| We have to keep our God placated with prayers,
and even then we are never sure of him -- how much higher and finer is the
Indian's God......Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent
in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he
can for his injun and does it free of charge. - Marginalia written in copy of Richard Irving Dodge's Our Wild Indians |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
|
I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre.
If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing
for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden
as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred
Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to
finish him some time or other.
|
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
| The priest explained the mysteries of the
faith "by signs," for the saving of the savages; thus compensating
them with possible possessions in heaven for the certain ones on earth which
they had just been robbed of. Nobody smiles at these colossal ironies. - Life on the Mississippi |
 1903 Lewis and Clark Centennial Commemorative Tray from the Dave Thomson collection |
|
[Governor Nye was] a real father to those poor Nevada Indians. He gave
them, without regard to their sex or age, blankets and hoopskirts. You
could see an Indian chief with a string of blacking boxes round his neck,
and over his red blanket four or five of those hoopskirts, walking the
streets as happy as a clam, with his hands sticking out of the slats.
And yet, notwithstanding all the efforts and civilizing kindness of the
good Governor, those Indians didn't step out of their savage condition--they
were just as degraded as if they had never seen a hoopskirt. Years ago, I was accused of loading an Indian up with beans lubricated
with nitro-glycerine & sending him in an ox wagon over a stumpy road.
This was impossible, on its face, for no one would risk oxen in that way.
But it shows how far malice will deflect an aborigine from the equator
of truth. |
Recommended reading:
Mark
Twain Among the Indians by Kerry Driscoll (2018)
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