Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/113

Rh this is the reason I am afraid to say anything about the land. I am afraid of the laws of the Great Spirit. This is the reason of my heart being sad. This is the reason I cannot give you an answer. I am afraid of the Great Spirit. Shall I steal this land and sell it, or what shall I do? This is the reason why my heart is sad. The Great Spirit made our friends, but the Great Spirit made our bodies from the earth, as if they were different from the whites. What shall I do? Shall I give the land which is a part of my body and leave myself poor and destitute? Shall I say I will give you my land? I cannot say so. I am afraid of the Great Spirit. I love my life. The reason why I do not give my land away is, I am afraid I will be sent to hell. I love my friends. I love my life. This is' the reason why I do not give my land away. I have one word more to say. My people are far away. They do not know your words. This is the reason I cannot give you an answer. I show you my heart. This is all I have to say."

As explanatory of the trouble which led to the Whitman massacre, and to the wars with the Oregon Indians, Mrs. Victor in her history of the Indian wars of Oregon says, page 29, "The real cause of ill feeling between the Indians and their Protestant teachers was the continued misunderstanding, concerning the ownership of land, and the accumulation of property. No one had appeared to purchase the lands occupied by the missions; nor had any ships arrived with Indian goods and farming implements for their benefit, as had been promised."

Both the missionaries and the settlers had located in the Indian country and proceeded to build houses and cultivate the land as if the Indian had no title. That indeed was the way the white man had viewed the question from the first settlement in America. They who came from civilized Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries found the American continent peopled by tribes without cultivation, literature and refinement, or fixed habitations. They considered the Indians mere savages, having no rightful claim to the country of which they were in possession. Every European nation had deeemd it had secured a lawful and just claim to any part of the American continent which any of its subjects had discovered, without any regard to the prior occupation and claims of the Indians. And even in much later times, and by the highest court this view was affirmed as good law, by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1810, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States (Cranch's Reports, Vol. 6, page 142) held, that the Indian title to the soil is not of such a character or validity as to interfere with the possession in fee, of the disposal of the land as the state may see fit.

It takes a long time to correct an erroneous principle of fundamental law, and a still longer time to beat down a race prejudice. The nation has had to spend billions of dollars and sacrifice almost millions of lives to extinguish the heresy that neither the black man or the red man had any rights the white man was bound to respect. And while our Nation has finally arrived at the full standard of giving justice and equity to all men, without respect of persons, the great nations of Europe are still enforcing their ideas of two hundred years ago upon the weaker peoples of Asia and Africa to maintain privilege and power by taxation without representation. The decision of the Supreme Court in 1810 did not pass unchallenged. Justice Story in his exposition of the Constitution, page 13, says: "As to countries in the possession of native tribes at the time of the discovery, it seems difficult to perceive what right of title any discovery could confer. It would seem strange to us, if, in the present times, the natives of the South Sea islands should by making a voyage to and discovery of the United States, on that account set up a right to this country. The truth is, that the European nations paid not the slightest regards to the rights of the native tribes. They treated them as barbarians that they were at liberty to destroy. They might convert them to Christianity, and if they refused to be converted, they might drive them from their homes, as unworthy to inhabit the country. Their real object was to extend their own power and increase their own wealth, by