OCR Text |
Show lxxxviii FIFTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF maintained accordingly. '6 But," says Parton, in hid Life of Jefferson, "Indians can not receive oar civilization. If the college had any sncoess with an Indian youth, he was no sooner tamed than he sick-ened and died. The rest may have assumed the white man's habit while they remained at Williamsbnrgh? but the very day that they rejoined their tribe they threw off their college clothes, resumed their old costumes and weapons, and ran whooping into the forest, irre-claimable savages." To this failure, and to other similar failures of more recent times, the disbelievers in the possibility of Indian redemption from barbarism are constantly calling the attention of those hopeful philanthropists and confident statesmen who refuse to believe that the future experiences of the Indian will be but a repetition of those of his past history. These disbelievers in the possibility of any good resulting from governmental, 4 religious, or humanitarian eitort to redeem the lndian from his deplor-able condition, overlook the many successfill attempts thac have been made to lead him into civilization. They disparage into a molehill every mountain of success; they exaggerate into a mountain every molehill of failure. Since the time when lndian educated youths either died of civilization at "William and Mary" or ra.n away from it into the forest and re. lapsed into savagery, the Five Tribes hare been civilized and organized into nations; and of late years the children of nearly all the other tribes have bee11 lrnockir~ga t the door of the school-house, requesting admittance. The Indian has indeed begun to change with the changiug times. He is commencing to appreciate the fact that he must become oivil- J ized-must, as he expresses it, <'learn the white man's way"-or perish from the face of the earth. He can not sweep back with a brooln the flowing tide. The forests into which he. ran whooping from the door of "William and Mary1' have been felled. The game on which he lived , has disappeared. The war-path has been obliterated. He is hemmed in on all sides by white pol~ulation. The railroad refuses to be ex-cluded from his reservation-that hot-bed of barbarism, in which many noxious social and political weeds grow rankly. The Christian missionary is persistently antreating him to abandon paganism. Gradu-ally the paternal hand of the Goven~menits being withdrawn from his support. His environments no longer compel him, or afford to him op-portunites, to display the nobler traits of his character. On the war-path and in the chase he was heroic: all activity; patient of hunger; patient of fa,tigne; cool-headed-a creature of exalted fortitude. "But," siys a writer? sketching his character, L'mhen the chase was over, when the war was done, and the peace-pipes smoked ant, he aban-doned himself to debauchery and idleness. To sleep all day in a wig. wam of painted skins, filthy and blackened with smoke, adorned with scalps, and hung with tomahawks and arrovs, to dance in the shine of the new.moon to music made from the skin of snakes, to tell stories of witches and evil spirits, to gamble, to sing, to jest, to boast of his |