If we be men, let us die like men, beneath the blue sky, don't you know, and by the still waters, according to Gunter, in the presence of the nobility, rather than be stepped on by a spoiled bronco, surrounded by low tradesmen from New York.
TO THE POOR SHINNECOCK
THERE can be nothing more pathetic than to watch the decay of a race, even though it be a scrub race. To watch the decay of the Indian race, has been with me, for many years a passion, and the more the Indian has decayed the more reckless I have been in studying his ways.
The Indian race for over two hundred years has been a race against Time, and I need hardly add that Time is away ahead as I pen these lines.
I dislike to speak of myself so much, but I have been identified with the Indians more or less for fifteen years. In 1876 I was detailed by a San Francisco paper to attend the Custer massacre and write it up, but not knowing where the massacre was to be held I missed my way and wandered for days in an opposite direction. When I afterwards heard how successful the massacre was, and fully realized what I had missed, my mortification knew no bounds, but I might have been even more so if I had been successful. We never know what is best for us.
But the Indian is on the wane, whatever that is. He is disappearing from the face of the earth, and we find no better illustration of this sad fact than the gradual fading away of the Shinnecock Indians near the extremity of Long Island.
In company with The World artist, who is paid a large salary to hold me up to ridicule in these columns, I went out the other day to Southampton and visited the surviving members of this great tribe.
Neither of us knows the meaning of fear. If we had been ordered by the United States Government to wipe out the whole Shinnecock tribe we would have taken a damp towel and done it.