ples, since Loyola, in 1534, established the order, are opposed to
liberty.

There is something wonderfully comforting in giving one's self,
body and mind, one's hopes and ambitions and fears, to the



43

control of a system, to be directed into just the channel where
the individual will do most and be most in the world. But 'tis
a tremendous power thus put into the hands of a few. The lather
confessor, the superior, the pope, a power which is almost sure to
be often misapplied or abused. The fundamental principle of
unhesitating, unquestioning obedience to the will of the superior is
directly opposed to freedom of thought or action. The system,
essentially monarchical as it is in its government, worked exactly
contrary to the broad democratic idea of liberty, as understood
in these days and on these shores.

The name of the Sieur de la Salle stands preiiminent among those
of the French explorers. His family was one of rank, as the name
implies. The young man was educated by the Jesuits, but later
he associated himself more with the Sulpicians of Montreal, and
consequently incurred the jealousy of the all-powerful Jesuit
order, and possibly many of the difficulties he encountered in his
great work were due to their secret opposition. As early as 1670
his hope was to discover, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi, the
long sought passage to the Pacific. 'Tis probable that he was the
discoverer of the Ohio — "Beautiful River" — and the Illinois, but
to Joliet and Marquette belongs the honor of being the first
Europeans to launch upon the Mississippi. Perhaps from La Salle's
failure to reach China, the name La Chine was derisively given on
his return, to the place near Montreal.

With Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario — now strongly fortified
— as a base of supplies. La Salle proposed a second great expedi-
tion for the purpose of establishing a chain of forts across the
country, and of finally reaching the mouth of the Mississippi.
The fearless, resolute explorer was strangely cold, reserved,
unsympathetic in his intercourse with men, and he, in consequence,
made few friends. Perhaps it was the secret hostility of the
Jesuits, perhaps that of others, repelled by his natural coldness,
which placed in the way of his success one obstacle after another,
until any one but La Salle would despair. But over the natives
he seemed to possess a wonderful power, and to this fact his final
success is to a considerable extent due.



44

Above the Falls of Niagara he succeeded in building a vessel
— "The Griffin" — the first sailing craft the Great Lakes ever saw.
With this he sailed up Lake Huron, and in good time reached
the mouth of what is now known as the St. Joseph, near the
southern extremity of Lake Michigan. Here Fort St. Joseph was
to form one link of the chain connecting the explorer with
civilization. The Griffin returned for supplies for another vessel
to be built at the head of navigation on the Illinois, and this was
the last La Salle saw or heard of it. The loss of this vessel upon
which he so much depended was a severe blow, but he was not
disheartened. From the banks of the Illinois, where he had now
founded Fort St. Louis, he started overland on foot back to Fort
Frontenac. This was a most disheartening journey ; arriving at
the fort after the extreme toils and privations of the winter soli-
tudes of the forests, he found his affairs in disorder, his friends
grown cold and his enemies active. Without the needed supplies he
returned to Fort St. Louis, to find the friendly Illinois scattered
by the Iroquois, and his little garrison gone. But no discourage-
ment overcame him, and at last, in canoes instead of a large
vessel, he determined to carry out his plan of exploring the
Mississippi to its mouth. In 1682, he stood on the delta — the
first white man (unless possibly the Spaniard, de Soto, may have
reached the point, one hundred and forty years before,) to know
where the Mississippi floods discharged themselves ; and in the
name of his king, he took possession of the river and all the
territory it drained.

'Tis interesting to trace through the pages of Parkman's most
fascinating history La Salle's further wanderings, his toilsome
return up the river, his almost fatal illness on the way, his arrival
in Canada, return to France, and solicitations at court for means
with which to carry out his scheme for a colony at the mouth of
the river he had discovered. Then comes that disastrous expedi-
tion to convey the colonists to Louisiana by way of the Gulf of
Mexico. When first at the mouth. La Salle had not been able to
get the longitude, and consequently now missed his destination,
and a suffering, starving time on the coast of Texas followed. The
last survivors escaping starvation or death at the hand of savages.



