Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/16

The Indian Dispossessed clearly that among the most implacable and bitter of all Indians were many who had once turned to the white man, only to be met with treachery and deceit.

The inevitable results of this long, unequal contest were made more tragic because of the unyielding Indian's conviction that his right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was being ruthlessly trampled upon. There was no difference, to his untutored mind, between defending his native land against the incursions of other wild tribes, as he had often defended it, and his final contest with the white man. There was the same bitterness in defeat, the falling of his braves was as tragic, and the sufferings of his women and children as real, as though he were yielding to another barbarian, because—Heaven help him—there was much in the white man's philosophy which he could not understand. In the calm of the long afterward, when we sing our song of liberty:

it will do the Indian no more than a sentimental justice to remember it as the song of his own glad days.

The tragic story of the untamed, fighting Indian is closed, and this book will have no more of him,—thus eliminating many a sad, but possibly instructive, chapter. Neither is the tale to be burdened with a recital of individual atrocities perpetrated by irresponsible white settlers, and by renegades 6