Читать книгу The Seminoles of Florida онлайн

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R. Braden Moore.

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The history of the American Indian is a very Iliad of tragedy. From the day Columbus made the first footprints of the European in the damp sands of Cat Island, the story of the original owners of fair America has been full of melancholy, and fills with its dark pages every day of a quartet of centuries.

Columbus describes the innocent happiness of these people. “They were no wild savages, but very gentle and courteous,” he says, “without knowing what evil is, without stealing, without killing.” They gave to him a new world for Castile and Leon, while in exchange he gave to them “some glass beads and little red caps.” The tragedy of the new world began when we find this same admiral writing to the Spanish majesties that he would be able to furnish them with gold, cotton, spices, and slaves—“slaves! as many as their Highnesses shall command to be shipped”; and thus, this land, a paradise of almost primeval loveliness, was transformed into a land of cruel bondage, desolation and death.