Although the chiefs had guessed from Stronghand's gestures what was going on between him and the American bandit, not one of them made the slightest allusion to Kidd's departure, or even seemed to notice it. The Canadian trapper, named Whistler, alone went up to the hunter, and pressing his hand, said, with a coarse laugh—
"By heavens! Comrade, you did not miss your game, but brought it down at the first shot. Receive my sincere congratulations for having freed us of that skunk, who is neither fish nor flesh, and whose roguish face did not at all please me."
"It would please you much less, my good fellow, if you knew him," the hunter replied, with a smile.
"I beg you to believe that I have no desire to form a closer acquaintance with that pícaro; only too many like him may be met on the prairies."
The chiefs had resumed their seats, and the council which had been momentarily interrupted, was re-opened by Thunderbolt. The Indians, though people think proper to regard them as savages, could give lessons in urbanity and good breeding to the members of parliamentary assemblies in old Europe. Among them a speaker is never interrupted by those coarse and inopportune noises for which some M.P.'s seem to possess a privilege. Each speaks in his turn. The speakers, who are listened to with a religious silence, have the liberty of expressing their ideas without fearing personalities, which are frequently offensive. When the debate is closed, the speaker—that is to say, the oldest chief, or the one of the highest position either through bravery or wisdom—sums up the discussion in a few words, takes the opinion of the other chiefs, who vote by nodding their heads, and the minority always accepts, without complaint or recrimination of any sort, the resolution of the majority.
Before going further, we will explain, in a few words, the cause of the dissatisfaction which had induced the Indians to revolt once again against the whites. At the period of the Spanish conquests, the Indians, in spite of the obstinate assertions to the contrary, were happy, or at any rate were, through the intelligent care of the Government, placed in a situation which insured their existence under very satisfactory conditions. It is indubitable that if Spain had retained her colonies for fifty or sixty years longer, she would have gradually succeeded in converting the aborigines of her vast territories, attaching them to the cultivation of the soil, and making them give up a nomadic existence, and adopt the far preferable life in villages.
All Spanish America, both North and South, was covered with missions; that is to say, agricultural colonies, established on a large scale; where monks, in every way respectable, through their complete abnegation of the enjoyments of the world, and their inexhaustible charity, taught the Indians not only the paternal precepts of the Gospel, and their duty to their neighbour, but preaching by example, they became weavers, labourers, cobblers, and blacksmiths, in order to make their docile apprentices more easily understand the way to set to work. These missions contained, at the time of the War of Independence, several hundred thousand Indians, who had given up their nomadic life of hunting, and patiently assumed the yoke of civilization. This magnificent result, obtained by courage and perseverance, and which would have speedily resulted in the solution of a problem declared to be insoluble—the emancipation of the red race, and its aptitude to assume the sedentary condition of a town life, was unhappily not carried further.
When the Mexicans had proclaimed their independence, their first care was to destroy all that the Spaniards had raised, and utterly overthrow the internal governmental system established by them. Naturally, the missions were not exempted from this general overthrow; they were perhaps more kindly treated than the institutions created by the old oppressors. The philosophic spirit of the eighteenth century, when it forced its way into Mexico, was naturally misunderstood and ill appreciated by men who were plunged into the grossest ignorance, and who believed that they displayed the independence and nobility of their character by deadly hatred of the clergy, and abolishing their prerogatives at one stroke. It is true that, by an inevitable reaction, the Mexicans, whose revolution was almost entirely effected by priests, and who, at the outset, displayed themselves as such daring skeptics, ere long fell again, through their superstition, beneath the power of the same clergy, and became more devoted slaves to them than ever.
Unfortunately, the death blow had been dealt to the missions or agricultural colonies, although the Government recognized its mistake, and sought by all means to palliate it. They never recovered, only languished, and eventually the majority of them fell into ruin, and were utterly abandoned by the Indians, who returned to that desert life from which they had been drawn with such difficulty. Nothing is so heart-rending as the sight now offered by these missions, which were once so rich, so full of life, and so flourishing; only a few Indians can be seen, wandering about like ghosts in the deserted cloisters, led by an old, white-haired monk, whom they would not leave, and who had vowed to die among his children.
The Mexican Government did not stop here. Returning to the old errors of the conquistadors, it grew accustomed to regard the Indians as slaves; imposing on them exorbitant tariffs for articles of primary necessity, which it sold to them through special agents, bowing them to any Draconian law, and carrying their injustice so far as to deny them intellect, and brand them with the name of Gente sin razón, or people without reason. The consequences of such a system can be easily comprehended. The Indians, who, at the outset, contented themselves with passively withdrawing, and seeking in the desert the liberty that was refused them, on finding themselves so unjustly treated, and urged to desperation by such insults, thought about avenging themselves, and requiting evil for evil.