The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1892-10-08

writing. in 1910 or thereabouts In 1921 he
had it completed. 1t is not strictly true
that he invented letters. He had seen
white men using them, and his untnught
shrewdncss gave him clcw to their meth
od. 1t will well repay any scholar to mas
ter the Cherokee alphabet sufficiently to
read aloud with llucncy, and any one can
do it in Il week. 1t is II singularly instruct
i've lesson.
The young Cherokee does not have to
learn to spell, the alphabet is purely pho
netic. In lS05-l0 the Chcrollees had sunk
to Il rather low ebb. They had ceased to
be good pagans without becoming Chris
tlans. a common subject of debate among
them was the white mans talk paper"
The old set declared it was sort of witch
craft peculiar to whitcs-no Indian could
learn it. That settled the matter with the
Bourbons ScIuoyah and few radicals
declared it was an art which Indians could
master, and finally proved it, He advanced
rapidly in honor and learning One of his
favorite ideas was that the Navajoes were.
branch OF the Cherokces long separated
from the rest. He went to visit them and
never returned. Born in Georgia about
ITO, he died in northern Mexico in 1912
AS long rs she lived the Cherokee Nation
paid his widow 5000 per year--the only
literary pension paid in the United States.
1t is pleasant to read in the papers of the
day that the last point in issue between
this interesting people and the United
States is definitely settled; that the money
received for their lands is so judiciously
invested that the interest supports their
government and schools and leaves IL sur
plus, and that their crops and cattle are
again so abundant that, as in 1850, they
may well claim to be in proportion TO their
numbers the richest nntioD in tbn would
1t is the fashion to say that the west and
the south have treated the Indians with
uncXamp!ed cruelty. and strangely enough
this complaint is heard most often in the
only section which cXterminatcd its own
Indians, not leaving remnant. Almost.
every tribe of the Ohio and Mississippi
valley now has its representatives on the
reserved land, but where are the Pcuuots
and Mohicans, the Narragansetts and the
Wampanoags2
1t is the fashion to say that the Indians
owned and inhabited the country, and the
whites violently took it from them. Neither
statement is true. The country was not in
any just sense inhabited There are good
reasons for believing that there are MS
many Indians within the present limits Of
the United States as when the pilgrims
landed. 1t IS certain that the great plains
were not inhabited till after the horse was
introduced. The Indians "Owned" the
country only in the sense that gypsies own
country over which they roam, or hunters
own forest. There was no occupation in
my moral or legal sense.
This world was not made to be monopo-
LIKED III that way. The area required to
yield one savage precarious living will
sustain GOO civilized people in the highest
condition of comfort. II man is ut liberty
to dcducc the eternal design from his own
moral instincts and the worlds experience,
this conclusion is unavoidable: That the
H,NO civilized Indians in the Indian Terri
tory present a far more pleasing sight to
higher intelligence than did the 2OO,GOG
who once rcamed over the whole country
east OF the Rocky mountains.
j. III. BEADLE