New-York tribune., 1870-02-05

al
that Ioe known throughout the world as the gems
20, -eT they were unique and perfect members The
salmon are their chief article of food, / be-
lieve but long ere this they had speared and salted
more than their most gluttonous appetite could
crave yet here, day after day, and month after
month, they came and lounged, and speared fish for
sheer wantonness cruelty, letting them drop back
into the river all torn and papitatng from the barb
or throwing them out on tho rock to die horribly III
the sum- and rot and infect the air. Every stone was
slippery with the decaying salmon. The sight dis
custed and the stencil sckened us all. The Noble
Savage seemed to find it congenia sceno. Dirty be-
yond such possibilities Of dirt as il enters into the
heart of civilized man to conceive diseased beastly
in habits degraded in feature, attitude, bearing,
vain of his squaid rags and tawdry paint he is the
most repulsive of those repulsive creatures whom
in the praver-book-we call brothers These crea-
lures live on the outskirts Of settlements beg always,
pfer when they can absorb all tho vices Of ciyiza-
tion know none of its virtues. They were more de-
pressing than the imaginary bones of imaginary an
cestors had been half an hour before For really
could not help asking ourselves what significance
they had in life or gave to life.
Once saw Mission school of Pottawattamies( (then
how do You spell it established by the Catholics II
was triumph of drill The little savages in trow-
sers and jackets nexpressibly ugier than their own
dull red skins would have been, were frOwned down
by big black-boards. and confronted by mutiplica-
tion tables and verbs aud definitions, and were
dreadfully put upon by star-eyed science.
They were letter-perfect | don't think they
bundered in an answer They even divided fractions,
whereon looked at them in speechless admiration,
for it's thing Ican't do But they were as so many
images pulled by string. The lessons meant
nothing to them. They had not an idea. Why you
should divide fraction they had no more notion
than the Man in the Moon. Whereas, see pos
sible proprety in the impossible achievement. which
shows a superior mental endowment. Well, as was
saying all the individuality ground out of the
poor little puppets After the geography lesson was
written on them it was rubbed ont, as it were, and
a grammar lesson set down in the same place, and
then the surface just blank for the catechism,
or the hymn. l don't believe that education agrees
with the Indian blood. When you try to make him
put on our ways he merely loses his own, and is more
lazy and not less vicious
have seen at least fifty in my travels, and feel
quite competent to write essay on provisional races
with remarks on the future of the aboriginal man.
1t requires little Skill but much cru-well call 1t
nerve, to stab the beautiful salmon. They really
seemed higher creation than the Noble Savage.
Our party did not slay many. And when we could no
ger forget the dirt and the stencil, and the creep
ing maggOts, and the Encouragement of the human
failure lin short-sighted eyes), in the beauty OF
the river, and the wonder of the fish, we turned
away and toed up the bank again.
We found lovely agates among the big stones; such
delicately vened and tinted things, that we saw
ourselves invested in ornaments for the rest of
days. But when we showed our treasures to man
who understood stones, he said they were chiefly
pebbles and that a bushel Of EN- wouldn't make an
agdte' which was true, but entirely uncalled for,
because nobody had limited that a halfbushel, or a
quart of gravel even went to the composition of an
agate
We gave up the cow-catcher-partly because of a
morbid woe superinduced by Indians and sand;
partly because the engineer assured us that the
wind would blow our eye-winkers off, and per-
sonal considerations withheld u.s. So We came in
the car like Your even Christian, back to the boat
and in the lovely morning, in the boat back to the
cars, and so again by boat down the river that
seemed more beautiful than after the desert,
past Hood and Rainier, past Adams and Jefferson,
under the sacred shadow of Mount Saint Helen's,
and so to anchor and to rest in beloved Portland
l. G. C.