Indian subcontinent

“ The wave of our population has been from the east to the west. The Indian was found on the Atlantic seaboard, and thence to the Rocky mountains lived numerous distinct tribes, each speaking a language as incomprehensible to the other as was our language to any of them. As our settlements penetrated the interior, the border came in contact with some Indian tribe. The white and Indian must mingle together and jointly occupy the country, or one of them must abandon it. ”

“ The Indian, like all savages, is very superstitious. He loves to think over the time, hundreds of years ago, when the red men roamed over the whole continent from ocean to ocean. He dreams of those days, and believes they will again return—that the pale faces will be driven into the sea, and the vast land become the hunting ground of the Indians. ”

“ This outgrowing of Indian influence, so long continued and so wide in extent, was naturally not the result of any one impulse. At no time can we see in India any passion of discovery, any fever of conquest such as possessed Europe when the New World and the route to the East round the Cape were discovered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During some centuries India, as a political region, was not delimitated on the north-western side as it is at present and numerous principalities rose and fell which included Indian territory as well as parts of Afghanistan. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Indian gives to the white man all he needs, and aids him in obtaining from the wide stretch of land over which he roams all the wealth that it can afford. Practically one part of the Dominion is handed over to the Red Man and to the half-breeds, for there is an Indian frontier which as yet has not been much encroached upon by any large migration of whites. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To the Indian it is of incalculable cost. Every year's advance of our frontier takes in a territory as large as some of the kingdoms of Europe. We are richer by hundreds of millions; the Indian is poorer by a large part of the little that he has. This growth is bringing imperial greatness to the nation; to the Indian it brings wretchedness, destitution, beggary. ”

“ The number of their Indians is much less, and their unoccupied territory much larger. They have still what may be called an Indian frontier—the white men on one side of the line and the Indians on the other, with vast hunting-grounds visited only by the trapper and fur-trader. Their agricultural settlements advance with far less rapidity than ours. There is far less opportunity for encroachment. ”

“ In considering the important and somewhat intricate subject of policy on the North-Western frontier of our Indian Empire it will be desirable, in the first place, to give a concise history of the events which have guided our action, and which for many years past have exercised a predominating influence in that part of our Eastern dominion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So much, at least, of geographical description must be given as a clue to the distribution of the peoples of India. {2} Along the Himalayas, growing stronger in numbers as we go eastwards, are races mostly of a Mongolian type, mingled with purely Indian elements. In the Panjāb and the United Provinces, sending offshoots southwards along the well-watered west coast, are the peoples in whom the traces of Aryan immigration are most visible. In Bengal we find a duskier race, provisionally termed Mongolo-Dravidian, but with a strong infusion, in the upper classes, of western blood. ”

“ Self-contained though it be, and easily thought of as a geographical unit, we must not think of India as a racial, linguistic, or religious unit. We may much more correctly speak of the European race, language, or religion, than of the Indian. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Doctor, “is in all respects a country to be desired by Indians. It is a mild climate—the land is good, the forests full of game, and the lakes and rivers abounding with fish. The region itself is not only remote from the territories claimed by the individual States; but it is in the exclusive occupancy of Indian tribes, and destined in the plan of the national government for that purpose. Besides, it is vast, and not only sufficient for the tribes already there, but more than sufficient for all your purposes and theirs. ”

“ He at once began to talk about the printing of our Indian Scriptures, and said that he would be most happy to get any of our Indian Translations printed at the Government press in this town. He also expressed great desire for the Indians in this Province to be settled in villages, and said that he would do all in his power towards granting them lands for location, and to aid in effecting their civilization. He thought it highly important that the Indians should be taught useful trades and farming, as soon as possible. ”

“ Attached to the land, and dwelling usually in small villages which, save in fertile tracts like the Vilcamayu Valley, are seldom near together, the Indian has retained the beliefs and habits of his forefathers more than even the peasantry of Russia or the Turkish dominions. ”

“ THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, AND SURROUNDINGS.
We have abundant and trustworthy means for informing ourselves of the qualities of character, the exterior life, the resources, employments, and practical capacities of the aboriginal tribes during the whole period since the first coming here of Europeans. The intercourse has always been close and continuous between the races ”

“ In the days of the early explorers, after the islands discovered by Columbus were called the West Indies, some people began to call the Indian continent the East Indies, to distinguish it; and some of the papers about India drawn up for the information of Parliament about Indian affairs still use this name, but it is not a familiar use to most people. ”

