Indian Mutiny

“ 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. ”

“ The fact is, however, that this position of things is one unavoidably growing out of the clashing of adverse interests—the Indians being anxious to check, we to extend, our dominion and power as a people; and the causes existing now were in being nearly a century ago, and will, in all probability continue, until all vestige of Indian existence shall have passed utterly away. ”

“ Not as a matter of justice, but as a matter of fact, the rapid development of the country puts before the Indians the stern alternative of civilization, or destruction by conflict. Wise and human statesmanship will see to it that the Indians do not stand in the way of that development, but become part of it, and benefited by it. This is the “Indian problem” in a nutshell. ”

“ They but forget we Indians owned the land
From ocean unto ocean; that they stand
Upon a soil that centuries agone
Was our sole kingdom and our right alone.
They never think how they would feel to-day,
If some great nation came from far away,
Wresting their country from their hapless braves,
Giving what they gave us—but wars and graves.
Then go and strike for liberty and life,
And bring back honour to your Indian wife. ”

“ And yet the solution of the Indian problem is not a matter of theory or of speculation, but is an accomplished fact. It has been wrought out before our eyes. Wild, savage Indian tribes, as fierce, as lawless, as intractable as any now existing, have been tamed, have been taught the arts and ways of peace, have subjected themselves to law, and are now living in orderly, peaceable, industrious communities. ”

“ As I read over volumes of history in order to glean the truth from the great mass of details, I cannot help being struck with the different manner in which massacre and bloodshed are represented when Indians are spoken of, and when the same things are recorded of white men. The villages of Wyoming and Cherry Valley were devastated and destroyed by British and Indians, and the shocking story is repeated and dwelt upon as unparalleled in atrocity. The Indian is called a barbarian and bloodthirsty assassin—the personification of cruelty and revenge. ”

“ Thus the continual outbreaks of the Indians, have been a source of trouble and anxiety to the government, which has sought to adjust the claims of the red men in a fair and just manner. That the latter have often been cheated and robbed by unscrupulous agents and traders, no one can deny, but the fact still remains that the Indian nature is peculiarly hard to subdue, and their natural instincts are cruel. ”

“ Thus do we too often find the Indians on our frontiers to be the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes, who have lingered in the vicinity of the settlements and sunk into precarious and vagabond existence. Poverty, repining and hopeless poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes their spirits and blights every free and noble quality of their natures. ”

“ They could scent afar off, also, the smoke of the fires which the Indians made whenever they halted, and thus they would come upon them in their most secret haunts. Sometimes they would hunt down a straggling Indian, and compel him, by torments, to betray the hiding-place of his companions, binding him and driving him before them as a guide. ”

“ We pray them to remember that, for the sake of principle, their forefathers were compelled to leave, therefore driven from the old world, and that the winds of persecution wafted them over the great waters and landed them on the shores of the new world, when the Indian was the sole lord and proprietor of these extensive domains-Let them remember in what way they were received by the savage of America, when power was in his hand, and his ferocity could not be restrained by any human arm. ”

“ It has been said, and reiterated so frequently as to have obtained the familiarity of household words, that it is the doom of the Indian to disappear—to vanish like the morning dew before the advance of civilization—before those who belong by nature to a different, and by education and circumstances to a superior race; and melancholy is it to us—those doomed ones—that the history of this country, in respect to us, and its civilization, has furnished so much ground for the saying, and for giving credence to it. ”

“ For what are civilized and Christian nations now drenching their fields with blood?
It is said the Indian was cruel to the captive, and inflicted unspeakable tortures upon his enemy taken in battle. But, from what we know of them, it is not to be inferred that Indian chiefs were ever guilty of filling dungeons with innocent victims, or slaughtering hundreds and thousands of their own people, whose only sin was a quiet dissent from some religious dogma. Towards their enemies they were often relentless, and they had good reason to look upon white men as their enemies. ”

“ Another ground of violent outcry against the Indians is their barbarity to the vanquished. This had its origin partly in policy and partly in superstition. The tribes, though sometimes called nations, were never so formidable in their numbers but that the loss of several warriors was sensibly felt; this was particularly the case when they had been frequently engaged in warfare; and many an instance occurs in Indian history where a tribe that had long been formidable to its neighbors has been broken up and driven away by the capture and massacre of its principal fighting-men. ”

“ The great mass of the common Indians were low and degraded men. Almost any of them were ready for a price, and that an exceedingly small one, to betray their nearest friends.
An Indian would sometimes be taken prisoner, and immediately, in the continuance of the same battle, with his musket still hot from the conflict, he would guide the English to the retreats of his friends, and engage, apparently with the greatest zeal, in firing upon them. ”

“ Nor will the full effect of this consideration be appreciated if it be not borne in mind that the Indian is intensely susceptible to severe punishment. His own wars are so bloodless, his skirmishing tactics so cowardly and resultless, that the savage fighting of the whites, their eagerness for close quarters, and their deadly earnestness when engaged hand to hand, impress him with a strange terror. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is, in fact, no surmising the results of a mad war on the part of America.
But, in all their profound calculations, the Indian, the poor despised Indian, is forgotten. How he is to live, how he is to die, are alike matters of indifference. ”

