Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/116



The mind of the native Indian possessed no ideas on the subject of religion except the single belief in a great spirit. And in the light of modern discoveries in science that might not be classed within the tenets or principles of any form of religion. The American Indian was the best specimen of the child of nature, the earth has ever produced. His instincts, passions and affections were but little above those of the forest bred animals around him on which he made war for his own subsistance. That he had attained to such simple arts as ministered to the bare necessities of his existance or aided the strength of his hands or the fleetness of his limbs in obtaining food and clothing shows some evolution of the mental faculties, but no enlargement of his moral or reflective nature. The Indians of the northwest coast of America were scarcely up to the average of Indians of the Atlantic coast and Mississippi valley. As a race they did not possess that vigor of constitution which characterized the tribes that rallied under the call of Pontiac and Tecumseh. They had but little reasoning powers and in a general way accepted everything they saw with their own eyes, or were told by the white men, to be facts until they found out to the contrary. To this lack of mental force and reflective faculties was added the inherent passion for alcoholic stimulants which has demoralized the native races of every land and country. It is both probable and reasonable, that if intoxicating liquors could have been kept entirely away from the Indian, he could have been perfectly controlled by just white men, taught the rudiments of education and Christianity and made a law-abiding self-supporting people. But long before the Missionaries reached this region the free fur traders of the coasting vessels, and free trappers and fur traders coming west from St. Louis, had debauched the Indian with whiskey and utterly poisoned his mind against all white men. The United States had spent five hundred millions of dollars in suppressing Indian wars and defending frontier settlements, which might have been saved and prevented entirely, if the same policy had been enforced in all intercourse with the natives which characterized the dealings of the Hudson Bay Company with the Indian. The policy of the United States government, so far as a policy could express the mind of the people, was intended to be just to the Indian. If wars came, and they did come—they had to be suppressed. But the error was in allowing ir-