Page:Life among the Apaches.djvu/103

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LIFE AMONG THE APACHES.
97

oculated them with, the most terrific vices. This is a sad picture, but it cannot be denied.

What was the result of bringing leading chiefs, like Black Hawk, Keokuk, Irritaba and Juan Chivari from their native wilds to behold and take lessons from the wealth, power, numbers and general superiority of our people? In each case those once renowned warriors lost their whole influence. They were regarded with suspicion and dislike by their own tribes. They were suspected of being bewitched. Their tales of the wondrous things they saw and heard were treated with scorn and unbelief, and, in some instances, such as in that of Irritaba and Juan Chivari, they barely escaped death at the hands of their former followers.

The North American savage gazes with ill-suppressed admiration upon our palatial buildings, our thronged streets, our splendid stores, our vast and complicated mechanical engineering, our big guns and great ships; but his teaching ends there. While wondering at these things, he pants for his own unbounded plains and dense forests. He is not animated to attempt any change in his own method of life. He has no idea of toiling throughout existence that his children's children, to the tenth or twentieth generation, may possess capabilities and advantages like those enjoyed by the white man. His ambition is not at all excited, and he philosophically concludes that each race has its appointed duties, and is engaged in its fulfillment. Indians who have been removed from their native scenes at an early age, and received the best education attainable in our seminaries of learning, have almost invariably returned to their wastes, and proved the most formidable enemies of those who congratulated themselves on having rescued them as "brands from the burning."