Red people

“ To watch their games, and hear their shouts of exultation, in any of their villages, to sit down in their lodges and listen to their jokes, repartee, anecdote and laughter, would effectually banish this erroneous opinion so generally held in regard to the Red Men. With no anxieties for the future—no necessities goading them, it is natural that they should be a merry people, and most of their life be spent in sports and games. ”

“ The red man has no powerful friends (such as the enslaved negro can boast) , to rightly represent his miserable, sorrowing condition, his many wrongs, his wants and wishes. In fact, so feebly is the voice of philanthropy raised in his favor, that his existence appears to be hardly known to a large portion of the American people, or his condition and character has been so misrepresented that it has failed to secure the sympathy and help which he really deserves. We do not fully understand the nature and character of the Red Race. ”

“ I believe the Great Spirit above made both white and red men; but I suppose it is because we are red men, that the white men impose upon us, and try to get our land, which we do not want to part with.
“Brothers, I am glad to find there are a people who love peace, and give such good advice to red men. ”

“ But it is not alone to these, that the Red man and his associations, present a field for study and contemplation. His history and existence on this continent, is blended with the richest sources of poetry and imagination. His beautiful and sonorous geographical nomenclature alone, has clothed our hills and lakes and streams, with the charms of poetic numbers.—The Red man himself, who once roved these attractive scenes, with his bow and arrows, and his brow crowned with the highest honors of the war path and the chase, was a being of NOBLE MOULD. He felt the true sentiment of independence. ”

“ Acute writers who have wrought upon the theme have confessed themselves unable to draw at any point a sharp dividing line, or to define any one single trait, quality, or condition which shall distinguisli between a state of civilization and a state of barbarism or savagery.
Our latest science, alike archæological and speculative, fails to give us positive knowledge about the origin of the red man and his relation to the other races of human beings on the other continents. ”

“ Hissing from their nostrils came forth fire and smoke, striking terror to both fowl and beast. The red men hid themselves in fear, or fled away, while the white men trained these monsters for the war path, as warriors for battle. ”

“ Red—the deep blood red—is decidedly the favorite color among the enslaved damsels of my acquaintance. If a red ribbon does not encircle the neck, you will be certain to find all the hair of their woolly heads tied up with red strings of one sort or another. ”

“ The light of another day is springing up, and a thousand shapes are visible; are these spirit-hunters of the red men—do they sanctify the night by their chase? They are not like the red men of those days. Mighty ones they are, and they pursue the mammoth for their sport. ”

“ The early migrations must have been necessarily confined to portions of the old world peopled by the Red Race—by a race, not only of red skins, black hair and eyes, and high cheek bones, who would reproduce these fixed characteristics, ad infinitum, but whose whole mental as well as physiological development assimilates it, as a distinct unity of the species. ”

“ All that we can say of this self-degradation of the white man — civilized, Christian — to the barbarism of the red man is, that he was swift to learn and imitate all ill examples; and that he adopted scalping simply as one of the elements of wilderness warfare, like the lurking in ambushed thickets and ravines, and skulking behind a tree when firing his piece. ”

“ Why, on the broad and ample fields of this continent, whose larger expanses are still in a wild state, have not the red man and the white man consented to keep apart, leaving each other alone, each to his own preferred way of life? ”

“ Away beyond the mighty waters of the dreary sea, He gave the white man a home, with everything he wanted, and He gave him a mind which was for him, and only him. The red man is satisfied with the gifts to him of the Great Spirit ”

“ The noble red men, as they were called by the Eastern philanthropist, were as treacherous to the whites as an ocean squall to the navigator. No pen or picture has or can fully describe the cruelty of their nature. ”

“ There is somewhat of the grotesque in the aspect of a European intruder, of another stock, coming from across the sea, meeting the native red men, regarding them as an impertinence or an anomaly, and putting the question, “Who are you? ”

“ And that may be the reason why — the Spaniards having vanished with the age of gold, and the French with the wasteful fur-trade — the English, though the last comers, are the hard workers and the opulent on this land.
The red men will always have a tender, touching claim upon our sympathetic regrets in the fact that we succeed to their heritage. We fill the places from which they have vanished. The more enduring, the unchangeable features of the scenes of our life-time — the mountain, the valley, the river — are those which are forever identified with them. ”

“ Red is the color of all those banners which wave above the societies which were established in the days of Socialism, and among them are many national flags—blue, red, and white—the standards of the old guilds and corporations. ”

“ It may well be believed that there is hardly a single square mile of now occupied territory on its once virgin soil which is not stained with the life-current of the common humanity of the red man and the white man, in their deadly strifes. If there be any such spaces where the veins of the red men have not flowed, the whites, in their own feuds and wars, have supplied the stains. Over all these busy realms of thrift have floated the wails of human agony. ”

“ Whether these tribes last made known to us are affiliated with those of our earliest acquaintance, or have been disclosed to us as reserved and original sections of the same old race of red men, independent in lineage and position, certain it is that they are the same sort of men in all their marked characteristics, — in nature, habits, traits, ways of life, method of warfare, jealousy and hatred of the whites, and steadfast dislike of civilization. ”

“ The idea had dawned upon his master mind that the sovereignty of the wilderness rested with the red men. His intelligent casting of the horoscope of the lowering future for his race led him to seek boldly and consistently to sap the very roots of the threatening calamity for them, by advising them to be no longer dependent on the white man's goods or to cherish any lurking partiality for the white man's habits of life. ”

“ The head and forelegs of the robe typify that part of the earth whence rises the god of day to take his westward journey. Red is the color of the day when it is young, the time when you will rise and go forth to prepare food for the little one whose tender life is wholly dependent upon your efforts. ”

