The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1898-10-27
Present Day Thoughts.

article is written some days in advance
of the event, yet it will not appear in
print until after the Sixteenth Indian
Conference has been held at Lake
Mohonk. In consequence, though
the latest phase of thought regarding
Indian will hardly be included in this
column, yet review of past condi-
tions, past mistakes, past iniustices
and present attempts to right great
wrongs will be particularly timely.
Concerning the early unhappy
struggles between the Aborigines and
write men, we have at this late date
very little survival of feeling, because
those struggles took place between
generations of men that have never
been seen by us Just as there. seems
TO the young man of the present day
something lacking in the reality of
Mexican war. Yet if we permit our
thoughts to dwell on these events of
the past for any length of time they
gradually assume q definite shape to
us. We then plainly see that there
was something more involved on the
Indian side than mere blind resistance
to the white man; and that the
white man had more of an i'm
pulse back of him than mere
bloody slaughter of crafty foe
1t was really a struggle between pro-
gress and barbarism-on one side a
few hundred thousand men with
roaming nature and dcombatitive tribal
instincts, on the other side the early
ripplings of a tide that was destined
never to cease in its risings until the
resistance on the Eastern shores had
been driven beyond the Mississippi,
afterwards to the Rockies, and from
thence to the Pacific coast. The white
mans barbarian foe was made weak,
not solely by his hatred of the white
intruder, but because of his equally
strong hatred of his fellow red-man of
a JIlOC. It utbdllS are
nearly all sad, with only an occasional
gleam of native gentleness and for
hearance, as when Hudson explored
the river of his own name, or when
Penn tried the effect of Christianity
unadulterated and unperverted, or
when the impulsive Pocohontas fol
lowed her heart leadings and saved at
the risk of her own the life of one of
the intruders, or when the Jesuits
counted their lives as dross if they
could but serve their church and its
head by taking light and civilization,
as they understood it, into dark
places.
These exceptional cases demonstrate
that there were ways of overcoming
barbarism by other means than the
sword and the gun, the treacherous
compact, and the over reaching bar
gain. But the better way was not
chosen, the weaker was not lifted up
but crushed; the strong was not mag
unanimous, but fierce; and the worst
elements among the intruders went on
a very pioneer work of disintegration
and destruction with their diseases
and their drinks. The more one
thinks upon it. the sadder one seems,
yet it is done, and cannot be undone.
Still if We bear in mind that ances-
tors may leave a heritage of wealth,
but also a heritage of mistakes or un-
solved problems, it is quite blind for
our nations people to think Of all
this past, regretable and unchanged
BILE past, as being without its share
of responsibility for those of us who
have come into the inheritance of a
great national history and prospect
4:
Just as a child is not able by one
years study to come to full knowl-
edge of what to do or how to conduct
itself, thus with a nation. So, though
our best men came long ago to a real
ization that justice was due to the In
dian, and was best to be meted out by
placing him in q huge reservation re-
mote from interference and free to re-
main in savagery, yet it is now seen
that the method chosen was exactly
the one to lead to continuance of
the Indian problem. According to
the dictum of one of our great think
ers, mo question is settled until it is
settled right And we therefore still
have a responsibility in this day as in
the nth century, to deal with the In
dian as we find him, and if govern
ment records are to be trusted our
treatment has in some cases been al
most as fatal. This leads therefore to
brief reference to the Indian confer
ence of the past and the attention
they have attracted to the pauperiz-
ing and destructive effect of the res
ervation and free-ration system of the
past and even the present.
Beginning with 1888, by the genera