Breaking the Wilderness : $b The Story of the Conquest of the Far West, From the Wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca, to the First Descent of the Colorado by Powell, and the Completion of the Union Pacific Railway, With Particular Account of the Exploits of Trappers and TradersDellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
History
Breaking the Wilderness : $b The Story of the Conquest of the Far West, From the Wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca, to the First Descent of the Colorado by Powell, and the Completion of the Union Pacific Railway, With Particular Account of the Exploits of Trappers and Traders
Dellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
West (U.S.) -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- History
Races, as a whole, differ from each other, in their ability to make
machines, in their ability to secure comfort, in language, and in their
social regulations; differences of degree. These qualities are begun
and fostered more by stimulating circumstances than by particular
superiority of race. For example, the Europeans forged ahead mainly
because they were possessed of animals easily domesticated that would
supply their needs. The Amerind had no such animals in North America
except the bison and the dog. The latter he utilised to the full as a
draught and pack animal, as a wool producer, and as a supply of animal
food. Why he did not domesticate the bison is a problem. Perhaps it
was because there were too many of them. The store of animal food was
usually over-abundant with all Amerinds living in the range of the
buffalo, so there was no spur to economy. We may imagine that if the
buffalo from time to time had appeared in comparatively small numbers
in the thickly populated country of the Aztecs where animal food was so
scarce that an elaborate system of human sacrifices developed to supply
this deficiency, the latter eventually would have been abandoned and
captive buffalo substituted for captive man. Domestication, to guard
the supply, would then have been an easy step. But the buffalo was
permitted to roam at will, and the dog remained the sole domestic animal
in possession of the people of North America before the arrival of the
white race.[20]
The Amerind was not a savage. He was a barbarian with a rather well
ordered society. He possessed a high quality of intellect, and he
differed from his white antagonist more in external complexion than in
any other particular except his social organisation, which was one the
white man had passed through and left behind in centuries far past. But
the Amerind had the same emotions. He loved his home, his family,—as
constituted by his social regulations,—and his children. As to honesty
and dishonesty, the balance was certainly not far from even, average
for average; if anything, the Amerind had more respect for the ideals
of his race than was the case with the white man with reference to his.
Of course he had abundant vices like all the rest of humanity. He was
often horribly cruel to his enemies. But on the whole he was not worse
than the European who brought him degradation; who frequently soaked him
with cheap rum and alcohol, in order more easily to exchange nothing for
valuable furs: who engrafted upon him more and worse vices, who shot him
needlessly, and who reviled him as he sank helpless under the heavy tide
of imposition. Love of home and defence of country are ever extolled as
of the highest merit in the white race; in the American native they were
crimes. From the beginning of the contact the Amerind began to change
for the worse.
[Illustration: A Pai Ute Family at Home.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.]
[Illustration: A Ute Mountain Home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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