The Most Curious Thing I Saw: 'The Red Indians'

They live on the tops of the mountains and in the distant plains. Their land is wide of expanse and pure of air, pouring colors over them; they draw their culture from its perpetual brilliance and its native splendor.

So the foreign tourist sees them; so American publicity pictures them to us. But the story that one of them tells differs somewhat from this: — the mountains were all their property, and the near plain, like the far plain, was their pasture; then the white American came and forced them by force of arms to take refuge in their present lands... And the sun poured out its colors over all America, and the air was pure everywhere; then the white American came and fouled the clear atmosphere... And their culture was bright and native; then the white American came and replaced it with an unbridled culture that all but overwhelmed the brilliance of what they knew and wiped out the native character from their ways of living.

And suddenly the white American felt the enormity of the calamity that had befallen the original inhabitants of his country, and before wiping them out to the last man he enacted laws to protect them and to foster their crafts and the color peculiar to their culture. These laws considered the land on which the various tribes live the property of the government, and thenceforth any aggression upon it, or upon those who live on it, was considered a direct offense against the government. These lands were named the Indians' sanctuaries — Indian Reservations — and were exempted from the collection of taxes. The Red Indians in America today are different tribes, each with its own language and its distinct culture. Each of them lives in its own reservation, and the members of one tribe differ from the members of another in their appearance, their dress, their conduct, and their customs.

Of these tribes I visited the Cherokee tribe, whose reservation lies on the summit of a great mountain stretching from the northwest of the state of North Carolina to the middle of the state of Tennessee, called the Smoky Mountain — a stretch of land finer than which, in climate and greenery, I have never seen in my life: wide of expanse, bright with sun, abounding in waters, gentle of air. There, at various distances, are scattered the houses of the Red Indians and their farms. They are houses of mud, wretched to look upon, showing that their inhabitants are a poor folk... The greater part of them work at farming and handicraft (though a large part of their young men today have gained an education and gone out into the arena of American life, working in it like any other American). The Red Indian's skin inclines markedly to redness; his face is oval in shape, with eyes more like the eyes of the Chinese than any other eyes, a straight nose, and large lips. His hair is black, flowing, and thick, and he is of middling stature and moderate stoutness. But the pure Red Indian is rare to find today, after they have mingled with the white race so visibly that fair hair, blue eyes, and white skin are not rare things among them — yet they all take pride in the red blood that runs in their veins. Their culture, likewise, has so mingled with the general American culture that it has nearly faded away: they have exchanged their traditional dress for European dress, just as they have replaced all the outward forms of their life with the forms recognized in America today. Yet their spirit still differs somewhat from the spirit of the generality of their countrymen: the Indian inclines to withdrawal and to keeping apart from people, and he carries within himself a pride and a loftiness placed there by the bygone generations and by a history filled with a high culture and an unending defeat.