Good Indian

“ The Indian wise speakers in the book are the best men of their tribe. Only what is true is within this book. I want all Indians and white men to read and learn how the Indians lived and thought in the olden time and may it bring holy—good upon the younger Indian to know of their fathers. A little while and the old Indians will no longer be and the young will be even as white men. When I think, I know it is the mind of the Great Mystery that the white man and the Indians who fought together should now be one people. ”

“ How quickly their sound arrests the attention of the traveler and stranger? How softly their syllables fall from the lips of beauty. There seems a magic spell about them. May it be their protection from any change. It is but just that the streams that first knew the Indians in their pride and glory should retain the melody of their language.
In many instances, the Indian character has been found capable of great refinement from education, and of the few who have been placed in our colleges, some have evinced superior talents. ”

“ There is no danger of painting Indians, so that they will become attractive to civilized people; and there is no need of painting them more hideously than they paint themselves.
There is a bright and pleasing side to Indian character; and thinking that there has been enough written of their wars and their cruelties, of the hunter’s and the fisherman’s life, I have sat down by their firesides, and listened to their legends, and tried to become acquainted with their domestic habits, and to understand their finer feelings, and the truly noble traits of their character. ”

“ The nature of an Indian can be changed. He changes under adverse circumstances, and rises into the dignity of a civilized being. If you war against him, it takes a generation or two to regenerate his race, but it can be done. I would have fields around the trading-houses. I would encourage the Indians to cultivate them. Let them see how much it adds to their comfort; how it insures to their wives and children abundant subsistence, and then you win the Indian over to civilization; you charm him, and he becomes a civilized man. ”

“ There is no reason why the Indians should not speedily become civilized. Those who have longest lived amongst them, and who best understand their character, tell me so. I fully believe it. The Indian follows his wild habits because he has been educated to do so. The education of habit, familiar from infancy, and the influence of tradition, lead him to the hunt, and as much to despise manual labor. He does what he has been taught to consider as noble and honorable, and that is what the most enlightened do. ”

“ We knew many of their present stalwart braves in those days of early life when the Indian and white alike forget disguise, but in the unchecked exuberance of youthful feeling show the real character that policy and habit may afterwards so much conceal; and we know that, under the stolid stoic look he assumes, there is burning in the Indian's nature a heart of fire and feeling, and an all-observing keenness of apprehension, that marks and remembers everything that occurs, and every insult he receives. ”

“ Those who read these stories will have the narratives just as they came to me from the lips of the Indians themselves; and from the tales they can get a true notion of the real man who is speaking. He is not the Indian of the newspapers, nor of the novel, nor of the Eastern sentimentalist, nor of the Western boomer, but the real Indian as he is in his daily life among his own people, his friends, where he is not embarrassed by the presence of strangers, nor trying to produce effects, but is himself—the true, natural man. ”

“ I had read some flaming picture books of Indian life, and I had mixed all my life more or less with the Indians, that is, such as are willing to mix with us on the border, but the real Indian, the brave, simple, silent and thoughtful Indian who retreats from the white man when he can, and fights when he must, I had never before seen or read a line about. ”

“ As yet I am inclined to think that the idea of the Indians becoming what we call a civilised people seems quite hopeless; those who entertain such benevolent anticipations should come here, and behold the effect which three centuries of contact with the whites have produced on the nature and habits of the Indian. The benevolent theorists in England should come and see with their own eyes that there is a bar to the civilisation of the Indians, and the increase or even preservation of their numbers, which no power can overleap. ”

“ The Indian, on the contrary, free from the restraints and refinements of polished life, and in a great degree a solitary and independent being, obeys the impulses of his inclination or the dictates of his judgment; and thus the attributes of his nature, being freely indulged, grow singly great and striking. ”

“ We all know what a savage Indian is. What is a civilized Indian?—what a semi-civilized Indian? To what degree of industry, frugality, and sobriety can the Indian be brought? How well does he repay efforts and expenditures for his enlightenment and his advancement in the arts of life? How far does he hold his own when once fairly started on his course by the bounty of the government or by philanthropic enterprise, instructed and equipped, with no obstacles in his way, and with no interruptions from without? ”

“ O that the Indian had more of such, kind friends! how soon would the wounds made by the wicked whites be healed, and joy and gladness spring up in the Indian's heart! But alas, too many of those who have gone amongst the Indians have rather manifested a domineering spirit, which has proved his want of success. The Indian is a free man and will not be driven. Gain his confidence and esteem, and then you can do anything with him. Some white people have imagined that in order to christianize the heathen, you must first teach them the arts and sciences as a necessary preparation for the Gospel ”

“ I like ’em better than most foreigners that have come over in the last few hundred years. One thing about the Indian is this: when he mixes with the white race he swaps all his own vices for them of the pale-faces—and he retains all his own virtues. ”

“ Such, nevertheless, is the spectacle which an Indian nation exhibits to the eye of a stranger. I have been a witness to it for a long series of years, and after much observation and reflection to discover the cause of this phenomenon, I think I have reason to be satisfied that it is in a great degree to be ascribed to the pains which the Indians take to instil at an early age honest and virtuous principles into the minds of their children, and to the method which they pursue in educating them. ”

