Within the memory of the writer, the tomahawk once reflected the light of burning cabins along the Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers, and the scalping-knives dripped with the blood of our border settlers, as we have driven the Indians back, back, to the setting sun!
But behold the change to-day, where the church has missions, and the red men are treated like immortal beings, with souls to be saved.
Mr. Wm. Welsh says of what he saw in Nebraska: "The blanket and bow discarded; the spear is broken, and the hatchet and war-club lie buried. The skin-lodge (tepee) has given place to the cottage and the mansion. Among the Santee Sioux, on Niobrara River, in Nebraska, the Episcopal Church has a mission, where one can see the murderous weapons and the conjuror's charms, by aid of which the medicine-man wrought his fiendish arts.
"That is the pipe-stem,—never smoked except on the war-path,—always blackened, being associated with deeds of darkness.
"These," he says, "are laid at the feet of our Christian missionaries, such as Bishops Whipple and Clarkson, and Rev. Mr. Hinman; where school-houses abound, and the feet of many thousand little children, thirsting after knowledge, are seen entering those vestibules of science; while churches, consecrated to the Christian's God, reflect for miles the sun's rays, tokens of a brighter light to their darkened heathen souls!
"Dear children, thanks to our holy religion, a few faithful men, taking their lives in their hands, have gone forth at the church's call,—bearing precious seed,—struggled and toiled, endured severe privations, afflictions, and trials, and saved in tears the germs of light, truth, and hope, which to-day have ripened into a glorious harvest of intelligence and Christian civilization! Christ said, 'It must needs be that offenses come, but woe unto that man by whom the offense cometh.'"
Now, if the wrongs accumulated, done to the poor, ignorant pagan Indians for years and years since the Mayflower landed her pilgrims on these shores, are to be redressed in this world (for there is no repentance for nations after), and if a God of justice so require that we atone to them, or suffer greater torments from their children, who shall say it is not a righteous retribution?
If we find them fierce, hostile, and revengeful, if they are cruel, and sometimes perpetrate atrocities that sicken the soul, and almost paralyze us with horror,—burning and pillaging,—let us remember that two hundred and fifty years of injustice, oppression, and wrong, heaped upon them by our race, with cold, calculating, and relentless perseverance, have filled them with the passion of revenge and made them desperate. If you and I, boys, were Indians, we would do just as Indians do. Their tender mercies are cruel, but there is a reason why it is so.
The former Indian agents, on a salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year, got very rich in a short time. How could they do so but by swindling the poor Indians, who have no idea of the relative value of money, or the cost of goods?
Not long since a tribe just above us was paid off their annuities in shoddy blankets; they were bought back again with whisky, and another tribe was paid with the same blankets; and one agent took out several thousand "elastics" (girls know what I mean) to pay the Indians (among other things), and yet no wild Indian ever wore a stocking!