Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/271

Rh got — the whole. And what of the former owners? If we look at certain Government maps we see that States and Territories are parcelled out over this magnificent realm like the squares in a vast checker-board. Among these partitions, shown in colors, we may count some hundred and thirty patches, large or small, called Reservations. Each of these marks — in homely language, which is best for it — a scrape into which our Government has got itself by making a bargain about it which it cannot keep, and does not mean to keep. These were certainly, in letter and form, covenants which positively recognized the territorial rights of savages; and the spirit in which they were entered into was certainly, in some cases, sincere and fair. It has been found inexpedient or impracticable to keep them. This, however, is a subject for later pages of this volume; passing reference to it comes here, as the vacillation and so-called perfidious course of policy of our Government in regard to these covenants is only another evidence of an original distrust or denial of any proprietary rights of the savages.

It was, of course, only gradually that our aboriginal people came to realize the full meaning of the struggle which they would have to maintain against the white men. At first they were wholly ignorant of the real purposes of the European colonists. The early companies of them were poor and few; they might have touched and landed here by accident, with no intention of remaining; they were often objects of pity, and needed help; then they appeared to be transient traffickers, seeking an exchange of commodities — fish and peltry — for a few implements and trinkets. These early days of the white man's weakness and poverty have been ever since referred to with pathetic pleading and reproachful remonstrance in the forest eloquence of Indian orators at councils, since we have become so strong and encroaching. Over and over again have these wild spokesmen by council fires, in making treaties