Ethnology at Washington, place the
decrease of Indian population in the United Sates, north of Mexico, since
the coming of the white man, at 65 per cent. They have gone from the
forests and plains, from the hills and valleys over which they roamed and
reigned for uncounted ages. We have taken their land, blotted out their
faith and despoiled their philosophy. It has been the utter extinction of
a whole type of humanity. The conquering Anglo-Saxon speech has swept out
of existence over a thousand distinct languages. These original Americans
_Deserve a Monument_. They have moved majestically down the pathway of
the ages, but it culminates in the dead march of Saul.

The record of the North American Indian has naught to do with the
tabulation of statistics, the musty folios of custom reports, the
conquests of commerce. He has never walked up to the gates of the city
and asked entrance to its portals, nor subscribed himself as a contestant
in the arena of finance. He has had no share in the lofty ideals of
statecraft, nor the spotless ermine of the judiciary. He lived and moved
and had his being in the sanctuary of the hills, the high altar-stairs of
the mountains, the sublime silences of the stately pines--where birds sung
their matins and the "stars became tapers tall"; where the
zitkada_n_to--the blue bird--uttered its ravishing notes. He sought the
kat-yi-mo--the "enchanted mesa"--as the place of prayer, the hour in which
to register his oath. On the wide extended plain, rolling green, like the
billows of the ocean, he listened for wana'gipi tah'upahupi--"the wings of
the spirits." In wana'gi ta'ca_n_ku--the milky way--he saw the footprints
of departed warriors. His moccasined feet penetrated wa-koniya--"the place
where water is born"--the springs that gushed forth to give life, and
refreshing to all the earth. Ca_n_hotka ska--the "white frost"--became the
priest's robe as he petitioned at the sacrament of winter. The universe
to him became a sounding-board of every emotion that thrilled his being.
He found in its phenomena an answer to his longings and the high
expression of every fervour of his soul. We cannot understand this,
because the Indian chased the ethereal, the weird, the sublime, the
mysterious: we chase the dollar. He heard the voice of nature; we listen
for the cuckoo clock of commerce.

[The Sacrament of Winter]

The Sacrament of Winter