NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.*
Da. GRINNELL'S book on the North American Indians is not romantic nor picturesque. It is no rival to the works of Catlin, Colonel Dodge, or Parkman. On the contrary, it is a clear, straightforward statement of the conditions under which the Indians live to-day, and it is filled with facts, figures, and advice which will rather prove useful to the Government of the United States than entertaining to the general reader. At the same time Dr. Grinnell does not yield in sympathy or knowledge to the authors we have named, and he has embellished his book with a unique set of portraits. Surely photography has never achieved a stranger feat than to put before us, in their panoply, the fiercest and shyest warriors the world has seen.
Yet as we study the curious faces here-presented we half realise the difficult task which is set to the United States. They are not savages, these red men of the prairie. Intelli- gence and force are depicted in each one of them, though the intelligence and the force are not such as the white man best understands. One young chief resembles the youthful Napoleon ; many an old chief has stamped upon his face the far-sought cunning, the long-inherited wisdom, of a Chinese Mandarin. And these are the men, proud in their decoration of feather and beads, strong and crafty in the chase, whom the Agents of the Indian Bureau are ordered to rule with the hardest of iron rods. Pathetic in their arrogance, they seem the chieftains of a dying race. Their eyes, long used to gaze across the wilderness and to mark the movement of a remote enemy, are now bounded by the walls of a mud cabin ; the wanderers, inured to the chase and to the sterner sport of war, are made house-dwellers by Act of Congress, and it is no wonder that the changed life has brought vice and disease in its train.
The Indian's character, drawn with a kindly hand by Dr. Grinnell, is attractive, despite — perhaps on account of —its impracticability. In old days he was industrious in procuring food, as he was energetic in war, because on these enterprises his livelihood depended. He was above all things truthful and honest. "About matters concerning which he had no positive knowledge," says Dr. Grinnell, "he was always careful to qualify his state- ments, so that it never might be said of him that his talk was not straight, or that he had two tongues." He believed in a community of goods, and hospitality was universal in his camp. " Those who killed food did so not merely to supply their own wants, but that the general public might eat." Ho
• The North American Indiana of To•day. By George Bird Grinnell, 113.D London : C. A. Pearson. Pls.] was faithful to his friend, for whom he was always willing to give his life ; he respected the rights of others, and would always listen with attention to the other side in a
dispute, and in other respects was mirthful and joyous as a child. Of course he was brave, but he fought in his own way. "In his war journeys," says Dr. Grinnell in an excellent passage, " he was subtle and crafty as the wolf or the panther, and for success depended largely on discovering the presence of the enemy, and making the attack before the enemy knew he was near. He modelled his warfare after the plan of the other wild creatures among which he lived ; as the panther creeps up within springing distance of the unsus- pecting deer, so the Indian crawled through the grass, or the thicket, or the ravine, until within striking distance of his unwitting enemy ; and then, making himself as terrible as possible by his yells and whoops, he fell upon the victim before he could prepare any defence." It is a wild method, no doubt, which to our eye resembles the chase rather than warfare, but it was terrible when the Indian devised it, as the English found long ago under Braddock, and as the Americans have found many times since.
Such was the Indian,—simple and cunning as the beasts with whom he claims kinship, until he was disturbed by the white man. And the white man, by giving him the horse, increased his skill tenfold ; he made him swifter in hunting the buffalo and more formidable in war. But he gave him also alcohol and disease, the twin horrors which are wont to accompany civilisation, and the Indians whom America knows to-day are very different in strength and weakness from their ancestors. If ethnographically they remain a puzzle, with their physical resemblances and strange diver- sities of language, politically they are an increasing difficulty.
The lot of subject races is always unspeakably hard, and the question of their proper treatment stubborn to answer. We may have solved the problem with the Maoris, but with what a sacrifice, and after how many years! The American system of reservations may be the best that offers, but Dr. Grinnell makes a frank confession of its shortcomings. " We blame the Indians," says he, "because they have not by this time become civilised, but, in fact, the fault is ours, and that of our representatives in Congress, for assenting to a system which places the Indians in charge of men, some of whom are un- intelligent, inefficient, careless, and sometimes criminal." And, in truth, life on the reservation, with its monotony, sickness, and insufficient food, is a hideous, if necessary, change after the free life of the prairie. As Dr. Grinnell miserably puts it : " In most cases the people have not yet reached a point where they have anything to look forward to."
The Agent is at once the danger and difficulty of the Indian question. If the Agent be honest and inefficient, the life of the Indians may be healthy and tolerable. But though, says Dr. Grinnell, the Agent is improving every year, he is still underpaid and too frequently shifted. His small salary tempts him to peculation, which can hardly be proved against him ; and no sooner does he begin to know his people than he is sent elsewhere to begin the dreary round again. But what- ever his merits may be, he wields a power which it is dangerous to put into the hands of any man. " He has a power over the Indians that is absolute," says Dr. Grinnell. " If he thinks best, he can cut off their supply of food at an hour's notice ; he can shut up in the guardhouse any man he chooses, can divorce any couple, can deprive any one of his tools or stock or house. Over a white man married to an Indian woman he has the same power, and in addition he may expel him from the reservation, or confine him in the guardhouse for an in- definite period." It is not surprising that Dr. Grinnell attributes to the Agent as much opportunity for tyranny as belongs to the chiefs of police in a Russian town. The Agent may be (and very often is) the best of men, but he is put to a test that is superhuman.
Yet Dr. Grinnell does not take a desperate view. He sees the necessity of the system, and as for the Agents, be properly throws the responsibility upon the people. That, he says, "must be borne by each one of us. We shall be just as well served by the Indian Bureau as we ask to be." That no doubt is true, and Dr. Grinnell pleads eloquently for the popular interest. Maybe he is sanguine in his estimate of what may be accomplished, maybe he believes too devoutly in the efficacy of education. But, he says, "a few years of con- sistently just and intelligent treatment by Congress, of thoroughly good Agents, of proper schooling, would settle all the Indian questions, which we have been wrangling over so long, and which to a few thousand white people are so real, and to the quarter of a million of people whom they affect are of such vital interest" And with this note of hope we take leave of a sound, scholarly, and intelligent book.
Previous page
