Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/132

112 romance which poets and novelists have thrown around the ill-fated red man.”

Of course common-sense, after all, must be trusted on such themes to draw the line not only between opinions and theories, but even in the statement and interpretation of facts, as they come from romancers, sentimentalists, idealists, and philanthropists, or from literal, practical, matter-of-fact persons, speaking from experience. The familiar line, hackneyed by frequent quotation, —

would have a different meaning according to the circumstances under which one happened to meet him, — whether he was running to you or from you. “The stoic of the woods, the man without a tear,” as a poet has drawn him, was after all, like most of us, a many-sided being. Much wise and well-balanced judgment, poised fairly, has been uttered of the savage in this sentence: “His virtues do not reach our standard, and his vices exceed our standard.” It seems to have been with the Indians, as Tacitus says it was with our German ancestors, that one half of their time was spent in hunting and war, and the other half in sloth and play. Two constraining reflections must always guide our thoughts about them. However degraded, they had the divine endowment from Him — as Southey says —

Again, the Indians are a people with a history but without a historian. The Jesuit Father Lafitau, a man of great learning in classic lore, and a most intelligent, candid, and discerning observer of savage life, published in 1724 the fruits of his patient investigations in two stately quartos, abundantly illustrated with engravings. The title of his work, — “Mœurs des Sauvages Américains, Comparées aux Mœurs des Premiers Temps,” — expresses the