Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/354

334 to obtain the mastery in dominion here. The contests in their prolonged and embittered animosities, with devastation, massacre, and the heightening of all the horrors of civilized warfare so called, were all of them waged at the expense of the natives for their own soil, and they were sure to be the chief sufferers whatever might be the result of each collision, and whichever party prevailed. But none the less, under the fatuity of their destiny, they became discreditable allies of one or another of the contending nationalities, and needless foes of each other in quarrels not their own. The same fatuity of circumstances which first assigned them to one or another party as friend or foe, forced them, in the changing relations of all parties, to shift their alliance here and there as fate impelled them. The Spaniards never concerned themselves with any anxiety or sense of responsibility as to the territorial rights of the savages: the Church's sacred prerogative carried all other claims with it. Nor was it within the purpose or practice of the Spaniards to become colonists or agriculturists through any outlay or labor of their own, in occupying and subduing wild lands. They looked for an easier and a more exciting thrift. The leaders, officials, and functionaries of their invading columns did indeed seek to become proprietors of islands and of immense stretches of territory for mining or cultivation, or for their products. But while the fee of these conquests might vest in Spanish nobles, hidalgoes, or ecclesiastics, the work upon them was to be done by the imported African slaves, and by the natives reduced to the same condition. And it was the Catholic monarch, not the natives, who transferred the title to these fair islands, fields, forests, and mines, and issued patents for their possession and government. Were it not for statutes of limitations, if the sense of natural justice and the benevolent impulse for the righting of all wrongs should ever reach a paroxysm over the hearts of civilized man, many descendants