45

are supposed to have fallen under the jealous hate of the Spaniards
from their colonies farther south. La Salle himself, having set
out on foot overland to Canada for aid, was villainously
murdered in the wilderness by some of his companions. Only
many years later, under Iberville, was French power permanently
established at the mouth of the Mississipi.

The French acquired great territory in America, but the foun-
dations of New France were broader than they were firm. The
French nature is scarcely calculated to endure the privations and
hardships of colonial life. The Huguenots, with their religious
impulse towards independence of thought and action, were by far
the best colonists, and after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
many of these found homes in England and the English Colonies,
and became a valuable element in their adopted countries. But
just this class, the most industrious, most temperate and most
resolute, upon the arrival of the Jesuits, was absolutely excluded
from Canada. The colonies were composed of noblemen to hold
the land, hireling laborers with no interest in building up a
community to work it, soldiers sent by the government to defend
it from its enemies, missionaries only interested in baptizing, I do
not say civilizing, the savages, and a crowd of unsettled fur
traders and adventurers who cared for nothing but to enrich them-
selves at the expense of the innocent natives, or to lead the life
of forest rangers entirely free from the restraints of civilization.

The French in general, by adopting Indian habits of life,
intermarrying with Indian women, and cultivating Indian familiar-
ity, lowered themselves to the Indian's level, instead of seeking
to lift the savages toward that of European civilization. Perhaps
if French civilization had embraced and cherished the Indian
less, and had set him an exami^le of industry and thrift, which to
the Puritans were of quite as much importance as religion, or
rather were essential elements in religion, the red men would be
at least one stage farther on that long road from barbarism up to
enlightened Christ ian manhood.

Soldiers, priests and noblemen — these are not the elements for
building up a healthy frontier colony. Is it any wonder that at



46

the Peace of Paris all the territory east of the Mississippi became
English ?

The contrast between the French colonies in Canada and the
neighboring English colonies is most striking. One is all
head, the other all body. One is best represented by the sword,
the other by the ploughshare. One is composed of priests,
soldiers and nobles, the other of common people. The society
of one was based upon feudalism, of the other on democracy.
The religion of one was Popery, of the other Protestantism.
In one we find the gentleman preeminent, in the other the
Puritan farmer. In one there is the fur trader, in the other
the agriculturist and navigator. In one there is scattered
enterprise, in the other compact progress. In the one there is
the decline towards barbarism, in the other progress in skill
and increase of wealth. The French came for gain or ad-
venture, and the names they gave to towns and rivers are almost
their only monument ; the English came for homes, and to that
race almost all of the North American continent has been ceded.

The story of the growth of the English Colonies, their gradual
but irresistible westward progress, their increasing difficulties with
the natives, needs no reviewing. The idea of English colonization
was a growth, promoted by peculiar circumstances in the mother
country. Since, unlike that of France and Spain, it was the
result of private enterprise alone, the plant developed late but
vigorously. At first the Indians were not ungracious hosts. In
many instances the early colonists were kept from starvation
through Indian hospitality. The Pilgrims had no difficulty* in
settling for the corn they took to sustain life that dreary first
winter. The Huguenots in the south were most kindly aided by
the natives, and lived on most pleasant terms with them until
they meddled in the quarrels among the tribes. 'Twas only as
the white men learned to look down upon them, to cheat them,
to encroach upon their rights, and to make them drunk with fire-
water, made, as the Indian said, " from the hearts of wildcats and
tongues of women," so fierce and so foolish did it make him,
that he became the cruel, heartless, savage enemy which he is in
history.



47

The colonists came with no expectation of fighting for their
homes. There was space enough ; they could live peaceably
beside the rude natives, lindinga welcome because of the firearms,
utensils and trinkets they brought. It was only as the settlers
realized more fully their superiority, that contention began.
Except the Five Nations, the French were always on terms of
peace and friendship with the Indians. With the same exception,
the English were involved in a rapid succession of bloody and
cruel wars with the Indians and their allies, the French. The
throbs of Europe's intermittent fever were felt strongly and
immediately, even off here in England's finger tips, and the
savages were very ready to join, with or without cause, when
scalps were to be won. No large area of New England
but has its tale of Indian burning, massacre or abduction, illus-
trating the methods in which this strange, inhuman warfare was
carried on.

