The morning star and Catholic messenger., 1873-08-24

Now that the Modoc war is over, there
are very few Indians left for our fellow
Christians of the West to impose upon and
defraud ; those who are left will probably
succumb before many years to the intiu-
ences of civilization and what is known in
the far West, as we'll as in the East, by the
general term of rum. A Vienna correspon-
dent has lately been writing to his paper
an account of the American mixed drinks
purveyed at the American bar of the Ex
position for the consumption of Christen-
dom, and the list, though we should say it
was by no means a complete one, is long
enough to fill the mind any foolish Indian
who may be sojourning in Vienna with joy
and any wise Indian with sad anticipations
of his fate. The Indian, to bo sure, has
been in the habit of clinging tenaciously
to liquor in its crude form; but we can
hardly doubt that the braves of the coming
generation, the children of the braves who
now disguise themselves in stove-pipe hats
and swallowtail coats when they go upon
tie war path, will have acquired more
cultivated and critical taste than their fore
fathers. 1t is curious TO reflect that since
the discovery of America and its civiliza-
tion by Europeans, the contest between the
native owners of the soil and the foreign
invaders should in reality have been one
long drinking bout, in which the inferior
civilization has fairly been drunk out of
existence. Who would have supposed
that the warlike, swift running, sinewy,
healthy Indian, accustomed to prlvatlon
of all kinds, and trained to endurance from
his cradle up, wonld have been beaten in a
contest of that sort by the pale-faced, over
civilized, morbid, literary European, with
his ill-shapen body, his over-fed brain, his
love OF luxury, comfort, and ease To the
Indian the matter must be an enigma even
now, and to our descendants it may seem
as strange as the question why the tobac-
conlst Ofour time should have taken as his
shop sign, by way of an inducement to
purchasers, an Indian of uncertain tribe
with tiara of feathers round his head, a
rather prohibitory look in his eyes, as if
his junction was to warm the public against
the vice of smoking rather than persuade
them into buying the cigars which the
bundle in his tightly clenched fist symbo-
Mes 10 return to the mixed drink ques-
Clon, the letter of the correspondent to
which we referred above, is to us by no
means satisfactory, and we have begun to
lear, after reading it, that the United States
are indeed badly represented at Vienna
even now. There is no branch of manu-
Iacture In which we have exhibited such
proficiency as the curious combinations of
liquors which the inventive genius of sew
eral generations of gifted bar tenders and
drinkers has suggested. 1t may be said,
we oeileve without fear of contradiction.
InaC there Is now no conceivable frame of
Tue human mind, or at any rate of the An
gIo- saxon human mind, for which there is
not some hot or cold compound exactly
adapted, for the purpose of cheering, sooth-
ing OF stimulating. This is certainly no
mean boast, and if the American were to
vanish tomorrow from the roll of history,
we could still reflect with sad satisfac-
ZION mat there would yet linger in its
wake the peculiar flavor, or aroma, or
Whatever it may be called left floating on
the ar by half million American bars, to
Gouc9 the memory of the world, and to re-
mlnd 1t OF what it had lost.-GaIary.