| 276 THE COMING OF THE EUROPEANS
is capable of supporting many hundred millions-
we know not how many. Under these circum-
stances it was as inevitable, and as much in fulfill-
ment ment of the designs of divine Providence, that the
old races should be supplanted by the new, as that
the horse and the cow should displace the alligator
and the elk, and brakes and bulrushes yield their
native grounds to corn.
And such has been the fact. It has been esti-
mated that at the time America was discovered the
number of Indians dwelling within the limits of the
United States was about sixteen millions. Of the
descendants of these sixteen millions only about
two millions now remain.
THE DISPLACEMENT OF ONE RACE BY ANOTHER NOT NECES-
SARILY ATTENDED WITH SUFFERING.
Nor are we to suppose that such a change as
this, by which a lower race is supplanted by a
higher one, necessarily implies any violence or
wrong on the part of the former against the latter
or any special suffering. It is the race and not the
individuals that the extirpating process acts upon
That is to say, the effect is produced, not by the
destruction of individuals already existing; but by
a diminution in the numbers born to take the
places of those ceasing to exist by natural caused
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