Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/544

524 Grant's staff, and his military secretary during our Civil War. Our Government has followed up this policy of providing medals to be struck for presentation to representative Indian chiefs, in treaties, and on their visits to Washington. These Government or Peace medals bear on the obverse the effigies of the President for the time being. The same die for the reverse common to most of them presents the hand of a military officer and of an Indian chief clasped in amity. All our presidents have shared in this peaceful service with the exception of Harrison, whose single month of office may have precluded him from the honor. It seems strange, however, that he who, with Jackson, was largely helped to our highest office through fame and success as an Indian fighter, should not have been commemorated in silver and bronze on a peace medal.

Another part of the policy of our Government in dealing with the Indians, steadily continued from the visit of Red Jacket in 1792, has been to invite and conduct to the national capital, from time to time, chiefs and delegations of various Indian tribes. These sons of the forest have been guided and escorted from their retreats, through our highways and watercourses, with the tokens of advancing civilization as they passed on. They have been courteously and hospitably entertained; and, gazed upon with staring curiosity by street crowds, they have been formally received, on a day appointed, by the “Great Father,” at the White House. They appear in all their grotesque finery of feathers and paint, with a strange blending of wilderness and civilized garb, expressing no wonder, assuming the bearing of sheiks and sultans, and showing their common humanity most in their greed and beggary. They are allowed to course the streets, to visit public buildings, and their desire to possess the goods and the trinkets which they see in the shops is generally gratified on the plea that they wish to have them to carry home to their squaws. Their return freight puts them in rivalry with the satirized “Saratoga trunks.”