Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/644

624 of the alternative lot of the Indians, of rescue, help, and survival in their race, by civilization?

Experience and facts have in all cases proved that when a body of Indians have been brought under the influence of civilized life and habits, the first results are for some years discouraging. There is always observable among them an increased mortality and disease. The change from a wild life in the open air to domestic restrictions, the change in food and its cooking from wild meats, roots, berries, and fish to pork and heavy bread, the heat of stoves, etc., tend to develop in them cutaneous diseases, scrofula, consumption, and corrupt blood. The most forlorn and repulsive aspect in which an Indian is ever presented to us is when he is in the state that may be called semi-civilization, — with a show and pretence, often a mockery of the white man's ways, in shiftlessness, wastefulness, and squalor, both in aspect and reality. The Indian roaming in free vigor, — with fresh air and soil and simple food, with the odor about him of the forest-pine and the berry, lifting the brook-water to his lips, — is in some sort a pleasing, never repulsive, object. But in the filthy hovel planted in the mud, with refuse in and around it, with greasy utensils, rags, and all disgusting accompaniments, the sight is revolting. There are sights one can see, truthful pages one may read, of scenes of what we call a degree of civilization, as among the Cherokees, — the most advanced of all, with their laws, their legislature, their papers, churches, schools, etc. As for domestic ways, a New England housewife would go distracted in any one of those homes. The mixture of breeds — white, red, and black — in more shadings than German worsted admits of, and the mingling of squalor with intimations and materials of thrift, are in no sense attractive. The native preacher or teacher — it may be educated in one of our minor colleges, and carrying home with him books — will, either of necessity or yielding, fall back from more than one stage of his advance.