The Mine with the Iron Door

by Harold Bell Wright

“It would be easier to number the drops of water that fell in the storm to-night than to tell the years of these mountains that look down upon the Cañada del Oro and the desert beyond. They have seen the ages pass as the cloud shadows that race across their foothills when the spring winds blow. Before the beginnings of what you white people call history they had watched many races of men rise to the fullness of their strength and pride, and fall as the flowers of the thistle poppies fall in the desert dust. In the time appointed the Indians came.

“From the peaks of these mountains Natachee the Indian can see far. From the place where the sun rises in the east, to the mountains behind which he goes down in the west, and from the farthest range that lies like a soft blue shadow in the north, to that line in the south where the desert and the sky become one, this land was the homeland of my Indian fathers. Since the God of all life placed us here it has been our home. What has the Indian to-day?

“Was there a place where the tall pines grew and the winter snows lingered long into the dry season to feed the streams where the wild creatures drink—‘I want those trees, they are mine,’ said the white man. And he cut them down and sold them for gold, and the naked mountains held no snows to feed the creeks; and the meadows that God made became barren wastes—lifeless. Was there a spring of water—‘It is mine,’ cried the white man, and he built a fence around it and made a law to punish any thirsty creature that might dare to drink without paying him. In this homeland of my fathers the wild life was as the grass on the mesas. The Indian took what he needed. It was here for all. The white man saw the antelopes in the foothills, the deer on the mountain slopes, the bear in the cañon, the sheep among the peaks, and he shouted: ‘They are mine—all mine.’ And every man in his white madness, for fear some brother would destroy one more wild thing than he himself could count among his spoils, killed and killed and killed; and only the buzzards profited by the slaughter. But I, Natachee, an Indian, here in this homeland of my fathers, because I dared to kill the deer from which we had our meat this evening, am a violator of the white man’s laws, and subject to the white man’s punishment.

“You tell me that I should teach my people how to live? By that you mean that I should teach them the ways of the white people? Is it the duty of one who has been robbed of all that was his to accept the thief as his schoolmaster and spiritual guide? Would you say that one who had been tricked and cheated out of his birthright must adopt the principles and customs of the trickster? Could you expect one who had been humiliated and shamed and broken to set up the author of his degradation as his ideal and pattern?

“The schools of the white people taught me nothing that would cause the white people to permit me ever to make a place for myself among them as their equal. No education can ever, in the eyes of the white man, make a white man of an Indian. All kinds of animals are educated for the circus ring, and the show bench, and the vaudeville stage. If they prove clever enough you applaud them. You reward them for amusing you. You educate the Indian. If he be clever enough you give him a place in your social circus so long as he amuses you. But do you permit him to become one of you in your homes, your professions, your law-making, your business—no—he is no more one of you than the performing bear is one of you. Do you think that I, Natachee, do not know these things? Do you think my people do not know that, when one of their boys is put in the white man’s schools, he grows up to be something that is neither a white man nor an Indian? It is because they do know, that they look upon me, Natachee, as an outcast of the tribe. Would the outcast, without place or people in the world, teach others the things that made him an outcast?

“The only thing that an Indian can teach an Indian is to die. In the day of their strength and pride my fathers in these mountains saw the smoke from the first camp fire made by a white man in the Cañada del Oro. It was a signal smoke—but no Indian then could read its meaning. We know now that it meant the time had come when the Indians, too, must go into the shadows, even as the many races that had passed before them. But my people shall not be unavenged—as the red man is going, the white man too shall go.

“The strength of the Indian was the red strength of the mountains and deserts and forests and streams. The Indian is dying because the white man stole his red strength and turned it into a white man’s strength, which is yellow gold. But the white man’s yellow strength is his weakness. In the golden flower of his greatness are the seeds of his decay. For gold, your people destroy the forests—tear down the mountains—dry up or poison the streams—lay waste the grass lands and bring death to all life. For gold they would rob, degrade, enslave and kill every race that is not of white blood. For gold they rob, degrade, enslave and kill their own white brothers. Even the natural mating love of their men and women they have made into a thing to buy and sell for gold. In this lust for gold their children are begotten, and born to live for gold, and of gold to perish. The very diseases that rot the white man’s bones, wither his flesh, dim his eyes and turn his blood to water are diseases which he buys with his gold. And the only heaven that his religious teachers can conceive for his celestial happiness is a place where he may forever wear a crown of gold, make music upon a harp of gold, and walk upon streets of gold. It was this gold, which is both the white man’s strength and his weakness, that brought your race like a pestilence upon my people. By this same gold for which the Indian peoples have been destroyed shall the Indians be revenged; for by this gold shall the destroyers themselves, in their turn, be destroyed.

“There is nothing left for the Indian but to die. I, Natachee, have spoken.”

At his closing words Marta Hillgrove caught her breath sharply.

“Nothing left but to die? And you—have you never dreamed of—“ she could not speak her thought.