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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 19, 1930)
CHEMAWA AMERI Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of India Wednesday, Feb. 19, 1930 Vol. XXXI No. 23 Si t CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY GERMANS ARROWS Jr^tha LONG BOW 3SSi. > 4=—^^ (F rom the Q uiver of M ajor J ames M c L aughlin ) I believe that the Indian was a man before outrage and oppression made him a savage. MM---------------- The Indian problem is involved in a condition created by and for the benefit of the American people. In the Indian of to day there is very little trace of that high spirit and cheerful independence which marked the aborigines upon whom the first comers are said to have fallen. I do not know but that the Indian was upon the whole better off when we treated him as an enemy than he is now that we have an opportunity to practice on him the mistaken policies evolved by his quandam friends. A hundred years of governmental direction of the Indian, sometimes by cajolery, frequently by warfare, and occasionally by rational and fair treatment, has produced a being who is a child in his understanding of our ways, of our philosophy, and our knowledge of the necessity for “hustling” for what is desirable. jwmh >* The Indian of to day who is living at an agency, a moral pauper by reason of his dependency on the dole he receives from the government, or that other one who is struggling to stand alone and upright among men, is handicapped in his efforts and his hopes by reason of the fact that he and his ancestors have been treated as cheats and liars by those who wanted that which the Indian possessed. jaww ....... >• Leaning as he does on a governmental prop that is unstable, the Indian to-day calmly asks: “What are you going to do about it?” And the question must be answered, not by the bookman, nor by the mis sionary societies, but by the practical men who are to-day engaged in giving to the administration of governmental affairs the most practical intelligence ever placed at the disposal of the people of the republic. THEIR IGNORANCE The use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a horde of sav ages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge, and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imag ination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and the illiterate peasant. The former by reading and reflection, multiplies his own experiences, and lives in distant ages and remote countries; whilst the latter, rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses but very little his fellow-laborer the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties. The same, and even a greater difference, will be found between nations than between individ uals; and we may safely pronounce that without some species of writing no people has evei preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made any consid erable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever pos sessed, in any tolerable degree of prefection, the use ful and aggreeable arts of life,—and the Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters. THEIR INDOLENCE If we contemplate a savage nation in any part of the globe, a supine indolence and carelessness of fu turity will be found to constitute their general char acter. The care of the house and the family, the management of the land and cattle, were delegated to the old and the infirm, to women and slaves. The lazy warrior, destitute of every art that might employ his leisure hours, consumed his days and nights in the animal gratifications of sleep and food. And yet, by a wonderful diversity of nature the same barbarians are by turns the most indolent and the most restless of mankind. They delight in sloth, they detest tranquil ity. The languid soul, oppressed with its own weight, anxiously required some new and powerful sensation; and war and danger were the only amusements ade quate to its fierce temper. The sound that summoned (Continued on page 2)
