The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-12-06
sealners and Quakers.

A good audience, considering the state OF the
weather, assembled in City Hall last evening I"
listen to Hon. Thos Fitch of Nevada, Oh
s'Scalpers & Quakers." The lecture was
happy blending of rhetoric and ridicule, direct
e,. alternately at Fenmore Cooper and the
Federal Government. The lecturer began by
description of the material advantages of the
West, dilating in glowing language upon the
vastness of its resources, and said that the
chief obstacles to its developement were the
writings of two men, Walter Scott and Fennl-
more Cooper. Scott had taught us to look with
admiration upon the Sir Tristrams and Sir
Johns the mailed marauders of the middle
ages, and to regard with aversion the wonders
of our own time, like the steam engine and
the electric telegraph. Ivanhoe and Roderick
Dhu, who in these days would pass most of
their time in felons cell, were held up for
our admiration. We see the effect of SCOTS
teaching in the circus-show tournaments of
the South Cooper has given us an ideal saw
age, and beautified his rhetorical jargon about
beef and whiskey into lofty description of
the Great Spirit. The frontiersmen will tell
you a different story. They will tell you that
he does not labor, not because he he is chival-
rio, but because he is lazy. That instead of
hunting the bear and the antelope, he lies in
wait for the squirrel'and the rabbit, and chases
the agile grasshopper. That he never fights if
he canavod it, but prefers assassination to
combat under all circumstances. That there is
no word in any of the Indian tongues spoken
beyond the Rocky Mountains, for gratitude, or
womanly virtue or future state. Of these
HOY, h,v For oil tho
fine thoughts attributed to them, we are in
debted to the exuberant fancy of the interpre-
tiers. The savages are cruel, vindictive and
cowardly. These characteristics prevail from
the Siouxs of the North to the oowardly Moquas
of Mexico. They are the curse of the West,
and their gorged carcasses block the wheels of
progress To these men we are applying the
Quaker policy of William Penn. We have
sent our agents and onr missionaries to provide
them with material and spiritual food at an ex-
pense of S3,O00,000 month. We have Toasted
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail at an expense of
$50, 900. We have entertained Spotted Tail in
the parlors Of the White House when the car
pets were swept by his trailing head dress, en-
Droidered with eagles feathers, each one of
which was the symbol of scalp torn reeking
from the heads of white men and women.
Then we send them home with clothing from
the government stores to cover their nakedness
and columbads from the arsenals to hunt their
rabbits. You would do better to send your
commissioners to the grizzly bear of the Sierras
than to the squallid savages The grizzly is
scarcely inferior to them in intellect he is their
equal in magnanimity. he is vastly their supe-
rior in courage. If you wish to know the char
acter of the savage read the testimony of Gen.
Sheridan in the letter to Sherman, dated Feb,
%, 1871. will place the testimony of the
hero of Five Forks against all the romances of
Fenimore Cooper and Vincent Collyer Our
entire Indian policy is based and built upon a
foundation of blundeYs. We acknowledge
title to the lands of the West a title which no
court in ChrlstendOm would hold valid, for
wandering and nomadic tribes can establish no
right by possession. They must occupy and i'm
prove the land. We have given them terri
tory extending through five degrees of latitude
and four of longitude, as fair as ever was kiss
ed by the sun; land capable of furnishing
four hundred miles in width by three hundred
in length. This is the concession which civili
cation has made to barbarism. What has she
done for her own? Look at the wretched how
els in her great cities for an answer. This great
territory should be opened up to the starving
population of the cities of the east, and not
left in the idle and unproductive hands of
these peripatetic vermin-farms. If the present
policy be done away with, you will ask what
policy shall be adopted in its place? l would
have no policy. would have all men equal
before the law. I would have the red man
work or starve, as the white man and the black
man have to do. Let him jump upon the car of
progress or step out of its way; or if he choose
TO obstruct it, let him be crushed under its on
rolling wheels. The lecturer concluded by an
eloquent appeal for the hardy pioneers. of the
West.
The lecture was An able effort, and no synop-
sis can do Justice to its rich humor, its keen
sarcasm, its caustic criticism or its lofty elo-
quence.