Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/13

2 traveling menageries, demonstrates its restlessness and untamableness; and so it is with the Indian: for with few exceptions, although they have come in contact with European civilization for four hundred years, they are still far from being up to the standard of the average American. Compare him with the Negro. The Negroes were first brought from the wilds of Africa in 1620, and were taught to labor; but the average Indian would rather die than become a slave. The Spaniards had a proverb that has gone into history, "that one Negro was worth four Indians." Those who are acquainted at this writing with the Indians who now make their homes on reservations fully realize that four hundred and seven years since they were called Indians by Columbus, they only potter around at farming and stock raising, with some exceptions among the five nations in the Indian territory.

The Indians were by God created to roam, hunt, fish and come in contact with nature, which they love with a passion inbred by many generations of progenitors. The Indians of today must not be compared with those who peopled the country in 1539, the date of this story, for there is no similarity. The "fire water" of the white man was unknown to the early aborigines. It did more to demoralize and degrade them than anything else. Within thirty miles of the place where this is written there are the Pottawatomie and Kickapoo reservations. These two tribes have been living on their reservations for a great number of yeers, and from observation at this time they are killing themselves off by the excessive use