“ Eastern Africa was influenced, largely through the medium of Arab sea trade. Towards the north and northeast as far as Mongolia and Japan, India has been a dispenser of culture content and has taken little in return. Toward the southeast, Indian influence has been the largest component in the civilization of Indo-China and the East Indian archipelago, which as regards their higher attainments may be regarded as cultural dependencies or extensions of India. ”

“ But in all Asia north and east of India, excluding most of Siberia but including the Malay Archipelago, Indian influence is obvious. Though primarily connected with religion it includes much more, such as architecture, painting and other arts, an Indian alphabet, a vocabulary of Indian words borrowed or translated, legends and customs. The whole life of such diverse countries as Tibet, Burma, and Java would have been different had they had no connection with India. ”

“ The Indian element in the United States proper is so small proportionally—about one in three hundred—and the conditions for its amalgamation so favorable, that it would of itself require scarcely any consideration in this argument. There is no prejudice against the Indian blood, in solution. ”

“ My next cardinal proposition was that Indian tribes, if civilized at all, must be civilized along the lines of their past history, habits and modes of life; that some tribes of Indians subsist, and have subsisted for ages, on the products of ocean, lake and river: that these are sometimes called fish Indians: that to make appropriations to teach these Indians agriculture, or the successful operation of the farm, is a wasteful expenditure of public money; they are naturally sailors, and have carried the art of canoe [98] making and sailing to a high degree of perfection ”

“ 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. ”

“ INDIA, [1] a great country and empire of Asia under British rule, inhabited by a congeries of different races, speaking upwards of fifty different languages. The whole Indian empire, including Burma, has an area of 1,766,000 sq. m., and a population of 294 million inhabitants, being about equal to the area and population of the whole of Europe without Russia. The population more than doubles Gibbon’s estimate of 120 millions for all the races and nations which obeyed imperial Rome.
The natives of India can scarcely be said to have a word of their own by which to express their common country. ”

“ East Indians are those off springs of Christians of the East, and they atimes gather the offsprings of Eurasians to the entering their marriage to the East Indian females in the East Indian community, thereby they are called East Indians. ”

“ These latitudes have invariably produced nations, whose influence has been felt in an elevating power over the world; and whose tracks have everywhere been marked by the highest evidences of inductive intellect, centralizing energy, and practical wisdom and forecast. From such a source the Indian could have derived none of his vague symbolisms and mental idiosyncrasies, which have left him, as he is found to-day, without a government and without a God. ”

“ To the assertion that the Indian must gradually decline in numbers and decay in strength, his life fading out before the intenser life which he encounters, can be offered instances of the steady increase in population of no small number of tribes and bands in immediate contact with settlements, and subject to the full force of white influence. ”

“ Some of the settlers turned stock over on the Indian lands after our negotiations, and the Indians hauled loads of life-giving water to the print shop now and then. Our collection of antique animals we turned loose to go back and live off the Indians. ”

“ Experiments with civilization on and near the Indian sub-continent centered around the Indonesian archipelago and the rich, semi-tropical and tropical valleys of the Ganges, the Indus, the Gadari, the Irra-waddy and the Mekong. ”

“ They are [Pg 192] emphatically an agricultural and stock-raising people, and perhaps of all the Indian tribes, great and small, are first in general intelligence, in the acquisition of wealth, in the knowledge of the useful arts, and in social and moral progress. The evidences of a real and substantial advancement in these respects are too clear to be questioned ”

“ On the contrary, so far as our knowledge extends, India has always been occupied by three or four different races of mankind, who have never amalgamated so as to become one people, and each of these races have been again subdivided into numerous tribes or small nationalities nearly, sometimes wholly, independent of each other—and, what is worse than all, not one of them ever kept a chronicle or preserved a series of dates commencing from any well-known era. ”

“ There is a greater diversity of races, languages, social customs, physical conditions, &c., between the different provinces of India than is often to be found between the different countries of Europe. Few differ more widely than the Deccan and Bengal—the Deccan, a great table-land raised on an average over 2,000ft. ”

“ Protect the inhabitants of the frontiers, gradually push the Indians south, and at no distant day, the necessary, unavoidable and melancholy consummation must arrive, viz., the expulsion of the last tribe of red men from the soil over which they once roamed the sole lords and possessors. ”