A Straight Deal [14]
arrived, and we shoved him, and shoved him, and shoved him, back, and back, and back. Treaty after treaty we made with him, and broke. We drew circles round his freedom, smaller and smaller. We allowed him such and such territory, then took it away and gave him less and worse in exchange. Throughout a century our promises to him were a whole basket of scraps of paper. The other day I saw some Indians in California. It had once been their place. All over that region they had hunted and fished and lived according to their desires, enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We came. To-day the hunting and fishing are restricted by our laws--not the Indian's--because we wasted and almost exterminated in a very short while what had amply provided the Indian with sport and food for a very long while.
In that region we have taken, as usual, the fertile land and the running water, and have allotted land to the Indian where neither wood nor water exist, no crops will grow, no human life can be supported. I have seen the land. I have seen the Indian begging at the back door. Oh, yes, they were an "inferior race." Oh, yes, they didn't and couldn't use the land to the best advantage, couldn't build Broadway and the Union Pacific Railroad, couldn't improve real estate. If you choose to call the whole thing "manifest destiny," I am with you. I'll not dispute that what we have made this continent is of greater service to mankind than the wilderness of the Indian ever could possibly have been--once conceding, as you have to concede, the inevitableness of civilization. Neither you, nor I, nor any man, can remold the sorry scheme of things entire. But we could have behaved better to the Indian. That was in our power. And we gave him a raw deal instead, not once, but again and again. We did it because we could do it without risk, because he was weaker and we could always beat him in the end. And all the while we were doing it, there was our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, founded on a new thing in the world, proclaiming to mankind the fairest hope yet born, that "All men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," and that these were now to be protected by law. Ah, no, look at it as you will, it is a black page, a raw deal. The officers of our frontier army know all about it, because they saw it happen. They saw the treaties broken, the thieving agents, the trespassing settlers, the outrages that goaded the deceived Indian to despair and violence, and when they were ordered out to kill him, they knew that he had struck in self-defense and was the real victim.
It is too late to do much about it now. The good people of the Indian Rights Association try to do something; but in spite of them, what little harm can still be done is being done through dishonest Indian agents and the mean machinery of politics. If you care to know more of the long, bad story, there is a book by Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor; it is not new. It assembles and sets forth what had been perpetrated up to the time when it was written. A second volume could be added now.
I have dwelt upon this matter here for a very definite reason, closely connected with my main purpose. It's a favorite trick of our anti-British friends to call England a "land-grabber." The way in which England has grabbed land right along, all over the world, is monstrous, they say. England has stolen what belonged to whites, and blacks, and bronzes, and yellows, wherever she could lay her hands upon it, they say. England is a criminal. They repeat this with great satisfaction, this land-grabbing indictment. Most of them know little or nothing of the facts, couldn't tell you the history of a single case. But what are the facts to the man who asks, "What has England done in this war, anyway?" The word "land-grabber" has been passed to him by German and Sinn Fein propaganda, and he merely parrots it forth. He couldn't discuss it at all. "Look at the Boers," he may know enough to reply, if you remind him that England's land-grabbing was done
In that region we have taken, as usual, the fertile land and the running water, and have allotted land to the Indian where neither wood nor water exist, no crops will grow, no human life can be supported. I have seen the land. I have seen the Indian begging at the back door. Oh, yes, they were an "inferior race." Oh, yes, they didn't and couldn't use the land to the best advantage, couldn't build Broadway and the Union Pacific Railroad, couldn't improve real estate. If you choose to call the whole thing "manifest destiny," I am with you. I'll not dispute that what we have made this continent is of greater service to mankind than the wilderness of the Indian ever could possibly have been--once conceding, as you have to concede, the inevitableness of civilization. Neither you, nor I, nor any man, can remold the sorry scheme of things entire. But we could have behaved better to the Indian. That was in our power. And we gave him a raw deal instead, not once, but again and again. We did it because we could do it without risk, because he was weaker and we could always beat him in the end. And all the while we were doing it, there was our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, founded on a new thing in the world, proclaiming to mankind the fairest hope yet born, that "All men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," and that these were now to be protected by law. Ah, no, look at it as you will, it is a black page, a raw deal. The officers of our frontier army know all about it, because they saw it happen. They saw the treaties broken, the thieving agents, the trespassing settlers, the outrages that goaded the deceived Indian to despair and violence, and when they were ordered out to kill him, they knew that he had struck in self-defense and was the real victim.
It is too late to do much about it now. The good people of the Indian Rights Association try to do something; but in spite of them, what little harm can still be done is being done through dishonest Indian agents and the mean machinery of politics. If you care to know more of the long, bad story, there is a book by Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor; it is not new. It assembles and sets forth what had been perpetrated up to the time when it was written. A second volume could be added now.
I have dwelt upon this matter here for a very definite reason, closely connected with my main purpose. It's a favorite trick of our anti-British friends to call England a "land-grabber." The way in which England has grabbed land right along, all over the world, is monstrous, they say. England has stolen what belonged to whites, and blacks, and bronzes, and yellows, wherever she could lay her hands upon it, they say. England is a criminal. They repeat this with great satisfaction, this land-grabbing indictment. Most of them know little or nothing of the facts, couldn't tell you the history of a single case. But what are the facts to the man who asks, "What has England done in this war, anyway?" The word "land-grabber" has been passed to him by German and Sinn Fein propaganda, and he merely parrots it forth. He couldn't discuss it at all. "Look at the Boers," he may know enough to reply, if you remind him that England's land-grabbing was done