255 



CHAPTEE XIX. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN IDEAS OF THE INDIAN HIS 

 BOYHOOD ORDEAL, AND THE WARRIOR. 



IT is doubtful if there be a people on earth concerning 

 whom there is so wide a difference of opinion as the 

 North American Indians. 



Eastern people, educated, by reading Cooper's and 

 other similar novels, to a romantic admiration for the 

 ' red man ; ' misled by the travellers' tales of enthusiastic 

 missionaries, or the more interested statements of agents 

 and professional humanitarians ; and indulging in a phi- 

 lanthropy, safe because distant, and sincere because igno- 

 rant, are ready to believe all impossible good, and nothing 

 bad, of the ' noble savage.' 



The western frontier people who come in contact 

 with him, who suffer from his depredations, and whose 

 life is made a nightmare by his vicinity, have no words 

 to -express their detestation of his duplicity, cruelty, and 

 barbarism. No amount of reason, no statement of facts, 

 will ever change the opinion of either eastern or western 

 people on this subject. 



In the east, Christian charity and sentimental humani- 

 tarianism form good ' paying leads,' which the professional 

 philanthropist will not fail to work to his own best ad- 

 vantage by statements of ' facts ' and an array of statistics 

 satisfactory to the most sceptical ; while the western man, 

 who has lost his horses, had his house burned, or his wife 

 violated and murdered, finds a whole life of hatred and 

 revenge too little to devote to his side of the question. 



