The Chemawa American, May 01, 1914, Page 4, Image 4

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THE
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
get out of their own prejudices, their own type of mind, their habits of
thinking, and see what it was that was animating the life of the people
in whose land they were coming; and the French were able to do that
more readily than the English. The English have been more or less
a stiff-necked people, and although I think the history of the English
people has been a history of sincerity, it has been a history of a great
deal of stubbornness in the persistence of some ideas that were abso­
lutely ineffective in bringing together the two races; and as I say, all
through the years that have passed since that time there has been much
misunderstanding. The people who landed in New England, with
their ideas of religion, felt that the Indian had no religion whatever,
and the white man’s religion, although the Indian showed in a great
many cases his willingness to look into it, was an absolutely new thing
to the Indian. We have simply been making an effort from that time
down to get together, to understand each other, to get into each others’
view points. I think that has been the greatest trouble in the amalga­
mation of the races.
The same failure to appreciate the viewpoint of the other race has ex­
isted when we have come to tell the story of the last three hundred
years. The historians of the past, all the way through, have followed
very largely the same attitude of misunderstanding. If you will take
almost any historical treatise and look into the description of the ex­
ploration period I think you will find this to be true. Take, for in­
stance, a common example—La Salle. I believe that you will find
that the description of his explorations, instead of beginning with the
land which he explored and the people who lived in che land which he
explored, will go back into the little town in France where he was born,
clear out of the surroundings in which his explorations lay, begin with
his life in France, his early training, and follow him through the dif­
ferent experiences of his younger days, and then through his life in
the St. Lawrence Valley, and so eventually reach explorations in the
Mississippi Valley, and watch the events that followed from the stand­
point of Europe. To my mind there is another standpoint that we
must get hold of. The way to study the exploration of the Mississippi
Valley is to get down into the Mississippi Valley before La Salle ever
heard of it, and see what was being done there, s?e what the situ­
ation was, see what the surroundings were, and see what the natural
resources were and who the people were who lived there, and what
were their industries and their methods of life. Then when vou have
put into the readers minds the students’ minds—an understanding of
what was there and howT the Indians thought and how they looked up­
on things, then, keeping that same standpoint, let these Frenchmen,
these Europeans, come in. Then, understanding what the circum-