Justice to the Indians.
BY JOHN BEESON.
President Grant placed them under control of the churches, making them responsible for all their Indian agents, whom the churches were to nominate. But as fraud and war have been more or less as rampant as ever, it seems that the first thing should be, to relieve the Indians from church rule, and recognize at once the Indian’s inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the same as we claim for ourselves; so long as they do not disturb the peace or violate the rights of their white neighbors, we have no right to interfere with either their religion or laws upon their reserves. It is this meddlesome injustice which makes all the trouble; it would make trouble with any other community, if another religious sect should be allowed to dominate over them in all their affairs. It is not Indian, but human, nature, to do so, the world over. Dr. Bland, editor of The Council Fire, says:
“I have been long and intimately acquainted with many tribes. I find that they are not savages, but the peers of white men, with great self-respect, a high sense of honor, and love of truth.”
Even the civilized tribes still retain their mutual confidence. Hence, they use no locks, no bolts nor bars, when absent from their homes; a stake in the ground, about three feet from the door, is a sufficient guarantee from intrusion. It would be deemed a reflection upon neighborly honor to lock a door in the Indian Territory. I was there when they built their first prison; they now number sixty thousand, most of whom have lived there forty years, and then, they said,
“The new railroad brought so many white renegades among us that we had to build a prison for them.”
I asked, “What do you do when one Indian kills another?” They answered: “We have a trial, and if the killing was without great cause, we sentence the guilty one to be killed by the near of kin to his victim; we appoint the time and the place, and we have never known an Indian to fail to come voluntarily in time for his own execution.”
They believe that the Great Spirit will give all the hell or all the heaven that each deserves; that there is no possibility of escape from a just penalty and no danger of losing a deserved heaven, but to them it is unjust to hope for anything on the merits of another. H. W. Beecher said in his first lecture after his return from the Pacific Coast:
“I made special inquiry of those who are posted on Indian affairs, as to their moral status, and was always told that when fairly treated they are quite reliable.”
Gen. Crookes said of the Apaches, that while they were protected on their reserves from outside aggression they were as well behaved and orderly as any community of people in the United States.
It is true, they killed Generals Canby and Custer, but the first had, contrary to preliminary agreement, moved his soldiers twenty-five miles, and placed them in two companies on each side of the place where the treaty was to be made. The first demand of the Modoc chief was, to take back the soldiers, and it was not until a long delay, and a firm refusal on the part of Canby, that the Modoc chief fired the fatal shot.
And as for Custer and his men, they fell while ignobly, and without right or authority, invading the peaceful home of Sitting Bull and his people.
General Harney says:
“I have lived fifty years on the frontier, and I have never known an Indian war in which they were not in the right.”
Dr. McLaughlin said:
“I have been fifty-three years an Indian trader, and more than fifty years superintendent of the Hudson Bay Fur Company, and in all that time, I have never seen an occasion to shed the blood of an Indian. The American people suppose that their revenge is proof of savagery. But that is a mistake. It is their sense of justice, and whatever they do is but an echo of what has been done to them. They believe as Moses taught, blood for blood, life for life.”
“I lived two years among the Indians with only one white woman, and was never more kindly treated. I lost nothing, although all I had was accessible to them.”
Surely, testimony like this, in connection with their healing magnetism so freely given to Spiritualism, should awaken sympathy if not gratitude in their behalf.—New Thought.
Talent, Oregon, Jan. 19, 1887.