Chap. II. HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL VIEWS. 223 
These characters, with their forced American nationality, 
represent the reverse of our former long-haired Teutonists. 
"We Germans," said the latter, "are the first people 
in the world : at present, it is true, matters stand badly 
with us; but our ancestors, they were a people!" The 
former say, " We Americans are the first people in the 
world : at present, it is true, matters stand very badly with 
us ; but our descendants, they will be a people !" But as 
the sons of Arminius, proud of their past, understood that a 
past has no value if it has no future, and therefore prepared 
themselves for this future by their athletic exercises ; so the 
sons of Uncle Sam, proud of their future, seem to opine that 
a future, without a past, is of no value, and therefore they 
attempt to found an American culture upon Indianism. 
" We want the prestige of antiquity," said Mr. , to 
me ; " but we have it ! See the Indian mounds in our 
West ! " It was upon this tendency of the American 
mind, which is not exclusively peculiar to the United 
States, but is also met with in the Spanish-American 
countries, that the cunning founder of the Mormon sect 
originally calculated, in making the American Indians 
play so prominent a part in the sacred history he invented. 
It is an endeavour, mentally and historically, as has been 
done politically, to emancipate themselves from Europe; and 
they imagine they can attain this object by denying their 
physical and mental origin. In the same manner the 
Mexicans, at the time of their separation from Spain, called 
themselves the sons of Montezuma — hijos de Montezuma. 
The history of how many a people may in the earliest 
times of mankind have been falsified in this manner ! 
Our waggons were loaded at Weyne City in the first week 
of August, and drawn by hired teams of oxen on to the open 
