Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/48

28 The fruitful subject of Christian missions to the Indians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, will be treated by itself. But brief reference must be made to the long, and up to this day continuous, series of efforts, beginning with the first European occupancy here, through incorporated and associated benevolent societies and fellowships; through consecrated bequests of funds; through public and private appeals generously answered; and through the heroic and self-sacrificing labors and sufferings of individuals who have shrunk from no extremities of pain and trial, — all given to civilize and Christianize the aborigines of this soil and their representatives. The advocates in our days of the peace policy with the Indians may trace their line of descent through an honorable roll of predecessors. There are funds sacredly kept, the income of which is now, year by year, distributed by the terms of old charters and trusts, for the secular and religious welfare of the Indians. Nor is it strictly true, as has often been said, that the Indians have no standing in our courts. Though the standing which they have may be hardly distinguishable from that of wards, idiots, lunatics, and paupers, it has at least secured to them many individual and common rights, with penalties on such as wrong them. There are regions now in some of our oldest States which were set apart for Indian ownership and residence in Colonial and Provincial times, with trust funds for their maintenance, independent of those which have been established by the national Government. Representatives of the race are still found in those places. To what experiences and results these few remnants of the aborigines on these spots have been brought, must be noticed further on in these pages.

In the minds of some among us, who most regret and condemn the general dealing of our people and Government with the Indians, there floats an ideal conception of what might have been, and what should have been, the relations between the two races from the first up to this day, —