American Indians

“ Generations of American Indians have served and sacrificed to defend our freedom, and no segment of our population has sent a larger percentage of its young men and women to serve in our Armed Forces. But American Indians are not just an important part of our country's past; they are also a vital part of today's America and will play an even more important role in America's future. ”

“ However little we may be interested in the American Indians personally, their experience touches us more nearly, as an exemplification of the experience of our own ancestors. Our primary institutions root themselves in a prior gentile society in which the gens, phratry, and tribe were the organic series, and in which the council of chiefs was the instrument of government. The phenomena of their ancient society must have presented many points in common with that of the Iroquois and other Indian tribes. ”

“ When we have learned to speak of the American Indians in language adapted to Indian life and Indian institutions, they will become comprehensible. So long as we apply to their social organizations and domestic institutions terms adapted to the organizations and to the institutions of civilized society, we caricature the Indians and deceive ourselves. There was neither a political society, nor a state, nor any civilization in America when it was discovered ”

“ It is expedient with respect to the condition of the North American Indians, to take into consideration some of the circumstances relating to their languages, customs, and superstitions; particularly such of them as may appear to have remote analogies with the observances of other races, or with the more advanced state of civilisation that existed in the fifteenth century, among the tribes who had conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan. ”

“ The North American Indians, though they achieved no civilisation to be compared with the cultures of Mexico and Peru, yet conserved a very high degree of initiative in other directions. According to competent observers, these people have shown a capacity for wiliness and a power of divination of the obscured workings of nature and of the human mind which have never been surpassed elsewhere. ”

“ Robbed of their homes and hunting-grounds, and driven by the encroachments of the whites to distant regions, which hardly support existence, the Indians, day by day, gradually decrease before the accumulating evils of body and soul, which their civilized persecutors entail upon them. With every man's hand against them, they drag on to their final destiny; and the day is not far distant when the American Indian will exist only in the traditions of his pale-faced conquerors. ”

“ Nothing in all the history of the earliest intercourse between the friendly tribes of North American Indians and the Europeans coming among them is more pathetic than the accounts of their simple hospitality, their unstinted invitations, and their guileless expressions of desire for a greater knowledge of the white men’s ways. ”

“ As we celebrate American Indian Heritage Month this year, we take note of the injustices that have been suffered by American Indian people. Even today, few enjoy the full bounty of America's prosperity. But even as we look to the past, we must also look to the future. Along with other Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives will face new challenges in the coming century. We can ill afford to leave any of our people behind. Tribal America must figure as prominently in our future as it has in our past. ”

“ There is great diversity among the various tribes of North American Indians in respect to manners and customs, dress, and modes of living. The inhabitants of the sultry regions of Florida and Texas, of course pay less attention to the texture of their garments, and the comfort of their dwellings, than those who reside in the more northern regions ”

“ Notwithstanding the North-American Indians, like the South-Americans, inter the whole riches of the deceased with him, and so make his corpse and the grave heirs of all, they never give them the least disturbance; even a blood-thirsty enemy will not despoil nor disturb the dead. ”

“ Shortly afterwards he went to some of the inhabitants, and said to them. When white man’s child die—Indian man be sorry—he help bury him—when my child die—no one speak to me—I make his grave alone—I can’t no live here.—He gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child and carried it with him two hundred miles through the forest, to join the Canada Indians. ”

“ Of course all theorists who have to deal with these supposed early discoveries by Europeans connect, each with his own pet scheme, the prevailing legendary belief among the American Indians that white men at an early period made their appearance on the coasts all the way from Central America to Labrador. ”

“ To assume that a population came over and passed down to Mexico, Yucatan and even to South America, carrying with them their arts, but not exercising them on this interminable journey, is ridiculous. No pottery has yet been found between the Yukon and the Humbolt, or even further south.
It was also assumed that either the ten tribes, or a Jewish colony, were the ancestors of the American Indians. ”

“ The relation of the American people to the Indians, since the first settlement of this country, has been one of conflict, which has been almost incessant in some sections of the land. By the opening of the nineteenth century the red men had been driven back in great measure from the thirteen original states, but the tribes in the west were still frequently hostile, and stood sternly in the way of our progress westward. ”

“ A few of these tribes live a retired existence in the forests, but most of them mingle with the white people, and are employed by them in gathering rubber or other products of the forests. The skin of the Indians is a coppery-brown colour. They are of a medium height, but have not the high cheek bones of the North American Indian. ”

“ There is every prospect of these north-western tribes remaining in their present primitive state, indeed of their gradual improvement, for nothing can induce them to touch spirits. They know that the eastern Indians have been debased and conquered by the use of them, and consider an offer of a dram from an American trader as an indirect attempt upon their life and honour. ”

“ It is curious that most of the accounts of the Indians of North America come from men not natives here, from French and Germans; and characteristic that we should send an expedition to the Dead Sea, while wide tracts of this continent lie all untouched by the white man's foot; and, also, that while we make such generous [Pg 391] and noble efforts to christianize and bless the red, yellow, and black heathens at the world's end, we should leave the American Indian and Negro to die in savage darkness, the South making it penal to teach a black man to write or read. ”

