So he walks in the night-time, all through the long fly time, he walks
by the sorrowful sea, and he yearns to wake never, but lie there forever
in the arms of the sheltering sea, to lie in the lap of the sea.
At least that is my idea of the way the Shinnecock feels about it.
The Indian race, wherever we find it, gives us a wonderful illustration
of the great, inherent power of rum as a human leveler. The Indian has,
perhaps, greater powers of endurance than the white man, and enters into
the great unequal fight with rum almost hilariously, but he loses his
presence of mind and forgets to call a cab at the proper moment. This is
a matter that has never been fully understood even by the pale face, and
of course the Indian is a perfect child in the great conflict with rum.
The result is that the Indian is passing away under our very eyes, and
the time will soon come when the Indian agent will have to seek some
other healthful, outdoor exercise.
So the consumptive Shinnecock, the author of "Shinny on Your Own Ground
and Other Games," is soon to live only in the flea-bitten records of a
great nation. Once he wrote pieces for the boys to speak in school, and
contributed largely to McGuffy's and Sander's periodicals, but now you
never hear of an Indian who is a good extemporaneous public speaker, or
who can write for sour apples.
He no longer makes the statement that he is an aged hemlock, that his
limbs are withered and his trunk attached by the constable. He has
ceased to tell through the columns of the Fifth Reader how swift he used
to be as a warrior and that the war-path is now overgrown with grass. He
very seldom writes anything for the papers except over the signature of
Veritas, and the able young stenographer who used to report his speeches
at the council fire seems to have moved away.
Two hundred and fifty years ago the Shinnecock Hills were covered by a
dense forest, but in that brief period, as if by magic, two and one-half
acres of that ground have been cleared, which is an average of an entire
acre for every hundred years. When we stop to consider that very little
of this work was done by the women and that the men have to attend to
the cleaning of the whales in order to prepare them for the table, and
also write their contributions for the school-books and sign treaties
with the White Father at Washington, we are forced to admit that had the
Indian's life been spared for a few thousand years more he would have
been alive at the end of that time.
So they wander on together, waiting for the final summons. Waiting for
the pip or measles, and their cough is dry aud hacking as they cough
along together towards the large and wide hereafter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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