We were
swift to note the way they behaved, the differences in their religion
and morals, and in their ways of drawing a living from the same kind
of soil under the same general conditions; how they protected
themselves from the weather; how they were influenced by new doctrines
and old ones seen in new lights in preaching, lecturing, debating,
bringing up their children, etc., and how they regarded the Indians,
those first settlers and owners of the ground that was being made into
farms.
I well remember my father's discussing with a Scotch neighbor, a Mr.
George Mair, the Indian question as to the rightful ownership of the
soil. Mr. Mair remarked one day that it was pitiful to see how the
unfortunate Indians, children of Nature, living on the natural
products of the soil, hunting, fishing, and even cultivating small
corn-fields on the most fertile spots, were now being robbed of their
lands and pushed ruthlessly back into narrower and narrower limits by
alien races who were cutting off their means of livelihood. Father
replied that surely it could never have been the intention of God to
allow Indians to rove and hunt over so fertile a country and hold it
forever in unproductive wildness, while Scotch and Irish and English
farmers could put it to so much better use.
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