Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/649

Rh night. Boarding schools alone, in which the pupils were taught decorum, propriety, and above all cleanliness, were found essential. And religion also effects its best work through indirect teaching in character and influence, rather than through doctrines and professional offices.

The Indians seem now to have become aliens in the land of their nativity. There is one ray of possible hopefulness for them, and with such cheer as it may afford we may close the review of their sad history. What reason or assurance there may be for the hope now to be intimated will depend for each one on his estimate of the quality, the capacity, the destiny of the Indian race. At any rate those who, as philanthropists, grieve most over the wrongs, plead most earnestly for the rights of the Indians, and insist that there is a brighter future before them, ought to emphasize this hope. It is that the race may soon present to us one or more specimens of truly great and wise men, patriots, civilians, of lofty minds, pure aims, with the faculty of quickening, guiding, and inspiring their fellows, lifting them and leading them onward. It will be well, too, if such a man or such men may be of pure Indian blood, of unmixed native stock, with the virility and the nobleness of a wilderness birth, and that he accept without shame, ay, glory in, the tinge of his race. That the wilderness, with the help and without the bane of civilization, should produce one, two, three great leaders of men, peers of many members of our Congress, and of more than one of our Presidents, would be an easy accomplishment. May it not produce such men equal to our foremost and best? Why not? We have had a few of the Indian race whom, by our standards, we call able, gifted, great. They have indeed been few. We may count them for the centuries on one hand, — five. But all of these foremost Indian chieftains — Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola, Black Hawk — have represented savagery, have stood and fought for savagery. They have all been familiar with what civilization