History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0099/00997.txt

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$Title{Democracy In America
Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races - Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{De Tocqueville, Alexis}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{indians
indian
civilization
nations
civilized
footnote
european
europeans
still
themselves}
$Date{1899}
$Log{}
Title:       Democracy In America
Book:        Volume I
Author:      De Tocqueville, Alexis
Date:        1899
Translation: Reeve, Henry

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races - Part II

     These are great evils; and it must be added that they appear to me to be
irremediable.  I believe that the Indian nations of North America are doomed
to perish; and that whenever the Europeans shall be established on the shores
of the Pacific Ocean, that race of men will be no more. ^i The Indians had
only the two alternatives of war or civilization; in other words, they must
either have destroyed the Europeans or become their equals.

[Footnote i: This seems, indeed, to be the opinion of almost all American
statesmen.  "Judging of the future by the past," says Mr. Cass, "we cannot err
in anticipating a progressive diminution of their numbers, and their eventual
extinction, unless our border should become stationary, and they be removed
beyond it, or unless some radical change should take place in the principles
of our intercourse with them, which it is easier to hope for than to expect."]

     At the first settlement of the colonies they might have found it
possible, by uniting their forces, to deliver themselves from the small bodies
of strangers who landed on their continent. ^j They several times attempted to
do it, and were on the point of succeeding; but the disproportion of their
resources, at the present day, when compared with those of the whites, is too
great to allow such an enterprise to be thought of.  Nevertheless, there do
arise from time to time among the Indians men of penetration, who foresee the
final destiny which awaits the native population, and who exert themselves to
unite all the tribes in common hostility to the Europeans; but their efforts
are unavailing.  Those tribes which are in the neighborhood of the whites, are
too much weakened to offer an effectual resistance; whilst the others, giving
way to that childish carelessness of the morrow which characterizes savage
life, wait for the near approach of danger before they prepare to meet it;
some are unable, the others are unwilling, to exert themselves.

[Footnote j: Amongst other warlike enterprises, there was one of the
Wampanaogs, and other confederate tribes, under Metacom in 1675, against the
colonists of New England; the English were also engaged in war in Virginia in
1622.]

     It is easy to foresee that the Indians will never conform to
civilization; or that it will be too late, whenever they may be inclined to
make the experiment.

     Civilization is the result of a long social process which takes place in
the same spot, and is handed down from one generation to another, each one
profiting by the experience of the last.  Of all nations, those submit to
civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
Pastoral tribes, indeed, often change their place of abode; but they follow a
regular order in their migrations, and often return again to their old
stations, whilst the dwelling of the hunter varies with that of the animals he
pursues.

     Several attempts have been made to diffuse knowledge amongst the Indians,
without controlling their wandering propensities; by the Jesuits in Canada,
and by the Puritans in New England; ^k but none of these endeavors were
crowned by any lasting success.  Civilization began in the cabin, but it soon
retired to expire in the woods.  The great error of these legislators of the
Indians was their not understanding that, in order to succeed in civilizing a
people, it is first necessary to fix it; which cannot be done without inducing
it to cultivate the soil; the Indians ought in the first place to have been
accustomed to agriculture.  But not only are they destitute of this
indispensable preliminary to civilization, they would even have great
difficulty in acquiring it.  Men who have once abandoned themselves to the
restless and adventurous life of the hunter, feel an insurmountable disgust
for the constant and regular labor which tillage requires.  We see this proved
in the bosom of our own society; but it is far more visible among peoples
whose partiality for the chase is a part of their national character.

[Footnote k: See the "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," by Charlevoix, and the
work entitled "Lettres edifiantes."]

     Independently of this general difficulty, there is another, which applies
peculiarly to the Indians; they consider labor not merely as an evil, but as a
disgrace; so that their pride prevents them from becoming civilized, as much
as their indolence. ^l

[Footnote l: "In all the tribes," says Volney, in his "Tableau des
Etats-Unis," p. 423, "there still exists a generation of old warriors, who
cannot forbear, when they see their countrymen using the hoe, from exclaiming
against the degradation of ancient manners, and asserting that the savages owe
their decline to these innovations; adding, that they have only to return to
their primitive habits in order to recover their power and their glory."]

