There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a
wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since
passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now
but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our
untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as
we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or
imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes
that their hearts are black, and that they are often
cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to
restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man
began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope
that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have
everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is
considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men
who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose,
know better.
Our
good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as
well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further
north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if
we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be
to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will
fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the
northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our
women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and
we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not
our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his
strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the
hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken
His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit,
seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger
every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our
people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never
return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect
them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for
help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God
and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial,
for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you
laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once
filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament.
No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate
destinies. There is little in common between us.
To
us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is
hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and
seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon
tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could
not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our
religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of
our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great
Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of
our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon
as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars.
They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never
forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love
its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains,
sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and
ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living,
and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console,
and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the
approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning
sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think
that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you
offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the
Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking
to my people out of dense darkness.
It
matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not
be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of
hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in
the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and
wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer
and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded
doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.
A
few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants
of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in
happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to
mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful
than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people?
Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the
waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.
Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the
White Man whose God walked and talked with him as
friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may
be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you
know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that
we will not be denied the privilege without molestation
of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and
children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my
people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove,
has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished.
Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun
along the silent shore, thrill with memories of
stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very
dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps
than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our
ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and
even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here
for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide
they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall
have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have
become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the
invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think
themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon
the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not
be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At
night when the streets of your cities and villages are
silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the
returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful
land. The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be
just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.
Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
