Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1901 — Oar Forefathers Honest. [ARTICLE]

Oar Forefathers Honest.

Sometimes historians tells us that it was only Dutchmen and not Englishmen who bought the red men’s land Instead of stealing It. Such statements have been made in New York, but If w r e pass on to Philadelphia we hear that it was only Quakers who were thus scrupulous, and when we arrive in Baltimore we learn that it was only Roman Cathqlics. In point of fact, It was the invariable custom of European settlers on this Atlantic coast to purchase the lauds on which they settled, and the transaction was usually recorded iu a deed to which the sagamore affixed their marks. Nor was the affair really such a mockery as it may at first thought seem to us. The red man got what he sorely coveted, steel hatchets and grindstones, glass beads add rum, perhaps muskets and ammunition, while he was apt to reserve sundry rights of catching game and fish. A struggle was inevitable when the white man’s agriculture encroached upon and exhausted the Indian’s hunting ground; but other circumstances usually brought it on long before that point was reached. The age of iron superseded the stone ago in America by the same law of progress that from time immemorial has been bearing humanity omvnrd from brutal savagery to higher and more perfect life. In the course of it our forefathers certainly ousted and dispossessed the red men, but they did not do It in a spirit of robbery.—Atlantic Monthly.