Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/119



" camp followers " as respectable and representative soldiers.

When you reflect that for centuries the Indians in almost every lodge on the continent, at almost every council, have talked of the whites and their aggres sions, and of these things chiefly, and always with that bitterness which characterizes people who look at and see only one side of a case, then you may come to understand, a little, their eternal hatred of their hereditary enemy how deeply seated this is, how it has become a part of their nature, and, above all, how low, fallen, and how unlike a true Indian one must be who leaves his retreating tribe and lingers in a drunken and debauched fellowship with the whites, losing all his virtues and taking on all the vices of his enemy.

A pot-house politician should represent us at the court of St. James s, if such an Indian is to be taken as a representative of his race.

The true Indian retires before the white man s face to the forest and to the mountain tops. It is very true he leaves a surf, a sort of kelp and drift-wood, and trash, the scum, the idlers, and the cowards and prostitutes of his tribe, as the sea leaves weeds and drift and kelp.

Judge not the sea by this, I protest. This is not the sea, but the refuse and dregs of the sea. The misfortune of it is, however, that this is about all that those who have written and pronounced upon the character of the Indian have ever seen.

And, again, why hold the whole race, f