Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/615

Rh prepared for, and is steadily advancing to its dismal close. Often have we had presented to us in the pathetic rhetoric of the orator, the well-wrought verse of the poet, and the sad-colored canvas of the painter, the vision of “the last Indian jumping into eternity towards the setting sun.” The only qualification, and that grudgingly and feebly uttered, of the certainty and sweep of this fate is that there may be a remnant left, of a degraded and enervated kinship, representing not the Indian, but a poor specimen of humanity.

In a few years hence we are told that our aborigines can be studied only by their skulls in our museums. The basis of this conviction as to the fate of the Indian is that he cannot be civilized, and that he cannot exist in contact with civilization. This belief, it is insisted, has been fairly and decisively reached, as the result of full experiment and experience. More than this is urged. For we are reminded that this assurance that the Indian cannot be civilized is not a prejudgment, not a bias against him from the first, not a resource for excusing, justifying, or comforting ourselves under the compunctions for our wrong treatment of the Indians. On the contrary, the belief, it is said, has been forced on us against our wills, against actual prejudgments on the other side, and comes to us certified and sadly and disappointingly confirmed by the thwarting of all our best and most patient and costly labors and efforts in behalf of the race. There once were hopefulness, earnestness, enthusiasm, lofty expectations of what might be done and realized by reclaiming, civilizing, educating, and Christianizing the noble savage. The most heroic and holy zeal of saintly men and women, the ingenious schemes and devices of benevolent souls and societies, have gone into the work, with the combined efforts and treasures of Government. And all in vain.

So the conviction which dooms the Indian claims to be supported by full experimental, largely varied, and