Farewell to the Indian!

We have seen that, from the time of the very earliest European adventurers, to the great Sioux uprising of 1876, there has been but one result of the contact between the whites and those of another color. Powhatan, the diplomat, was as unable to keep his land from the Anglo-Saxon invader as was Sitting Bull, the tactician. For nearly four centuries the gradual conquest of the American continent went on apace, with frightful carnage, suffering and race hatred. The most fit survived; the people of lesser intelligence and thrift had to give way to those of superior attainments.

It has been a picturesque struggle. There has been the fierce battling against the Pamunkies of Virginia and Opechancanough, the ruthless Virginian. There has followed the strange warfare in the rude forests of Massachusetts with King Philip, and the neighboring contest with Sassacus, chief of the Pequots. Later, was the sanguinary struggle in the Mohawk Valley of New York; the wild fighting around the wooded slopes of the Hudson; the swift marches and vainglorious retreats in the dreamy forests near Lake George, and by the banks of the gray, glittering Champlain.

Then, as the restless pioneers crept southward and westward, was the carnage of Tippecanoe; the stalwart campaigning in the trackless forest of the Illinois; the battling in the land of Weatherford, the Creek conspirator; and the long-continued campaign in the dark and dismal gloom of the Florida Everglades. It was a time which put men upon their mettle, and in which no shirker or weakling could hope to have a place of responsibility.

The most desperate struggles were between 1868 and 1876, struggles which have made heroes of both red men and white. As the steel rails of the Union Pacific road crept steadily but surely across the continent, the Sioux and Cheyennes desperately endeavored to stem the overwhelming influx of white settlers, who followed in the wake of the army and the railroad. There was fighting—and plenty of it—for Custer, Crook, Miles, Forsyth and the other gallant officers of the United States army. Such chiefs as Roman Nose, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Red Cloud fought with all the tenacity and strength which they could command. It was of no avail. The fields of the Rosebud; Beecher's Island; the Little Big Horn; and Slim Buttes; mark stepping-stones in the conquest of the continent by the white invader.

I, myself, have trod over the ground on which Opechancanough battled with the whites in Virginia; have packed across the wide sweep of prairie in Wyoming which once echoed with the wild shouts of the followers of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull; have slept near the crystal waters of the Powder River; and have camped where the caÑons once echoed with the rifle shots of Lieutenant Sibley, a gallant scout of Crook's command, who was with him at the battle of the Rosebud. There were no signs of the red man in this magnificent country. He had vanished from the grassy plateaus and beetling mountains, as had the game which once abounded in the fertile land.

The Indian of the plains has disappeared. Now, educated in the ways and customs of the whites, in various schools for the members of his race, he joins in the conquest of the soil, and in modern progress, by the same methods adopted by those of superior mental development. The gorgeous war bonnets, magnificent trappings, and painted accoutrements have given way to the sober dress and technical instruments of the whites. The picturesqueness and color which surrounds the native American will shortly fade away. Spirited has been the history of his struggle for the land of his forefathers, and sad has been its ending.

Farewell to the Indian of the plains!

THE END.