Arizona republican., 1894-11-23
LEAVES NO MONUMENT.
The Vanishing American Indian Has Done
 Nothing to Benefit Mankind.

The Vanishing American Indian Has Done
 Nothing to Benefit Mankind.
 A recent brief announcement, un- noticed by many, had an important bearing on the Indian question:" or on the duration of that question, says the Kansas City Star. It was, seem ingly, that the last mounted soldier of the United States army had been ordered out of the Indian Territory, something that had never before happened. Ever since the white man landed on the shores of what are now the United States a white man with gun has been watching the Indian. The first semblance of an army was raised to fight Indians; almost the first structure raised on the shore was a fort for pro- lection against Indians; so, for two hundred years and more as the Indian has fallen back, the soldier and the fort have moved with him. Then the white man moved around to the west ern ocean and the western shore, to Oregon and California, and began to push the Indian to the eastward, fort and soldier and settler altogether press ing on. Now the Indians moved back from the Atlantic and Pacific to the great central plains seem surrounded. and now comes the order to take off the guard. ''He can neither fight nor fly is the idea of this order. ''He must be a good Indian now. The troopers can unstable and take a long rest from now on." Does not this re- ally look as if we were approaching the last hour of the last Indian?
 In truth, the original ''rear' Indian, absolutely unchanged by contact with the white man, has gone now except in the far deserts and mountain fast nesses. In 1S46, Francis Parkman tells us in the Oregon Trail" he saw Indians who had not emerged from the ''stone age,'' and used imple ments and weapons such as may have been used by people before Noah's flood. But could such Indians be found now? Certainly not in the region where MT. Parkman found them. FL derly people who visit the Wild West" show make mild complaint that the Indians who do the best they can to look natural do not look like the Indians of forty years ago. That In dian has, somehow, passed on.''
 This much is certain, that the Hast Indian will be, in every sense of the word, the last" He will leave noth- ing behind him to mark the place he occupied in the world no history; neither monument. Books there will be and museums and ''collections," but none by him. Should an Indian be- come so learned and accomplished as to write history he would become a white man. Many white men have followed him, studied him. Learned men from foreign countries have jour neyed here for such purposes, but who of all of them has learned the secret of the Indians heart? To do that it would be necessary to become for the time an Indian-to put yourself in his place." and what white man has ever done that? The Indian has no record, or it is as if whispered to the winds or committed to the leaves that fall or to the water that runs away. The Indian rears, while heis an Indian, no habitation that endures; when it is gone there is nothing but ring on the ground that the rain washes away. He throws up no highway; his narrow path through the grass lasts no longer than the buffalo's road to ford in the stream. So there must come a time when, leaving no trace behind, he shall pass out of this world, when the Hast Indian" shall go-like the mist.