From:  Willie Martin 
        I know you all have seen the Noble Indian as portrayed by the 
movies and print media, but the truth is quite different. I think you will
be most interested in the following from the pen of Mark Twain. As you 
will note the lying Jews and their propaganda.
The Noble Red Man
 by Mark Twain
Although it is difficult to imagine an era more receptive to ethnic
flummery than the present (see review of The Invented Indian), the 
impulse to glorify the Indian is scarcely new.
In 1870, Mark Twain, never a man to leave foolishness unrebuked, vented his
contempt for worshipful accounts of imaginary Indians. His essay, which
originally appeared in the September issue of The Galaxy, is omitted from
most anthologies.
In books he is tall and tawny, muscular, straight and of kingly presence;
he has a beaked nose and an eagle eye.
His hair is glossy, and as black as the raven's wing; out of its massed
richness springs a sheaf of brilliant feathers; in his ears and nose are
silver ornaments; on his arms and wrists and ankles are broad silver bands
and bracelets; his buckskin hunting suit is gallantly fringed, and the belt
and the moccasins wonderfully flowered with colored beads; and when,
rainbowed with his war-paint, he stands at full height, with his crimson
blanket wrapped about him, his quiver at his back, his bow and tomahawk
projecting upward from his folded arms, and his eagle eye gazing at specks
against the far horizon which even the paleface's field-glass could
scarcely reach, he is a being to fall down and worship.
His language is intensely figurative. He never speaks of the moon, but
always of "the eye of the night;" nor of the wind as the wind, but as "the
whisper of the Great Spirit;" and so forth and so on. His power of
condensation is marvelous. In some publications he seldom says anything but
"Waugh!" and this, with a page of explanation by the author, reveals a
whole world of thought and wisdom that before lay concealed in that one
little word.
He is noble. He is true and loyal; not even imminent death can shake his
peerless faithfulness. His heart is a well-spring of truth, and of generous
impulses, and of knightly magnanimity. With him, gratitude is religion; do
him a kindness, and at the end of a lifetime he has not forgotten it. Eat
of his bread, or offer him yours, and the bond of hospitality is sealed--a
bond which is forever inviolable with him.
He loves the dark-eyed daughter of the forest, the dusky maiden of
faultless form and rich attire, the pride of the tribe, the all-beautiful.
He talks to her in a low voice, at twilight of his deeds on the war-path
and in the chase, and of the grand achievements of his ancestors; and she
listens with downcast eyes, "while a richer hue mantles her dusky cheek."
Such is the Noble Red Man in print. But out on the plains and in the
mountains, not being on dress parade, not being gotten up to see company,
he is under no obligation to be other than his natural self, and therefore:
He is little, and scrawny, and black, and dirty; and, judged by even the
most charitable of our canons of human excellence, is thoroughly pitiful
and contemptible. There is nothing in his eye or his nose that is
attractive, and if there is anything in his hair that--however, that is a
feature which will not bear too close examination...He wears no bracelets
on his arms or ankles; his hunting suit is gallantly fringed, but not
intentionally; when he does not wear his disgusting rabbit-skin robe, his
hunting suit consists wholly of the half of a horse blanket brought over in
the Pinta or the Mayflower, and frayed out and fringed by inveterate use.
He is not rich enough to possess a belt; he never owned a moccasin or wore
a shoe in his life; and truly he is nothing but a poor, fi lthy, naked
scurvy vagabond, whom to exterminate were a charity to the Creator's
worthier insects and
reptiles which he oppresses. Still, when contact with the white man has
given to the Noble Son of the Forest certain cloudy impressions of
civilization, and aspirations after a nobler life, he presently appears in
public with one boot on and one shoe--shirtless, and wearing ripped and
patched and buttonless pants which he holds up with his left hand--his
execrable rabbit-skin robe flowing from his shoulder--an old hoop-skirt on,
outside of it--a necklace of battered sardine-boxes and oyster-cans
reposing on his bare breast--a venerable flint-lock musket in his right
hand--a weather-beaten stove-pipe hat on, canted "gallusly" to starboard,
and the lid off and hanging by a thread or two; and when he thus appears,
and waits patiently around a saloon till he gets a chance to strike a
"swell" attitude before a looking-glass, he is a good, fair, desirable
subject for
extermination if ever there was one.
There is nothing figurative, or moonshiny, or sentimental about his
language. It is very simple and unostentatious, and consists of plain,
straightforward lies. His "wisdom" conferred upon an idiot would
leave that idiot helpless indeed.
He is ignoble--base and treacherous, and hateful in every way. Not even
imminent death can startle him into a spasm of virtue. The ruling trait of
all savages is a greedy and consuming selfishness, and in our Noble Red Man
it is found in its amplest development. His heart is a cesspool of
falsehood, of treachery, and of low and devilish instincts. With him,
gratitude is an
unknown emotion; and when one does him a kindness, it is safest to keep the
face toward him, lest the reward be an arrow in the back. To accept of a
favor from him is to assume a debt which you can never repay to his
satisfaction, though you bankrupt yourself trying. To give him a dinner
when he is starving, is to precipitate the whole hungry tribe upon your
hospitality, for he will go straight and fetch them, men, women, children,
and dogs, and these they will huddle patiently around your door,
or flatten their noses against your window, day aft er day, gazing
beseechingly upon every mouthful you take, and unconsciously swallowing
when you swallow! The scum of the earth!
And the Noble Son of the Plains becomes a mighty hunter in the due and
proper season. That season is the summer, and the prey that a number of the
tribes hunt is crickets and grasshoppers! The warriors, old men, women, and
children, spread themselves abroad in the plain and drive the hopping
creatures before them into a ring of fire. I could describe the feast that
then follows, without missing a detail, if I thought the reader would stand
it.
All history and honest observation will show that the Red Man is a skulking
coward and a windy braggart, who strikes without warning--usually from an
ambush or under cover of night, and nearly always bringing a force of about
five or six to one against his enemy; kills helpless women and little
children, and massacres th e men in their beds; and then brags about it as
long as he lives, and his son and his grandson and great-grandson after him
glorify it among the "heroic deeds of their ancestors." A regiment of
Fenians will fill the whole world with the noise of it when they are
getting ready invade Canada; but when the Red Man declares war, the first
intimation his friend the white man whom he supped with at twilight has of
it, is when the war-whoop rings in his ears and tomahawk sinks into his
brain. . . .
The Noble Red Man seldom goes prating loving foolishness to a splendidly
caparisoned blushing maid at twilight. No; he trades a crippled horse, or a
damaged musket, or a dog, or a gallon of grasshoppers, and an inefficient
old mother for her, and makes her work like an abject slave all the rest of
her life to compensate him for the outlay. He never works himself. She
builds the habitation, when they use one (it consists in hanging half a
dozen rags over the weather side of a sage-brush bush to roost under);
gathers and brings home the fuel; takes care of the raw-boned pony when
they possess such grandeur; she walks and carries her nursing cubs while he
rides. She wears no clothing save the fragrant rabbit-skin robe which her
great-grandmother before her wore, and all the "blushing" she does can be
removed with soap and a towel, provided it is only four or five weeks old
and not caked.
Such is the genuine Noble Aborigine. I did not get him from books, but from
personal observation.
... DOG PATCH USA * CHATTANOOGA TN * (423)867-5971 * [1:362/309]
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30
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