Helen Hunt Jackson

“ When we see the men of Lorraine, or of Montenegro, ready to die for the sake merely of being called by the name of one power rather than by that of another, we find it heroic, and give them our sympathies; but when the North American Indian is ready to die rather than wear the clothes and follow the ways of the white man, we feel for him only unqualified contempt, and see in his instinct nothing more than a barbarian’s incapacity to appreciate civilization. ”

“ The word “extermination” is as ready on the frontiersman’s tongue to-day as it was a hundred years ago; and the threat is more portentous now, seeing that we are, by a whole century of prosperity, stronger and more numerous, and the Indians are, by a whole century of suffering and oppression, fewer and weaker. But our crime is baser and our infamy deeper in the same proportion.
Close upon this Conestoga massacre followed a “removal” of friendly Indians—the earliest on record, and one whose cruelty and cost to the suffering Indians well entitle it to a place in a narrative of massacres. ”

“ They irate the lowest class of men to the perpetration of the darkest deeds against their victims, and as judges and jurymen shield them from the justice due to their crimes. Every crime committed by a white man against an Indian is concealed or palliated. Every offence committed by an Indian against a white man is borne on the wings of the post or the telegraph to the remotest corner of the land, clothed with all the horrors which the reality or imagination can throw around it. Against such influences as these the people of the United States need to be warned. ”

“ The savage does not labor for the gratifications of civilized life, since he does not desire these. His labors and his desires are both dependent upon some spiritual gift, which, having kindled him, quickens his desires and calls forth his toil. Unless he has some help from without, some light and life from above to illumine and inspire him, the savage remains a savage, and without this all the blandishments of the civilization with which he might be brought into contact could no more win him into a better state than could all the light and warmth of the sun woo a desert into a fruitful field. ”

“ I at one time, in April, 1787, was astonished when I heard one of their orators, a great chief of the Delawares, Pachgantschilias by name, go over this ground, recapitulating the most extraordinary events which had before happened, and concluding in these words: ‘I admit that there are good white men, but they bear no proportion to the bad; the bad must be the strongest, for they rule. They do what they please. They enslave those who are not of their color, although created by the same Great Spirit who created them. ”

“ It lies in appeal to the heart and the conscience of the American people. What the people demand, Congress will do. It has been—to our shame be it spoken—at the demand of part of the people that all these wrongs have been committed, these treaties broken, these robberies done, by the Government.
So long as there remains on our frontier one square mile of land occupied by a weak and helpless owner, there will be a strong and unscrupulous frontiersman ready to seize it, and a weak and unscrupulous politician, who can be hired for a vote or for money, to back him. ”

“ From ten in the forenoon till three in the afternoon there the helpless creatures stood before the shut gate—messengers going back and forth between the defiant garrison and the bewildered and impotent governor; the mob, thickening and growing more and more riotous hour by hour, pressing the Indians on every side, jeering them, reviling them, charging them with all manner of outrages, and threatening to kill them on the spot. The missionaries, bravely standing beside their flock, in vain tried to stem or turn the torrent of insult and abuse. ”

“ I fearlessly assert to the world, and I defy contradiction, that the North American Indian is everywhere in his native state a highly moral and religious being, endowed by his Maker with an intuitive knowledge of some great Author of his being and the universe—in dread of whose displeasure he constantly lives with the apprehension before him of a future state, when he expects to be rewarded or punished according to the merits he has gained or forfeited in this world. ”

“ He who violates his treaties, violates at the same time the law of nations, for he disregards the faith of treaties, that faith which the law of nations declares sacred; and, so far as dependent on him, he renders it vain and ineffectual. Doubly guilty, he does an injury to his ally, and he does an injury to all nations, and inflicts a wound on the great society of mankind. ”

“ Superintendents, agents, commissioners, secretaries, all reiteratedly recommending this one simple and necessary step toward civilization—the Indians themselves by hundreds imploring for titles to their farms, or at least “hoes”—why did the United States Government keep on and on in its obstinate way, feeding the Indian in gross and reckless improvidence with one hand, plundering him with the other, and holding him steadily down at the level of his own barbarism? ”

“ A ferocious massacre of white settlers by the Sioux had so exasperated the citizens of Minnesota, that they demanded the removal of all Indians from the State. The people were so excited that not an Indian could step outside the limits of the reservation without the risk of being shot at sight. The Winnebagoes had utterly refused to join the Sioux in their attack on the whites, and had been threatened by them with extermination in consequence of this loyalty. Thus they were equally in danger from both whites and Indians: their position was truly pitiable. ”

“ A view from the bluff reveals a living panorama, as one sees the vast fields of waving grain surrounding well-built and tasty cottages adorned with porches, and many of the conveniences found among industrions whites. The sight would lead a stranger, not knowing of its inhabitance by Indians, to inquire what prosperous white settlement was located here. It is by far the most advanced in the ways of civilization and progress of any in the Territory, if not on the coast. ”

“ The faith of treaties—that firm and sincere resolution, that invariable constancy in fulfilling our engagements, of which we make profession in a treaty—is therefore to be held sacred and inviolable between the nations of the earth, whose safety and repose it secures; and if mankind be not wilfully deficient in their duty to themselves, infamy must ever be the portion of him who violates his faith. ”

“ What imagination could have foreseen that in less than twenty years the chiefs of this Cherokee nation would be found piteously pleading to be allowed to remain undisturbed on these very lands? In the whole history of our Government’s dealings with the Indian tribes, there is no record so black as the record of its perfidy to this nation. There will come a time in the remote future when, to the student of American history, it will seem well-nigh incredible. From the beginning of the century they had been steadily advancing in civilization. ”

