EDITOR'S TABLE. 



749 



torial dictum. Mr. Windom, of Minne- 

 sota, is reported as recently saying in 

 the Federal Senate that " the Indians 

 are the greatest liars and vagabonds up- 

 on the face of the earth." With their 

 rank as vagabonds we have no imme- 

 diate concern, but in regard to their 

 grade as liars we think the Senator is 

 in error ; he is over-modest ; the " great- 

 ness" which he so freely accords to the 

 savages, in this respect, belongs pre- 

 eminently to his own race. The rival- 

 ries of falsehood between races, like 

 other rivalries, must depend upon ca- 

 pacity, culture, and opportunity ; and, in 

 any competition for honors in deception, 

 the Yankee has proved from the be- 

 ginning to be much " smarter " than 

 the Indian. Our Senator, indeed, if 

 the reports can be trusted (and they 

 are white, not Indian reports), might 

 be taken as a living and conclusive 

 illustration of the superiority of the su- 

 perior race in perpetrating falsehood on 

 an imposing scale. He is said to have 

 advocated a breach of the treaty by 

 which the "Black Hills" are reserved 

 to the Sioux, so as to let in all the white 

 adventurers that choose to go there ; 

 that is, to break the faith and pledge 

 of the Government, and turn the whole 

 nation into liars by virtue of our repre- 

 sentative system. This brings out the 

 exalted advantages in the practice of 

 falsification possessed by the dominant 

 race over the uncultivated savages. We 

 can perpetrate deceit by oflScial machin- 

 ery. Even in the smallest way, in the 

 hand-to-hand competition of a huckster- 

 ing trade, the Yankee may be trusted 

 anywhere to circumvent, that is, to out- 

 lie the Indian. But when we consider 

 the case in its broader aspects, where 

 the two sorts of people work freely in 

 their separate social spheres, the Indians 

 are not to be named as competitors of 

 the whites in the art of mendacity. 

 Granting the disposition, they lack the 

 resources and capacity. Mentally, they 

 are children, with but little knowledge, 

 scanty ideas upon a few subjects, and 



limited intellectual operations. They 

 lack the scope, the cultivation, the fa- 

 cilities for exercise in deceit which are 

 possessed by the civilized race. With- 

 out books, newspapers, advertisements, 

 highly-organized party politics, diplo- 

 macy, lawsuits, complex business rival- 

 ries, sectarian strifes, big enterprises, and 

 fashionable society, what can they do 

 in the way of duplicity, fraud, imposi- 

 tion, misrepresentation, artifice, cheat- 

 ing, forgery, perjury, and the thousand 

 forms, and grades, and variations of ly- 

 ing, in which the dominant race is so 

 proficient ? The civilized man multi- 

 plies his capacity of falsehood through 

 division of labor. He not only lies with 

 his tongue, but with his hands, manipu- 

 lating falsehood into his manufactures. 

 He lies by machinery, aijd swindles by 

 steam. By the printing-press he scat- 

 ters deceptions like snow-flakes over 

 the continent. Your civilizee lies with 

 enterprise, through an army of agents 

 by post and by telegraph. What can 

 the " poor Indian," with his " untutored 

 mind," do in comparison with this? 

 There was more lying in the manage- 

 ment of the Northern Pacific Eailroad 

 than ten tribes of Indians could perpe- 

 trate in a generation. There is more 

 lying in one presidential campaign than 

 all the North American tribes could per- 

 petrate in a century. The Indians are 

 no more " the greatest liars on the face 

 of the earth " than they are the greatest 

 lawyers, politicians, editors, merchants, 

 and manufacturers, on the face of the 

 earth. Fraud, falsification, dissimula- 

 tion, insincerity, trickery, overreach- 

 ing, and the innumerable grades and 

 shades of humbug, are vices of the civ- 

 ilized man, and he must accept this 

 with all his other forms of greatness. 

 The Indian has undoubtedly a rudi- 

 mental capacity for lying, which gets 

 somewhat developed along the borders, 

 by his intercourse with the whites, but 

 he cannot aspire to the unenviable emi- 

 nence which Senator Windom ascribes 

 to him. 



