most atrocious massacre that disgraces the annals of our country.
It was at a time when settlers were pouring into Colorado. The
buffalo had become scarce; the annuities for some reason had
ceased; the Indians were sad and depressed. But they kept the
peace. Black Kettle, of whom I have already spoken, was their
chief. A white man made complaint to a United States officer that
an Indian had stolen some of his horses. The officer did not
know the man, nor whether or not he had owned any horses; but he
fitted out an expedition to seize horses. Soon they ran across
Indians and claimed their stock, though the Indians protested
that they had only ponies and no American horses. A fight ensued
and some Indians were killed. Black Kettle knew his danger. He
rushed at once to the Governor of Colorado, seeking protection.
It was refused. Col. Boone, an old resident of the Territory,
told Bishop Whipple that it was the saddest company he had even
seen when they stopped at his house on their way back. He offered
them food, but they said: “Our hearts are sick; we cannot eat.”
Soon after troops appeared upon the horizon. Black Kettle and his
two brothers went out with a white flag to meet them. They fired
on the flag and the two brothers fell dead. Black Kettle returned
to his camp. Three men in the United States uniform were in his
tepee. He said; “I believe you are spies; it shall never be said
that a man ate Black Kettle’s bread and came to harm in his tent.
Go to your people before the fight begins.” He gathered his men
and they fought for their lives. A few escaped; but men, women
and children were massacred in a butchery too horrible to relate,
Women were ripped open and babes were scalped; and the Sand
Creek massacre has gone upon record, by testimony that cannot be
impeached, as a “butchery that would have disgraced the tribes
of Central Africa.” (Bishop Whipple’s letter to _Evening Post_,
January, 1879; and the report of the Doolittle Commission.)
But we fought the Cheyennes again in 1867. What occasioned that
war? Gen. Hancock, “without any known provocation,” as says
the report to Congress of the Indian Bureau, in July, 1867,
surrounded a village of Cheyennes who had been at peace since the
signing of the treaty of 1865, and were quietly occupying the
grounds assigned to them by the treaty, burned down the homes of
three hundred lodges, destroyed all their provisions, clothing,
utensils and property of every description, to the value of
$100,000. This led to a war that extended over three years, and
cost us $40,000,000 and three hundred men. (President Seeley’s
speech.)
We have just fought the Bannocks and Shoshones. In November,
1878, Gen. Crook wrote to the Government: “With the Bannocks and
Shoshones our Indian policy has resolved itself into a question
of war-path or starvation; and being human, many of them will
choose the former, in which death shall at least be glorious.”
Is it necessary to say anything more of that war? Why pursue the
story? The late Congressman (now President) Seeley, of Amherst
College, says: “There has not been an Indian war for the past
fifty years in which the whites have not been the aggressors.”
What, then, is to be done? I press upon you the importance of
these resolutions. Standing in the courts, the recognition of the
Indian as a person with rights, inalienable as yours and mine, to
life, to justice, to property, this is the first, the absolute
essential. As long ago as 1807, Governor (afterwards President)
Harrison said: “The utmost efforts to induce the Indians to take
up arms would be unavailing if _one only of the many persons
who have committed murder upon their people could be brought to
punishment_.” Generals Harney and Pope have testified of late
that this is as true now as then.
In 1802 President Jefferson wrote to a friend that he had heard
that there was one man left of the Peorias, and said “If there
is only one, justice demands that his rights shall be respected.”
Reviewing subsequent history we may well repeat Jefferson’s
solemn words, “I tremble for my country when I know that God is
just!”
We can make no more treaties with the Indians. The act of 1871
put an end to that dreadful farce. There have been nearly 900
treaties since 1785. They have been the loaded dice with which we
have always won and the Indian always lost. We have hoodwinked
ourselves by them to a perpetual fraud and deception. They have
been to the Indian a veritable compact of death. Relying on
them he has sooner or later found himself held by the throat by
the wolf starvation, or impaled on the bayonet of the soldier;
crowded to the wall by the encroaching settler, or removed to
the wilderness by the Government as soon as he had begun to make
for himself a home. The Stockbridges have been thus removed four
times in a hundred years, and are now on a reservation where it
is impossible to get a living. The Poncas are the latest instance.
