Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/29

Rh future must provide for that, as for many other serious problems, social and political. We can only comfort ourselves with the fact that this continent, especially under Anglo-Saxon sway, has shown a wonderful power of digestion and assimilation of various peoples and nationalities. We have digested a large part of Ireland, and a considerable portion of Germany, — not, however, without some symptoms of a social and political dyspepsia. Dutch, Swedes, Scandinavians, French, Italians, have also furnished us with a stimulative and an alterative diet; and we must leave to the wisest councillors of our nation to dispose of the Mongolian element.

But, instead of finding in this New World a people in a measure advanced in civilization, and capable of defensive resistance to invasion, those who were the first of Europeans to introduce themselves to another division of their own human race encountered only such as we still call savages, or, at least, barbarians.

Even long after the lands discovered on this side of the Atlantic were known to form a new continent, no longer a part of India or Asia, America was regarded as simply an interposed barrier on the course westerly from Europe to the fabled realm. Not for more than a hundred years following upon the first voyage of Columbus was this continent sought or occupied solely for the magnificent ends which it has been realizing for nearly three centuries. The continent was bound to open a water-course to India, — a new and shorter route to its wealth and wonders. That shortened route, which even to this day we have not given over seeking, was then a beguiling and constraining lure, which turned all considerate thought aside from the inviting shores and the inner depths of this splendid realm for toil and harvesting. The Spaniards pursued the search for that Indian highway near the south of the present bounds of our nation, and in so doing beheld the Pacific Sea, and opened California and Oregon. French, English, and Dutch