     There is no Indian so wretched as not to retain under his hut of bark a
lofty idea of his personal worth; he considers the cares of industry and labor
as degrading occupations; he compares the husbandman to the ox which traces
the furrow; and even in our most ingenious handicraft, he can see nothing but
the labor of slaves. Not that he is devoid of admiration for the power and
intellectual greatness of the whites; but although the result of our efforts
surprises him, he contemns the means by which we obtain it; and while he
acknowledges our ascendancy, he still believes in his superiority. War and
hunting are the only pursuits which appear to him worthy to be the occupations
of a man. ^m The Indian, in the dreary solitude of his woods, cherishes the
same ideas, the same opinions as the noble of the Middle ages in his castle,
and he only requires to become a conqueror to complete the resemblance; thus,
however strange it may seem, it is in the forests of the New World, and not
amongst the Europeans who people its coasts, that the ancient prejudices of
Europe are still in existence.

[Footnote m: The following description occurs in an official document: "Until
a young man has been engaged with an enemy, and has performed some acts of
valor, he gains no consideration, but is regarded nearly as a woman.  In their
great war-dances all the warriors in succession strike the post, as it is
called, and recount their exploits.  On these occasions their auditory
consists of the kinsmen, friends, and comrades of the narrator.  The profound
impression which his discourse produces on them is manifested by the silent
attention it receives, and by the loud shouts which hail its termination. The
young man who finds himself at such a meeting without anything to recount is
very unhappy; and instances have sometimes occurred of young warriors, whose
passions had been thus inflamed, quitting the war-dance suddenly, and going
off alone to seek for trophies which they might exhibit, and adventures which
they might be allowed to relate."]

     More than once, in the course of this work, I have endeavored to explain
the prodigious influence which the social condition appears to exercise upon
the laws and the manners of men; and I beg to add a few words on the same
subject.

     When I perceive the resemblance which exists between the political
institutions of our ancestors, the Germans, and of the wandering tribes of
North America; between the customs described by Tacitus, and those of which I
have sometimes been a witness, I cannot help thinking that the same cause has
brought about the same results in both hemispheres; and that in the midst of
the apparent diversity of human affairs, a certain number of primary facts may
be discovered, from which all the others are derived.  In what we usually call
the German institutions, then, I am inclined only to perceive barbarian
habits; and the opinions of savages in what we style feudal principles.

     However strongly the vices and prejudices of the North American Indians
may be opposed to their becoming agricultural and civilized, necessity
sometimes obliges them to it.  Several of the Southern nations, and amongst
others the Cherokees and the Creeks, ^n were surrounded by Europeans, who had
landed on the shores of the Atlantic; and who, either descending the Ohio or
proceeding up the Mississippi, arrived simultaneously upon their borders.
These tribes have not been driven from place to place, like their Northern
brethren; but they have been gradually enclosed within narrow limits, like the
game within the thicket, before the huntsmen plunge into the interior. The
Indians who were thus placed between civilization and death, found themselves
obliged to live by ignominious labor like the whites.  They took to
agriculture, and without entirely forsaking their old habits or manners,
sacrificed only as much as was necessary to their existence.

[Footnote n: These nations are now swallowed up in the States of Georgia,
Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi.  There were formerly in the South four
great nations (remnants of which still exist), the Choctaws, the Chickasaws,
the Creeks, and the Cherokees.  The remnants of these four nations amounted,
in 1830, to about 75,000 individuals.  It is computed that there are now
remaining in the territory occupied or claimed by the Anglo-American Union
about 300,000 Indians.  (See Proceedings of the Indian Board in the City of
New York.) The official documents supplied to Congress make the number amount
to 313,130.  The reader who is curious to know the names and numerical
strength of all the tribes which inhabit the Anglo-American territory should
consult the documents I refer to.  (Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No.
117, pp. 90-105.) [In the Census of 1870 it is stated that the Indian
population of the United States is only 25,731, of whom 7,241 are in
California.]]

     The Cherokees went further; they created a written language; established
a permanent form of government; and as everything proceeds rapidly in the New
World, before they had all of them clothes, they set up a newspaper. ^o

[Footnote o: I brought back with me to France one or two copies of this
singular publication.]

