CHAPTER III.
THE INDIAN IN HIS CONDITION, RESOURCES, AND SURROUNDINGS.
We have abundant and trustworthy means for informing
ourselves of the qualities of character, the exterior life, the
resources, employments, and practical capacities of the
aboriginal tribes during the whole period since the first coming
here of Europeans. The intercourse has always been
close and continuous between the races; and though the
relations in which they have stood to each other have been
prevailingly hostile, there have been occasional and agreeable
exceptions to this rule. As has already been said,
though the Indians have a history profoundly interesting,
especially in its tragic elements, they have no historian of
their own race. The few and quite unsatisfactory specimens
which we have of their way of telling their own
story and fortunes for the record, are to be gathered from
speeches delivered by some of their chiefs, in review of
their history, at great councils with the whites; and we
have to accept these as they have come through the medium
of interpreters more or less intelligent, honest, and qualified
for the office. Occasionally, too, we have had from whites
who, as captives in their early youth, have lived long with
the natives and been adopted by them, and also from some
of their own youths who have been educated at our schools
and colleges, what may serve as the Indian's own way of
communicating to us the fortunes and experiences of his
race. For the most part, however, — as in the case of the
