BANCROFT. 1800 GEORGE BANCROFT was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1800. He recently returned from Berlin, where for several years he discharged, with honor to himself and his country, the duties of United States Minister. In 1817 he graduated at Harvard, bearing off, despite his tender age, the second honors of his class. The next year he went to Germany, where he studied under the direction of Heeren and Schlosser, and other eminent scholars. He prepared himself for a clerical life; but his love of literature was stronger than his "drawing" to the pulpit, and he soon abandoned the idea of adopting the sacred profession. In 1823 he made his first public literary essay in a volume of poems, and, in the next following year, put forth a translation of Heeren's Reflections on the Politics of Ancient Greece. About this time he associated himself with the late Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell in the establishment of the Round Hill School at Northampton. The duties of a pedagogue, however, proved uncongenial to him, and, although the school enjoyed a fair degree of prosperity, he found its management irksome, and turned his attention to politics. In 1838 he was appointed Collector of the Port of Boston; was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1844, and in 1845 was made Secretary of the Navy. This office he held about one year, displaying marked ability in the discharge of its duties, and effecting many important reforms in the department. In 1846 he was appointed Minister to England, and remained abroad till 1849. From that time till the date of his appointment as Minister to Berlin by President Grant, he devoted himself assiduously to the writing of his History of the United States, which is now completed. The first volume of this work was published in 1834, and the succeeding volumes, down to the tenth, which is just ready, have followed at long intervals. It is safe to say that Mr. Bancroft's History is unrivaled as a record of the origin and growth of the United States. In its preparation, or at least in that of those volumes which treat of the years immediately preceding the Revolution, he had the use of a vast number of manuscripts to which no earlier historian had access. His natural qualifications, reinforced by wide reading, for the historian's work are exceptionally great. It has been charged by some English critics that his democratic prejudices are too manifest in his History; but this allegation has had little weight with those who are most competent to form a judgment in the case, — his own countrymen; and his judicial candor is generally reckoned among the most admirable components of his intellectual equipment. His style has received warm and universal praise; it is eminently scholarly, yet not pedantic, brilliant, yet not flashy, in narrative animated and picturesque, and in philosophical passages massive and majestic. This history is one of the proudest monuments of American scholarship. INDIAN MASSACRES OF THE EARLY SETTLERS. BETWEEN the Indians and the English there had been quarrels, but no wars. From the first landing of colonists in Virginia, the power of the natives was despised their strongest weapons were such arrows as they could shape without the use of iron, such hatchets as could be made from stone; and an English mastiff seemed to them a terrible adversary. Nor were their numbers considerable. Within sixty miles of Jamestown,* it is computed, there were no more than five thousand souls, or about fifteen hundred warriors. The whole *JAMESTOWN. A town in Virginia, on the James River, now in ruins. The first English settlement in the United States was made here in 1608. territory of the clans which listened to Powhatan * as their leader or their conqueror comprehended about eight thousand square miles, thirty tribes, and twenty-four hundred warriors; so that the Indian population amounted to about one inhabitant to a square mile. The natives, naked and feeble compared with the Europeans, were nowhere concentrated in considerable villages; but dwelt dispersed in hamlets, with from forty to sixty in each company. Few places had more than two hundred, and many had less. It was also unusual for any large portion of these tribes to be assembled together. An idle tale of an ambuscade of three or four thousand is perhaps an error for three or four hundred; otherwise it is an extravagant fiction, wholly unworthy of belief. Smith once met a party, that seemed to amount to seven hundred; and so complete was the superiority conferred by the use of fire-arms, that with fifteen men he was able to withstand them all. The savages were therefore regarded with contempt or compassion. No uniform care had been taken to conciliate their good-will, although their condition had been improved by some of the arts of civilized life. The degree of their advancement may be judged by the intelligence of their chieftain. A house having been built for Opechancanough after the English fashion, he took such delight in the lock and key, that he would lock and unlock the door a hundred times a day, and thought the device incomparable. When Wyatt arrived, the natives expressed a fear lest his intentions should be hostile; he assured them of his wish to preserve inviolable peace, and the emigrants had no use for fire-arms except against a deer or a fowl. Confidence so far increased that the old law which made death the penalty for teaching the Indians to use the musket was forgotten; and they were now employed as fowlers and huntsmen. The plantations of the English were widely extended, in unsuspecting confidence, along the James River and towards the Potomac, wherever rich grounds invited to the culture of tobacco; nor were solitary places, remote from neighbors, avoided; since there would there be less competition for the ownership of the soil. Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, remained, after the marriage of his daughter, the firm friend of the English. He died in 1618; and his younger brother was now the heir to his influence. Should the *POWHATAN. An Indian chief, father of Pocahontas. The familiar story of the heroism of Pocahontas in saving the life of Captain John Smith is now generally considered a myth. She married John Rolfe, an Englishman, and died in 1617. native occupants of the soil consent to be driven from their ancient patrimony? Should their feebleness submit patiently to contempt, injury, and the loss of their lands? The desire of self-preservation, the necessity of self-defense, seemed to demand an active resistance; to preserve their dwelling-places, the English must be exterminated; in open battle the Indians would be powerless; conscious of their weakness, they could not hope to accomplish their end except by a preconcerted surprise. The crime was one of savage ferocity; but it was suggested by their situation. They were timorous and quick of apprehension, and consequently treacherous; for treachery and falsehood are the vices of cowardice. The attack was prepared with impenetrable secrecy. To the very last hour the Indians preserved the language of friendship; they borrowed the boats of the English to attend their own assemblies; on the very morning of the massacre they were in the houses and at the tables of those whose death they were plotting. Sooner," said they, "shall the sky fall, than peace be violated on our part." At length, on the 22d of March (1622), at midday, at one and the same instant of time, the Indians fell upon an unsuspecting population, which was scattered through distant villages, extending one hundred and forty miles on both sides of the river. The onset was so sudden that the blow was not discerned till it fell. None were spared; children and women, as well as men; the missionary, who had cherished the natives with untiring gentleness; the liberal benefactors, from whom they had received daily benefits, all were murdered with indiscriminate barbarity, and every aggravation of cruelty. The savages fell upon the dead bodies, as if it had been possible to commit on them a fresh murder. In one hour three hundred and forty-seven persons were cut off. Yet the carnage was not universal; and Virginia was saved from so disastrous a grave. The night before the execution of the conspiracy it was revealed by a converted Indian to an Englishman, whom he wished to rescue; Jamestown and the nearest settlements were well prepared against an attack; and the savages, as timid as they were ferocious, fled with precipitation from the appearance of wakeful resistance. Thus the larger part of the colony was saved. THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. ALL the disasters which had been encountered, far from diminishing the boldness of De Soto,* served only to confirm his obstinacy by wounding his pride. Should he, who had promised greater booty than Mexico or Peru had yielded, now return as a defeated fugitive, so naked that his troops were clad only in skins and mats of ivy? The search for some wealthy region was renewed; the caravan marched still farther to the west. For seven days it struggled through a wilderness of forests and marshes, and at length came to Indian settlements in the vicinity of the Mississippi. The lapse of nearly three centuries has not changed the character of the stream. It was then described as more than a mile broad, flowing with a strong current, and, by the weight of its waters, forcing a channel of great depth. The water was always muddy; trees and timber were continually floating down the stream. The Spaniards were guided to the Mississippi by the natives; and were directed to one of the usual crossing-places, probably at the lowest Chickasa Bluff, not far from the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude. The arrival of the strangers awakened curiosity and fear. A multitude of people from the western banks of the river, painted and gayly decorated with great plumes of white feathers, the warriors standing in rows with bow and arrows in their hands, the chieftains sitting under awnings as magnificent as the artless manufactures of the natives could weave, came rowing down the stream in a fleet of two hundred canoes, seeming to the admiring Spaniards "like a fair army of galleys." They brought gifts of fish and loaves made of the fruit of the persimmon. At first they showed some desire to offer resistance; but, soon becoming conscious of their relative weakness, they ceased to defy an enemy who could not be overcome, and suffered injury without attempting open retaliation. The boats of the natives were too weak to transport horses; almost a month expired before barges large enough to hold three horsemen each were constructed for crossing the river. At length the Spaniards embarked upon the Mississippi, and were borne to its western bank. * HERNANDO DE SOTO. A Spanish explorer, born about 1500, discovered the Mississippi River in 1541, and died in Louisiana in 1542. He was one of the boldest and bravest of the many brave leaders who figured in the discoveries, and distinguished themselves in the wild warfare of the Western World. The Dacotah tribes, doubtless, then occupied the country southwest of the Missouri. De Soto had heard its praises; he believed in its vicinity to mineral wealth, and he determined to visit its towns. In ascending the Mississippi the party was often obliged to wade through morasses; at length they came, as it would seem, upon the district of Little Prairie, and the dry and elevated lands which extend towards New Madrid. Here the religions of the invaders and the natives came in contrast. The Spaniards were adored as children of the sun, and the blind were brought into their presence, to be healed by the sons of light. "Pray only to God, who is in heaven, for whatsoever ye need," said De Soto in reply; and the sublime doctrine which, thousands of years before, had been proclaimed in the deserts of Arabia, now first found its way into the prairies of the Far West. The wild fruits of that region were abundant; the pecan-nut, the mulberry, and the two kinds of wild plums, furnished the natives with articles of food. At Pacaha, the northernmost point which De Soto reached near the Mississippi, he remained forty days. The spot cannot be identified; but the accounts of the amusements of the Spaniards confirm the truth of the narrative of their ramblings. Fish were taken, such as are now found in the fresh waters of that region; one of them, the spade fish, — the strangest and most whimsical production of the muddy streams of the west, so rare that, even now, it is hardly to be found in any museum, is accurately de scribed by the best historian of the expedition. An exploring party, which was sent to examine the regions to the north, reported that they were almost a desert. The country still nearer the Missouri was said by the Indians to be thinly inhabited; the bison abounded there so much that no maize could be cultivated, and the few inhabitants were hunters. De Soto turned, therefore, to the west and northwest, and plunged still more deeply into the interior of the continent. The highlands of White River, more than two hundred miles from the Mississippi, were probably the limit of his ramble in this direction. The mountains offered neither gems nor gold; and the disappointed adventurers marched to the south. They passed through a succession of towns, of which the position cannot be fixed, till at length we find them among the Tunicas, near the hot springs and saline tributaries. of the Washita. It was at Autiamque, a town on the same river, |