Idaho semi-weekly world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1875-1908, 1893-01-31

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 untaught
shrewdness gave him clew to their meth
od. 1t will well repay any scholar to mas
ter the Cherokee alphabet sufficiently to
read aloud with f1ency, and any one can
do 1t in a week 1t is a singularly instruct
i've lesson.
The young Cherokee does not have to
learn to spell, the alphabet is purely pho
netic. In S05-l0 the Cherokees had sunk
to rather low ebb. They had ceased to
be good pagans without becoming Chris
tians. A common subject of debate among
them was the white mans talk paper"
The old set declared it was a sort of witch
craft peculiar to whites--no Indian could
learn it, That settled the matter with the
Bourbons Sequoyah 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
a branch of the Cherokees 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 as she lived the Cherokee Nation
paid his widow $500 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 a sur
hnt nj
again so abundant that, as In 1860, they
may well claim to be in proportion to their
numbers the richest nation in the world
1t Is the fashion to say that the west and
the south have treated the Indians with
unexampled cruelty, and strangely enough
this complaint is heard most often in the
only section which exterminated it's 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 Pequots
and Mohicans, the Narragansetts and the
Wampanoags?
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
aS"'ohS toi pclltfluB IndU there are
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
any moral or legal sense
This world was not made to be monopo
lized in that way. The area required to
yield one savage precarious living will
sustain 6oo civilized people in the highest
condition of comfort. If man is at liberty
to deduce the eternal design from his own
moral instincts and the worlds experience
this conclusion is unavoidable: That the
7oooo civilized Indians in the Indian Terri
tory present far more pleasing sight to
higher intelligence than did the 200 900
who once roamed over the whole country
east of the Rocky mountains.
j, II. BEADLE.