White settlers

“ The more savage side of their disposition being, however, so very apparent, it is not astonishing that, brought into contact with white settlers, who equally consider that they have a right to settle, the aborigines are rapidly disappearing. ”

“ The first European colonization here in patches of the wilderness, and in each successive stage of its advance through our inner belts and borders, was made by men who, save that they had with them a few tools and implements, were in all outward respects very much on a level with the Indians themselves as to conditions, circumstances, and means of life. The Indians first saw civilization in its inchoate, elemental stages. The early white settlers were glad even to help out their wardrobes with the skins which the Indian wore ”

“ The settlements now in prospect to be made in that large extent of country, from the west side of the Allegany mountains to the Mississippi, on a breadth of four or five hundred miles, would afford a suitable and beneficial means of settlement for many of them among the white people, which would in all probability be as profitable to the negroes as to the new settlers. ”

“ Most of the Indians are anxious to move to the Indian country south of Kansas, where white settlers cannot interfere with them.
“Intermingled as the Kansas reservations are with the public lands, and surrounded in most cases by white settlers who too often act on the principle that an Indian has no rights that a white man is bound to respect, they are injured and annoyed in many ways. ”

“ Yes; that’s what the roving and unsettled bands are called by white folks. Those that are on reservations and earning their own living, or a part of it,––for the Government helps them out considerably,––are called town Indians; those that live in wigwams, or tepees, and rove from place to place, subsisting on what they can catch, are blanket Indians. They tell me that there are wild Indians out on the western frontier. But they are not hostile; at least, they were not, at last accounts. The Cheyennes have been rather uneasy, they say, since the white settlers began to pour into the country. ”

“ But these individual whites and half-breeds who have affiliated and assimilated themselves with the Indians (outlaws, desperadoes, adventurers, or merely trappers, hunters, and restless roamers) are precursors of another set of men, — a class of frontiersmen, who are in the advance of actual settlers with their families on our shifting borders, intending at least a temporary occupancy of the bush or the valley, even if they afterward move or “locate” themselves, as their word is, on a new spot. ”

“ We have made with them solemn covenants, pledging to them their territory as reservations, and we have broken these covenants as wisps of straw. We have agreed to defend their lands against encroachments by the whites; and then when settlers, surveyors, miners, and railroad engineers have invaded them, we have sent our armies to protect, not the Indians, but the white men. Our national Government has made treaties with tribes, reserving to them territories that soon after were found to lie within the bounds of newly created States, which at once claimed supreme rights of domain. ”

“ In connection with the aggression of the whites, it is natural to lay stress on the fact that there were repeated instances in the case of the earliest colonists from each of the European nationalities, when the foreign adventurers, rovers, and settlers were so weak and helpless, so reduced to absolute starvation, that had it not been for the pity and aid of the natives, as well as for the fact of their being at bitter feud among themselves, there would not have been a survivor left of them. ”

“ This belief, that white people are the souls of departed blacks, is by no means an uncommon superstition amongst them; they themselves, never having an idea of quitting their own land, cannot imagine others doing it; and thus, when they see white people suddenly appear in their country, and settling themselves down in particular spots, they imagine that they must have formed an attachment for this land in some other state of existence; and hence conclude the settlers were at one period black men, and their own relations. ”

“ But as soon as the seaboard was deserted by new colonists, and the frontier settlers pushed farther and farther inland, the savages who had taken refuge in successive beltings of the continent had to begin the series of removals which have continued in steadily increasing rapidity to our own times. We find at last that there is a limit to this process of pushing the savages into new Western domains. We have crowded the tribes together, and they are now, like the deer or buffalo which they used to encircle and drive into their traps and pounds, circumscribed by the white men. ”

“ Both the missionaries and the settlers had located in the Indian country and proceeded to build houses and cultivate the land as if the Indian had no title. That indeed was the way the white man had viewed the question from the first settlement in America. They who came from civilized Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries found the American continent peopled by tribes without cultivation, literature and refinement, or fixed habitations. They considered the Indians mere savages, having no rightful claim to the country of which they were in possession. ”

“ How stands the case of the negro, in the non-slave-holding States? Free to go in advance of settlement, into the wilderness of the West, and there to found a colony of their own, exempt from the inferiority they must ever experience while in contact with the white man, they have continued to hang about the towns and cities, and generally to gain their subsistence by menial service to the white race. ”

“ If we seek in a general view of the mode of life and resources of the red men, in some favored localities, to find any radical disadvantage or disablement which put them below all communities of the whites which we call civilized, we can readily convince ourselves of our error by comparing the state of our Indians at the time of the settlement of this continent with that of communities of whites in Europe at the same time. ”

“ Their numbers have fallen off very fast in the face of the extension of the white settlements, partly on account of the fierce wars that have prevailed between them and the colonists, but more in consequence of the inroads of the vices and maladies which they have contracted from the whites. ”

“ Further, why do they fill their Plantations with Black People, so unnatural to the Whites, the Proprietors of the different Colonies, when it seems no way difficult to obtain White People to serve free in their stead? ”

“ In the first place, the colonies of the North were settled by people from the lower and middle classes, who had been accustomed to working for themselves and who thus had no use for slaves, while the South was settled largely by adventurers, who had never worked and who looked upon labor as dishonorable. In the second place, the North had a temperate climate in which any man could safely work, while the heat of the South was so intense that a white man endangered his life by working in it, whereas the Negro was protected by facility of acclimation. ”

