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Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFNRS. 113 Indian instinctive dislike of our manners and customs as well rooted in them as it is in the Hostiles; but for strategic purposes, and with a larger sense of prudence than the -Hostiles, the Friendlies have accepted the overtures of the Government, outwardly at any rate, a.nd to that extent command official encouragement and approval, just as, in ordinary warfare, a mercenary who does what is expected of him stands on a wholly different footing from the enemy, altho senti-mentally he may be no more attached to the cause for rvhich he is fighting. Whatever may have been its origin, the situation at Oraibi has as-sumed within the last fe; months a phase too serious to be ignored. I have heard a good deal of what mas going on, and, having known the Hopi Indians for some ten years, I was inclined to listen with caution to the stories brought to me, until I visited Oraibi last sum-mer and held a council. with the Indians on their mesa. I was con-vinced, by the conditions I found there, that before long it would become necessary for the Government to show its strong hand and bring the Hostile party sharply to terms. This would be in order to prevent such a spread of the spirit of defiance of, and contempt for, the Federal authority as might breed violence and possibly bloodshed. No one who does not know these Indians can have any conception of their crass ignorance and superstition. In a protracted colloquy with the chief of the Hostile faction, after having exhausted all the milder argume'nts to show him the folly of longer resisting the in-roads of civilization, I pointed out to him how much his people really owed to that very Government which he took such pains to decry and deride. I dwelt upon the patience the Government has shown& continuing its efforts to help h i and his people in spite of their malevolence, and then asked him if he realized how swiftly and surely disaster would come upon them all if their powerful bene-factor at Washington should withdraw its protecting hand. I pointed out to h i how white and Mexican adventurers would pour into that country and swarm over the little holdings of the Indians; how the taxgatherer would swoop. down upon their fields and their flocks and their crops, and how the authorities of the Territory would enforce the compulsory school law by not only carrying off the chi-dren to where they would receive the hated teachings of the whites, but fining and imprisoning the parents for neglecting their duty toward their offspring. I dwelt on the generous purposes of the Government, as demonstrated in its placing the little day school at the foot of his mesa, where the children could get the rudiments of learning without being sent away from home; on the way, when the taxgatherer came, the Government threw its shield over his people, insisting that until they were better educated they should ije spared |