countries, and which are at the present day in imminent danger of being totally dispossessed by another people, I call to mind the primitivS inhabitants of Palestine, who, masters also of one of the most beautiful countries in the world, saw themselves deprived of it by a severe but most just judgment of the Creator, whose menaces they had despised and whose glory they had profaned. Like the Canaanites, the savage tribes, taken in general, have been punished gradually. Perhaps they, like them, have been too long deaf to the divine voice, inviting them to quit their gross errors and embrace the doctrines of truth. Who has entered into the councils of eternal wisdom? Who can accuse his judgments of injustice? Cannot God, to whom the whole creation belongs, dispose of his property according to his own good pleasure? But in displaying his justice, he forgets not his mercy. Here below he strikes only to heal. His divine heart is ever open to those even whose iniquities he punishes.
The melancholy changes to which the condition of the Indian has been subjected within a few years, have led me to these mournful reflections. Under the administration of President Pierce, the whole vast Indian country within the Rocky Mountains, comprehended in the vicariate of Bishop Miege (except a little portion situated toward the south), has been organized into two Territories, known under the names of Kansas and Nebraska; that is to say, the Congress has decreed that this country is incorporated into the Union and open to the whites who are willing to settle there, in order to form, after a lapse of time, two States, similar in all respects to the other States of the Great Republic. Although, for the moment, the new colonists have orders to respect the territories or the lands reserved to the savages, we may nevertheless say that this decree has virtually destroyed all the Indian nationalities. Scarcely was the law known when the emigrants, like the waters of a great river which has overflowed its banks, impetuously passed the barrier and inundated the country.