of possessions; and were habitually hospitable to strangers. Scarcely sensible of want, they were alive to friendship and undissembled passions. Their pride, confined to personal excellence, was always checked by the emulation of superior worth, sanctioned and acknowledged by the approbation of the aged.
Almost unrestrained by artifice or moral education, we should, perhaps, expect the man of nature to become the prey of passion, like the irrational creation. Yet so nicely balanced, in every situation, is the proportion of good and evil allotted to humanity, that one stage of society has but little advantage over another. {132} Nature is not a cruel demon, nor delights in the accomplishment of destruction. Those who are fed by her frugal bounties are but seldom hurried into excess; indeed, the nations of America were stigmatized with apathy, so great was their command of the social passions, and their magnanimity under suffering. But the dire hatred which they bore their enemies, was a lasting proof of the strength of their affections, and mutual attachment. They felt for each other as members of the same family, as sons of the same father; a band of brothers mutually bound to defend and revenge the cause of each other, by a just and undeviating system of retaliation.
Their affection for those, whom time or casualty removed from the social circle, was as great and sincere, as extravagant demonstration could possibly declare. Among the Cherokees and others, the dead were not only accompanied by the choicest things which they had valued in life, but even, if a chief or father, interred in the house which had been his habitation, and which was thenceforth devoted to ruin and desolation. So awful even was the inanimate body then considered, that all who had imme-
