tirely at variance with their own. Aliens they are to us in almost all things. Their thoughts run in a different channel; they are guided so much more by instinct than by reasoning. They have a code of morals and of honor differing most materially from ours. They attach importance to matters so trifling in our eyes, are gratified or offended by such insignificant details, are guided through life by rules so much at variance with our established methods, that it is impossible for us to foresee what, under particular circumstances, their conduct will be. They are influenced by feelings and passions which we do not in the least understand, and cannot therefore appreciate. They show reverence to superstitions and religious ceremonies which we, knowing nothing whatever about them, declare at once to be utterly foolish and absurd; and they attach much importance to observances which seem to us almost as utterly meaningless and ridiculous as many of the doctrines preached by our missionaries must appear to them.
“White men who have dwelt all their lives with the Indians have to confess that they know very little about their inner lives, and understand nothing of the hidden springs of action and of the secret motives that impel them to conduct themselves in the strange and inexplicable manner they sometimes do. . . .
“We regard them as cowards, lacking bravery; they regard the bull-dog courage of the whites as fool-hardiness. A life is very valuable to them; hence it is that they admire the man who can creep, and watch, and lie out for days and nights in bitter cold and snow, without food or warmth, and who, by infinite patience, cool courage, and a nice calculation of chances, secures a scalp or a lot of horses without risk to himself; but who, if he found circumstances unfavorable and the odds against him, would return without striking a blow. That is the man they look up to.
“In our great cities they see just enough to degrade the inhabitants in their eyes. They can learn nothing of the blessings and advantages attendant on civilization. They see the worst only. . . . He is free, and he knows it; we are slaves, bound by chains of our own forging, — and he sees that it is so. Could he but fathom the depths of a great city, and gauge the pettiness, the paltry selfishness of the inhabitants, and see the deceit, the humbug, the lying, the outward swagger and the inward cringing, the toadyism and the simulated independence; could he but view the lives that might
have been honorably passed, spent instead in struggling for and39
