Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/262

242 own did he consider that he yielded up or parted with, and what rights did he intend to transfer to the purchaser? We must remember that the land in all cases was without improvements, clearings, fencings, wells, or buildings. It was in its wild state of nature. Curiously enough, the actual testing of the transactions between the seller and the purchaser in such cases showed what the Indian thought he was doing when he sold his land. The moment the white man changed this wild state of nature and began to make improvements upon it, the Indian regretted and tried to retract his transfer of it. It would seem that he had intended to allow the white man a right of joint occupancy with himself, using the facilities of the region in common. The Indians had no idea of moving off to a distance and keeping away from the fields of the white men. Nor did they generally do so. They came and went as before, loitered about, occasionally got jobs of work and food, and they were always accessible. Nearly half a century after the settlement of Boston and scores of towns around it, the Apostle Eliot found Indians enough to occupy a dozen towns of their own within thirty miles.

It comes at last to this. The white man's uses of territory are always and everywhere incompatible with the red man's uses of it; and the white man's uses nullify and destroy the red man's. The issue, turned to plain fact, is this, — the red man must consent to make common and joint use of territory with the habits of the white man, or he must give way to the white man. A railroad track, a mail route, a telegraph wire passing through a wilderness, puts an interdict upon the savage and claims the territory for civilization. The comity of nations, independent and jealous in their sovereignty, does not forbid those links and fibres of transit and intercourse. The untamed ocean allows them, and the wild red hunter must not prohibit them. Here is the central turning-point of all the struggle between civilization and barbarism. King Philip began