     The growth of European habits has been remarkably accelerated among these
Indians by the mixed race which has sprung up. ^p Deriving intelligence from
their father's side, without entirely losing the savage customs of the mother,
the half-blood forms the natural link between civilization and barbarism.
Wherever this race has multiplied the savage state has become modified, and a
great change has taken place in the manners of the people. ^q

[Footnote p: See in the Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs, 21st
Congress, No. 227, p. 23, the reasons for the multiplication of Indians of
mixed blood among the Cherokees.  The principal cause dates from the War of
Independence.  Many Anglo-Americans of Georgia, having taken the side of
England, were obliged to retreat among the Indians, where they married.]

[Footnote q: Unhappily the mixed race has been less numerous and less
influential in North America than in any other country.  The American
continent was peopled by two great nations of Europe, the French and the
English.  The former were not slow in connecting themselves with the daughters
of the natives, but there was an unfortunate affinity between the Indian
character and their own: instead of giving the tastes and habits of civilized
life to the savages, the French too often grew passionately fond of the state
of wild freedom they found them in.  They became the most dangerous of the
inhabitants of the desert, and won the friendship of the Indian by
exaggerating his vices and his virtues.  M. de Senonville, the governor of
Canada, wrote thus to Louis XIV in 1685: "It has long been believed that in
order to civilize the savages we ought to draw them nearer to us.  But there
is every reason to suppose we have been mistaken.  Those which have been
brought into contact with us have not become French, and the French who have
lived among them are changed into savages, affecting to dress and live like
them." ("History of New France," by Charlevoix, vol. ii., p. 345.) The
Englishman, on the contrary, continuing obstinately attached to the customs
and the most insignificant habits of his forefathers, has remained in the
midst of the American solitudes just what he was in the bosom of European
cities; he would not allow of any communication with savages whom he despised,
and avoided with care the union of his race with theirs.  Thus while the
French exercised no salutary influence over the Indians, the English have
always remained alien from them.]

     The success of the Cherokees proves that the Indians are capable of
civilization, but it does not prove that they will succeed in it.  This
difficulty which the Indians find in submitting to civilization proceeds from
the influence of a general cause, which it is almost impossible for them to
escape.  An attentive survey of history demonstrates that, in general,
barbarous nations have raised themselves to civilization by degrees, and by
their own efforts.  Whenever they derive knowledge from a foreign people, they
stood towards it in the relation of conquerors, and not of a conquered nation.
When the conquered nation is enlightened, and the conquerors are half savage,
as in the case of the invasion of Rome by the Northern nations or that of
China by the Mongols, the power which victory bestows upon the barbarian is
sufficient to keep up his importance among civilized men, and permit him to
rank as their equal, until he becomes their rival: the one has might on his
side, the other has intelligence; the former admires the knowledge and the
arts of the conquered, the latter envies the power of the conquerors.  The
barbarians at length admit civilized man into their palaces, and he in turn
opens his schools to the barbarians.  But when the side on which the physical
force lies, also possesses an intellectual preponderance, the conquered party
seldom become civilized; it retreats, or is destroyed. It may therefore be
said, in a general way, that savages go forth in arms to seek knowledge, but
that they do not receive it when it comes to them.

     If the Indian tribes which now inhabit the heart of the continent could
summon up energy enough to attempt to civilize themselves, they might possibly
succeed.  Superior already to the barbarous nations which surround them, they
would gradually gain strength and experience, and when the Europeans should
appear upon their borders, they would be in a state, if not to maintain their
independence, at least to assert their right to the soil, and to incorporate
themselves with the conquerors.  But it is the misfortune of Indians to be
brought into contact with a civilized people, which is also (it must be owned)
the most avaricious nation on the globe, whilst they are still semi-barbarian:
to find despots in their instructors, and to receive knowledge from the hand
of oppression.  Living in the freedom of the woods, the North American Indian
was destitute, but he had no feeling of inferiority towards anyone; as soon,
however, as he desires to penetrate into the social scale of the whites, he
takes the lowest rank in society, for he enters, ignorant and poor, within the
pale of science and wealth.  After having led a life of agitation, beset with
evils and dangers, but at the same time filled with proud emotions, ^r he is
obliged to submit to a wearisome, obscure, and degraded state; and to gain the
bread which nourishes him by hard and ignoble labor; such are in his eyes the
only results of which civilization can boast: and even this much he is not
sure to obtain.

