“This averment is sustained by a reference to the white people who have been taken prisoners in childhood and brought up among the Indians. In every such case the child of civilization has become the ferocious adult of the forest, manifesting all the peculiarities, tastes, and preferences of the native Indian. His manners, habits, propensities, and pursuits have been the same, so that the most astute philosophical observer has not been able to discover any difference between them, except in the color of the skin, and in some instances even this has been removed by long exposure to the elements, and the free use of oils and paints.”
The many instances which there are on record of cases in which persons taken captive by the Indians, while young, have utterly refused in later life to return to their relatives and homes, go to confirm this statement of Judge Burnet’s.
On the other hand, he says: “The attempts that have been made at different times to improve the minds and cultivate the morals of these people have always been attended by success.
“On an unprejudiced comparison between the civilized educated white man and the civilized educated Indian, all this theory of an organic constitutional difference between the European and the native Indian vanishes.
“In what respect have Ross, Boudinot, Hicks, Ridge, and others differed from the educated men of our own race? Inasmuch then as the reclaimed educated Indian becomes assimilated to the white man, and the European brought up from infancy among the Indians becomes identified with them, this alleged difference cannot be real, it must be imaginary.
“The fact is, the difficulty of civilizing the natives of this continent is neither greater nor less than that which retarded the improvement of the barbarous nations of Europe two thousand years ago, * * * Men uncivilized have always delighted in the chase, and had a propensity to roam; both history and experience prove that nothing but necessity, arising from such an increase of population as destroys the game, has ever induced men to settle in communities, and rely on the cultivation of the earth for subsistence. In the progress of civilization the chase has given way to the pastoral state, and that has yielded to agriculture as the increase of numbers has rendered it necessary.
“As soon as the Cherokees and the Wyandots were surrounded by a white population, and their territory was so contracted as to cut off their dependence on hunting and fishing, they became farmers, and manifested a strong desire to cultivate the arts; and
