A Straight Deal by Owen Wister

The blackest page in our history is our treatment of the Indian. To speak of it is a thankless task -- thankless, and necessary.

This land was the Indian's house, not ours. He was here first, nobody knows how many centuries first. We arrived, and we shoved him, and shoved him, and shoved him, back, and back, and back. Treaty after treaty we made with him, and broke. We drew circles round his freedom, smaller and smaller. We allowed him such and such territory, then took it away and gave him less and worse in exchange. Throughout a century our promises to him were a whole basket of scraps of paper. The other day I saw some Indians in California. It had once been their place. All over that region they had hunted and fished and lived according to their desires, enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We came. To-day the hunting and fishing are restricted by our laws -- not the Indian's -- because we wasted and almost exterminated in a very short while what had amply provided the Indian with sport and food for a very long while.