AS AN INDIAN SAW IT

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 25, 1902

AS AN INDIAN SAW IT.

Boston Transcript.

CHIEF POKAGON, of the Pottawattamies, a full-blooded Indian, who died last year, wrote a book called the “Queen of the Woods,” apparently a sketch of his own life. The following passage from it is of real interest, enhanced by the circumstances of the writer:—

“A few years since, as I passed through the peach belt of southwestern Michigan, I noticed in many of the peach orchards along my route men were at work digging up the trees, root and branch, and burning them. I also observed that many of the trees were loaded with ripe fruit of red and crimson intermixed, tempting to behold, which was also burned with them. I made careful inquiry for the cause of such wanton destruction, and was told the trees were diseased with a contagion known as the ‘yellows,’ and that the charming ripe fruit I had seen was premature and diseased, and that it was known among fruit growers as ‘mock peaches,’ and further, that the State of Michigan had decreed that all such diseased trees must be destroyed; and if the orchard owners neglected to do so, the State of Michigan would destroy them at the owners’ expense, and subject them to the payment of a fine of one hundred dollars in each case, and imprisonment if not paid. To-day I passed over the same route again; and where eight years ago the land was cursed with dying trees and mock peaches, I beheld, spread out before me in every direction, beautiful orchards loaded with rich, ripe fruit, red-cheeked and in the bloom of health, which, in contrast with the dark-green foliage of the trees, presented a living picture which excited my heart to cry out, ‘Behold Eden’s garden of the nineteenth century.’ Men, women, and children, with jest and jeer, with laugh and merry song, on every hand were picking and packing the fruit, while others, with teams, were hauling it away, some to the railroad and some to the lake for shipment, while the employed and the employer were happy alike, and rejoiced together.”

“Now let Pokagon ask in all candor, What brought about this mighty change from adversity to prosperity, from death to life? But one answer can be given: ‘The State of Michigan did it.’ With a single blow of her right arm she crushed the widespread contagion, and yet there are many who still dare say, unblushingly, in both public and private life, in the face of such convincing facts and thousands of like cases, ‘that no law can be enforced to prohibit the sale and manufacture of intoxicating drinks.’”

“My native brains are indeed puzzled to understand how it is that the incoming white race by their intelligence and skill have invented instruments whereby they can measure the heavens above, and declare of what substance the stars are composed; who have provided means whereby they can travel at ease in palaces, sweeping above rivers and through mountains, outstripping in their course the flight of birds in their migration; who have provided means whereby they can enjoy parlor life while crossing oceans in the teeth of the wildest storms; who have perfected inventions whereby they can rise above the eagle in his flight, or descend into the depths of the sea, where fish can scarcely swim; whose subtle brains have devised means whereby they can talk, as though face to face, around the globe; whose ingenuity can successfully bottle up speech whereby generations yet unborn may listen to the voices of their forefathers; from whose brains emanated that marvelous invention by means of which a button pressed by the fingers of a child causes mountains to be rent asunder and torn down, or the granite bottom of the sea uplifted and broken in pieces. All these wonderful achievements the white men have accomplished, and yet they dare have the effrontery to declare to all the world by words and deeds, regardless of their marvelous works almost divine, that they are not able to provide means whereby they can destroy that great devil-fish which their own hands have fashioned and launched upon the sea of human life, whose tentacles reach out to do their wicked work alike into wigwams and palaces, into schools and colleges, into halls of legislation and courts of law, and all unsought, crushes in its coils the heart of the young bride, the wife, the mother, and the little child. Now if it be true the dominant race lacks the power to bind down and destroy that monstrosity born of their own race, then it must also be true that the moral science of good government, for the best good of all the people, has not kept pace with their remarkable discoveries and improvements. At this very time some of the best brains of our country are laboring night and day to provide instruments whereby the seed of disease, or any foreign substance, may be seen in the human body to aid surgery in relieving the afflicted.”

“The people are wildly clapping their hands over it, and shouting loud acclaim; and yet these benevolent men of giant research and their votaries, as well as many of our political and moral scientists, cannot or will not see in broad daylight the curse of the glass between the lips of our boys and young men who are rushing down the toboggan slide of shame into the broad gateway of physical ruin and moral death.”

“It is well for the agriculturist to study chemistry, so that he may understand the property of the soil, and prepare it for the golden grain. But he who would so prepare his land, and plant it with the best of seed, and then allow the grass and the noxious weeds to choke out the young and tender plants, would be considered foolish with all his wisdom. Our country is one vast field for our cultivation; science, with a lavish hand, has given us ample means to dress and take care of it, and yet, to the shame of this nation, cigarette weeds, whisky weeds, and all manner of vicious weeds are running over it, demoralizing alike the young men and the little boys. Fathers and mothers, Pokagon asks you in the name of the sons of the forest; he asks you in the name of the Great Spirit of his fathers and yours; in the name of humanity and Christianity, and by all that is sacred and dear to mankind, Is it not your duty to destroy these deadly weeds, root and branch? Ancient and modern history, written and traditional, both declare most emphatically that in order to attain to the most perfect type of civilization for the best good of all, the people must be equally developed, morally, mentally, and physically. And yet it must appear to every candid-thinking man, as he beholds intemperance sweeping our land like a prairie on fire, scorching all that is fair and lovely, that the lack of moral education to map out proper legislation is the most lamentable defect of the present age.”