Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/182

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172 Rez'iezus 0/ Books Indianer umi Anglo- Amey-ikaner : Ein gt-schichtlicher Ueberblick, von Georg Friederici, Oberleutnant im Infanterie-Regiment Graf Bose (1. Thiir.) Nr. 31. (Braunschweig, Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1900, pp. 147). The author of this brochure is a German infantry officer who, from long residence and extended travel in the United States, has come to be interested in the Indian question as determined by past and present governmental policy. A previous work dealt with the practice of scalp- ing, especially as fostered and encouraged in the colonial wars. The present one discusses the relations between the two races from the first discovery down to this year of grace 1900, following the lines of Helen Hunt Jackson's Century of Dishonor, with a narrative of slave-hunts, scalping-raids, massacres and broken faith that is an old story to readers of Indian history. The author deals primarily with the United States, beginning with the Spanish period, and follows in turn the history of the Delawares, the Iroquois, the Cherokee, the Sioux, Apaches, Cheyennes, Poncas, Nez Perces, the Texas tribes and those of California. Some of the facts given are comparatively well known, such as those relating to the massacre of the Christian Delawares in 1782 and the removal of the Cherokee in 1838, but others noted are compiled from sources not readily accessible. To those who have looked upon scalping as a custom practised only by Indians, or by the rude borderers of a past century, it may be a surprise to learn that the hostility of the Apaches to the Amer- icans dates from a massacre of a part of that tribe committed in 1836 by a band of professional American scalp-hunters in the pay of the governor of Sonora. In more recent times scalp-bounties were offered, and prob- ably paid, by the legislature of a western territory. In 1862 the gov- ernor of Arizona ordered that every Apache man should be killed, every woman and child sold into slavery. In California the natives were practically exterminated by the miners in regular Indian hunts. The be- lief of the Columbia River tribes that the missionary Whitman had de- liberately uncorked the smallpox among them does not appear so foolish when we know that as far back as 1764 Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander-in-chief, undertook to destroy the Indians adhering to Pontiac's alliance by sending among them infected blankets. The author draws a sharp contrast between conditions in Canada, where Indian outbreaks are nearly unknown, and in the United States, where our Indian wars have cost us five hundred million dollars, and as- cribes much of the difference to the shifting policies of our partisan poli- tics. The numerous references show that the author is thoroughly familiar with the literature of the subject, and while some of the criti- cisms are perhaps unnecessarily severe, the work is a distinct contribu- tion to American history. J.-MES MOOXEV. The Groiofh of Nationality in the United States, by John Bascom. (New York, Putnam's Sons, 1899, pp. 209.) The essays along the ancient and honorable lines of constitutional history in this work are no