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Show COMKIBBIONER OX INDIAN ATFAIRE. 9 nature's work and do it over, butgrand results are possible if we simply turn her forces into the best channels. The Indian character is often misjudged because studied from .poor specimens. As, Americans we are quick to resent criticisms passed upon us by foreign tourists who have nevervisited us in our homes, and whose impressions of our whole people have been gained from chance acquaintances picked up at hotels and in public convey-ances. On our own part, if we wish to know more of the Italian people, for instance, we do not visit the pauper colony of Rome, or accept as the standard type of the nation the lazzaroni who swarm around the quays of Venice. In like manner, if we are to treat the Indian with justice, we must not judge him by the hanger-on about the edges of an agency or by the lazy fellow who lounges all the day in a gambling room of a frontier town. To get at the real Indian we have got to go back into the wilder country, where white ways have not penetrated. There we find him a man of fine physique, a model of hospitality, a k i d parent, a genial companion, a stanch friend, and a faithful pl;dge keeper. Is not this a pretty good foun-dation upon which to build? I have no absurd idea of painting the Indian as perfect in char-acter, or even well on the road toward perfection. Against his generosity as a host must be balanced his expectation that the guest of to-day will entertain him in return to-morrow. His courage in battle is offset by his conviction that any means are fair for outwit-ting and any cruelty permissible in punishing an enemy, The duty of our civilination is not forcibly to uproot his strong traits as an Indian, but to induce him to modify them; to teach him to recognize the nobility of giving without expectation of return, and to see true chivalry in good faith toward an active foe and mercy for a fallen one. The pugnacity and grit which command our admiration on the battlefield, the readiness to endure hunger and fatigue and cold for the sake of making a martial movement effective, are the very qualities which, turned toward some better accomplishment than bloodshed, would compel success. It is therefore our part not to destroy them, but to direct them aright. We accuse the Indian of maltreating his women because he expects them to cultivate the corn and fetch the water from the spring and carry the burdens on the march. We do not always pause to reflect that this is after all a matter of convention rather than of moral principle. When the chase was the Indian's principal means of getting food for his camp, his women were absolved from any share in his arduous enterprises; and in war, offensive or defensive, he has always provided well for their protection. Our attitude toward this subject ought to be that, in a game-stripped country, farming, lumbering or herding must take the place of hunting, and that the same prowess his fathers |
