"The design of the following pages is to exhibit the obligation which the people of the United States are under, to meliorate and substantially improve the condition of the Aborigines of our country, together with the means for attaining this most desirable object... traced to the degredation in which they found them. They were , at that time, sunk to the level of nature, and had ceased to feel the influence of a spirit of improving enterprise.... they were destitute of mental cultivation." Chapter 1.