Page:Historical and Biographical Annals of Columbia and Montour Counties, Pennsylvania, Containing a Concise History of the Two Counties and a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Representative Families.djvu/30

 HISTORY OF

COLUMBIA COUNTY

CHAPTER I

THE INDIANS

Civilization struck the native savages of this continent like a blight. The great and pop¬ ulous tribes and their strong bands of war¬ riors and hunters, fiercer than any wild beast and as untamable as the eagle of the crags, have faded away, and the remnants of the once powerful and warlike nations are now huddled upon reservations, and in stupid squalor are the paupers of our nation, begging a pitiful crust of bread, or in cold and hunger awaking the allowances doled out by the government for their support. The swiftness with which they are approaching ultimate extinction, the stoicism with which they see and feel the in¬ evitable darkness and destiny closing upon them and their (ate. forms one of the most tragic epics in history. Soon their memory will be only a fading tradition. To real history they will give no completed chapter, because they did nothing and were nothing as factors in the grand march of civilizing forces. They gave the world no thought, no invention, no idea that will live or that deserves to be classed with the few things born of the human brain that live and go on forever. As a race they had no inherent powers of self-development or advancement. Like the wild animal they had reached the limits of (heir capacity, and had they been left here undisturbed by the white race they would have gone on indefi¬ nitely in the same circle—savages breeding savages.

Such are nature's resistless laws that the march of beneficent civilization is over a great highway paved with the bodies and broken bones of laggard nations, nations who pause within the boundary line separating the ig¬ norant savage from intelligent progress. Nature tolerates none of (his sentimental stuff of "Lo. the poor Indian.” It wastes no time in futile tears over the sufferings of ignorance and filth, but "removes" them and lets the fittest survive, and to them belong the earth and the good things thereof. And yet even the poor Indian had rights that civilization should have been bound to respect; and civili¬ zation had it within her power to help rather than rob the red men of the forest.

The one characteristic that will ever redeem the memory of the Indian race from contempt is his intense love for his wild liberty and his unconquerable resolution never to be enslaved —a menial, drawing the wood and water and receiving the blows of the lash from a mas¬ ter's hand. He would sing his death song and die like the greatest of stoics, but he would not be yoked. When penned up as a criminal, he beat against the iron bars like the caged eagle and slowly perished, but died like an Indian brave, and rejoicing that thus he could escape the further tortures that lo him were far be¬ yond death itself.

The treatment of the red men by the govern¬ ment has not been wise and often unjust. Not only were they cruelly robbed of their lands at times, hut government traders swindled them of their pelts, furs and game, and gave them the worst evils of our civilization—whiskey, powder. lying, deceit and hypocrisy. Govern¬ ment agents and missionaries preached and