Kituhwa

I don't know if any of you have seen this before but....

I'm sitting here right now, absolutely nauseated by the fame and
heroic persona attributed to the American author Mark Twain, the PBS
special about him is on right now, and I honestly just want to puke
and here is but one reason why....yes he did write this, among many
other racist pieces of garbage about Indian people...he is NOT a hero

You must read the WHOLE thing to understand what I mean

The Noble Red Man

by Mark Twain
First published in The Galaxy 1870



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, filthy,
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.