Cherokee Phoenix

INDIANS IN MISSOURI

Published August, 12, 1829

Page 2 Column 5b

INDIANS IN MISSOURI.

Extract of a letter from a distinguished citizen of Missouri to his friend in Maryland [communicated to the editors of the National Intelligencer.]

The Indians are prostrate and crushed. We take their land first and cheat them out of it afterwards. We have already done so on the left bank, and the right is too good a country to expect a different fate. The whites have now no fears of them, they are cowed and subdued, and yet exhibit a touch of their condition that would awaken the better feelings of any man not hardened, as I partly am, by the frequent occurrence of the spectacle. They meet their fate like the trapped wolf, with a sort of sheepish ferocity. An overwhelming fear, and the absolute certainty of perdition, have deprived them of that proud spirit of resistance which marked their primitive character, and destroyed even the hope of revenge. But this is a subject too long to be treated of in a letter. It is only a few years they were powerful and comparatively happy, and in a few years more they will be heard only of in tradition.'