The reasons why the Indians were the constant friends of the
French and the constant enemies of the English have been sug-
gested. The Englishman woukl only take the savage as his equal
when he gave up his barbarism and led a sober, industrious life ;
the PVenchman made him his brother by giving up his own
civilization, and living as a savage. John Eliot, the representative
of the Protestant missionaries, ministering to his Indian parish
at Natick, would admit his converts to communion only after
they had, during several years, been instructed in the principles
of Christianity, and had shown evidence of intention and ability
to lead a sober, righteous and godly life.

The Catholic missionary, by exercising his priestly authority,
by setting forth, with the help, perhaps, of highly colored pictures, •
the terrors of hell, or by some other device, led the savage to
consent to baptism, and then he was in full brotherhood with the
white man, whether or not he had any conception of its signifi-
cance, or any intention of renouncing his thrifdess, lazy, dissolute
life. One is impressed with the picture of Indian character, and
the enlightening, softening influence of the Franciscan Missions
in Mrs. Jackson's charming romance, " Ramona." But a historian
of California, writing of the period of the annexation to the



48

United States, the period when Alessandro and his unhappy friends
Hved and suffered, gives a somewhat different picture. I quote a
paragraph from Mr. EUis's " Red Man and White Man in North
America."

"The writer (the above mentioned historian), says, The mis-
sionaries had the finest opportunities and the most facile subjects.
But while he extols their sincerity and devotion, the results of
their labors were to him doleful and dreary enough. ' Most of
the missions,' he says, 'are in a wretched condition, and the
Indians — poor and helpless slaves, both in body and mind — have
no knowledge and no will but those of the Friars.' The word
domesticated, as applied to animals, is more applicable to them
than the word civilized. In 1833, about 20,000 natives were
connected with the missions, and soldiers were needed at every
station. The Indians were lazy and helpless slaves, fed and
flogged to compel their attendance on the Mass, and besotted by
superstition."

Christianity is the religion of civilization, says some one. To
the Indian, a faith depending much upon external ceremonies,
and little upon reasoning and belief, is, of course, the most
attractive one. Considering the Puritan's high standard of Chris-
tianity, his high estimate of the importance of thrift, and his
high ideas of social equality, 'tis no wonder the French mission-
aries gained more converts than they, and the French warriors
more allies. But quality in our church members, our allies, our
friends, is of more importance than quantity ; so, though the
death struggle of French influence in the New World was
prolonged and painful, yet its death gave renewed life to true
civilization and progress here.

Painful as it is to think of all the loss of life and wealth in the
colonial wars with the savages, yet Parkman reminds us that these
wars were probably far less costly than wars going on in Europe
between civilized nations at the same time — the Thirty Years' War,
the Wars of the Spanish Succession, and the rest. We are accus-
tomed to lament the cruel extermination of the noble red man by
the relentless white man's bullet. But there is no reason to suppose



49

that the Indians were numerous at the tune the settlements began,
and doubtless the native population is greater now than two hun-
dred and fifty years ago. If there was a falling off during the
seventeenth century, it was more because of diseases resulting
from their barbarous life, and their warsvimong themselves, than
from the white man's refined cruelty.

There is very much to excite our pity for the Indian in the
story of the

"westward marches
Of the unkno\rn, crowded nations,
Restless, struggling, toiling, striving.
Speaking many tongues, yet feeling
But one heart i)eat in their bosoms."

They drive the natives, we say, from their ancestral forests
before them. Their hunting grounds contracted, we think of
them as now at bay, like hunted deer, between the packs of
Christian dogs from east and west. What a subject poet and
romancer find in the homeless, despised, but ever dignified and
stoical Indian. What is more pathetic than the " Seminole's
Reply" of the old reading books, or the "Indian's Lament" —

"I will go to my tent, and lie down in despair;
I will paint me with black, and will sever my hair;
I will sit on the shore where the hurricane blows.
And tell to the god of the whirlwind my woes."