Treaties must give place to personal rights. We must provide
something better for him than a reservation; that is, life in
a community for which we have provided no law, no courts, no
police, no officer other than an anomalous “agent,” no ownership
of land—nothing, in short, that all civilized people regard
as the first element of civilized life, and without which the
congregate life of bodies of men is impossible. We say to him,
Cease to be a savage, hungry but free, and come and be a pauper,
dependent on the will of others, without law, and still hungry.
As one of the agents wrote in 1875: “It is a condition of things
that would turn a white community into chaos in twelve months.”
It behooves every honest man, every man who loves his country,
to see that the day of equal personal rights for the Indian, the
only man on the broad earth who has none, shall at once dawn.
But I remember that I am speaking to a company of Christians.
Religion before all else can prepare the Indian to make the
most of his citizenship. Look at this picture. Here is a wigwam
in the pine forest. Before it is a tall pole, from the top of
which hangs a dried bladder containing a few rattling shells
and stones. It is the wigwam of Shaydayence, or Little Pelican,
chief medicine man of the Gull Lakers. He is the incarnation of
the devil in that tribe. He holds the tribe in his hand, and
represents their idolatry and their bloodthirstiness. It is due
to him that the missionary has been driven away. More than that,
he is an inveterate drunkard. He has been rescued from freezing
to death, drunk in the woods, by a chance lumberman finding him
and thawing him out before an extemporized fire.
The scene changes. There is again a wigwam. Lift the blanket door
and enter. Three old women are warming themselves by the fire
in the centre. A young man lies upon the ground singing aloud
from an Ojibway hymn-book, which he reads by the fire-light. An
old man rises to greet you, asks you to sit down, and proceeds
to talk about Jesus Christ. It is the same Shaydayence. He is
known now as the leader of the singing band of the Chippewas, who
goes from house to house with a few young men to plead with his
countrymen to love Christ. A little later you find him living
in a log house with table and chairs and stove, a white man’s
home, cultivating also his garden. What wrought the change? He
had a friend, Nayboneshkong, who was sick and dying. He went
to see him. The sick man had long been a Christian, and now
rallied himself to speak for the last time. Hour after hour he
expostulated and pleaded. He rose from his bed with preternatural
strength. He walked the floor, still talking and praying. Morning
came, Nayboneshkong was dead, and Shaydayence went to his wigwam
to begin the new life of a Christian man. Observe that he was a
savage, a medicine man and a drunkard. What other influence could
have saved him? Would education, or citizenship, or civilization,
or legal standing, or property rights? Nothing; nothing but the
personal power of Jesus Christ; and that did.
The story goes that once there appeared at the cave of a hermit
a little child, naked and cold and hungry. The good man eagerly
took him in, and from his own scanty store clothed and fed and
warmed him. He set his heart upon him as upon his own son. The
next day the hermit was gone. It was Jesus who had come thus
needy to his door, and proving his love, had in return taken him
to himself, and like Enoch, the hermit was not. The child, naked
and hungry and cold at our door, is the Indian. I hear the voice
of the Lord himself saying, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”
You have pointed out the large part which in the providence of
God may yet be appointed to the negro race to play in doing God’s
work in the world.
I know nothing of the future of the Indian in this direction.
He may have no “genius for religion,” no “peculiar talent of
faith,” no “wonderful power in song.” That he has talents which
are respectable, none who know him can doubt. But be that as it
may, before all other men he stands to-day the living witness of
the promise of the Scripture, that Christ “is able to save to the
uttermost them that come unto God by him.” He, brethren, is the
“uttermost” man—the sinner who, abused, outcast and despised,
is, at least in your eyes, the furthest of all men from hope and
from Christ. Have you religion enough to try to save him? If so,
begin by showing him justice.
* * * * *
THE CHINESE.
* * * * *
“CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION.”
Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association.
PRESIDENT: Rev. J. K. McLean, D. D. VICE-PRESIDENTS: Rev. A. L.