“ It will be admitted now on every hand that the only solution of the Indian problem involves the entire change of these people from a savage to a civilized life. They are not likely to be exterminated. Unless we ourselves withdraw from all contact with them, and leave them to roam untrammeled over their wilds, or until the power of a Christian civilization shall make them consciously one with us, they will not cease to vex us.
But how shall they become civilized? Civilization is in a most important sense a gift rather than an acquisition. ”

“ Our Indian wars are needless and wicked. The North American Indian is the noblest type of a heathen man on the earth. He recognizes a Great Spirit he believes in immortality he has a quick intellect; he is a clear thinker; he is brave and fearless, and, until betrayed, he is true to his plighted faith he has a passionate love for his children, and counts it joy to die for his people. ”

“ The Indians were unwilling to decide the matter without advice from the Five Nations, to whom they owed allegiance. A swift runner (Satcheecho) was, therefore, sent northward with the news of the occurrence; and the governor, with two of his council, went to Albany to hear what the Five Nations had to say about it. What an inconceivable spectacle to us to-day: the governments of Pennsylvania and New York so fully recognizing an Indian to be a “person,” and his murder a thing to be anxiously and swiftly atoned for if possible! ”

“ These Indians found themselves of a sudden surrounded by and caught up in the great influx of gold-seeking settlers, as helpless creatures on a shore are caught up in a tidal wave. There was not time for the Government to make treaties; not even time for communities to make laws. The tale of the wrongs, the oppressions, the murders of the Pacific-slope Indians in the last thirty years would be a volume by itself, and is too monstrous to be believed. ”

“ If he came here to tell us that our Indian system is a sink of iniquity, tell him we all know it. Tell him the United States never cures a wrong until the people demand it; and when the hearts of the poople ure reached the Indian will be saved. ”

“ In order to be a nation, there must be a people with a code of laws which they practise, and a government which they maintain. No vague sense of some unwritten law, to which human nature, in its lowest stages, doubtless feels some obligation, and no regulations instinctively adopted for common defence, which the rudest people herded together will always follow, are enough to constitute a nation. These Indian tribes are not a nation, and nothing either in their history or their condition could properly invest them with a treaty-making power. ”

“ The Indian Ring has fought the new policy at every step; and yet, notwithstanding our Indian wars, our violated treaties, and our wretched system, thousands of Indians, who were poor, degraded savages, are now living as Christian, civilized men. There was a time when it seemed impossible to secure the attention of the Government to any wrongs done to the Indians: it is not so to-day. The Government does listen to the friends of the Indians, and many of the grosser forms of robbery are stopped. No permanent reform can be secured until the heart of the people is touched. ”

“ However great perplexity and difficulty there may be in the details of any and every plan possible for doing at this late day anything like justice to the Indian, however hard it may be for good statesmen and good men to agree upon the things that ought to be done, there certainly is, or ought to be, no perplexity whatever, no difficulty whatever, in agreeing upon certain things that ought not to be done, and which must cease to be done before the first steps can be taken toward righting the wrongs, curing the ills, and wiping out the disgrace to us of the present condition of our Indians. ”

“ While they continue individually to gather the crumbs that fall from the table of the United States, idleness, improvidence, and indebtedness will be the rule, and industry, thrift, and freedom from debt the exception. The utter absence of individual title to particular lands deprives every one among them of the chief incentive to labor and exertion—the very mainspring on which the prosperity of a people depends. ”

“ Let it be fully understood that the Ute Indians have a good and sufficient title to 12,000,000 acres of land in Colorado, and that these Indians did not thrust themselves in the way of the white people, but that they were originally and rightfully possessors of the soil, and that the land they occupy has been acknowledged to be theirs by solemn treaties made with them by the United States.
“It will not do to say that a treaty with an Indian means nothing. It means even more than the pledge of the Government to pay a bond. ”

“ It was soon after these treaties that the artist Catlin made his famous journeys among the North American Indians, and gave to the world an invaluable contribution to their history, perpetuating in his pictures the distinctive traits of their faces and their dress, and leaving on record many pages of unassailable testimony as to their characteristics in their native state. He spent several weeks among the Sioux, and says of them: “There is no tribe on the continent of finer looking men, and few tribes who are better and more comfortably clad and supplied with the necessaries of life. ”

“ Said Black Kettle, the chief over whose lodge the American flag, with a white flag tied below, was floating at the time of the massacre, “I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man; but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for me to believe white men any more. * * * All my friends, the Indians that are holding back, they are afraid to come in; are afraid that they will be betrayed as I have been. I an not afraid of white men, but come and take you by the hand.” ”

“ The United States have unequivocally acceded to that great and broad rule by which its civilized inhabitants now hold this country. They hold and assert in themselves the title by which it was acquired. They maintain, as all others have maintained, that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or conquest, and gave also a right to such a degree of sovereignty as the circumstances of the people would allow them to exercise. ”

“ One of the chiefs said: ‘I no longer want to live; my women and children have been killed before my face, and I have been unable to defend them. Most Indians in my place would take a knife and cut their throats; but I will live to show these people that all they have done, and all they can do, shall not make me break faith with you so long as you will stand by us and defend us, in a language we know nothing of, to a great governor we never have and never shall see.’
“About their captives they say: ‘Get them back for us. ”

“ The great difficulty with the Indian problem is not with the Indian, but with the Government and people of the United States. Instead of a liberal and far-sighted policy looking to the education and civilization and possible citizenship of the Indian tribes, we have suffered these people to remain as savages, for whose future we have had no adequate care, and to the consideration of whose present state the Government has only been moved when pressed by some present danger. ”