Читать книгу A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner. U.S. Interpreter at the Saut de Ste. Marie онлайн

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The long agitated subject, of the “melioration of the condition of the Indians,” appears therefore to present two questions of primary importance: 1st. Can any thing be effected by our interference? 2d. Have we in our collective character, as a people, any disposition to interpose the least check to the downward career of the Indians? The last inquiry will be unhesitatingly answered in the negative by all who are acquainted with the established policy of our government in our intercourse with them. The determination evinced by a great part of the people, and their representatives, to extinguish the Indian title to all lands on this side the Mississippi—to push the remnants of these tribes into regions already filled to the utmost extent their means of subsistence will allow—manifests, more clearly than volumes of idle and empty professions, our intentions toward them. The vain mockery of treaties, in which it is understood, that the negotiation, and the reciprocity, and the benefits, are all on one side; the feeble and misdirected efforts we make for their civilization and instruction, should not, and do not, deceive us into the belief that we have either a regard for their rights, where they happen to come in competition with our interests, or a sincere desire to promote the cause of moral instruction among them. The efforts of charitable associations, originating as they do in motives of the most unquestionable purity, may seem entitled to more respectful notice; but we deem these efforts, as far as the Indians are concerned, equally misapplied, whether they be directed, as in the south, to drawing out from among them a few of their children, and giving them a smattering of “astronomy, moral philosophy, surveying, geography, history, and the use of globes,”[3] or as in the north, in educating the half breed children of fur traders and vagabond Canadians, in erecting workshops and employing mechanics in our frontier villages, or building vessels for the transportation of freight on the upper lakes. These measures may be well in themselves, and are doubtless useful; but let us not flatter ourselves that in doing these things we confer any essential benefit on the Indians. The Chocktaws and Chickasaws will not long retain such a knowledge of astronomy and surveying, as would be useful to guide their wanderings, or mete out their possessions in those scorched and sterile wastes to which it is our fixed intention to drive them. The giving to a few individuals of a tribe an education which, as far as it has any influence, tends directly to unfit them for the course of life they are destined to lead, with whatever intention it may be undertaken, is certainly far from being an act of kindness. If, while we give the rudiments of an education to a portion of their children, our selfish policy is thrusting back into a state of more complete barbarism the whole mass of the people, among whom we pretend to qualify them for usefulness, of what avail are our exertions, or our professions in their favour? We cannot be ignorant that in depriving the Indians of the means of comfortable subsistence, we take from them equally the power and the inclination to cultivate any of the branches of learning commonly taught them at our schools. Will the Indian youth who returns from the Mission school, after ten or fifteen years of instruction, be likely to become a better hunter, or a braver warrior, than those who have remained at home and been educated in the discipline of his tribe? Will he not rather find himself encumbered with a mass of learning necessarily as uncurrent, and as little valued among his rude companions, as would be a parcel of lottery tickets or bank notes? On this subject, as on many others, the Indians are qualified to make, and often do make, extremely just reflections. To say that they consider the learning of the whites of no value, would be to misrepresent them. On the contrary, they speak in terms of the highest admiration of some branches, particularly writing and reading, which, they say, enables us to know what is done at a distance, to recall with the greatest accuracy all that we or others have said in past times. But of these things they say, as of the religion of the whites, “they are not designed for us.” “The Great Spirit has given to you, as well as to us, things suited to our several conditions; He may have been more bountiful to you than to us; but we are not disposed to complain of our allotment.”