AMERICA'S INDIAN PROBLEM

The hospitality of the American aborigine, it is told, saved the early
settlers from starvation during the first bleak winters. In
commemoration of having been so well received, Newport erected "a cross
as a sign of English dominion." With sweet words he quieted the
suspicions of Chief Powhatan, his friend. He "told him that the arms (of
the cross) represented Powhatan and himself, and the middle their united
league."

DeSoto and his Spaniards were graciously received by the Indian Princess
Cofachiqui in the South. While on a sight-seeing tour they entered the
ancestral tombs of those Indians. DeSoto "dipped into the pearls and
gave his two joined hands full to each cavalier to make rosaries of, he
said, to say prayers for their sins on. We imagine if their prayers were
in proportion to their sins they must have spent the most of their time
at their devotions."

It was in this fashion that the old world snatched away the fee in the
land of the new. It was in this fashion that America was divided
between the powers of Europe and the aborigines were dispossessed of
their country. The barbaric rule of might from which the paleface had
fled hither for refuge caught up with him again, and in the melee the
hospitable native suffered "legal disability."

History tells that it was from the English and the Spanish our
government inherited its legal victims, the American Indians, whom to
this day we hold as wards and not as citizens of their own freedom