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Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851

"Oak Openings"

Dogs would
be the best name. You are poor Injins. A long time ago, the pale-
faces came here in two or three little canoes. They were but a
handful, and you were plentier than prairie wolves. Your bark could
be heard throughout the land. Well, what did this handful of pale-
faces? It drove your fathers before them, until they got all the
best of the hunting-grounds. Not an Injin of you all, now, ever get
down on the shores of the great salt lake, unless to sell brooms and
baskets, and then he goes sneaking like a wolf after a sheep. You
have forgotten how clams and oysters taste. Your fathers had as many
of them as they could eat; but not one of YOU ever tasted them. The
pale-faces eat them all. If an Injin asked for one, they would throw
the shell at his head, and call him a dog.
"Do you think that my chiefs would hang one of you between two such
miserable saplings as these? No! They would scorn to practice such
pitiful torture. They would bring the tops of two tall pines
together, trees a hundred and fifty feet high, and put their
prisoner on the topmost boughs, for the crows and ravens to pick his
eyes out. But you are miserable Injins! You know nothing.


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