The Portland daily press., 1895-07-02
GOOD INDIANS.
Remnants of the Dreaded Iro uuois Nation
Living in New York.

There are places this side of the great
West where an Indian need not be dead
in order to be good, and the state of New
York is one of them.
In this state, says the New York Jour
nal, there are about 5000 'sreserva-
tion" Indians, and although most of
them refuse to be entirely like white men,
although they further incur the dislike of
some of their neighbors by declining to
get off the rich lands which remain theirs
by treaty, they are a remarkably good
lot, as Indians go, and would be account
ed as good as the average of humanity il
they were only white.
These Indians are the remains, in the
United States, of the once dreaded Iro.
quois nation, and they are very proud Of
their ancestry. Although they veal
civilized clothing instead of blankets, live
in houses as good as those tof ordinary
white farmers, and get their modest liv
ing by working for it, they adhere jeal
ously to their old tribal distinctions, and
to the ancient custom of having a full
force of ''war chiefs and council
Chiefs and the various tribes, or nations,
asSthey call themselves combine to main.
tain still higher order of dignitaries,
called sachems.
One. of these sachems who is very proud
of the distinction, is Col and Brvt
Brig Gen. Ely Parker, at present an at.
tache of the police department. of New
York city, but who was an esteemed
civil engineer in Illinois before the late
war between the North and South, and
was one of the first staff officers of Gen.
Grant, who retained him throughout the
war. and later made him Indian commits
sioner
About the goodness of these Indians
some people differ, but their worst enc
mics cannot deny that nowhere in the
United States is the life, person and prop
erty of a white man safer than in or neat
one of the reservations They are re-
specters of women, too. Most of the
teachers of the school in the Indian reser-
vations of this state are young white
women, and they agree in testifying that
they never are subjected to any of the
annoyances which befall schoolma ans
in many other rural districts.
Thieves are to be found wherever there
is human nature, but the dockets of local
courts in the vicinity of New York reser-
vatiOns seldom have case against an
Indian for theft.
But these Indians are philosophers,
after a fashion, and one result of it
troubles some of their white neighbors
greatly. Their wants are few and simple,
and, as they have not acquired the virtue
or vice--of accumulation, they generally
regard enough as good as feast. - A
few of them are ambitious, work hard
and save money, but the majority live on
the hand -to-mouth principle. All do a
little planting, as their ancestors did be-
fore them from time immemoriai, and
some of them work for wages as loggers
berry pickers, etc. but when there is no
immediate need for effort they take to
"sport" of some kind, and enjoy it as
heartily as a lot of schoolboys, They are
great ball players, foot racers, swimmers
and dart -throwers, and such of them as
have horses delight in racing, no matter
how poor the animals or how slow the
time that can be got out of them.
Their most important diversion, how
ever, is the dance, of which there are
several each year at stated periods As
among white men, the dancing depends
much upon Hthe company, for some In
dians are very fastidious, while others are
not. Attempts have been made by some
land grabbers, and also by some we'll
meaning religious people, to prove that
all the Indian dances are scenes of de-
bauchery, but there is abundant evidence
to the contrary.
Some of the music for the dances in as
odd as any ever described by African
travellers. One of the instruments is the
Indian drum, which resembles a tam
BOURNE; another is turtle skin, dried
an d distended, and containing few shot,
pebble or peas Using this as rattle,
the turtles head being the handle, the
leader, who is generally the medicine
man" of the tribe, ''shakes time'' for
the dancers, occasionally giving special
emphasis with the drum, which he holds
in the other hand
The medicine man, by the way, is
most hideously picturesque character. He
wears q gown. but the most striking ar
ticle of his costume is mask, carved
from wood and containing two small
holes for the eyes. AS the mask entirely
covers the features is much larger than
the human face, and, of course has un-
changing features, which are framed
wildly in long hair. it is something to
be dreamed about for days by the small
white boys, who never lose an opportunity
to behold the dancers.
srz