“ I have already, in other chapters, commented upon some of these things, as revealed in the light of the Indian’s life. Their lives are, perforce, models of simplicity, devoid of luxuries and also of superfluities. It is not my intent to suggest that we should revert to their method of living a simple and unluxurious life, but I do long with all my heart that we might take lesson from them, and find the golden mean between their life and our too complex and superfluity-laden life. ”

“ The whole tendency of our intercourse with them has been, to demonstrate rather the physical than moral capabilities of the Indian, his expertness in war, his skill, stratagem, powers of endurance, and contempt of suffering. Indian fortitude has been applauded at the stake, and Indian kindness and generosity acknowledged in the wigwam, and in the mazes of the wilderness. ”

“ The most forlorn and repulsive aspect in which an Indian is ever presented to us is when he is in the state that may be called semi-civilization, — with a show and pretence, often a mockery of the white man's ways, in shiftlessness, wastefulness, and squalor, both in aspect and reality. The Indian roaming in free vigor, — with fresh air and soil and simple food, with the odor about him of the forest-pine and the berry, lifting the brook-water to his lips, — is in some sort a pleasing, never repulsive, object. ”

“ To such a man, as he recalls the undoubted wrongs done the Indian in the past, as he contemplates the fate of a race whose heroic and romantic qualities have been greatly exaggerated, or as he listens to the flattering tale of a missionary returned from some peaceful and half-civilized tribe, it is very pleasant to think that the original owners of the soil are to be protected by the government, saved to humanity, educated in the useful arts, and elevated to a Christian civilization. On such a man accounts of Indian outrages make little impression. ”

“ As we have here an assemblage of the people from other settlements, I wish to impress them with the necessity of treating the Indians with kindness, and to refrain from harboring that revengeful, vindictive feeling that many indulge in. ”

“ They well knew what effects the high-minded pride of an Indian is capable of producing, and, to this strong and noble passion they directed their attacks. "But," said they in reply to the answer which the chief had made them, "among all those chiefs whom you have mentioned, there is none who equals you in greatness; you are considered not only as the greatest and bravest, but as the best man in the nation." "Do you really believe as you say?" said the Indian, looking them full in the face. ”

“ There is but little in the civilised Indian to excite interest, or to enlist the feelings; they are a race between33 the whites, and their own people, as God made them. We have heard tales of those from whom they sprang; of their contests for their soil; of their fierce and bloody defence of their villages, and of the graves of their ancestors. But where are they? Where are the braves of the nation? They have come within the blighting influence of the white man; they have been swept away even as is the grass of their own prairie before the fire of the hunter. ”

“ Among the features that distinguish the character of the North American Indian, there is none more remarkable, none more worthy of the study and the imitation of civilised man, than the patience and impartial candour with which they listen to the advice or opinion of others: although so prone to be swayed by passion and governed by impulse, the Indian seems to have a wonderful power of laying aside these predispositions, when discussing a matter privately with a friend, or openly in council. ”

“ Already this is true of many Indians, and the day is not far distant—I venture to prophesy that it is within the next twenty years—when, if these influences continue, the Indian will be so thoroughly absorbed among his white brethren that as a separate race he will be lost to sight, and the Indian question will be a question no more. ”

“ DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL MANNERS OF THE INDIANS, WHILE ON THEIR WINTERING GROUNDS.
The Indian, who takes his position as an orator, in front of his people, and before a mixed assemblage of white men, is to be regarded, in a measure, as an actor, who has assumed a part to perform. He regards himself as occupying a position in which all eyes are directed upon him, in scrutiny, and he fortifies himself for the occasion, by redoubled efforts in cautiousness and studied stoicism. ”

“ In discussing the savage character writers have been too prone to indulge in vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration, instead of the candid temper of true philosophy. They have not sufficiently considered the peculiar circumstances in which the Indians have been placed, and the peculiar principles under which they have been educated. No being acts more rigidly from rule than the Indian. His whole conduct is regulated according to some general maxims early implanted in his mind. ”

“ But aside from these erroneous views, and after making just allowances for his ignorance and moral depression, the Indian is a man of plain common sense judgment, acting from what he knows, and sees, and feels, of objects immediately before him, or palpable to his view. ”

“ By degrees, he has been admitted into their opinions, and if we may so call it, the philosophy of their minds; and the life of an Indian no longer appears to him a mystery. He sees him acting, as other men would act, if placed exactly in his condition, prepared with the education the forest has given him, and surrounded with the same wants, temptations and dangers. ”

“ These Indians, who had become a Christian people, with the religion of Christ for their religion—occupying lands, rich with the products of their industry—must be thrust forth, because they were a people of a darker hue than ourselves. So these flourishing schools were broken up; these happy children were deprived of all their means of improvement, and thousands of innocent people were compelled to leave their homes and firesides, and wend their way to the wilderness—leaving the pathway drenched with their tears, and stained with their blood. ”

“ Were these affections cultivated, and children early taught the principles of virtue and rectitude, and the maxims of industry, order and cleanliness, there is no doubt that the mass of Indian society would be meliorated in a comparatively short period ”

“ Connected with them by a long residence, by the exercise of official duties, and by still more delicate and sacred ties, he has been regarded by them as one identified with their history, and received many marks of their confidence.
The Indians, viewed as a distinct branch of the human race, have some peculiar traits and institutions, from which their history and character may be advantageously studied. They hold some opinions, which are not easily discovered by a stranger, or a foreigner, but which yet exert a powerful influence on their conduct and life. ”