[Footnote r: There is in the adventurous life of the hunter a certain
irresistible charm, which seizes the heart of man and carries him away in
spite of reason and experience.  This is plainly shown by the memoirs of
Tanner.  Tanner is a European who was carried away at the age of six by the
Indians, and has remained thirty years with them in the woods.  Nothing can be
conceived more appalling that the miseries which he describes.  He tells us of
tribes without a chief, families without a nation to call their own, men in a
state of isolation, wrecks of powerful tribes wandering at random amid the ice
and snow and desolate solitudes of Canada.  Hunger and cold pursue them; every
day their life is in jeopardy.  Amongst these men, manners have lost their
empire, traditions are without power.  They become more and more savage.
Tanner shared in all these miseries; he was aware of his European origin; he
was not kept away from the whites by force; on the contrary, he came every
year to trade with them, entered their dwellings, and witnessed their
enjoyments; he knew that whenever he chose to return to civilized life he was
perfectly able to do so - and he remained thirty years in the deserts.  When
he came into civilized society he declared that the rude existence which he
described, had a secret charm for him which he was unable to define: he
returned to it again and again: at length he abandoned it with poignant
regret; and when he was at length fixed among the whites, several of his
children refused to share his tranquil and easy situation. I saw Tanner myself
at the lower end of Lake Superior; he seemed to me to be more like a savage
than a civilized being.  His book is written without either taste or order;
but he gives, even unconsciously, a lively picture of the prejudices, the
passions, the vices, and, above all, of the destitution in which he lived.]

     When the Indians undertake to imitate their European neighbors, and to
till the earth like the settlers, they are immediately exposed to a very
formidable competition.  The white man is skilled in the craft of agriculture;
the Indian is a rough beginner in an art with which he is unacquainted.  The
former reaps abundant crops without difficulty, the latter meets with a
thousand obstacles in raising the fruits of the earth.

     The European is placed amongst a population whose wants he knows and
partakes.  The savage is isolated in the midst of a hostile people, with whose
manners, language, and laws he is imperfectly acquainted, but without whose
assistance he cannot live.  He can only procure the materials of comfort by
bartering his commodities against the goods of the European, for the
assistance of his countrymen is wholly insufficient to supply his wants. When
the Indian wishes to sell the produce of his labor, he cannot always meet with
a purchaser, whilst the European readily finds a market; and the former can
only produce at a considerable cost that which the latter vends at a very low
rate.  Thus the Indian has no sooner escaped those evils to which barbarous
nations are exposed, than he is subjected to the still greater miseries of
civilized communities; and he finds is scarcely less difficult to live in the
midst of our abundance, than in the depth of his own wilderness.

     He has not yet lost the habits of his erratic life; the traditions of his
fathers and his passion for the chase are still alive within him.  The wild
enjoyments which formerly animated him in the woods, painfully excite his
troubled imagination; and his former privations appear to be less keen, his
former perils less appalling.  He contrasts the independence which he
possessed amongst his equals with the servile position which he occupies in
civilized society.  On the other hand, the solitudes which were so long his
free home are still at hand; a few hours' march will bring him back to them
once more.  The whites offer him a sum, which seems to him to be considerable,
for the ground which he has begun to clear.  This money of the Europeans may
possibly furnish him with the means of a happy and peaceful subsistence in
remoter regions; and he quits the plough, resumes his native arms, and returns
to the wilderness forever. ^s The condition of the Creeks and Cherokees, to
which I have already alluded, sufficiently corroborates the truth of this
deplorable picture.

