centuries and dominated by highly organized nations, armed to the teeth. Lying isolated, it presented an almost virgin opportunity to the conquering Teutons of Western Europe.
Freed by their isolated position from the necessity of contending against outside aggression, the inhabitants of the United States have expended their combative energies against the weaker peoples with whom they came into immediate contact—
1. The Indians, from whom they took the land and wrested the right to exploit the resources of the continent;
2. The African Negroes who were captured and brought to America to labor as slaves;
3. The Mexicans, from whom they took additional slave territory at a time when the institution of slavery was in grave danger, and
4. The Spanish Empire from which they took foreign investment opportunities at a time when the business interests of the country first felt the pressure of surplus wealth.
Each of these four groups was weak. No one of them could present even the beginnings of an effectual resistance to the onslaught of the conquerors. Each in turn was forced to bow the knee before overwhelming odds.
2. The First Obstacle to Conquest
The first obstacle to the spread of English civilization across the continent of North America was the American Indian. He was in possession of the country; he had a culture of his own; he held the white man's civilization in contempt and refused to accept it. He had but one desire—to be let alone.
The continent was a "wilderness" to the whites. To the Indians it was a home. Their villages were scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf to Alaska; they knew well its mountains, plains and rivers. A primitive people, supporting themselves largely by hunting, fishing, simple agriculture and such elemental manual arts as pottery and weaving, they found the vast stretches of North America none too large to provide them with the means of satisfying their wants.
The ideas of the Indian differed fundamentally from those of the white man. Holding to the Eastern conception which makes the spiritual life paramount, he reduced his material existence to the simplest possible terms. He had no desire for possessions, which he regarded—at the best—as "only means to the end of his ultimate perfection."[5] To him, the white man's desire for wealth was incomprehensible and the white man's sedentary life was contemptible. He must be free at all times to commune with nature in the valleys, and at sunrise and sunset to ascend the mountain peak and salute the Great Spirit.
The individual Indian—having no desire for wealth—could not be bribed or bought for gold as could the European. The leaders, democratically selected, and held by the most enduring ties of loyalty to their tribal oaths, were above the mercenary standards of European commerce and statesmanship. Friendly, hospitable, courteous, generous, hostile, bitter, ferocious they were—but they were not for sale.
The attitude of the Indian toward the land which the white men coveted was typical of his whole relation with white civilization. "Land ownership, in the sense in which we use the term, was unknown to the Indians till the whites came among them."[6] The land devoted to villages was tribal property; the hunting ground surrounding the village was open to all of the members of the tribe; between the hunting grounds of different tribes there was a neutral territory—no man's land—that was common to both. If a family cultivated a patch of land, the neighbors did not trespass. Among the Indians of the Southwest the village owned the agricultural land and "periodically its governor, elected by popular vote, would distribute or redistribute the arable acres among his constituents who were able to care for them."[7] The Indians believed that the land, like the sunlight, was a gift of the Great Spirit to his children, and they were as willing to part with the one as with the other.
They carried their communal ideas still farther. Among the Indians of the Northwest, a man's possessions went at his death to the whole tribe and were distributed among the tribal members. Among the Alaskan Indians, no man, during his life, could possess more than he needed while his neighbor lacked. Food was always regarded as common property. "The rule being to let him who was hungry eat, wherever he found that which would stay the cravings of his stomach."[8] The motto of the Indian was "To each according to his need."
Such a communist attitude toward property, coupled with a belief that the land—the gift of the Great Spirit—was a trust committed to the tribe, proved a source of constant irritation to the white colonists who needed additional territory. As the colonies grew, it became more and more imperative to increase the land area open for settlement, and to such encroachments the Indian offered a stubborn resistance.
The Indian would not—could not—part with his land, neither would he work, as a slave or a wage-servant. Before such degradation he preferred death. Other peoples—the negroes; the inhabitants of Mexico, Peru and the West Indies; the Hindus and the Chinese—made slaves or servants. The Indian for generations held out stolidly against the efforts of missionaries, farmers and manufacturers alike to convert him into a worker.
The Indian could not understand the ideas of "purchase," "sale" and "cash payment" that constitute essential features of the white man's economy. To him strength of limb, courage, endurance, sobriety and personal dignity and reserve were infinitely superior to any of the commercial virtues which the white men possessed.
This attitude of the Indian toward European standards of civilization; his indifference to material possessions; his unwillingness to part with the land; and his refusal to work, made it impossible to "assimilate" him, as other peoples were assimilated, into colonial society. The individual Indian would not demean himself by becoming a cog in the white man's machine. He preferred to live and die in the open air of his native hills and plains.
The Indian was an intense individualist—trained in a school of experience where initiative and personal qualities were the tests of survival. He placed the soles of his moccasined feet firmly against his native earth, cast his eyes around him and above him and melted harmoniously into his native landscape.
Missionaries and teachers labored in vain—once an Indian, always an Indian. The white settlers pushed on across mountain ranges and through valleys. Generations came and went without any marked progress in bringing the white men and the red men together. When the Indian, in the mission or in the government school did become "civilized," he gave over his old life altogether and accepted the white man's codes and standards. The two methods of life were too far apart to make amalgamation possible.
3. Getting the Land
The white man must have land! Population was growing. The territory along the frontier seemed rich and alluring.
Everywhere, the Indian was in possession, and everywhere he considered the sale of land in the light of parting with a birth-right. He was friendly at first, but he had no sympathy with the standards of white civilization.
For such a situation