Or the vision of Hiawatha, showing him his nation scattered,

"All forgetful of his counsels.
Weakened, warring with each other;
And the remnants of his people
Sweeping westward, w ild and woful,
Like the cloudrack of a tempest.
Like the withered leaves of Autumn."

Lamentable the circumstances are indeed ; evils and wrongs
there certainly have beeii and are, but let us regard the matter
soberly, and take as fair a view as we can.

Observers in different positions judge very differently of Indian
character, and it. is hard to arrive at an impartial jtidgment from

7



50

reading alone. The Indian agent has seen the red men as wards
of the government, unable to take care of themselves, whom he
was to manage with as little trouble and as great profit as possible.
The commander in the Indian wars has very likely seen him as a
savage fighter, unreliable, treacherous, with barbarism as an
indelible stamp on his character — by nature, training, associa-
tions, opposed to civilization. In his " Life on the Plains," Gen.
Custer tells us that the "Noble Red Man " of Cooper's tales, is not
at all the Indian with whom he has to do. His savage is a fierce,
inhuman barbarian, mysterious in origin, and worthy of thoughtful
study. He has a quickness in adapting himself to circumstances,
and before a member of a peace commission, or on a visit to
the "Great Father," at Washington, only one phase of his char-
acter is shown.

An artist like the famous traveller Catlin — going among them
to study form and color, to record their peculiarities and paint
their portraits, is quite sure to see them as strong, graceful,
active children of nature, strange, but simple, hospitable, religious,
highly intellectual, honest and honorable, and this with no laws
in their land, no locks to their doors or bars to their windows,
and no commandments. The word " savage," in its original sense
— wild, uncultivated — he would apply to them, but not the word
with its perverted meaning — fierce, barbarous.

But the philanthropist must see them as a branch of the human
race, naturally disinclined to the sober, steady, industrious life of
civilization, which has been repressed by necessary circumstances
attending extraordinary growth, and often by grossest mismanage-
ment on the ]mrt of individuals ; a race whom it is our duty as
fellowmen and Christians to strive to elevate.

The rapid growth of the country, the tumultuous rush after
wealth and material prosperity, prompted by the boundless
resources which exploration, invention and industry have brought
to light, has left no time for philanthropic care of a careless race.
Since the savages refused to be developed into civilized men, they
had to give way before them. The opportunity came to choose
between enlightenment and extermination, or at least exile from



5 I

their accustomed haunts. They persistently chose darkness, and
to keep in it they had no alternative but flight before the advanc-
ing sun, which stays not in all its course.

Their westward progress is now checked, for, strange as it is, a
dawning light has been advancing from the westward too, and
enlightenment must come. Some have said, if the Indian ncnu
refuses to enjoy the light, he must cease to live. He must yield
his place to him whom the light does rejoice. But this is a hard
doctrine. Humanity, Christianity, compels us to open the blind
man's eyes, if he cannot, or will not, of himself, see the bright-
ness streaming all about him. It may cost time and suffering,
but sight, physical or moral, a man is grateful for in the end, at
any price. Some one says, it takes a hundred years to make a
good English lawn, and three hundred years to make a Christian
gentleman. 'Tis a long way the Indian must travel, therefore
start him off at once. With the antediluvian principle " He that
will not work, neither shall he eat," we are learning to combine
the doctrine of the New Revelation, "Love thy neighbor" ; and
he that will not work must be taught to, if necessary be made to,
in order that he may eat and enjoy all that life affords.

If the Indian will not work and plan and think for his daily
bread. Christian philanthropy must teach him, until, after
generations, he shall become civilized ; until civilization shall be
forced upon him, instead of acquired through natural development,
as in the case of nations now so proud of their culture and
wealth. Even through this most hopeful of means, no very
satisfactory results can be expected until generations of children
have been taught in ways of purity and industry. The filthy will
be filthy still for a hundred years to come, though the results of
the efforts of the many earnest laborers will be more and more
apparent. The tribes longest under the influence of missionaries,
show some advancement ; but even these, which we are accus-
tomed to call civilized, could not, 'tis said, support themselves, if
thrown upon their own resources, without returning to barbarism.

