Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/41

Rh efforts to protect and benefit the savage; to secure his rights, to advance his welfare, to humanize, civilize, and Christianize him. Second, we have, in another unbroken but always steady series, a course of oppressive and cruel acts, of hostile encounters, of outrages, wars, and treacherous dealings, which have driven the savage from his successive refuges on plain or mountain fastness, in forests or on lake shores, till it would seem as if this unintermitted harassment must make certain his ultimate extinction.

How this second course and series of oppressive, cruel, and exterminating measures got prevalence and sway, and has effectually triumphed over the really sincere purposes and professions, over the earnest and costly efforts made to protect and benefit the savage, it is the office of a faithful and candid historian to explain.

Of course, it is of all things the most requisite that one should start on this inquiry in a spirit of perfect impartiality. Yet no one can pursue it far without yielding much or little to a bias that has prejudiced the inquiry for most who have engaged in it, and will be sure to present itself to all. That bias is the accepting what is called the inevitable, in the form of a theory about races, which assumes or argues the utter impossibility that two races of men can exist in harmony and prosperity together. It is enough to say that this theory is in no case to be assumed, but must be tested and verified on each occasion that suggests it.

As to these two parallel lines of facts which illustrate the relations between the red and the white man here, it may be observed that there is in our libraries and public archives a most voluminous collection of books and documents in which they are followed out. We have unnumbered journals and narratives, relations of individuals who, anticipating or sharing in each successive advance of frontier life, have written for us Indian chronicles. We have tales of adventure, stories of captives, reports of heroic missionaries, records of benevolent societies, and Government