Indian civilization

“ How shall the Indian cease to disturb us, and become a blessing to the nation?
There is really but one solution to the Indian problem, though many have been prominently attempted. We have tried to force the Indian. We have fought him. We have shut him in upon reservations. We have made a pretence of feeding and clothing him. We have tried our hand at civilization, have built school-houses, provided teachers, and gathered Indian children together, and taught them the rudiments of learning. ”

“ It is undoubted that they have done some good, by influencing the Indians to embrace Christianity, and have inculcated the first principles of civilization, particularly in the tribes now under consideration, which shows itself in the desire which they have expressed to be collected in a village, and have lands allotted them for cultivation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it is a commonplace of history that one of the main streams of this great migration of the pioneers of the world's civilization entered India through her north-western mountain passes to build up her spiritual character, even as the Indus and the Ganges have broken through the Himalayas to create her physical character. For centuries these Indo-Aryans pushed on their work of colonizing India amid struggles and conflicts with the original inhabitants of the country, and developed a civilization that is reflected in the literature they have created. ”

“ Two inferences seem naturally to follow from the fact: first, that any hopeful work in the civilization of the Indians must satisfy itself with effecting its results with the third generation from the present full-grown stock; and, second, that we must be content with accepting fragments, degrees, and stages of full civilization, as all that we are likely ever to realize in those of Indian blood. ”

“ What progress the Indian has made, therefore, toward civilization can be traced directly to his relations with the whites, and similarly the evil conditions of life among a great number of our Indians can be traced to the same cause. ”

“ No less than 26,873 full-blood male Indians were laboring in civilized pursuits, exclusive of those belonging to the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory. These people are not savages; they worship God—many of them enjoying the light of Catholic truth; they educate themselves and their children; they live in houses and wear decent clothes; they toil and are producers of valuable articles. Let us see, now, what is said about these and the other Indians less advanced in civilization, by their rulers, the successive Commissioners of Indian Affairs and their subordinates, the agents. ”

“ It is certain that under the direction of the Fathers many thousands of the Indians became Christians, learned the arts, and adopted the ways of civilization to an extent which raised them greatly above their nomadic kinsmen of the North. ”

“ The Indian population represented every grade of civilization. One might see the several stages of progress from the ignorant and superstitious blanketed Indian on the western reservations to the representatives of our advanced American culture among the five civilized nations. Our [Pg 20] missionaries have labored long and successfully and the education, degree of civilization and prosperity enjoyed by the Indians are due principally, if not solely, to the efforts of consecrated men and women, who devoted their lives to this special work. ”

“ It is not within the scope of this book to recount the great good that has come to the Indian through this branch of the Indian service, save to make full acknowledgment here of its greatness. It has done much more than attend the Indian's education. Many a tribe, and many individual Indians, have had saved to them tracts of good land, upon which they have worked their way toward civilization. ”

“ So that when we vaunt our civilization we must remember that it has no charms for those who have known the life of the woods, and thus we learn some at least of the reasons why we have failed to produce from the Indian a finished product of the civilization of our day.
Uncongenial as it may be to our pride of race to admit the fact, it would seem certain that the Indian character has power of persistence over that of the Caucasian. ”

“ It has come to be such an accepted thing in the history and fate of the Indian that he is to be always pushed on, always in advance of what is called the march of civilization, that to the average mind statements of these repeated removals come with no startling force, and suggest no vivid picture of details, only a sort of reassertion of an abstract general principle. ”

“ And finally we shall be risen very slowly, from the lowest to the highest civilization. Some of the white man those who opposed the Indian they said—"The Indians can never be civilized are dead Indian not lives Indians but dead, them are unsuccessful and good for anything." ”

“ Admitting the generally asserted and acknowledged fact that the Indian has so often, if not in all cases, so dismally disappointed the expectations of what he would or might be as the result of efforts made in his behalf under some processes and stages of civilization, the fact may help us to form more correct views of his actual place on the scale of humanity and of his natural endowments. ”

“ To those who advocate the application of the laws of civilization to the Indian, it might be a profitable study to investigate the effect which such application produces upon the strength of the tribe as expressed in numbers. ”

