The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1886-09-25

4
plement has cut to the marrow with
less flow of blood, than has the sword
of American injustice. No weapon
with finer edge has ever been invented.
Uusually the wounds have left no Wis
ible scar. When overwhelmed with
misery, the Indians have folded their
blankets about them, and while their
hearts were quivering with pain, their
| lips have given no sign. That apothegm
of history, ITO bear like Spartan, !"
here loses its force. The Indian is
greater than the Spartan. He has be-
sides the Spartan's calm endurance, the
virtue of enduring in silence. He will
not resist until the iron has so corroded
his soul that life has no value. His
wars against his oppressors have been
waged without hope.
Depriving the Indians of their rights
and lands-even of their " Reserved ("
lands, and "Rights" that have been
assured-has had in it much of the
oppression that characterizes barbarous
nations. But with arefinement of cru
city that even more inhuman nations
would have hesitated to adopt, the
whites have waited until the lands upon
which the Indians were settled have
been well-tilled and made productive,
and then have begun a clamor for their
removal. No one unacquainted with
the deathless love of the Indian for his
home, can imagine his agony and des-
pair when told that he must move
farther West. How little Americans
know what such removal means to
the Indians. To go from land that has
been reclaimed from the forest by the
axe, as in the eastern and middle sec
tiOns or from desert by irrigation,
as in the western half of the continent !;
to yet more intractable desert, or to a
more trackless forest-and this by force
is to experience the very depth of
human misery. The Indians have al
ways been struck in the most vulnera-
BILE points. 1t would be hard to single
out one tribe that has suffered more
than have the others it would be
equally difficult to point to one section
where the circumstances attendant upon
their sufferings have been of nature
more unyielding than they have been
throughout the entire country.
The Indians are not outside the COM
pass of Gods law. They are within
the region of cause and effect. But has
the nation ever stayed its process of
destruction long enough to inquire into
the causes of the rapid decrease of
numbers among them The report of
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
last year, showed known decrease of
nearly 5000 out of 264 ZOO, at the be-
ginning of the year. This is, probably,
not an uncommon rate. If we had the
statistics of decrease since 1920, we
should find, probably, that their num-
bers and the amount of territory occu-
pied by them had diminished in some
thing like direct ratio. There is, per-
haps, no better means of arriving at an
approximate conclusion. At that time
they roamed over the whole country !;
now they are thinly scattered over
reservations, deserts and mountains in
the West.
When Americans shall see this his
tory written within the one styled and
known as American history, they will
wonder that for centuries their eyes
have been closed and their ears dulled
to the sounds and sights of the life that
has gone out. When America declared
her right of freedom from oppression
and tyranny, her declaration was based
upon the sublime maxim, "All men are
born free and equal" The door which
shut tyranny out from the presence of
freedom, swung upon this hinge of
equality. But at the other end of the
great passage-way that liberty was
opening for the oppressed, another door
was slowly unclosing, and oppression
in another form was contesting her
further progress. Before America was
aware that self-interestimight blind her
own eyes to the truth she had so forci-
bly, enunciated, she found herself be-
lieving that white men, only, are born
free that il was a mistake to suppose
that colored men had equal rights, or,
in fact, that they had any rights that
white men were bound to respect.
Hence, when the people read that,
driven from place to place, the Indians
are fast disappearing, they consider it a
necessary consequence of the onward
march of American progress and civili-
zation. 1t is supposed to be a part,
and an unquestioned part, of the general
summing up of human affairs. They
reason that the general law is, and it is
supposed to be the law of destiny, that
the fittest shall survive; and that Chris
tianity and civilization are aiders and
maintainers of general law, not bar
riers to their fuljllment. By such spe-
cious reasoning have the American peo-
pie sought to convince themselves that
the crue lty and treachery of the United
States government toward the Indians,