How has he contributed to the world's progress? By his personal faithfulness to duty and devotion to a trust. He has not advertised his faithfulness nor made capital of his honor. Again and again he has proved his worth as a citizen of his country and of the world by his constancy in the face of hardship and death. Racial antagonism was to him no excuse for breaking his word. This simplicity and fairness has cost him dear; it cost his country and his freedom, even the extinction of his race as a separate and peculiar people; but as a type, an ideal, he lives and will live!
The red man's genius for military tactics and strategy has been admitted again and again by those who have fought against him, often unwillingly, because they saw that he was in the right. His long, unequal struggle against the dominant race has produced a brilliant array of notable men without education in letters. Such were King Philip of the Wampanoags; Pontiac, the great Ottawa; Cornplanter of the Senecas, in the eighteenth century; while in the first half of the nineteenth we have Weatherford of the Creeks, Tecumseh of the Shawnees, Little Turtle of the Miamis, Wabashaw and Wanatan of the Sioux, Black Hawk of the Foxes, Osceola of the Seminoles. During the last half of the century there arose another set of Indian leaders, the last of their type—such men as Ouray of the Utes, Geronimo of the Apaches, Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Sitting Bull of the Sioux, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces, and Dull Knife of the Northern Cheyennes. Men like these are an ornament to any country.
It has been said that their generalship was equal to that of Cæsar or Napoleon; even greater considering that here was no organization, no treasury, or hope of spoils, or even a stable government behind them. They displayed their leadership under conditions in which Napoleon would have failed. As regards personal bravery, no man could outdo them. After Jackson had defeated the Creeks, he demanded of them the war chief Weatherford, dead or alive. The following night Weatherford presented himself alone at the general's tent, saying: "I am Weatherford; do as you please with me. I would be still fighting you had I the warriors to fight with; but they no longer answer my call, for they are dead."
Chief Joseph, who conducted that masterly retreat of eleven hundred miles, burdened with his women and children, the old men and the wounded, surrendered at last, as he told me in Washington, because he could "bear no longer the sufferings of the innocent." These men were not bloodthirsty or wanton murderers; they were as gentle at home as they were terrific in battle. Chief Joseph would never harm a white woman or child, and more than once helped non-combatants to a place of safety.
In oratory and unstudied eloquence the American Indian has at times equalled even the lofty flights of the Greeks and Romans. The noted Red jacket, perhaps the greatest orator and philosopher of primitive America, was declared by the late Governor Clinton of New York to be the equal of Demosthenes. President Jefferson called the best-known speech of Logan, the Mingo chief, the "height of human utterance."
Now let us consider some of his definite contributions to the birth and nurture of the United States. We have borrowed his emblem, the American eagle, which matches well his bold and aspiring spirit. It is impossible to forget that his country and its freely offered hospitality are the very foundation of our national existence, but his services as a scout and soldier have scarcely been valued at their true worth.
THE INDIAN SOLDIER AND SCOUT
The name of Washington is immortal; but who remembers that he was safely guided by a nameless red man through the pathless wilderness to Fort Duquesne? Washington made a successful advance upon the British army at Trenton, on Christmas Eve; but Delaware Indians had reported to him their situation, and made it possible for the great general to hit his enemy hard at an opportune moment. It is a fact that Washington's ability was shown by his confidence in the word of the Indians and in their safe guidance.
In the French and Indian wars there is abundant evidence that both armies depended largely upon the natives, and that when they failed to take the advice of their savage allies they generally met with disaster. This advice was valuable, not only because the Indians knew the country, but because their strategy was of a high order. The reader may have seen at Fort George the statue of Sir William Johnson and King Hendrix, the Mohawk chief. The latter holds in his hand a bundle of sticks. Tradition says that the chief was arguing against the division of their forces to meet the approaching French army, saying: "If we are to fight, we are too few: if we are to die, we are too many!"
As an Indian, and having often heard my people discuss strategic details, I am almost sure that the chief anticipated the tactics of the enemy; and the pathetic sequel is that he was selected to lead a portion of the English forces to Fort Edward that morning, and when only a mile or so out was ambushed by the enemy. He stood his ground, urging his men to face the foe; and when he was shot dead, they were so enraged that with extraordinary valor they routed the French, and thus Hendrix in dying was really the means of saving Forts George and Edward for the colonists.