Thus it is that home Societies are often to be reckoned among the trials of Missionaries.
But we will not dwell on such shortcomings, and will rather pass on to what we had designed as the purpose of our present introduction; namely, to supplement the information which the biographical form of our work has necessitated us to leave imperfect, respecting the Missions as well as the men.
Of the Red Indians who first stirred the compassion of John Eliot, there is little that is good to tell, or rather there is little good to tell of the White man's treatment of them.

Self-government by the stronger people always falls hard on the weaker, and Mission after Mission has been extinguished by the enmity of the surrounding Whites and the corruption and decay of the Indians.

A Moravian Mission has been actually persecuted.

Every here and there some good man has arisen and done a good work on those immediately around him, and at the present time there are some Indians living upon the reserves in the western part of the continent, fairly civilized, settled, and Christianized, and only diminishing from that law of their physical nature that forbids them to flourish without a wilderness in which to roam.
But between the long-settled States of America and those upon the shores of the Pacific, lies a territory where the Indian is still a wild and savage man, and where hatred and slaughter prevail.

The Government at Washington would fain act a humane part, and set apart reserves of land and supplies, but the agents through which the transactions are carried on have too often proved unfaithful, and palmed off inferior goods on the Indians, or brought up old debts against them; and in the meantime mutual injuries work up the settlers and the Red men to such a pitch of exasperation, that horrid cruelties are perpetrated on the one side, and on the other the wild men are shot down as pitilessly as beasts of prey, while the travellers and soldiers who live in daily watch and ward against the "wily savage" learn to stigmatize all pity for him as a sort of sentimentalism sprung from Cooper's novels.
Still, where there is peace, good men make their way, and with blessed effect.