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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Of all plans hitherto devised to benefit the Indians, by far the best, though doubtless attended with great difficulty in the execution is, to let them alone. Were it possible to leave to them the small remnant they still hold of their former possessions, to remove from them all the poisoning influences of the fur trade and the military posts, and the agencies auxiliary to it, necessity might again make them industrious. Industry thoroughly re-established would bring in its train prosperity, virtue, and happiness. But since we cannot reasonably hope that this plan will ever be adopted, the friends of humanity must continue to wish that some middle course may be devised, which may, in a measure, palliate the misery which cannot be removed, and retard the destruction which cannot be prevented. The first labour of the philanthropist, who would exert himself in this cause, should be to allay or suppress that exterminating spirit so common among us which, kept alive by the exertions of unprincipled land jobbers, and worthless squatters, is now incessantly calling for the removal of the Indians west of the Mississippi. Many, and doubtless some of those who legislate, may consider the region west of the Mississippi as a kind of fairy land where men can feed on moonbeams, or, at all events, that the Indians, when thoroughly swept into that land of salt mountains and horned frogs, will be too remote to give us any more trouble. But suppose those who now so pertinaciously urge this measure completely successful, let every Indian be removed beyond the Mississippi, how soon will the phrase be changed, to west of the Rocky Mountains? We may send them into the sandy wastes, but cannot persuade them to remain there; they will soon become not less troublesome to the settlers in the countries of Red River, White River, and the Lower Arkansaw, than they are now to the people of Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, and Illinois. Is it absolutely necessary that while we invite to our shores, and to a participation in all the advantages of our boasted institutions, the dissatisfied and the needy of all foreign countries, not stopping to inquire whether their own crimes, or the influence of an oppressive government, may have made the change desirable for them, we should, at the same time, persist in the determination to root out the last remnants of a race who were the original proprietors of the soil, many of whom are better qualified to become useful citizens of our republic than those foreigners we are so eager to naturalize? It is certainly by no means desirable that any of the aboriginal tribes who have retained, or acquired, or who shall acquire so much of civilization as to be able to increase in numbers, and to gain strength, surrounded by the whites, should be suffered to establish independent governments, which may, in time, acquire such strength as to be highly troublesome to their neighbours. Could the project of colonization be carried into complete effect, the measure, leaving out of consideration its daring and flagrant injustice, would be of as questionable policy as our unavailing attempt to restore to Africa the descendants of her enslaved children. It is believed by many that national as well as individual crimes, are sure to be visited, sooner or later, by just and merited punishments. Is it not probable that despite the efforts of the Colonization Society, the African race, now so deeply rooted and so widely spread among us, must inevitably grow to such a magnitude as to requite, fourfold, to our descendants, our own and our forefathers crimes against the aborigines?