Читать книгу The Seminoles of Florida онлайн

9 страница из 60

Old history says this haughty repulse aggravated the illness of De Soto, “because he was not able to passe presently to the River and seeke him, to see if he could abate that Pride of his.”

Notwithstanding the hospitable treatment shown by the natives to the newcomers, the Castilians destroyed them by the thousands: One explorer after another wrote of these friendly people in the new land. “They are very liberal,” says the narrator, “for they give what they have.” Sir Ralph Lane describes the welcome by the natives, who came with “Tobacco, Corne and furs and kindly gestures to be friends with the strange white men,” etc., etc., but adds, “the Indians stole a Silver Cup, wherefore we burnt their Towne and spoylt their Corne,” etc., etc.

The time will soon be over for the study of the Aborigines of America. We have in 250 years wasted them from uncounted numbers to a scattering population of only about 275,000, while in the same length of time a cargo of dusky slaves from the African shores have become a people of millions, slaves no longer, but protected citizens. In the redskin, whom we have dispossessed of his native rights, we recognize no equality; yet the descendant of the barbarous black, whose tribe on the Golden Coast still trembles before a fetish, may now sit at the desk of Clay or Calhoun. Truly the tangled threads of modern morals are hard to unravel.