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40 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
stocks and stones. They were firm believers in the immortality of the
soul, in a future life with its rewards and punishments, in evil spirits
which they were wont to appease by incantations; and in every village
an important personage was the high priest who was a sort of mediator,
holding communion with the realm of spirits. To hunt forever in a
fadeless forest, abounding in all manner of game, to catch the radiant
sparkle of crystal waters, to hear the soft murmur of whispering emer
alds, to awake once more in a green country, with strength renewed,
with health restored, this was the' Indian's dream of paradise; and,
when gathered to his fathers, there was always placed at his side the
ever faithful bow, with its quiver of arrows and sometimes, but not
always, the spear and the tomahawk.
Some writers find little to admire in the character of the Indian;
while others impute to these dusky warriors of the forest many noble
and splendid traits. No one can read the pages of Cooper, of Washing
ton Irving, or of William Gilmore Simms, without feeling a thrill of
admiration for these prehistoric natives of America. That the red man
was enfeebled by contact with a white man's civilivation; that his blood
was inflamed by the intoxicating fire-water which he received from
traders in exchange for pelts; that his disposition to deceive, to employ
the arts of cunning, and to commit murder, rapine and arson, was due
in large measure to an unjust encroachment upon his lands, these are
facts which cannot be denied; and what the Indian really was in his
arcadian home before the advent of the European we have no way of
ascertaining; but if the great Tomo-chi-chi, with whom Oglethorpe
treated on the bluffs at Yamacraw was a fair type of the prehistoric
Indian, in his palmy days, then was he a character worthy of all admira
tion ; not only an ornament to his savage race, but a model for cultured
Anglo-Saxons.