Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/52

32 thought that the white man's “help” had been but sorrow for them. The Dutch colonists of New York were more frank, at least, in avowing the main object of their coming, for they chose a beaver for their shield seal.

The deliberate judgment of that observing and thoughtful missionary Lafitau is summed up in these words: “The Indians have lost more by imitating our vices than they have gained by availing themselves of those arts which might have added to the comforts and conveniences of life.” Yet among the many radical differences of judgment which have found expression by intelligent and competent observers, and which cover most of the matters of fact, with comments upon them, in the whole survey of the relations between the whites and the Indians on this continent, we are to recognize this, namely, — the avowal of the opinion that the intrusion and agency of the whites have, on the whole, accrued to the benefit, the relief, the improvement of the native stock. It has been stoutly affirmed that no additional havoc or horrors have attended the warfare of civilized men against the savages, beyond those which, with their rude weapons, their fiendish passions, and their ingenuities of torture, they had been for ages inflicting on each other. And it has been boldly argued, that, though civilization mastered the Indians rough-shod, it has dropped on its way reliefs, implements, favors, and influences which have mollified and reduced barbarism, and added resources towards lifting them from a mode of life hardly above that of brutes.

It is within the life-period of the present generation that the whole development of the relations between the whites and the Indians — protracted through the preceding centuries — has been rapidly matured towards what is in immediate prospect as some decisive and final disposal of the issue. During those previous centuries, steady as has been the process of the displacement of the Indians, it was pursued under the supposed palliating condition that their