Stone, D. D., Thomas O. Wedderspoon, Esq., Rev. T. E. Noble, Hon.
F. F. Low, Rev. I. E. Dwinell, D. D., Hon. Samuel Cross, Rev. S.
H. Willey, D. D., Edward P. Flint, Esq., Rev. J. W. Hough, D. D.,
Jacob S. Taber, Esq.
DIRECTORS: Rev. George Mooar, D. D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. E.
P. Baker, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, Rev. John
Kimball, E. P. Sanford, Esq.
SECRETARY: Rev. W. C. Pond. TREASURER: E. Palache, Esq.
* * * * *
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
The report opens with stating the greatness of the problems
with which the Association has to grapple, protests against the
discriminating legislation of State and nation, and concludes as
follows:
We regard the work of this Association among the Chinamen in
America as fruitful in good results. Its Superintendent on
the field has said: “I doubt whether any evangelistic labor
in connection with our churches has yielded larger results,
in proportion to the funds employed and the breadth which we
have been permitted to give to the work.” That work has been
limited. Out of $179,000 expended by this Association last year,
only $6,596 was given to this work. This was increased a little
by other funds in California. But this sum, applied to twelve
schools, with twenty-one teachers and 1,489 pupils, is too small
for the greatness of the work, for the 100,000 Chinamen in this
country have the closest relations with the millions left at
home. They are constantly coming and going. The Rev. W. C. Pond
said in 1876 that during the fourteen preceding years nearly
130,000 had landed in San Francisco, or about 9,000 annually; but
they are returning nearly or quite as fast as they come. They
are “picked young men, industrious, enterprising, persistent.”
As they come to us, feel our molding touch to harden or to
soften, and then return home, we owe it to them, to ourselves,
and to Christ, to pass as much as possible of this moving stream
of immortal souls through our schools and under the influence
of One greater than Confucius. We want the returning stream to
bear on its bosom the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus Christ. We,
therefore, recommend the enlargement of this work to its utmost
demand. It touches vitally the evangelization of 400,000,000
of brothers and sisters. This work is broader than that among
the Indian and the Negro; it is broader than the evangelization
of Africa. We press its importance, therefore, both upon the
officers and the constituent members of this Association, for by
and by we may see in it the Divine purpose to redeem China by
means of the Chinamen returning home laden with the riches of
grace, more precious than gold.
Your committee desire to express their high appreciation of the
able and exhaustive paper on the Chinese question read before the
Association by the Rev. J. H. Twichell, and submitted to this
committee, and recommend its publication.
Your committee deem it of great importance suitably to recognize
the action of President Hayes in saving us by a veto from
national disgrace. When Congress had so far forgotten the whole
past policy of our Government, and the principles of Christianity
imbedded in the foundations of the Republic, as to pass a bill
indirectly abrogating a treaty unmentioned in the bill, the
Executive interposed and saved both our treaty and our honor.
We would suggest, therefore, the expression of our appreciation
of his action in the adoption of the following resolution, viz.:
_Resolved_, That the American Missionary Association, assembled
in its thirty-third anniversary, believing that the treaties
existing between the United States and China, so far as they
relate to the rights of emigration from one country to the other,
and the treatment such emigrants should receive from the people
and nation among whom and in which they live, are right, just,
wise and Christian, does heartily record its appreciation of
the high services which President Hayes, under God, has, by his
timely veto of the anti-Chinese bill, been enabled to render
the Republic, in preserving inviolate its treaty obligations
and also the cause of Christianity, in removing a threatened
formidable barrier to the evangelization of the Chinese, not only
in America, but also in their native land, and the Association
hereby tenders him its profound thanks for the same.
_Resolved_, That the secretaries of this Association be
authorized to convey to President Hayes this our action.
A. HASTINGS ROSS,
W. A. NICHOLS,
CHARLES C. CRAGIN,
MARK WILLIAMS,
C. CAVERNO,
E. M. WILLIAMS,
JEE GAM.
* * * * *
UNITED STATES AND CHINA—THE SITUATION.
