Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-03-24
APR0RIEm INsnLnRLE

One of the most startling things to the
observant thinker, in our christian civiliza-
ton, is the complacent apathy with which
kind and generous people can allow injus-
tice, cruelty and wrong to go on without
feeling impelled to use the power they pos
sess to put an end to the wrong. We know
that England abounds in people full of gen.
erous and kindly sentiments, and yet they
quietly acquiesce in their government send
ing S30,000,000 worth of opium to China,
contrary to the wish and efforts of the Chi
nese government. The English people make
their own government by their votes, yet
they do not put this down, but they send
missionaries to China. How is it that they
can be so solicitous for the welfare of the
Chinese as to send them missionaries, and
yet 80 Indifferent about their morals as to
send them, in opposition to their own better
instincts, that supplying, damning producer
of imbecility and death, opium? The min
Cling of christian goodness and worldly don't
care-a-damn. ativeness in all this is singular
instance OF human inconsistency. This is
the mote in our neighbor's eye; we have no
less beam in our own eye. The Indian
is our special care, and we are answerable
to Providence for his welfare. This country
was his; we have by mere brute force pushed
him back, and his possessions we now call
ours. We surely owe something to those
whom we have dispossessed of hill and valley,
forest and stream, whose game we have
killed and whose woods we have cut down.
Yet to that Indian we deny the protection of
law, and deny him individual ownership in
the land he holds, as his fathers held it be-
fore him. His horse may be, and often is,
taken from his grazing ground, and the pallet
he sleeps on from his wigwam, but no court
is open to him where he can prosecute the
thief He has no more standing in law than
a child or an idiot, and he is not admitted TO
citizenship. But he is exposed to wrong; he
is made the victim of injustice; his igno-
rance is taken advantage of to defraud him,
and the most solemn treaties he has made
with our government are faithlessly broken
and disregarded, and how he has been robbed
and duped, and cajoled and driven from spot
TO spot, and shot down with merciless saw
agery by the christianity civilized, is story
too well known to need recalling. Year after
year the wrong goes on; the rum-keg and the
musket do their deadly work; the squaw and
the babe perish, and the men, maddened by
the sight and the wrongs inflicted
upon them, resist and are massacred, and
remorselessly christian civilization drives
him away from his home and runs
the pillow over the graves OF his fathers. 1
We are not speaking of the deeds of Span
iards, but of American Christians; we are
not drawing on the terrible record of the
past, but are glancing at the tragic horrors
enacting now-to day. And christian civ
ilization sits unmoved and has nothing to
say; the government is of its own making
and the laws OF its own choosing, yet these
acts are perpetrated, these fearful deeds go
on; we heap up riches, we revel in pleasures,
we even build churches, but we care not for
the wrong and the cruelty that we partici-
pate in, for we constitute the government
and make the laws. We care not for the
slaughtered Indian, we have no sympathy
with his weeping squaw, we are Indifferent
that his .papoose must inherit the same
wretched fate Yet we sympathize with the
poor wronged Indian so much that we send
the missionary to him to tell him the glad
tidings of salyation-a missionary, but no
justice, no rightiug OF wrongs, no emancipa-
tion FROM oppression! What Is the key to
this strange mystery? What is the solution
to this problem of contradictions? To pray
for the poor Indian, to build churches for
him, to learn his language that We may tell
him of the love and virtues of Jesus, and yet
refuse him the barest justice, hold from him
the commonest right! 1t is unaccountable!