Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/140

120 air. Enough of them remain, in manuscript and print, to bear testimony to us of the zeal and love which were poured into them, and to make us grieve again over the penalty of the “Confusion of Tongues.”

In the light of our best means of knowledge of the past, with what we infer from fact, and our observations of the present, as regards the aborigines of our continent, probably we should not widely err in resting in this conclusion, — that the North American Indian, when first seen and known by Europeans, stood about midway upon the scale of humanity, as then divided and filled over our globe by gradations of beings belonging to our race. Perhaps we should place the Indian somewhat favorably this side of the middle of that scale. Certainly there were two hundred years ago, and probably there are to-day, as many representatives of our common humanity standing below him as above him. This statement is intended to cover general conditions, stage of development, possession and exercise of human faculties, resources of life, appliances, social relations, and the common experiences of existence.

We have not to go very far back in the centuries, to find for our own ancestors naked and painted men and women, burrowing in caves, without fields or flocks, and living by the chance growths of Nature. It has been pertly said that “the European is but a whitewashed savage;” and many among civilized scenes have lost both the external and the internal tokens of a release from barbarism.

There is one special and painful matter — most harrowing if it were pursued into details — to which we must give some place in forming our estimate of the nature and character of the Indian: it is the hideous and revolting cruelty manifested in his savagism. The scalping-knife is the symbol of the Indian warrior, as the sword and the rifle are of the rank and file of the civilized soldier. But there is something to us supremely hideous in the use of the scalping-knife and its companion weapon, the tomahawk. The practice of