The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1894-11-20
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. 1t 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 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.
anu aOW COl4CS OnO OI0CT 10 b1tAC Oil
the guard. He can neither fight nor
fly" is the idea of this order. E'He
must be good Indian now. The
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 real Indian,
absolutely unchanged by contact with
11a hifo hac ~,
the far deserts and mountain fast
nesses. In 1916, Francis Parkman
tells us in the t'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 Mr.. Parkman found them. Ell
derly people who visit the t'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 s'last
Indian" will be, in every sense of the
word, the ''last.'' He will leave moth
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
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 he is 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 u time
when, leaving no trace behind, he shall
pass out of this world, when the ''last
Indian" shall go-like the mist.