The American Indian has no ancestry of civilization to look back to. His
forebears so far as is known to history were savages, and the Indians
found in America by the first white settlers were also savages.
Their origin as a race is shrouded in obscurity, some asserting that
they are descendants of the Semitic race of Asia, others that they are
Turanian and Malaysian mixed. It is certain, however, that nothing
remains of any very ancient civilization, what does exist consists of
“mounds” containing crude articles of pottery, flint arrows, etc., and
in the case of the descendants of the cliff dwellers in New Mexico and
Arizona, their habitations remain, showing that their surroundings were
crude and their civilization at a low ebb.
The descendants of the Aztecs, Toltecs and other tribes whose ancestors
were ruthlessly slaughtered by Cortez and his Spanish soldiers, and
oppressed by his successors, had small title to what is known as
civilization. Of these little can be said except that the present
descendants present the vestiges of degeneracy, and have no marks of
being a pure race of any sort. They are just the same as they were when
first discovered, barring vices which they have acquired from the
civilized races without receiving any benefit from their virtues.
These people present no example worth being followed, but as to the
descendants of the real savage American Indian, the Sioux, Algonquins,
and other large and savage warrior tribes encountered by the American
pioneer and frontiersmen, they show the power of civilization and their
adaptability to changed environment.
Among them were many noble men, men of high aspirations and aims, who as
soon as they understood civilization, broke away from the trammels of
savagery and became civilized. That is, they adopted the manners and
customs of the civilized races, and became unified with them.