Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/20



I must write of myself, because I was among these people of whom I write, though often in the back ground, giving place to the inner and actual lives of a silent and mysterious people, a race of prophets ; poets without the gift of expression a race that has been often, almost always, mistreated, and never understood a race that is moving noiselessly from the face of the earth ; dreamers that sometimes waken from their mysteriousness and simplicity, and then, blood, brutality, and all the ferocity that marks a man of maddened passions, women without mercy and without reason, brand them with the appropriate name of savages.

But beyond this, I have a word to say for the Indian. I saw him as he was, not as he is. In one little spot of our land, I saw him as he was centuries ago in every part of it perhaps, a Druid and a dreamer the mildest and the tamest of beings. I. saw him as no man can see him now. I saw him as no man ever saw him who had not the desire and patience to observe, the sympathy to understand, and the intelligence to communicate his observations to those who would really like to understand him. He is truly "the gentle savage ;" the worst and the best of men, the tamest and the fiercest of beings. The world cannot understand the combination of these two qualities. For want of a truer comparison let us liken him to a jealous woman a whole-souled un cultured woman, strong in her passions and her love. A sort of Parisian woman, now made desperate by a long siege and an endless war.