and its enemies, where the battle has warmly raged. Many a friend of revelation, even before geology was known as a science, has fancied that he saw in the structure of our globe,

* The speech of Mr. Clay, though reported in such a manner as to do but little justice to the great orator, cannot be read without tears. "He rejoices that the voice, which, without charge of presumption or arrogance, has ever been raised in defence of the oppressed of the human species, had been heard in defence of this most oppressed of all. To him, in that awful hour of death, to which all must come, and which, with respect to himself could not be very far distant, it would be a source of the highest consolation that an opportunity had been found by him, on the floor of the Senate, in the discharge of his official duty, to pronounce his views on a course of policy marked by such wrongs as were calculated to arrest the attention of every one, and that he had raised his humble voice and pronounced his solemn protest against such wrongs."