New-York tribune., 1877-01-04
TIE SHINNECOCK INDIANS.

Zen or Tie men uTOWHcu vi tiic SHe"oniah
were Shinnecock Indians. The village from
which they came is made up of the fragment
of tribe, and is reported to be a very poor
but orderly, GOd-fcaring community. The
drowning red men," we arc told, "checred
:" each other by hymns and prayers dur
"ing the eight hours in which they hung
helpless, waiting for DEATH" The brief
account shows us an Indian 80 different from
the familiar demon of the ewspapers-drunk,
dirty, lazy, scaping knife in one hand and
whisky bottle in the Other-that it tempts us
to look behind the newspapers for the other
side of the story. The Swedes who settled
among them as friends report the "wild peO-
"ples as honest, kind, easily taught to believe
"in Christ" Penn, who followed, had no more
faithful citizens than his red brethren: Hecke-
weder, who for eighty years lived in daily
communication and labOred with them, gives
it as his deliberate OpiuiOn that they are by
nature devOut, just, generous people, slow to
anger, hOspitabe to strangers, and respectful
to the aged. The "vices of lying and cheating
(which have begun to creep i'll among them
"they have learned from the whites"
Coming down to later times, there is not a
single missionary who has gone among this
race who will not testify to their eagerness to
learn, their teachableness, their loyalty to
their friends. Only the other day Bishop
Whipple, entering his protest against the oc-
cupatiOn of their tcrritOry-the Black Hills
by the whites, declared in effect that it would
drive to want and to arms peaceful body OF
men anxious to live as good citizens in their
own homes. The warning was unheeded, and
we have the consequences in every days re-
ports of massacrcd whites and massacred In
dians. In short, the story has been the same
from the beginning. The Moravan, the
Swede the Quaker, the missionary, the old
army officers, used to frontier life, all of whom
approached the red man as human being,
found him human as themselves, ready to
strike hands, keep faith, and further, to till
the ground, receive and practice Christianity,
as honestly as his white brethren while, on
the other side, the Puritan who came with a
gun in his hand to the "red devils" the
agent and trader who make their living by
swndliDg them, and the young, secOnd-rate
class of soldiers who sec in them the only
object of their vaulting courage, find an Indian
only in his right place when he is dead.
We are asked to contribute to the help of
the destitute families of the ten Indians who
were lost the other day, and the appeal should
he answered promptly. But broader ques-
ton lies back of that-justicc to the whole
race of these men. 1--WE are bound" says old
Heckeweldcr. 81 to acquit ourselves of injustice
toward these people who welcomed us to
"their shores, hoping that they and we should
" sit beside each other as brothers " If " In
dian atrocities" " provoke our wrath this
Winter, it is as well to remember that the
white man, as the red, will fight for his home
and for the means of subsistence with little
regard to justice in detail. The worst use we
can make of these men is to butcher them by
the sword or starvation. For nearly two CEN
turies our injustice to the black man was the
curse of the country; expediency and the
money loss to the whites prevented its aboli-
ton. 1t was wiped out-in whose blood we all
know. Injustice to the red man will bring
punisbment as sure and as well directed. There
is, after all, Power higher and juster than
governments or cxpedency.