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Tho Indian's Future

Tho Indian's Future image
Parent Issue
Day
20
Month
July
Year
1882
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The question of what is to be the glorious ultimately of the red man in America is one which demands of us, as as a people, serious conaideration. Will a few fleeting years extírpate and extermínate from the face of the earth a race which has so long ölled our f ourth readei s and our school declamations with crude oratory, exist only as a smoke-tanned, bead-trimmed memory? Will the beautiful picture of the brunette Indian maiden at last become nothing but the frontispiece of a time honored legend and the trade mark of a fine cut factoiy ? Let us hope that it will not. We have crossed the wide oceau and wrested from these people their lands, and then, to add insult to injury, we have taüght them the mysteries of our civilization. With the white man came the doctrine of vicarious atonement and the open back shirt. He brought with him the dictionary and the garden hose, salvation and saleratus. The tale was soon told, and now on the vertebra; of the continent the telephone and the morning papers are crowding the red vvidower and the pigeon-toed scion of Powhatan into the moaning sea. The restless waves of civilization and soap have crowded old Kise-Up-William Kiley and his whole tribe into the black night of forgetfulness and death. Gradually he has picked up his household gopds and his wife and upright piano, and stolen toward the coach of dying day. Jíow he stands upon the rocky battleménts that border the new states, and bathed in red sunlight and nothing else ín particular, he shakes hands with his approaching doom. Had he taken more kindly to the Dath-tub of the pale face and fraternized more adequately with the crash towel of the European, his oblivion would háve been less speedy and the black torn cat night of eternal sleep less formerly. ' Silent and unrelenting, unmoved above the broad cemetery of his people, stolidly awaiting forgetfulness and death, we cannot .help admiring the brawny brave with the undaunted eye and the buckskin pants with the seat cut out. Nature gave to thee, thou dusky warrior, strength like the eagle, and swiftnesa in the chase, but in her wisdom dehied thee the copper lining that is required -to meet and conquer the vintage of a progressive age. The mountain lion may meet thee and yieid up his life at thy hands, but the iuice of the centipede, that is distilled by the paleface and sold Xo thee, tangle up thy duodenum and cracks the crown sheet of the digester. Brave orator of. the school book, grim relie of the days of Pocahontas, we watch with tear-dinimed eyes thy closiüg hours. Adieu, thou Indian mother standing on the steep.precipitous shores of eteruity. Bshind thee rest the dead héroes of Ihy race and at thy side the brindle relie of a migïity tribe of Indiau Jogs, fatigued and listleas, pets bis favorite flea. No one can look upon this sad and smoky group uumoved. The lading remnants of a glorious petty larceny mob. Had he adopted the Prince Albert coat and the doctrine of a protective tariff, instead of the plug hat and the whisky sour, his future might have been a resplendent oue, and hia Ufe lesa cloiuled with failure and remorse, "We should learn from this to shun the ervors whieh have busted the glorious future of the red man. Let us proiit by his exainple and eschew the llowing bowl. We should also avoid the expO3ure of an outdoor Ufe. A constant commuijion . with nature and wet feet shortens life, and clouds the pathway with gloom and catarrh

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat