Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/639

Rh who are crushed by poverty, toil, and struggle in civilized life: they touch what is left of the springs of simplicity and sincerity in many, pampered and jaded, in the highest ranges of artificial society. So it is not strange that to the one question, “Can an Indian be civilized?” some persons add another, “Why should he be civilized?”

When the astute and heroic Indian patriot Tecumseh was plying all his energies and eloquence to engage the Northern and Southern tribes in a vast confederacy, and in alliance with the British, in our last war with them, for the suppression and extinction of the power of our Government in the Mississippi Valley, he brought to bear upon his wild and maddened followers, as well as upon some tribes who were halting in purpose, a direct attack upon civilization. He knew well the forces and attractions, as well as the enfeebling and demoralizing influences, of the white man's mode of life. In his own mind he had balanced well the life of civilization and of barbarism, and his savage instincts decided him to retain for his people the state of Nature. With a power of appeal — pointed with sarcasm, scorn, and invective — which proved him able to stir the wildest passions of his hearers, he bid them despise the plough and loom and all the implements of thrift and toil, and cling to their primitive customs. He warned them against the destruction of their magnificent forests and the pollution of their crystal rivers. Reminding them of the darker-colored race from Africa, in slavery to the whites on their violated domains, he foretold that fate as their own if they came under subjection to the white man. He exhorted them to rid themselves of every symbol and token of their previous intercourse and traffic with the peddling and tricky adventurers from the States, to abandon their new clothing and even their guns, to dress themselves in the skins of the beasts which the Great Spirit had provided for their food and covering, and to resume the war-club, the scalping-knife, and the bow. The late chief Ouray, whose name