Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/119

Rh stoves, apple parers and sausage machines, and needle threaders and sewing machines.

Now our aborigines present to us these singular conditions: having a fine physique, vigor of body, acuteness of senses, few demoralizing habits, good natural understandings, and living under a stimulating and healthful, not enervating climate, on good soil, they were nevertheless torpid, unaroused, unambitious, idle, listless, indifferent to everything but hunting and fighting. Of the metals, fibres, chemical activities all around them they made almost no use. No step of progress, no sign of betterment, showed itself among them. For all the evidence within our reach attests to us that there was among the savages no token of that discontent or yearning which is the incentive to change for the better.

In dealing with our whole subject under its successive themes, we shall have many occasions to present the Indian under a variety of characters and aspects. A few general notes of observation may come in here.

The fascinating description which Columbus wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella of the first savages that came within his view has already been repeated here. Coming to a later time and to a way of judging them which we can better appreciate, we take a sentence from Roger Williams, who had as long and close and curious an intercourse with the Indians as any white man, and who had an intelligent and discerning spirit. He wrote thus: “For the temper of the brain in quick apprehensions and discerning judgements (to say no more), the most High Sovereign God and Creator hath not made them inferior to Europeans.” This relates to the higher endowment of the Indian. For his form and grace, his bearing and demeanor, let us take a few sentences from the enthusiast George Catlin, who lived eight years (1832-1840) with such Indians as we have now, visited forty-eight of their tribes, and painted in oil five hundred canvases of