In the opinion of the Indians, palefaces were weaklings under torture. Still, white folks possessed strong medicine capable of moving great boats upon water without paddles. They also set great store upon boundaries on land and upon scratches on paper, which they said meant the same thing yesterday, today, and forever, and when a chief touched the quill to make his mark at the end of a writing it might bring trouble for years to come. Of course, the whites then said it was a treaty of cession by which the tribe had agreed to move the Indian village away and leave the settlers alone. These strange white people had a passion for killing trees continually, for making more tobacco than they could smoke, and for sending most of it away in their ships. White men were always working, mostly at tasks fit only for squaws, and they were fond of getting other white men and black men, and even trying to get red men, to work for them. Palefaces rarely moved their houses or changed their wives, and they would eat little more in harvest, or after a kill, than at any other time. Their restraints and their lack of restraint were equally unaccountable; and their numbers were ever swelling and their demands ever continuing for more and more land. They were, in truth, unfriendly neighbors, unwilling to blend the colony with the tribe; but they were firm, and on occasion impolite, in living their own lives and crowding the red men out. This brought battle now and then and a few blond scalps to dangle, but in war, too, the whites were unreasonable. They would not wait for Indian summer to do battle, and when once they took the path they were not content with raids, ambushes, and surprise attacks, but they would persist in a campaign under staunch command long after sensible, spasmodic Indian folk had grown weary.[160]
Thus, we may fancy, thought the Algonquins, Iroquois, Mohicans, Tuscaroras, and the Cherokees, the more sedentary eastern tribes early to experience the white man’s aggression. At length they concluded that their first welcome had been unwise and wrecked themselves in efforts to drive the invaders out, but even in this purpose the tribes could not unite. Alliances reluctantly made between them were carelessly broken in the hour of peril. There is record of few confederations of Indian tribes that acted with any degree of unity. The ordinary tribal relationships were hostile. Indeed, every Indian tribe had at least one implacable enemy. As Chief Little Plume once said, “As long as there remains a Crow and a Piegan, so long will there be war.”[161] Even in their campaigns with the white men they were inconstant and uncertain and quite as much the victims of treachery and double dealing as they were perpetrators of such offenses.
In what light was the Indian held by the white settlers of America? It has already been noted that Europe’s Christian sovereigns and their governors disregarded the Indians’ tribal ownership. They were primitive, pagan, and of ill repute. Human beings they were, perhaps, but with a hazy past, precarious present, and reckless future. If they could be converted to Christianity, well and good. That blessing would adequately compensate for the loss of their hunting grounds. Salvation in heaven was far better than savagery on earth.
Hence, we learn that the Pilgrim Fathers first “fell upon their knees and then upon the aborigines.” Roger Williams, William Penn, Zebulon Pike, John C. Calhoun, and Brigham Young raised dissenting views, but theirs were as voices crying in the wilderness. Other more self-seeking councils prevailed. Many were the voices raised in condemnation.
General Phil Sheridan, in his oft-quoted comment, said, “There is no good Indian but a dead Indian.... If a white man steals, we put him in prison; if an Indian steals, we give him a blanket. If a white man kills, we hang him; if an Indian kills, we give him a horse to put the blanket on.”[162]
Another characterization from a Montana frontiersman goes, “An Indian’s heart is never good until he is hungry and cold.”
Jim Stuart, than whom no man had more occasion to harshly judge Indians about Yellowstone, made the following observation:
“Arro-Ka-Kee” or The Big Rogue [eminently appropriate, that name], stood six and a half feet high in his moccasins and weighed two hundred and seventy-five pounds. He was accompanied by “Saw-a-bee Win-an,” who was a good Indian, although not dead, which I note as an exception to the general rule.[163]
The Earl of Dunraven professed to express the Sportsman’s viewpoint when he said that Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack had the same feeling for Indians that they entertained toward game. That is to say, “They love them, and they slay them.”
To the typical frontiersman, the Indian was a savage, ready to pounce on careless settlers, scalp them, burn their homes, and carry off their loved ones—in short, a “varmint.” To the romantic writers, the Indians were children of nature, dwellers in shady forests and peaceful plains, earth’s true nobility! Of course, the romantic writers seldom saw the natives and never lived with them. These errors, and many others, have been accepted as first-hand accurate observations. Indeed, the whole American Indian policy has been called a tragedy of errors, beginning with the naming of the race “Indian.”[164]