REV. J. H. TWICHELL, HARTFORD, CONN.
OUR OPPORTUNITY.
* * * * Much as anterior conditions and causes have to do with
it, the great opportunity now maturing in China for the ingress
of revolutionary influences from without, has been pre-eminently
shaped by Protestant missions; and in the nature of the case,
it devolves on Protestant Christendom the highest obligations
to meet it that circumstances can create. To no other nation,
however, does such a share of this opportunity and corresponding
obligation fall as to the United States; for we sustain relations
to the Chinese Government and to the Chinese people that are, in
important respects, singular.
(1.) To begin with, there is the relation of _neighborhood_.
Sailing up the Pacific, near our coast, one summer evening, Yung
Wing, leaning against the steamer guards, and looking across the
level waters to the westward, said, “Yonder lies my country, next
land to this.” Between us and China, between our two realms,
the one so old, the other so young, for a thousand miles of
coast on either side, nothing intervenes but the sea, which no
state owns, and that is contiguity. Along so great a boundary
America and China may be said to touch, yet without possibility
of territorial dispute. And this nearness is one feature of our
special opportunity.
(2.) A second and more pregnant feature of it is to be noted
in the _good-will_ that in a peculiar degree characterizes the
relations of our two countries in the past and in the present.
This may seem a strange thing to say just now, but the truth of
it will appear on a brief survey of facts. Probably it is less
our merit than our fortune, but it is certainly the latter,
that through the whole stage of that unhappy, though largely
unavoidable collision of China with the foreign powers, by which
she was forced off from her intolerable policy of exclusion,
our Government was the least conspicuous of the principal
aggressors,—less so than France, less so than England, less
so than Russia. To the several treaties in which the collision
issued, that with the United States, and that alone, contained
the express provision that the parties to it, and their peoples
respectively, should “not insult or oppress each other for any
trifling cause, so as to produce an estrangement between them.”
There has been, and is, less bitter remembrance of us on the
score of that conflict than of the other belligerents engaged
in it. Again, while we have subsequently had men in the various
ranks of our diplomatic service in China who have hurt us there,
and have them still, we have probably given least offence on
_that_ score. No thanks to our civil service want of system; but
in the providence of God, we have had more than our proportion
there of men who have helped our good fame. Eighteen years ago
we sent thither an ambassador, one result of whose six years of
official life there was, that at the end of that time jealous
Pekin had come to recognize in him, what he truly was, a friend
to China. I mean, of course, Anson Burlingame, of Massachusetts.
For his friendship, China offered to his acceptance honors never
before or since conferred on a foreigner. She freely committed
to his hands a trust of supreme magnitude. She made him her
ambassador to all the western people. In that capacity he came
home to his own country, and framed with us the first of that new
series of treaties in which China gave and received the pledge
that made her a member on equal footing of the family of nations.
And that treaty, the work of our own citizen, large minded
enough to value the capabilities of that great people, large
hearted enough also to make his sympathy felt by its rulers,
still stands, and is _going_ to stand. But this most remarkable
and luminous paragraph of history—is there another such between
China and any other nation but ours?
(3.) Finally, as if to supply the last term required to complete
our relationship for all possible service to the Chinese race, as
if to openly designate and summon us to the office of aiding its
emergence into a new life, especially of ministering to it the
holy faith, (which is the best gift we have to impart, the one
secret and source of our happier lot,) for us and for us alone,
of all Protestant Christendom, by bringing to our soil, to the
presence of our institutions, to our church doors, a multitude
of Chinese people themselves, God provided the condition of
_personal contact_. That was the rounding and perfection of our
opportunity.
But, it will naturally be inquired, is not whatsoever exceptional
advantage gained for us in the past mostly annulled by the later
and recent record of social and political hostility here at home,
which stands against us in our account with China? I think not.
The shameful truth is, China is wonted to the ill-treatment of
her subjects on foreign Christian soil, and if we have furnished
no exception to the rule, our outrage has been milder than she is
accustomed to; so that, after all that has happened to wound her
feelings here, there still remains to us the benefit, though it
is nothing, I repeat, to be proud of, of comparison with worse
doers.
