A LESSON TAUGHT BY THE BED INDIAN.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1671, 5 March 1890, Page 3

A LESSON TAUGHT BY THE BED INDIAN.

This is an age of conferences, and the Red Indians of America, bitten apparently by the conference mania, have had their conference to devise means whereby they may be enabled to hold their own against the encroaching white race. There are in America wild tribei — that is, tribes still living in savagery— and civilised tribes, the latter having more or less adopted civilised habits and customs. At the conference referred to all the tribes, both civilised and uncivilised, were represented. The conference was styled "The Great International Indian Council." At the first set-off, the delegates from the wild tribes denounced most bitterly the white race and all connected with them and their institutions but the Cherokee Indians who appear to be by far the most civilised of all the tribes, managed to throyr oil on the troubled waters, and eventually the wild Indians consented to abide by the decision of the majority no matter how unpalatable it might be to them. Theirs was the subject that is now agitating the whole civilised world, that is the land question, and it will be seen from the result of their deliberations that, entirely unaided by white influence, they came to conclusions which would delight the heart of Henry George. "We want," said a Cherokee delegate, "to live ever as we do now ; we do not wish either to sell or divide our lands; we do not wish to be like the white people who possess their lands in severality and allow, the rich to buy all the land." He then proceeded to compare the Indian with the civilised Christian method of tenure, greatly to the discredit of the latter. He said : "There are millions of whites who have no land, because a few men own j it all ; but the Indians are wise— they hold tbeir land in common so that the Indian can stay if he wants to. It is because the land system of the white man is wrong that the Cherokees prefer to remain a nation. Almost everything else the white man does is bettor, and the Indian must follow him, but the land system of the Indian is better. The Cherokees are civilised * and happy. If the wild tribes will get civilised they also will be happy, if they do not part with their lands, and the Government will not take their lands from them. If the Indian sells his land, or allows it to be held in freehold, he will become in the end a wandering gipsy." The conference subsequently unanimously resolved that they would neither sell their lands nor allow any Indian or anybody else to claim the exclusive right to a single foot of their territory.