Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/545

Rh The object of these visits and entertainments is, of course, to impress the savages with a sense of the resources of civilization and of the power of our Government. The effect, however, has often been thought a dubious one. The pride and taciturnity of the savages lead them to suppress what may be their real feelings. They receive and accept everything as a matter of course, as simply due to their rank and antecedents. Doubtless they are more bewildered than impressed. Their interpreters are the most important personages of the escort, and probably the channel through which speeches and replies flow, impregnates them with artificial material. It is suggestive to think how much of misunderstanding and deception may have been caused alike to Government and to Indians by unqualified or untrustworthy interpreters. These visits of the nobles of the forest have been reciprocated by return visits of Government officials to the savages at home, on errands to which we are soon to refer. It might seem strange that a whole century of such intercourse has accomplished so little towards the results of peaceful and friendly relation which it has been designed to secure. It would be difficult to prove that it had really brought about any direct conciliation or assimilation of parties or their interests. The more the whites see of real Indians the less attractive is the spectacle, and the full-grown Indian always prefers his savagery to civilization.

In reviewing the whole course of our Government, for a now nearly completed century, in its dealings with our native tribes, we find that it has always had in view three leading objects or designs, which have from the first prompted and directed its action. These are: —

1. To keep an ever-shifting frontier space between the Indians and the whites; securing this by moving the former farther and farther westward as the latter advanced on new territory for actual settlement.

2. To prevent or suppress all border quarrels and