Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/619

Rh of civilization, of the greed of money, of class distinctions, of social rivalry, of avarice, family quarrels, rebellious and dissipated children, false estimates of true manhood. La Hontan, it is true, was a volatile romancer; but if he personated both parties in his dialogues, he used very pertinent and forcible pleas consistent with either party in the conferences. We shall read before we close this chapter some veritable judgments pronounced by savages, giving us the grounds of their preference of their own way of life.

The discouraging view of the whole problem presented in the failure thus far of all attempts to bring the Indian race under civilization has been stated in its full force, with all the facts and evidence by which it is supported. Are we, therefore, to accept it, to acquiesce in it, and so to look only to the decay, the wasting away, the extinction of the original occupants of this continent as an inevitable decree of fate?

It would be fatal to the interests and prospects of humanity, it would discredit the quality and work of our own civilization, if we should commit ourselves to that forlorn conclusion. However discouraging, or, as some may say, hopeless, quixotic, and even absurd, the attempt may be, we are bound to plan and act and labor as if we were sure of success in the purpose that in years to come the Indian race shall be represented here in blood and vigor by an element in our most advanced civilization. We are not to recognize failure. We are to refer all our discomfitures to our own blunders, and to institute a new trial with all the hopefulness which belongs to a first one. If all the forces of our own civilization and Christianity, backed by the pleadings and helps of a common humanity, cannot compass the reclaiming and uplifting from barbarism of an issue from the Indian stock, we may well own ourselves humbled. We may ask whether we are likely to perpetuate our own civilization, if we have not the power