The past century has been called one of dishonor, and in one
sense such it has been. But it has been a century of weakness,



52

of irresolution, of vacillation, of mistakes in judgment ; but it has
not been a century of wickedness, or of malicious or wilful cruelty
toward the Indians, so far as the government is concerned. "We
may," says EUis, "justly use terms, severe and condemnatory in
word and tone, to characterize the lack of wisdom, of calm,
methodical, judicious administration of Indian affairs by our
Government ; and we may use the most scorching invective
against many of the agents and agencies to which it has entrusted
functions most outrageously abused, — but we can acquit our
Government of all intentions of inhumanity."

Though we seem only now to be awaking to a realization of
our duties as a nation towards the untutored savages, we must
not forget that their education, civilization, christianization, was
early in the minds of many of the first settlers. " Come over
and help us," were the words put into the mouth of the Indian
pictured on the seal of Massachusetts colony. Roger Williams'
and John Eliot's broad and generous sentiments in the matter
are well known. Harvard College very early made special pro-
vision for educating 'Indians, and Dartmouth, I think, was
founded for this very purpose. But it is acknowledged that the
results of the efforts thus far have not been great. Harvard's
single Indian graduate soon died of consumption. Some in the
older states have intermarried with Europeans, through generations,
until many or most of the faults of the race are overcome. But
the Indian of unmixed blood is still an Indian. His senses are
acute, he is naturally cunning and has power of invention, but he
does not reason well and does not know how to apply his educa-
tion.

The Indians were given fine physiques, strong constitutions,
acute senses and good natural understanding ; they were placed
in a temperate, healthy climate and on fertile soil, with every resource
that land and water, river and sea coast, mine, forest or air could
furnish ; and under all these favorable conditions they have never
from the beginning shown any tendency to improve. Their
predecessors, the Mound Builders, worked the mines, used iron
and bronze implements, etc., but. had not the Europeans taught



the Indians something better, they would to this day be kilhng their
game with stone arrow heads, making their fires by rubbing two
sticks together, cooking their sagamite in wooden vessels by
dropping into them heated stones, and scratching the surface of
the ground with a stick, in order that their corn might take root.

The savages were entirely content with their lot, having no
yearning for anything better, so unlike were they to their '^ restless,
struggling, toiling, striving" conquerors "from the shining land of
Waban." Even their most skillful and naturally gifted leaders, their
Tecumsehs and Pontiacs, have been most persistent resisters of
civilization, who would gladly guide their people back to the
savage sim])iicity of their original condition. The Indians were
not really improvers of the soil — they only skimmed its surface.
To support themselves after their manner would require six
thousand acres for each Indian, a prodigality of resources not for
a moment justifiable.

The intrusion of the white races has certainly in many respects
improved the condition of the Indians, for even the partial
contact they have had with civilization has forced some beneficial
changes upon them in spite of their vigorous resistance, while, all
the time, the gradual pushing and crowding westward, cruel and
unjust though it seems, has preserved them their associations with
the forest and with untamed nature.

This irresistible power which has been driving the Indians on
until they can go no farther, was natural, and in a way justifiable ;
an instance of the ever recurring fi\ct of the survival of the fittest.

Great Britain, unlike the United States, inherited with her
possessions in North America no Indian difficulties. Until very
recently, colonization has not been encouraged in British America.
I do not remember that Manitoba was mentioned on the maps of
twenty years ago ; the great region to the Northwest has, until
now, lain in primitive wilderness. It remains to be seen whether
the Canadian Pacific Railway will overcome the inertia of the
ages.

The management of the giant monopoly — the Hudson Bay
Company — was modified in 1863 only, and until then all its influ-



54

ence went to prevent the settlement of the region with which it
had to do. Well may Great Britain in the past have preserved

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