Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/131

Rh often, not always, — for there have been honorable and noble exceptions, — finds himself the only honest man among a crew of rascals and knaves, and who guards against their swindling him by swindling them. Fifth, the army officer, who has to follow the trail of the ambushed foe, and to do the fighting. And, lastly, there are annually numerous wild rovers, pleasure tourists, hunters, noblemen from abroad, who go to the Plains to chase the buffalo. These have a free and happy time with the Indians, being companionable and lavishly generous. When the Duke Alexis, by President Grant's order, was accompanied by General Custer in his rush over the wild plains, he of course had a good time, and thought the Indians noble fellows.

Of course the Indian, his life and surroundings, are favorite themes of romance. These have been already wrought into the fancies and charms of poetry. Such uses they will serve more richly in the future. The less we see and know of real Indians, the easier will it be to make and read poems about them. The themes of epics will yet be found in them, and distinctive American literature for time to come will draw inspiration, eloquence, and fascination from the heroes and the fortunes, it may be, of a vanished race, — vanished with the primeval forests and the wild game. And poetry and romance have their license. Stern history, however, has got the start of them, and will always be able to tell the true story in sober prose. Cooper's novels, the poems and ballads of Campbell, Longfellow, Whittier, and others will secure to romance the holding of its own with the traditions of truth. Whittier, in his preface to his “Mogg Megone,” naïvely says, that in portraying the Indian character he has followed, as closely as his story would admit, the rough but natural delineations of Church, Mayhew, Charlevoix, and Roger Williams (that is, of those who had actual knowledge and converse with the Indians); and, in so doing, he has “necessarily discarded much of the