University of Virginia Library

4. The Indian--His Future

(from Indian Journal , June 6, 1902)

Looking back we see him despised because he is a savage and a shade darker than the pale face. He is not given to work, cares little for progress and is without love for money. Is he to be blamed? For all these faults, if faults they be, he believes that the One looking over him did not intend that he should work; that had the pale face stayed on his own side he would to-day be happy.

Not so. He has been driven from one reservation to another until he should be a worst savage to-day than he was five hundred years ago.

On the shores of the Atlantic he stood a giant. The little waves came and went, but came oftener and higher as he stood till finally the giant was forced to retreat from them, seeking safety on the banks. But the waves followed him there and he retreated still further. He climbed the mountains, but the waves sought him out, submerging the mountains. Then the giant set his face unto the setting sun and climbed higher, yet did the waters follow him. Weakened finally by his march, the giant stopped and tried to stand his ground, but stumbled in the effort by selling a piece of American soil to William Penn.1 Then one stumble followed another until he was swept along with no landing in sight. He struggled in vain to get away from the waves. He became disgusted with his own weakness and man's inhumanity to man. He saw nothing to encourage him to another effort. Meanwhile the waves rose higher.

One of these waves is called the Penn treaty, another the sale of Alabama, another the Georgia squabble, another the emigration west of the Mississippi, another the war of the rebellion whereby the giant lost most of his property, and yet another the misinterpretation of a treaty in 1866,2 giving the Negro about one-third of the giant's country without the consideration of one dime.

The giant, or hero, of our fable has been oppressed more than any other being on the face of the earth.

Did you ever stop to think over this case of our hero? Well, about one-half of our hero's countrymen served as soldiers during the late war. How much of the rebellion they put down is not recorded, but we find many old pensioners among the people of the giant. Now, the giant gets no credit for his loyalty to the union, although the war swept away about a third of his lost and only lands.

The last wave which will close over the life of the giant, which is not worth living nohow, will be the winding up of tribal affairs. The wave is already here.

The old Indian, who came from Alabama, has told his young people, "Even the children of the pale face will call you bad names; kick you out and not see that you have your rights. You will only be Indians, the hated and despised people. If you are liked, it will be only while your land lasts. Then you will be a vagabond the balance of your miserable life."

Such is the prophecy of the old Indian, who concludes this: "The white man will say to you, who have sold your land and are begging food and shelter, 'you are stout and able to work.' The white man's religion teaches him that by the sweat of his brow shall he eat bread."

So will the noble red man of Cooper3 go down into his grave, if he has any, unhonored and unsung. So will pass one of the honestest, truthfulest, kindest, most charitable, hospitable, humblest, most religious, most wronged, most patient, forbearing, but most revengeful race of people that ever inhabited the earth.