Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/267

Rh applicable in the past, there is reason for believing that it has much to verify it in these last years. The present generation of savages profit largely either from the remorse, or from the apprehensions, or from the generosity of our people as expressed by the Government. While in our largest cities are crowded hordes of wretched, houseless beggars, suffering all the direful miseries of penury, cold, nakedness, and disease, the Indians who are pensioners of our Government have transported to their fastnesses, by most costly modes of carriage and distribution, a marvellous variety of necessities and even of luxuries. Droves of beef on the hoof, with whole warehouses of clothing emptied of materials for their apparel, minister to prime necessities. But this is by no means all: any one who will turn over the annual report of the United States Indian Commission will find in it a most elaborate table, covering (for 1881) one hundred and sixteen closely printed pages, headed “Proposals received and Contracts awarded for Supplies for Indian Service.” On reading over that table, one will have really a new and grateful impression of the resources, appliances, ingenuities, and ministrations of civilization for human life. All the varieties of food, of household and farming, mechanical and artistic, tools, of stuffs and garments, of groceries and furniture, of iron, tin, glass, and crockery ware, — fill the specifications in the tables. The eye falls with pleasure upon the hundreds of thousands of pounds of soap, and the thousands of combs, which may be put to excellent use. Cosmetics hold a large space. The variety of surgical instruments and mechanical medical devices is an amazing one. The elaborate list of drugs and medicines would seem to indicate that a system of light practice does not prevail among the natives. Tobacco is furnished most lavishly. When it is considered that ninety-nine hundredths of the articles on these tables were never used by or even known to the Indians before their intercourse with the whites; and when we also take