The National tribune., 1881-08-20
THE NOBLE RED MAN,
From The National Republican.

| gress towards rational conclusion than that of
! the relations between our Government and the In
/ dans The juvenile histories OF the settlement
of America stirred our youthful blood with horror
at the atrocities of the red man perpetrated upon
/ our Pilgrim Fathers in the Colony OF AlasSachu-
setts. Peter Farley Eight rest the turfabOye himD
gave us delightful accounts of the prOwesS of our
ancestors in their deadly conflicts with the PEI
nObscOts, the PequOts, the Mohegans, and the Mar
ragansetts. UncaS, MantOnOmah, and Philip were
the Sitting Bull Red Cloud, and Spotted Tail Of
our forefathers, and when they vanquished
and their tribes scattered there were no lacka4
daiscal editors to the eastward of them to deplor
the fate which the murderous whites" had meted
out to the gentle sayages. Our sturdy ancestors
were too busily engaged in subdung the unprpm-
ising soil and shielding the lives of their families
to have time for mourning over the wrongs of the
poor Indians The historical collections of Mas
sachusetts and Connecticut fail to exhibit any
tenderness on the part of the earliest settlers to-
wards the abOrigines. They wanted space anC
they took it, If the Indians made remOnstrance
so much the worse for the Indians. The
highly-cultvated regions bordering on the Bay OF
Massachusetts,, and on the Atlantic Ocean to the
north and east, and on Long Island Sound were
taken from the Indians by force No Indian bu-
reau, no Indian agents, no Indian ring. The rem1
nants of the tribes live there STILL leading gipsy
life, some weaving baskets and others obtaining q
subsistence best they can and al subject to the
same laws as the white man. There is no Indian
reservation in Maine, Massachusetts, or COnnecti-
cut for the PenObscOts, MIohegans, or other In
dians. Nor has civilization done much for them
except to extinguish the tierceness which once
made them as formidable as Sioux, Utes or Apa-
ches They are afraid to kill white people for the
very same reasons that make white people afraid
to kill them.
The maintenance of Indian Kingdoms on Ameri-
can soil, the boundaries thereof being temporary
and changeable at our will the imprisonment of
the Indians within those boundaries; the pay
ment to them of salaries for being Indians, and
the vicarious theft of the lions share of the same
by the deftness of philanthropic agents and the
greediness of authorized traders; the hunting Of
Indians who wander away from the space assigned
them; the formation of treaties with their chiefs,
of which the latter know only so much as ras-
cally Interpreters may tell them; and, finally, the
occasional trips of braves to Washington at Gov
ernment expense, as advertisement for the Ma
tion's representatives and an opportunity for the
atrical effects by the Indian Office-a1 these
would be ludicrous were they not so costly and
sometimes so tragical
The war between the Indian and the frontiers
man is as bitter and unrelenting as it was in
1920 and thereafter ON Massachusetts, Bay, but no
more so. There cannot be peaceable joint Occupa-
ton of the same territory by two governments.
The tribal authority" of Indian chiefs ought TO
cease. The reservations ought to be abolished.
The Indian bureau would still be useful to aid the
Indians to education and employment. But, ask
the sentimentalists, what will become Of them,
dependent as they have been on the Government
for subsistence? The answer is Let necessity
teach them as it did the negroes. They out
numbered by the savages of civilization in the
great cities, who murder, rob, and steal rather
than leave their favorite localities to find work
Society suffers some everywhere in the friction
with lawlessness. The Indians can be made to
fear the law more easily than can the criminal
classes of the cities. They cannot be made more
dangerous than they They murder and
are murdered. They are not always in the wrong,
as the frontiersman says, always in the right,
as the professional philanthropist says Let civil
lizatiOn cease to treat with barbarism. Let the
law be terror to all who disObey it, Sitting Bull
has found the way OF the tranSSreSSOr 10 De naTu
Let us not apologize to him. 1t is not the Indians
habit to plow and reap. Let us teach him it is not
our habit to allow anybody to kill, rob, or steal.
Let him learn, as our inexperienced young men
have to do, that daily bread, when not inherited,
must be earned, begged or stolen and that the
thorniest way to get it is the latter. Let US no
longer pay Indians for being Indians, nor deny
them the right to seek living where they please.
Let us break up the profits of philanthropy and
protect the Indian only as we do all others-name-
ly, by furnishing those who mistreat him. Then
will the test be made as to how far he can assim-
late with u.s. If after some years it should be
found that some Indians could not speak as elo-
ouently as Red Jacket or Red Cloud were made to
by their interpreters (Out of COopers novels per-
haps) or if we should find that they had not all be-
come we'll educated and thrifty mechanics farmers,
teachers, &c, we could console ourselves with the
reflection that our jails, almshOuses, and asylums
are filled with the civilized and that neither the
tramps and outlaws who infeSt the country roads
nor the great mass of criminals at large in the
cities are Indians If the Government Is to be
paternal one let all the helpless the unthrity the
unfortunate and the criminal be put upon reser-
vations fed and clothed at the expense OF the rest
and killed if they leave their own grounds why
discriminate in favor of the Indian? Ii we say IL
is because we are cOnscience-smltten at having
taken his lands. let us give them back and with