“ It was in the year 1857 that the charm of this delicate fidelity was first broken; and broken so appallingly, that men were long incredulous that such things could be.
But the children, the sabred and mangled little ones—that these could be so treated by the same natives, was more astounding to the Anglo-Indians than even the treatment of the women. ‘Few of our countrymen have ever returned from India without deploring the loss of their native servants. In the nursery they are, perhaps, more missed than in any other part of the establishment. ”

“ The animosities felt and expressed are not towards the Indians as Indians, but arise out of the sense of injuries suffered, and the apprehension of further suffering. Were the Indians once rendered, by the extension and strengthening of our settlements, powerless for harm, the easy tolerance, the rough good-nature, and the quick condonement of wrong, which characterize pioneer communities, would speedily reconcile the whites to their presence, and establish relations not wholly unworthy of both parties. ”

“ It is said, that annihilation is the destiny of the Indian race. Perhaps it is, judging from the past. But shall we therefore hasten it? Death is the irreversible decree pronounced against the human race. Shall we accelerate its approach, because it is inevitable? No, sir. Let us treat with the utmost kindness, and the most perfect justice, the aborigines whom Providence has committed to our guardianship. ”

“ In these recitals, the Indian was depicted as the very impersonation of evil—a sort of wild demon, who delighted in nothing so much as blood and murder, Whether he had mind, was governed by any reasons, or even had any soul, nobody inquired, and nobody cared. It was always represented as a meritorious act in old revolutionary reminiscences, to have killed one of them in the border wars, and thus aided in ridding the land of a cruel and unnatural race, in whom all feelings of pity, justice, and mercy, were supposed to be obliterated. ”

“ White men—some of them not even citizens of the United States—in violation of law enter the Indian reservation, steal the Indians’ ponies, drive off their cattle, shoot down a few of the Indians for resisting them, or perhaps for the mere fun of the thing. The Indians, maddened by the wrongs inflicted upon them, go on the war-path. ”

“ Without going into the causes of the Indian troubles, it can safely be said that the frontiersmen generally believed that the tribes were dangerous and not to be trusted. In any difficulty between a white and a red man they assumed the latter was to blame. Many old-timers held that the only way to settle the Indian question was to exterminate the tribes or at least reduce them to impotence. ”

“ To precipitate a conflict by striking the Indians unnecessarily would in the unprotected condition of the settlers have been a crime, while to let the Indians escape to carry on in unbroken force an Indian warfare would have been worse. ”

“ The misconduct of a few white men disturbed the harmony of a wide region. The Indians were oppressed and insulted to the last point of forbearance, and a small but restless band, regarded as insubordinate and troublesome even by their own nation, seized upon the occasion to rush to war. ”

“ The mutiny failed, but its course showed with what intensity the mutineers hated the British. The Indians are a very kind-hearted people; they would not injure even an ant, much less a human being, if they could help it, but some of them were guilty of the most cruel excesses during the mutiny. The British, too, in their turn did not spare the Indians in any way either during the mutiny or after it. ”

“ What good end can be answered by teaching the North American Indians a religion which has ever been followed by destruction, pillage, rapacity and bloodshed, persecution for opinion, and a long catalogue of evils? and which, however good it may be in some of its precepts, is nevertheless utterly unable to restrain the avarice and cruelty of its followers. ”

“ Even fifty years ago, few Indians supposed that the wide Empire of India could be governed save under British guidance, or without the aid of British bayonets. The old habitual forces of disruption were too obvious; the distrust of one race for another was still too keenly felt to allow Indian politicians to imagine a united India under indigenous rule. ”

“ Now, these men, and those of a feebler kind who take their opinions from them, believe and preach that annihilation of the Indian is the only possible cure for the Indian evil. I have heard them say it in public a score of times that "the Indian should be wiped clean out." ”

“ To make worse these adverse influences, the public estimation of the Indian, resting, as it does, upon the imperfect knowledge of their character, and infused, as it ever has been, with the prejudice, is universally unjust.
The time has come in which it is no more than right to cast away all ancient antipathies, all inherited opinions, and to take a nearer view of our social life, condition and wants, and to learn anew your duty concerning the Indians. ”

“ It means the rush of a swarm of people, good, bad and indifferent—chiefly bad and indifferent—and these settlers will crowd themselves in as a wedge between the two divisions of the Indian reservation, and we shall have Indians both to the north and to the south. They will be exposed to influences from which they have been kept as yet; influences which will tend to uplift in the outcome, as well as to degrade. I thank God for it. I thank God that he is bringing the white man into the midst of the Indian country. ”

“ When the whites first came to this country, wars and atrocious cruelties existed between the new race of men and the Indians. When this animosity began to abate, a treaty was held, which was attended by the Indians far and wide. They were told by an interpreter, one of the white men who had already learned their language, that the Indian tribes appeared, in the eyes of white men, while in action, like the beasts of the forests and the birds of prey, changing from one form to the other, and that the bullets of the foreigners had no effect on them. ”