Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted,
because they are not.--_Saint Matthew_.
One of the many signs that the Indian is human is his slowness to
learn. Ever since 1492 the whiter man has been trying to force some
supposedly useful things into the mind of him of the darker skin. One
of these is that he of the blanket has no rights that he of the dress
coat is bound to respect. The Indian rises in practical debate to this
question. His arguments are not words, but the rifle and the
scalping-knife. The whiter man demurs when he receives his justice
dished up to him in redskin style.
It is unreasonable to the Indian that the white man should take from
him his hunting grounds and limit his access to the very streams
whence his people for ages uncountable filled their pantries for the
winter. He has learned to his disgust (without place for repentance)
that equivalents are equivocations, and that the little baubles the
fathers of the tribes had for their broad acres were mostly worthless.
The civilized trick of procuring the mystic sign manual known as
signature had fastened on them the gyves of perpetual poverty.
In addition to this, the nation demanded they should send their
children to the white man's school in the far, far away Eastern land,
where they could not see them and from which so many of the red-faced
lads and lassies returned with that dread disease, pulmonary
tuberculosis. But they were only Indians, and what rights had they?
When boys and girls were not promptly surrendered, the soldiers were
sent to chase them down. It would not seem good to us to have big,
brawny Indians on horseback give chase to our children, and catch and
tie them like so many hogs, to be carted off to a land unknown to us;
but then these are only Indians. That makes all the difference
imaginable.
Some years ago the Fort Hall Indians went on their usual trip to the
edge of Yellowstone Park--Jackson's Hole--for the purpose of laying in
their annual supply of elk and bear meat. The government had forbidden
this, yet they went, with their indispensable paraphernalia and camp
equipage, taking the squaws (and papooses, of course) to dress and
care for whatever of provision fell into their hands.
When it was discovered that the Indians had gone in the face of the
prohibitory order the soldiers were sent to drive them out. Such
racing and chasing! "Wild horse, wild Indian, wild horseman," as
Washington Irving puts it. Every man and woman for himself now.
Papooses were slung on the saddle-horns of their mothers' horses, a
loop being fastened to the back of the board to which every little
copperfaced tike was strapped. In one of the hard flights through the
thickly fallen and storm-twisted pines, firs, and chaparral a mother,
pressed too hard by the soldiers and cavalry, lost her baby.
Her tribal friends ventured back after all was safe, and with an
Indian's trail-finding tact hunted high and low, far and wide, but no
trace was ever found of the wee baby.
"But, then, what mattered it? It was nothing but an Indian baby, and
its mother only an Indian squaw! Who cares for a squaw any way?"