The Vanishing Race: The Last Great Indian Council

Napoleon said to his soldiers, drawn up in battle line on the plains of Egypt, in sight of the solemn Sphinx and the eternal pyramids: “Forty centuries look down upon your actions to-day!” Four hundred and a score years ago Columbus looked first upon the red man. These solemn centuries look down upon this day; look down upon the sheathed sword, the broken coup stick, the shattered battle-axe, the deserted wigwams, the last red men mobilized on the plains of death. Ninety millions, with suffused eyes, watch this vanishing remnant of a race, whose regnant majesty inspires at the very moment it succumbs to the iconoclasm of civilization. It is the imposing triumph of solitary grandeur sweeping beyond the reach of militant crimes, their muffled footfalls reaching beyond the margin of an echo.