ADVANTAGES OF THE ANTI-CHINESE AGITATION.
I am glad to pass to a pleasanter topic, and to remark next, that
there are certain incidental consequences of the anti-Chinese
agitation, and, as well, certain circumstances felicitously
contemporaneous with it, that have operated to offset and
countervail the injury which that agitation may be supposed to
have inflicted on our relation with China—that have done more
than that.
First, it has developed and brought out into expression a _vastly
preponderant public opinion adverse to the whole movement_. The
argument for it has been heard and canvassed, and not without
sympathy; for it was presented by our own countrymen, and it
was not to be questioned that they were in a measure of honest
difficulty of some sort with the matter they brought to trial.
But I think it is entirely true to say that the event of the
discussion has been that the argument is answered. It did not
stand as to its facts. I believe that all the main counts of the
indictment against Chinese emigration and Chinese emigrants we
severally disproved to the public satisfaction.
But beside this aspect of the case, and to a great extent
independently of it, the judgment asked for, _viz., the adoption
of the policy of exclusion, was considered_. Whereupon it
appeared that it was the proposal of an act no less serious, no
less forbidden, than to disown and repudiate a principle, the
maintenance of which more than any other thing distinguishes
us as a nation, which our fathers built into the foundation of
our government, which we have always advocated to the world in
every publishment of our political creed—a principle which
we have ever claimed to be one of natural right, which we
have persistently endeavored, from the outset of our national
existence, to persuade other governments to recognize as such,
and which we had particularly emphasized in the very treaty of
which this act, if consented to, would be the violation. It
appeared, furthermore, that it was a proposal that we take toward
China the very attitude which we had helped force China out of,
as towards ourselves and other nations, _i. e._, that we borrow a
page of cast-off Chinese politics and insert it in our law—that
it was a proposal to return from the nineteenth to the eleventh
century, and convert to the use of a modern free republic
something in the likeness of a medieval edict against the Jews;
that, finally, it was a proposal to go back upon ourselves, to
revoke our own most recent step of advance in civilization, and
restore that doctrine of race discrimination, which we had lately
put away.
And when this was seen, the country said, No! Legislature,
chamber of commerce, institutions of learning, benevolent
organizations, united in the protest. The general voice was, that
whatever evil there was to be remedied must be dealt with in some
other way. A Congressional committee, indeed, brought in a report
not warranted by the evidence it had heard, favorable to the
policy of exclusion—the lamented Morton dissenting—and Congress
itself passed the anti-Chinese bill. But that was Congress,
which has reasons of its own for what it does sometimes, not
very mysterious in this instance. But the report for the people,
which the people with little distinction of party gratefully and
audibly accepted, was made by President Hayes in his strong veto.
Of course the Chinese Government, through its representatives at
Washington, is accurately informed of all this; and besides, the
Chinese Government reads the papers. Thus an attempt which, had
it succeeded, would have destroyed our friendship with China, has
not only failed, but has been the occasion of such an expression
of the national sentiment of good-will toward her as never had
been made before, and as could not have been made otherwise.
A minor but very much to be noted result of the affair has been
_the disclosure of the actual state of things in California_.
It has shown how and where the anti-Chinese movement started,
how low its origin was and how it grew, by what means, by what
management it drew into it such respectable elements as it did;
that it was fomented by the press operating in the field of
State politics—that it was mainly a worked-up irrational furor
kindling by contagion, and did not really signify what it seemed
to. It was shown that much of the best part of California was not
in it. Why, the evidence for the defence on which the country,
balancing it with the other evidence heard, found its verdict
aforesaid, was, all of it, the evidence of California men—men
from the first rank of citizenship. It transpired that there was
in California a not inconsiderable party on the poor Chinaman’s
side, not forbearing to denounce and oppose the violation of his
rights, and to testify in his favor, that much as had been said
and done there against him, a good deal in the name of Christian
benevolence and humanity and justice had been said and done for
him. And so in the upshot of the public trial of the case it has
come about that the offence of California is mitigated by it.