“ I believe that the civilization India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors. Rome went, Greece shared the same fate, the might of the Pharaohs was broken, Japan has become westernised, of China nothing can be said, but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. The people of Europe learn their lessons from the writings of the men of Greece or Rome, which exist no longer in their former glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of Greece and Rome. ”

“ It may be truly said at this moment that the structure and principles of Indian society are but partially known, and that the American Indian himself is still an enigma among us. The question is still before us as a nation whether we will undertake the work of furnishing to the world a scientific exposition of Indian society, or leave it as it now appears, crude, unmeaning, unintelligible, a chaos of contradictions and puerile absurdities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I feel that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilization required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I do not believe that in the old times in the ancient history of our country, there ever was one united India—India was never one whole under the Hindus at any time. I hold in great reverence and veneration all the activities of ancient India. India was great, but the great Indian nationality was in the making. We have profited by what was done in the ancient days, we have inherited all their culture but it is for us to widen that culture for the evolution of the great Indian nation. That day, gentlemen, is fast approaching. ”

“ There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of nature than our poets have sung. It is only white man’s poetry. Homer and Ossian even can never revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how these cities are refreshed by the mere tradition, or the imperfectly transmitted fragrance and flavor of these wild fruits. If we could listen but for an instant to the chant of the Indian muse, we should understand why he will not exchange his savageness for civilization. Nations are not whimsical. Steel and blankets are strong temptations; but the Indian does well to continue Indian. ”

“ Today though India is under the wheel of a common fate, a common political, historical and cultural development is going on which is developing in embryonic form the type which is “politically an Indian;” yet an Indian nation is far from being in the growth. ”

“ These questions, which have divided the minds of millions of men, which have caused rivers of blood to flow, nowadays sound idle and even absurd to our readers, who hear Hindu religion spoken of as mere mythology, and India as some far-off planet; but, at the time of which we are now speaking, the Indian Empire was the centre of the civilised world and master of the known world. ”

“ His tall dignified figure, familiar at court and in the highest circles of society, welcomed alike by the English Church and non-conformists, and equally at home in every circle of society, became in the eyes of those, who for the most part had never before seen an Indian at all, the embodiment of the Indian Empire. ”

“ Whether, in such an event, the Indians, thus left to meet their fate by themselves, with reasonable provision by the government for their instruction in the arts of life and industry, will waste away in strength and numbers, is a question quite too large to be entered upon here. Popular beliefs and scientific opinion undoubtedly contemplate the gradual if not the speedy decline of Indian tribes when deprived of their traditional freedom of movement, pent up within limits comparatively narrow, and compelled to uncongenial occupations. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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? ”

“ Our palates are accustomed to the food which they have supplied to us from our very childhood, and hence whatever comes to us now from the thought-mines of India is generally put aside as merely curious or strange, whether in language, mythology, religion, or philosophy. But however foreign Indian thought may appear to us, it has filled an important place in the growth of the human race, and that growth is important, whether it took place on the borders of the Ilissos or on the shores of the Ganges. In India we still see, as it were, the last traces of the primordial surprise at this world. ”

“ We shall ourselves become the leaders of the coolies, and dig out channels in Ceylon, in Africa, in South America, and other countries, building up from entirely new centres new colonies and territories and kingdoms where the Indian colonist would find himself not a stranger in a strange land, unwelcome, neglected, or illtreated, but at home in a new India, more prosperous and happy than the one he had left behind,—a colony peopled and possessed and managed by those of his own race and language. ”

“ Thus in the past on account of community of character and language there was an Indian nation in the scientific as well as in the juristic sense. Again, in modern India such an evolution was being started under the quasi-national rule of the Timurids, but the evolution was cut short as soon as it gave emphasis to the difference of religion! Present-day India is again, on the threshhold of a new evolution. ”

“ The fact is, however, that this condition 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. ”

“ If so, what inducement could have been placed before them, sufficiently powerful, to break down the barriers of nature, and bring men habitually indolent, to so herculean a task? The Indian, as we see him now, never works. He is the sovereign of the woods, and strides over his heritage with the step of a master, and the wild glance of one who disdains employment. ”