“ The men who were engaged in tearing unoffending Africans from their native home were some time learning that this colony was at this time a ready market for their helpless victims. Whatever feeling or scruple, if such ever existed, the colonists had in reference to the subject of dealing in the slave-trade, was destroyed at conception by the golden hopes of large gains. The latitude, the products of the soil, the demand for labor, the custom of the indenture of white servants, were abundant reasons why the Negro should be doomed to bondage for life. ”

“ Unquestionably, a certain proportion of the Negro race has risen notably since the era of emancipation. A proportion of the colored population—that is, the upper fraction—have not only accumulated property but have, mainly in the cities and towns, attained a higher standing, based partly on property, partly on character, and partly on intellectual advance. But, unless the universal testimony of the white people of the South is unreliable, this rise is confined largely to those regions where the Negroes have had the aid, sympathy, and encouragement of the whites. ”

“ Though certain small areas of land in these rich territories are held by whites, the bulk of the country is reserved for the exclusive use and benefit of the natives, and it is not at all likely that any more land will be alienated for purposes of settlement by Europeans. ”

“ The enslaving of the negro race in the colonies—and which was largely confined to those called Southern, and almost entirely to them after the ending of the slave trade—placed the white people of the colonies on a higher and broader plane and released them from the daily struggle after the "almighty dollar." ”

“ Southern white newspapers unaccustomed to give the Negroes any mention but that of criminals have said that the Negroes are going North because they have not had a fair chance in the South and that if they are to be retained there, the attitude of the whites toward them must be changed. ”

“ The colonists had learned enough of the Indian tongue for the purposes of trade and barter; they had made the natives feel the power and superiority of the white men, and kept them at a distance as barbarians and pagans, holding them subject to their own laws for theft, polygamy, and murder, and waging dire war against them for acts which the Indians regarded only as a defence of their natural rights; but as yet, and not till a long interval of years had passed, had the white men proposed to make the savages equal sharers in the blessings of their civilization and religion. ”

“ Malachi was convinced that the young Indian had been sent to intimate that Percival was alive and in captivity, and he resolved to wait patiently till he brought up the subject.
"Does not the cold kill the white man?" said the Indian, at last.
"No; the white man can bear the winter's ice as well as an Indian. He hunts as well, and brings home venison."
"Are all who came here with him now in the white man's lodge?"
"No, not all; one white child slept in the snow, and is in the land of spirits," replied Malachi. ”

“ In time the tribes came, through advancing settlements, to be surrounded by a large and increasing white population, many of the whites entering their districts and living there-some as tenant farmers, stock growers and merchants, and others as mere adventurers. The United States then perceived a need for making a larger use of its power. ”

“ Confining ourselves to the territory which became the United States, we may say that the first attempt was made to enslave the Indians, and when this failed to work, white people were imported from Europe as chattel slaves. All through the colonial period this importation continued with its consequent effects on the social and political life of the colonies. Most people will be surprised to learn that the first Fugitive Slave Law was framed, not in the south, but in the north, and was made not for black but for white laborers. ”

“ The Trustees replied that the introduction of negroes would be the introduction of a "baneful Commodity, which, it is well known by sad Experience, has brought our Neighbour Colonies to the Brink of Ruin, by driving out their White Inhabitants, who were their Glory and Strength, to make room for Black, who are now become the Terror of their unadvised Masters." ”

“ Let us turn aside for a moment to consider the general conditions of the negroes and their relation to the white people. We have to-day about the same relative proportion of blacks to whites in the whole country as we had in 1860—about 12 per cent.—; and we have nearly the same in the South, about 40 per cent. What is to become of the negro for the next fifty years? No man would dare suggest an answer looking farther ahead than that: God only knows. Some say he will amalgamate with the whites. ”

“ The houses, with farms attached, of these people, which we passed in walking through the settlement, were similar to the homes of the industrious civilised American negro. Very little encouragement on mission work could be gained from our colonial friends. Many cases were cited by them to prove that the religious beliefs of the white man do not throw any whiter rays of new light upon the barbaric mind than it already has. ”

“ In the South, the effect of losing thousands of negroes from lands in southern Mississippi is already ... producing a wholesome farm diversification and economic stimulation. Then, too, a more equitable distribution of the sons of Ham will teach the Caucasians of the northern States that wherever there is a negro infusion, there will be a race problem—a white man's burden—which they are destined to share. ”

“ By our last census we had one hundred and fifty whites, and twelve negroes or mulattoes, to each Indian.
We are experiencing, in our joint interests as a nation and in those of a common civilization, the embarrassments attending this system of reservations. The single States and Territories in whose bounds they lie are subjected by them to all sorts of annoyances, complications, and practical evils. It is found to be utterly impossible to restrict the Indians to them. In some treaties a conditional privilege has been covenanted to the occupants of hunting beyond them ”

“ Mildred looked behind her, every few minutes, while she worked in the garden, to see whether Roger was not there, and at every rustle that the birds made among the trees on the Red-hill,—the eminence behind the house,—she fancied that some one was hidden there. Oliver let his tools and his alabaster lie hidden, much as he longed to be at work with them. Mildred had lost her greatest treasure,—the white hen. He must take care of his greatest treasure. ”