Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/362

 to the Indian except by the terrible tuition of force. Even among our own citizens who have had the opportunities for enlightenment that come from colleges and schools, how many of them have considered this as a philosophical question and looked with compassion upon the red brother who is wholly without such helps to form a proper judgment and thereby incline him to habits promotive of peace and a progressive life. And this tuition of force and destruction, in its entirety, has been unknown to the Indian. Each tribe and probably contiguous tribes could know of it as applied to themselves, but of its history, extent, and universality, they could not know. The Indian, without science and arts, except the rudest, without literature or a recorded history, what could he know of the advance of that persistent, cumulative and relentless force, which resist as he would, was crowding him off the earth? And in this so-called race conflict, are we, with a! our science, history, and philosophy, in a mental condition to do justice to the character of this barbarian? I fear that we are not. We say that he is cruel, treacherous, revengeful, indiscriminate in slaughter when at war, and receives pleasure in torturing his enemies. Admit it all, and the Indian, if he had the ability to read our history, could say that every such allegation is true of the white man in overflowing degree. Yes, the Indian is indiscriminate and inclined to hold the white race responsible for the acts of an individual, and in my experience at the Umatilla, as I have elsewhere related, there was not a case of grievance alleged by a white man against an Indian, that he did not, in his anger, mutter maledictions against the whole Indian breed and blame Uncle Sam for trying to make anything out of it. I did not therefore rush to the conclusion that the white man is no better than the Indian, for in every such instance, after the relations between the races had been explained, and the provocatives to individual resistance and retaliation for the white man's encroachments were shown, the white denouncer proved his superiority by exhibiting a more fraternal spirit towards his red brother.