Samantha at the World's Fair by Marietta Holley (classic literature list txt) 📗

But I didn't speak my mind out loud, and they begun to talk earnest and excited about 'em, and I could see as they went on that they felt jest alike towards the Injuns, and wanted 'em wiped off'en the face of the earth; but they disagreed some as to the ways they wanted 'em wiped. One of 'em wanted 'em shot right down to once, and exterminated jest as you kill potato-bugs.[Pg 169]

The other wanted 'em drove further off and shet up tighter till they died out of themselves; but they wuz both agreed in bein' horrified and disgusted at the Injuns darin' to fight the whites.

And first I knew Krit jest waded right into the talk. He waded polite, but he waded deep right off the first thing.

And, sez he, "Before they all die I hope they will sharpen up their tommyhawks and march on to Washington, and have a war-dance before the Capitol, and take a few scalps there amongst the law-makers and the Injun bureau."

He got kinder lost and excited by his feelin's, Krit did, or he wouldn't have said anything about scalpin' a bureau. Good land! he might talk about smashin' its draws up, but nobody ever hearn of scalpin' a bureau or a table.

But he went on dretful smart, and, sez he, "Gentlemen, I have lived right out there amongst the Injuns and the rascally agents, and I know what I am talkin' about when I say that, instead of wonderin' about the Injuns risin' up aginst the whites, as they do sometimes, the wonder is that they don't try to kill every white man they see.

"When I think of the[Pg 170] brutality, the cheatin', the cruelty, the devilishness of the agents, it is a wonder to me that they let one stick remain on another at the agencies—that they don't burn 'em up, root and branch, and destroy all the lazy, cheatin', lyin' white scamps they can get sight of."

The two men acted fairly browbeat and smut to hear Krit go on, and they sez—

"You must be mistaken in your views; the Goverment, I am sure, tries to protect the Injuns and take care of 'em."

"What is the Goverment doin'," sez Krit, "but goin' into partnership with lyin' and stealin,' when it knows just what their agents are doin', and still protects them in their shameful acts, and sends out troops to build up their strength? Maybe you have a home you love?" sez Krit, turnin' to the best lookin' of the men.

"Yes, indeed," sez he; "my country home down on the Hudson is the same one we have had in the family for over two hundred years. My babies are to-day runnin' over the same turf that I rolled on in my boyhood, and their great-great-grandmothers played on in their childhood.

"My babies' voices raise the same echoes from the high rock back of the orchard, the same blue river runs along at[Pg 171] their feet, the sun sets right over the same high palisade. Why, that very golden light acrost the water between the two high rocks—that golden line of light seems to me now, almost as it did then in my childhood, the only path to Heaven.

"Heaven and Earth would be all changed to me if I had to give up my old home. Why, every tree, and shrub, and rock seems like a part of my own beloved family, such sacred associations cluster around them of my childhood and manhood. And the memories of the dear ones gone seem to be woven into the very warp and woof of the stately old elm-trees that shade its velvet lawns, and the voice of the river seems full of old words and music, vanished tones and laughter.

"No one can know, or dream, how inexpressibly dear the old home is to my heart. If I had to give it up," sez he, "it would be like tearin' out my very heart-strings, and partin' with what seems like a part of my own life."

The man looked very earnest and sincere when he said this, and even agitated. He meant what he said, no doubt on't.

And then Krit sez, "How would you like it if you were ordered to leave it at a day's notice—leave it forever—leave it so some one else, some one you hated, some one who had always injured [Pg 172]you, could enjoy it—

"Leave it so that you knew you could never live there again, never see a sun rise or a sun set over the dear old fields, and mountains, and river, you loved so well—

"Never have the chance to stand by the graves of your fathers, and your children, that were a-sleepin' under the beautiful old trees that your grandfathers had set out—

"Never see the dear old grounds they walked through, the old rooms full of the memories of their love, their joys, and their sorrows, and your loves, and hopes, and joys, and sadness?

"What should you do if some one strong enough, but without a shadow of justice or reason, should order you out of it at once—force you to go?"

"I should try to kill him," sez the man promptly, before he had time to think what to say.

"Well," sez Krit, "that is what the Injuns try to do, and the world is horrified at it. Their homes are jest as dear to them as ours are to us; their love for their own living and dead is jest as strong. Their grief and sense of wrong and outrage is even stronger than the white man's would be, for they don't have the distractions of civilized life to take up [Pg 173]their attention. They brood over their wrongs through long days and nights, unsolaced by daily papers and latest telegraphic news, and their famished, freezin' bodies addin' their terrible pangs to their soul's distress.

"Is it any wonder that after broodin' over their wrongs through long days and nights, half starved, half naked, their dear old homes gone—shut up here in the rocky, hateful waste, that they must call home, and probably their wives and daughters stolen from them by these agents that are fat and warm, and gettin' rich on the food and clothing that should be theirs, and receivin' nothing but insults and threats if they ask for justice, and finally a bullet, if their demands for justice are too loud—

"What wonder is it that they lift their empty hands for vengeance—that they leave their bare, icy huts, and warm their frozen veins with ghost-dances, haply practisin' them before they go to be ghosts in reality? What wonder that they sharpen up their ancestral tomahawk, and lift it against their oppressors? What wonder that the smothered fires do break out into sudden fiery tempests of destruction that appall the world?

"You say you would do the same, after your generations of culture and Christian teaching, and[Pg 174] so would I, and every other man. We would if we could destroy the destroyers who ravage and plunder our homes, deprive us of the earnings of a lifetime, turn us out of our inheritance, and make of our wives and daughters worse than slaves.

"We meet every year to honor the memory of the old heroes who rebelled and fought for liberty—shed rivers of blood to escape from far less intolerable oppression and wrongs than the Injuns have endured for years.

"And then we expect them, with no culture and no Christianity, to practise Christian virtues, and endure buffetings that no Christian would endure.

"The whole Injun question is a satire on true Goverment, a lie in the name of liberty and equality, a shame on our civilization."

"What would you do about it?" said the kinder good-lookin' man.

Sez Krit, "If I called the Injuns wards, adopted children of the Goverment, I would try not to use them in a way that would disgrace any drunken old stepmother.

"I would have dignity enough, if I did not stand for decency, to not half starve and freeze them, and lie to them, and cheat them till the very word 'Goverment' means to t[Pg 176][Pg 175]hem all they can picture of meanness and brutality. I would either grant them independence, or a few of the comforts I had stolen from them.

"If I drove them out of their rich lands and well-stocked hunting-grounds they had so long considered their own—if I drove them out in my cupidity and love of conquest, I would in return grant them enough of the fruits of their old homes to keep up life in their unhappy bodies.

"If I made them suffer the pains of exile, I would not let them endure also the gnawings of starvation.

"And I would not send out to 'em the Bible and whiskey packed in one wagon, appeals to Christian living and the sure means to overthrow it.