“ The first two classes of tribes always held the preponderating power, at least in North America, and furnished the migrating bands which replenished the ranks of the Village Indians, as well as the continent, with inhabitants. It remained for the Village Indians to invent the process of smelting iron ore to attain to the Upper Status of barbarism, and, beyond that, to invent a phonetic alphabet to reach the first stage of civilization. One entire ethnical period intervened between the highest class of Indians and the beginning of civilization. ”

“ When the whites first came to North America, the Indians were a formidable foe. For years they continued to be a menace to the lonely settler or the frontier village. But when the white settlers were once firmly established, the days of uncertainty were over, and the Indians were brushed aside as a man brushes aside a troublesome insect. ”

“ In considering the characteristics and capacity of the Indians in Central America, it can never be forgotten that, during a period of great257 revolutionary agitation, two unknown Indians should, in a most extraordinary manner, have risen to the surface, and controlled the destinies of the new Republics. ”

“ When the Indians are travelling in their own country, they enquire for a house of their own tribe; and if there be any, they go to it, and are kindly received, though they never saw the persons before—they eat, drink, and regale themselves, with as much freedom, as at their own tables; which is the solid ground covered with a bear-skin. It is their usual custom to carry nothing along with them in the journies but a looking-glass, and red paint, hung to their back—their gun and shot pouch—or bow and quiver {17} full of barbed arrows ”

“ THE AMERICAN INDIAN The American Indian has no ancestry of civilization to look back to. His forebears so far as is known to history were savages, and the Indians found in America by the first white settlers were also savages.
Their origin as a race is shrouded in obscurity, some asserting that they are descendants of the Semitic race of Asia, others that they are Turanian and Malaysian mixed. ”

“ The Indians were also an object of special solicitude in the royal proclamation. 'The Indians who live under our Protection should not be molested in the possession of such parts of our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them.' The home government was far in advance of the American colonists in its humane attitude towards the Indians. ”

“ During the War of 1812 large numbers of negroes in the South took advantage of the general excitement to make good their escape from bondage. The Indians welcomed them and shielded them from bands of slave hunters that made sallies into the Spanish territory for the purpose of recapturing them. In this the Indians were aided by the British, who saw an opportunity to make trouble for the republic on its southern border, while the United States troops were occupied on the Canadian frontier. A British agent built a strong fort on Spanish soil on the Appalachicola River. ”

“ How far the theory of our culture was applicable to the needs of the Amerind can be only a subject of speculation, for the errors of application of that theory debarred the Indians from participation in any benefits which they might have received thereunder. The imperfect generalization which has been applied to the study of the American Indian is most conspicuous in error in its failure to take account of the marked degradation which ensued in the Indian character after the settlement of the country by the whites. ”

“ But the Indians belong to one great race, and show no connection in language or customs with the outside world. They belong to the American continent, it has been said, as strictly as its opossums and its armadillos, its maize and its golden rod, or any other of its aboriginal animals and plants. ”

“ If such, then, are the effects of ardent spirits upon the condition of civilized man, who has the precepts of instructed reason to enlighten him, and the consolations of Christianity to support him, what must be the influence of intemperate habits upon the aboriginal tribes? I propose to offer a few considerations upon this subject. And in so doing I disclaim all intention of imputing to one nation of the European stock, more than the other, the national crime of having introduced ardent spirits among the American Indians. ”

“ TRADITIONS OF THE ANCIENT WHITE PEOPLE. WHEN the Indians first made their appearance on the Klamath river it was already inhabited by a white race of people known among us as the Wa-gas. These white people were found to inhabit the whole continent, and were a highly moral and civilized race. They heartily welcomed the Indians to their country and taught us all of their arts and sciences. The Indians recognized the rights of these ancient people as the first possessors of the soil and no difficulties ever arose between the two people. ”

“ These four remained many years among the Indians, wandering from one tribe to another, always trying to hear of some Spanish settlement where they might meet friends. Sometimes the Indians were kind to them, but oftener they were treated very cruelly. Several times it happened that they were taken captive and held as slaves, and then their lives would have been most miserable, had it not been that the Indians grew to respect them because they knew so many things that they themselves were ignorant of. ”

“ As to their power, as we have intimated above, it was derived from the capacity, courage, prejudices, and ignorance of the Indians, which the American missionary, if let alone, would soon overcome by his more liberal dealings with them, and his constant effort to improve their condition, which, just in proportion as the Indians learned the value of their own productions and labor, would diminish the profits in the fur trade. ”

“ In a Report for the protection of the Western Frontier, submitted to Congress by the Secretary of War, we have a very fair exposé of the conduct and intentions of the American Government towards the Indians. Although the Indians continue to style the President of the United States as their Great Father, yet, in this report, the Indian feeling which really exists towards the American people is honestly avowed ”

“ But after making all due allowances for these conditions, it still remains difficult to understand how so great a number of languages have become established amongst a comparatively small population. At no time, since the discovery of America, have the total numbers of Indians within the regions now forming the United States, exceeded five hundred thousand men, women and children. In 1829, it was estimated that the Indian population slightly exceeded three hundred and thirteen thousand. ”