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matter, they were called together by the Indian Agent, who showed them a little piece of paper, which he told them was a treaty, which their brethren had made in their name, with their Great Father at Washington. And as they knew not what a treaty was, he held up the little piece of paper, and they looked under it, and lo! it covered a great extent of country, and they found that their brethren, by knowing how to read and write, had sold their lands, and the graves of their Fathers; and that the white man, by knowing how to read and write, had gained them. Tell our Great Father at Washington, therefore, that we are very sorry we can not receive teachers among us; for reading and writing, though very good for white men, is very bad for indians."[1]
Another evidence of the opposite natures of the two Races is to be found in the natural and general repugnance of the white man, to an intimate personal association with the black man, in his instinctive aversion to eat at the same Table; to drink from the same cup; to sleep in the same bed; to sit next to him in the same Church Pew or Railroad Car; or, in short, to be in any close proximity to him, in any place whatever. And this aversion is not based entirely on the peculiar odor emitted from his body; so inoffensive to himself and yet so offensive to the white man; but it is general and instinctive; and is based on a stern law of Nature, similar to that which governs our intercourse with the lower Animals or Reptiles; and is coeval with our existence. As early as 2700 years ago the fair widowed Queen, Dido, of Carthage, committed suicide rather than comply with the unnatural and selfish importunities of her principal subjects, to marry Iarbus, the swarthy Monarch of Mauritania, in Africa. And as a further illustration of its existence, the white man is quicker and fiercer to
- ↑ Seminole tradition by Washington Irving.
