Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/161

Rh painter and the lion, where the artist alone could represent both sides of the contest, — the history of our Indian tribes comes from the pen of their conquerors. For many and obvious reasons we have to regret what we must regard as a gap in our literature, caused by the lack of any native contributions to it. As we shall have to note in later pages of this volume, there have been a few master minds, both in reasoning and oratory, among the Indians. From more than one of these we have evidence of a capacity and acuteness of thought exercised upon the comparative attractions and advantages of a barbarous or a civilized life; cogent arguments for the right of Indians to follow their own preferences and habits; and plaintive laments over the miseries and the woes inflicted by the white man upon those whom the Divine Being had set in their own free domains, with all that could minister to their need and happiness. Rousseau was but a tame and artificial pleader for the immunities and joys of a state of Nature for man, when compared with some of these aboriginal specimens of it.

Yet we need hardly feel that we lack any information which it is desirable and interesting for us to have concerning the habits, mode of life, resources, and experiences of our aboriginal tribes. Allowing, too, for the fact already recognized, that our abounding literature on the general subject is composed of contributions from a large variety of writers, in capacity and in principles, who in their intercourse with the natives, having had widely different relations with them, and widely different ends in view, have seen and reported them differently, we have all the means for a full and fair representation of aboriginal life.

A state of savagery, however extensive the regions covered by it, and however diverse in local climatic influences and productions parts of it may be, will generally reduce nearly to uniformity the condition and habits of life of those who share it. In civilized lands, countries bordering on each other — neighboring counties, cantons, or