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high a proof of genuine heroism, and so essentially belongs to the honor of a warrior, a great chief is always prepared to give that testimony of devotion to his nation: he would refuse adoption as a dishonourable condition. By a national sentiment, therefore, or a kind of unwritten public law, all prisoners are held to be dead by these savages, because they ought to die. Those who accept life among another tribe are hated and despised by their countrymen. It  is a violation of their allegiance, which is a natural claim that every national community seems to possess and assert over its members. They dishonour their tribes, and would most probably be put to death as enemies, if they should attempt to return. The adopted, on the other hand, are, on account of their utility, caressed and comforted by their recent connexions; they receive the mark of the new nation imprinted on their skin which is a barrier of eternal separation from their former friends.* Their inducements, therefore, are much stronger to remain in the society to remain in the society of their

*Each nation has some peculiar symbolic character, as each chief has some personal distinction impressed upon the person. It is inserted by punctures, in the substance of the skin, and indelibly stained by the discolouring juice of certain vegetables. 

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reconciled conquerors, than to return to the contempt and hatred of their alienated countrymen. 
There are many circumstances besides which render the relinquishing of his native region a much less sacrifice to the savage, than to the citizen. The latter is attached to his country by property, by artificial wants which render the property necessary to his comfortable subsistence, by habits which attach him to the manners and customs of his own people, by fixed residence which connects his happiness intimately with the scenes wherewith he has been long conversant, and even the spot of earth which has been identified in his imagination with all his early pleasures, by a long dependence upon parents, and by a thousand nameless ties and charms of society Whereas a savage can hardly be said to have a country. Accustomed to roam over hundreds of leagues in quest of prey, he is exclusively connected with no region, he is attached to no spot. Even wholetribes rising at once from their habitations and carrying with them the bones of their fathers, will often seek new forests, and new skies, for the convenience of hunting. Every place is the country of a savage where he can find game. his bow is his property. He has no wants which this cannot