The Indian Dispossessed
"They lack thrift, incline to dissolute habits, yet plant regularly year by year, and have small stocks of horses, cattle, and sheep. A better crop and more commodious huts, a few chairs, and a table distinguish them from the mountain villages; still, they have made a broad step towards civilization. Custom has always allowed them ardent spirits, from which lamentable practice not even the missionaries can be excepted. The laws of nature have had their course, and the Indian is paying the penalty of all who violate them. Three years ago they were practically slaves. American freedom does not profit them. They soon fall into the bad ways of their Christian neighbors. American rule and American liberty, which have come to them and overthrown the church, have given them the white man's habits of dissipation, and they are disgusted with prospects of civilized life."
Sixty years of Franciscan dominion had served to differentiate these Indians from all other Indians in the great western country; they presented an aspect of Indian life entirely new to the advancing hosts of Uncle Sam. But sixty years under paternal guardianship had left them unassertive, dependent without those upon whom to depend, and wholly unprepared to cope with the persistent American frontiersman. The system from which they had derived their great benefits developed rather than overcame the Indians' one great weakness,—their
206
