FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129  
130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   >>   >|  
at, or harder to trick into civility, or more impervious to the injunctions of the Ten Commandments? I suppose it will be said that he is; that the black fellow bolted the whole code at a gobble, and wagged his tail, as if the feat must surely please his new masters; that he had long had the benefit of civilized cooking, and knew a gentleman by his toggery; that, moreover, he was of a teachable, plastic nature, and was meant to lie down in due time upon the hearth rug before the fire, in any gentleman's sitting room in the land. It may be true. I believe all this myself, and a good deal more, about him; and I take renewed hope also for this great republic--which is the hope of the world!--that it has thus, at last, tamed him, and fitted him for exhibition upon a nobler theatre than that of Barnum. But the red lion, you say, is untamable--cannot be dealt with successfully by the wit of white men; and that it is best, therefore, to rob him of the golden apples which he guards, and which are his only food, and so starve him out. But you can't deal that way with the Indian lion, my friend, without feeling the taste of his claws. You have tried it long enough. Bishop Whipple says, 'for fifty years'! And I ask you how much nearer are you to the taming of him now, than you were those 'fifty years' ago? Echo answers: 'That's an impudent question!' and I reply, so be it! but you can't shuffle it off in that way. I have tried my hand at suggesting how imminent dangers, calamities, and horrors may even yet be averted from the Western settlements; and if those who urge that justice shall be done to them, equal to that which we here render, or try or pretend to render to each other--if those who urge this are not listened to now, their plea will be remembered when it is all too late, and thousands of innocent people are again murdered, and their homes laid waste and desolate. I again say, let no one think by these statements that I am making a special pleading for the Indians, or that I sanction their butcheries. God knows how far all this is from my thought or feeling! I am a white man right through all the inmost fibres of my being: too white, I often fear; for I find my love of race, and pride of blood and ancestry, often encroach too far upon the proper regions of my humanity, and threaten to blear my eyesight to the fair claims of the inferior races. But I have to do with a thoughtful, reflective, and, at the bottom, just
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129  
130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
render
 

feeling

 

gentleman

 

question

 

impudent

 
answers
 
shuffle
 

pretend

 
settlements
 

calamities


dangers

 

Western

 
averted
 

horrors

 
justice
 

suggesting

 
imminent
 
ancestry
 

proper

 

encroach


inmost

 

fibres

 

regions

 

humanity

 

thoughtful

 

reflective

 

bottom

 

inferior

 

threaten

 

eyesight


claims

 
murdered
 

people

 

desolate

 

innocent

 
thousands
 

listened

 
remembered
 

butcheries

 
sanction

thought
 

Indians

 
pleading
 
statements
 

making

 

special

 
plastic
 

teachable

 
nature
 

toggery