Indians of North America; Indians of North America -- Government relations; Indians of North America -- Legal status, laws, etc.
On the other hand, in our prosperous and well-ordered communities at the
East, a gentleman of leisure and of native benevolence, whose ears have
never rung with the war-whoop, whose eyes have never witnessed the
horrid atrocities of Indian warfare, and who is only disturbed in his
pleasing reveries by the occasional tramp of the policeman about his
house, is apt to dwell exclusively upon the other side of the Indian
question. To such a man, as he recalls the undoubted wrongs done the
Indian in the past, as he contemplates the fate of a race whose heroic
and romantic qualities have been greatly exaggerated, or as he listens
to the flattering tale of a missionary returned from some peaceful and
half-civilized tribe, it is very pleasant to think that the original
owners of the soil are to be protected by the government, saved to
humanity, educated in the useful arts, and elevated to a Christian
civilization. On such a man accounts of Indian outrages make little
impression. He regards them as the invention of pioneer malice, or
easily disposes of them by a mental reference to the crimes perpetrated
in his own town or city. He is, perhaps, so ignorant of Indian matters
as to think that all the Indians of the country form one homogeneous
community, and cannot understand how it should be, that, while Cherokees
are supporting churches and colleges and orphan asylums at home, and
sending their sons to receive classical and professional education in
the best schools of the East, Kiowas should roast their prisoners alive,
and brain the babe before the eyes of its mother. Is it a matter of
wonder, that men who are contemplating things so different as are the
Eastern philanthropist and the Western settler, when Indians are spoken
of, should imagine that they disagree as to the policy of the
government, and come to entertain contempt or repugnance for each other,
while, in fact, on an honest statement of a given case, neither would
dissent in the slightest degree from the views of the other? If there
is, then, such a liability to confusion and misapprehension in the
discussion of the Indian question, we may be allowed to insist strongly
upon the necessity of the distinction indicated.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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