Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/384

364 class of men on our changing frontiers who have bridged over, in every respect, the whole dividing chasm between the European and the native, between civilization and savagery. The red man and the white man on the frontiers have very often interlinked their lot and destiny, and merged all their differences. Hundreds of white men have been barbarized on this continent for each single red man that has been civilized. The whites have assimilated all the traits and qualities of the savage, and mastered his resources in war and hunting, and his shifts for living, in tricks, in subtlety, and cruelty. And the savage has been an apt pupil of the companion with whom he has consorted on familiar terms. He has caught English words enough to enable him to swear, and, as has been said, has seemed to regard oaths as the root-terms of our mother tongue. And with the use of the rifle and ammunition the savage acquired the taste for “fire-water,” which turns him into an incarnated fiend. He has caught also the white man's guile and fraudulency, which, while perhaps no worse than his own, are of another species. Foul and debasing diseases have come in desolating virulence from the miscegenation of white and red men on the frontiers. Mixed breeds of every shade and degree have brought about the result, as on good vouchers we are informed that full one sixth of those classed among the Indians have white kindred.

Doubtless we must credit some advantages and facilities, as well as much trouble and mischief, to the score of these white men — recreants to civilization, outlaws, adventurers, prisoners, and half-breeds, in all their motley and miscellaneous crews — who have made themselves Indians among the distant tribes, in advance of white settlers of a better sort. They have served as go-betweens, as interpreters, as scouts and guides, and have enabled Government agents and military officers to hold some sort of intelligent intercourse with the natives. Something, however, is to be abated from any general statement of the