[Footnote s: The destructive influence of highly civilized nations upon others
which are less so, has been exemplified by the Europeans themselves. About a
century ago the French founded the town of Vincennes up on the Wabash, in the
middle of the desert; and they lived there in great plenty until the arrival
of the American settlers, who first ruined the previous inhabitants by their
competition, and afterwards purchased their lands at a very low rate.  At the
time when M. de Volney, from whom I borrow these details, passed through
Vincennes, the number of the French was reduced to a hundred individuals, most
of whom were about to pass over to Louisiana or to Canada.  These French
settlers were worthy people, but idle and uninstructed: they had contracted
many of the habits of savages.  The Americans, who were perhaps their
inferiors, in a moral point of view, were immeasurably superior to them in
intelligence: they were industrious, well informed, rich, and accustomed to
govern their own community.

     I myself saw in Canada, where the intellectual difference between the two
races is less striking, that the English are the masters of commerce and
manufacture in the Canadian country, that they spread on all sides, and
confine the French within limits which scarcely suffice to contain them.  In
like manner, in Louisiana, almost all activity in commerce and manufacture
centres in the hands of the Anglo-Americans.

     But the case of Texas is still more striking: the State of Texas is a
part of Mexico, and lies upon the frontier between that country and the United
States.  In the course of the last few years the Anglo-Americans have
penetrated into this province, which is still thinly peopled; they purchase
land, they produce the commodities of the country, and supplant the original
population.  It may easily be foreseen that if Mexico takes no steps to check
this change, the province of Texas will very shortly cease to belong to that
government.

     If the different degrees - comparatively so slight - which exist in
European civilization produce results of such magnitude, the consequences
which must ensue from the collision of the most perfect European civilization
with Indian savages may readily be conceived.]

     The Indians, in the little which they have done, have unquestionably
displayed as much natural genius as the peoples of Europe in their most
important designs; but nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever
may be their intelligence and their zeal.  Whilst the savages were engaged in
the work of civilization, the Europeans continued to surround them on every
side, and to confine them within narrower limits; the two races gradually met,
and they are now in immediate juxtaposition to each other. The Indian is
already superior to his barbarous parent, but he is still very far below his
white neighbor.  With their resources and acquired knowledge, the Europeans
soon appropriated to themselves most of the advantages which the natives might
have derived from the possession of the soil; they have settled in the
country, they have purchased land at a very low rate or have occupied it by
force, and the Indians have been ruined by a competition which they had not
the means of resisting.  They were isolated in their own country, and their
race only constituted a colony of troublesome aliens in the midst of a
numerous and domineering people. ^t

[Footnote t: See in the Legislative Documents (21st Congress, No. 89)
instances of excesses of every kind committed by the whites upon the territory
of the Indians, either in taking possession of a part of their lands, until
compelled to retire by the troops of Congress, or carrying off their cattle,
burning their houses, cutting down their corn, and doing violence to their
persons.  It appears, nevertheless, from all these documents that the claims
of the natives are constantly protected by the government from the abuse of
force.  The Union has a representative agent continually employed to reside
among the Indians; and the report of the Cherokee agent, which is among the
documents I have referred to, is almost always favorable to the Indians.  "The
intrusion of whites," he says, "upon the lands of the Cherokees would cause
ruin to the poor, helpless, and inoffensive inhabitants." And he further
remarks upon the attempt of the State of Georgia to establish a division line
for the purpose of limiting the boundaries of the Cherokees, that the line
drawn having been made by the whites, and entirely upon ex parte evidence of
their several rights, was of no validity whatever.]

     Washington said in one of his messages to Congress, "We are more
enlightened and more powerful than the Indian nations, we are therefore bound
in honor to treat them with kindness and even with generosity." But this
virtuous and high-minded policy has not been followed.  The rapacity of the
settlers is usually backed by the tyranny of the government.  Although the
Cherokees and the Creeks are established upon the territory which they
inhabited before the settlement of the Europeans, and although the Americans
have frequently treated with them as with foreign nations, the surrounding
States have not consented to acknowledge them as independent peoples, and
attempts have been made to subject these children of the woods to
Anglo-American magistrates, laws, and customs. ^u Destitution had driven these
unfortunate Indians to civilization, and oppression now drives them back to
their former condition: many of them abandon the soil which they had begun to
clear, and return to their savage course of life.

[Footnote u: In 1829 the State of Alabama divided the Creek territory into
counties, and subjected the Indian population to the power of European
magistrates.