“ Through both he brings us into companionship with the red man, as if careering with him over the boundless plains, the primeval forests of his hunting grounds in the far West, or in the vicinity of his temporary village settlements, witnessing his athletic games, his strange, fantastic dances, and his spontaneous endurance of those revolting tortures by which he evinces his unflinching stoicism. ”

“ Black grew so pale he might have been going to faint if the glitter in his black eyes hadn’t told the tale of a vitality which was simply taking it out that way instead of by showing red, as most men do. ”

“ They say that the land, and the lakes, and the rivers, and the hunting-grounds, belong to the red-man only, and that no other color ought ever to be seen there. The Great Spirit has thought otherwise, and what he thinks happens. Men are of many colors. Some are red, which is the color of my father. Some are pale, which is the color of my friends. Some are black, which is the color of my father's friend. He is black, though old age is changing his skin. ”

“ Now that I have finished my imperfect sketch, the ink in which I have drawn it seems too black. After all, there is a great deal of red blood in Eurasia; sometimes, indeed, the admixture of the other color is so slight as to completely impose upon society, knowing as society thinks itself. ”

“ But, through any and all future time, — when, if it should be so, the red race has vanished, — two very different pleas in relief or vindication of the white man will be offered. We can anticipate those pleas, for they can be no other than are spoken earnestly and urgently in our own present time. ”

“ If we look carefully into these quaint tales and folk-lore of the red man, we shall find that he lived upon very intimate relations with all his wild brothers and while he hunted them for meat and used their skins for garments and their hides for bowstrings, yet he knew and understood them and treated them with a reverence that his white brother has never been able to feel. ”

“ HERE is an untold tale of the Red Man, as spoken by Dewy Beard, an Oglalla Sioux, who sits alone to-day, bullet-scarred and sad, while in the drifting blue from his tepee fire come images of that glory which has departed from his race. It is true, though running counter to the lore of the white man, the reason whereof lies hid beneath army influence. ”

“ They could even wear bandoliers and shorts of the same color. Red, of course. Red stood out, attracted attention, and was the color of enthusiasm and violence. The sight of solid red ranks would at once intimidate opposition and attract recruits. ”

“ Doubtless one misleading element of our notions of the red men, as they first appear in our history, comes from the early use of the names, the titles, and the state of royalty as attached to forest chieftains, the formalities and etiquette to be observed with them. ”

“ The elevation, if not the security from extinction, of the race of red men depends upon its furnishing masters and guides from its stock. A race that cannot itself contribute its redeemers will never be redeemed. ”

“ He counselled them to accept of the glory of the coming day when the red men would mingle with the white race, accepting their teachings and civilizations and finding therein peace, plenty and contentment. ”

“ Attached as the Red man was to his own mode of life, he was induced at length to form a part of the establishment, in the capacity of grieve, or head shepherd—a duty he undertook most cheerfully, as it still left him opportunities of meeting and communing with his friends, and reconnoitering the altering denizens of the forest. ”

“ But throughout Siberia, China, central Asia, India, and Europe they left behind much of their stock blended with the other colored races.
When the red man crossed over into America, he brought along much of the teachings and traditions of his early origin. His immediate ancestors had been in touch with the later activities of the world headquarters of the Planetary Prince. But in a short time after reaching the Americas, the red men began to lose sight of these teachings, and there occurred a great decline in intellectual and spiritual culture. ”

“ Let him call the white man’s increase from a little beginning, the red man’s decrease from a great,—the white man’s victories, the red man’s defeats,—the white man’s flourishing, the red man’s fading; and he will have the history of the red men, and the reasons of their sad history, in this country. ”

“ The narratives of the red men, imperfectly understood, and construed by the desires of the strangers, rather than their minds, were full of marvels of neighboring lands and nations,—great empires of wealth and strength,—cities in romantic solitudes,—high places among almost inaccessible mountains, in which the treasures are equally precious and abundant. Listening to such legends, our Frenchmen linger with the red men, until the approach of night counsels them to seek the security of their ships. ”

“ And with regard to all attempts to civilise them, what should the red man see in the civilisation of the white man which should move him to envy or emulation, or raise in his mind a wish to exchange his "own unshackled life, and his innate capacities of soul," for our artificial social habits, our morals, which are contradicted by our opinions, and our religion, which is violated both in our laws and our lives? ”

“ The retrospect of the fortunes of the red race, which has been yielding and fading before this persistent and lion-hearted endeavor, is prevailingly melancholy, as it presents imbecility and incapacity succumbing to the potency of skill and energy. ”

“ All colors of red were red. Black was black, and brown was just plain brown until it became yellow, when it was no longer brown. Purple he had always imagined was red, something like blood, until she taught him better. Once they rode out on a high hill brow where wind-blown poppies blazed about their horses' knees, and she was in an ecstasy over the lines of the many distances. ”

“ Thus, to the colour-blind person many shades of dark blue, dark red, dark green and brown are to be grouped indiscriminately among the blacks. The pure blues and pure yellows they see as we see them; it is the reds, and the combinations of colour into which the reds enter, to which they appear wholly insensible, or insensitive. The reason, though not the explanation, of this shortcoming is readily demonstrable by way of the prism. ”

“ I thought I would say so much in favour of the red men, and here let me advise you to mark your feelings from this time, and see if you do not feel better when you feed them, than when you take up the sword to fight them. ”

“ Perhaps when we read of the turmoil that is constantly disturbing our southern border, we may think that the Indians had a knowledge of the real meaning of red when they made the totem of the south a red mountain. Red is the ruling color, the king of color, the dominant color, the strong color, and symbolizes the blossoming of plants and is the color of berries and fruit. Red tints the spring leaves and stains the fall leaf. In the spring the thickets and tree trunks are tinged with red ”