Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/609

Rh people to consider whether the indisposition on the part of the savage to adopt our ways of life — instead of being wholly chargeable to ignorance, dulness, or indocility on his side — may not also indicate that our civilization is not in all respects a desirable or faultless thing. There may be in it qualifications and abatements of good which the Indian may detect, and which signify more to him than they do to us. At any rate, he considers himself rid of all class distinctions of the rich and poor, the humble and the privileged. The whole slavery of industry, toil, struggle, and rivalry for a living presents to him an uninviting aspect. More than this: if our modern communists, pleading for the removal of individual rights of property and the joint ownership of everything, are really the advanced and wise theorists which they claim to be, the Indians have long had the start of them in that matter. The Indians, too, might quote many pages of our own literature, if known to them, — essays, for instance, of Burke and Rousseau, — favoring the wilderness state as the natural and happy state for man. Nor is it at all to be wondered at, that not only idealists, but also some thoughtful, experienced, and practical persons, feeling the oppressive burdens of the social state under all the thickening and threatening problems which, once opened, are never disposed of, recur to former less advanced stages of human society as really preferable to our own. Some in this backward gaze rest simply with the pastoral, agricultural stage; others fondly seize on the charms and freedom of the wild hunter's life. The Indian, as we shall see, is more than content with the latter.

We have to note the very positive fact that civilization assumes as its prerogative the natural right to force itself upon people who do not ask for it nor want it, and who even refuse to receive it. We practise first upon animals, — wild cattle, parrots, and other creatures, — and tame and domesticate as many of them as possible. The horse,